I was sitting down to put together a little something about Notre Dame cornerback Leonard Moore, and started double checking some Fighting Irish defensive stats. While I’m quite familiar with them, I stared at the listings for a few minutes and thought… there’s some funny stuff going on here.
So, here are some of those thoughts that I had:
Xavier Watts might forever be under appreciated by college football fans. He finished tied for 3rd all-time for career interceptions at Notre Dame which was more than Irish legends, Shane Walton and Todd Lyght. Sometimes “legend” status takes a little bit of marinating — but it shouldn’t since Watts was so incredible.
Watts is tied for 7th for interceptions in a season (7), and one of the guys he’s tied with is Manti Te’o. I don’t think (and neither do you) we will ever see a linebacker pull down that many picks again. Much was said about Te’o’s Heisman campaign, but it was THOSE interceptions that really set him up.
If I asked you to name the top ten leading tacklers in Notre Dame history — how long would it take you to come up with the name of Te’von Coney? The former Irish linebacker is currently 10th all-time with 314 from 2015-2018.