Notre Dame Fighting Irish College Football Pregame Quote, 12/30/2024

Q. Malaki Starks had some awards last year. Did you get a chance to chance to meet him?

XAVIER WATTS: Yeah, we were at the [Bronko] Nagurski ceremony last year.

Q. Did you get a chance to spend any time with him (Malaki Starks) there?

XAVIER WATTS: Obviously, we did a couple things together. We talked a little bit. But we weren’t with each other the entire time ‚Äì we were with each other the entire time, but we didn’t hang out or anything like that.

Q. You guys might hit the combine together with the safeties, and if you do that, do you look at other

safeties around the country and see what their games look like?

XAVIER WATTS: Not really. I’m not trying to pay attention too much to other safeties. Really just focusing on the NFL guys.

Q. What about Gunner Stockton? What’s been your impression?

XAVIER WATTS: It’s been a little hard because there’s not a lot of film on him. Just basing it off the Texas game. Looks like he’s high-thought player. He runs the ball pretty hard when he gets a chance to, and it’s difficult because there’s not a lot of film on him.

Q. Can you talk about your coaching staff. Not just Coach [Marcus] Freeman, your positional coaches how they made you better, what have you learned from them the last couple years?

XAVIER WATTS: Yeah, so like with ‚Äì I’ll start with Defensive Coordinator, Coach [Al] Golden. Him first coming in, because he came from the Bengals when they were in Super Bowl. Just having him come over, NFL-style defense and coaching, it’s been really awesome. Especially for a player like me has translated my game to the next level.

And Coach [Mike] Mickens. It’s his first year doing like DBs all together. Like last year we had safeties and corners split over two different coaches. So him coming this year altogether, been really good because it’s a different type of language versus just a safety coach versus a corner coach. Both of these guys have been really good.

Q. What’s your favorite part about this Notre Dame team off the field? Is it the comradery? The sense of family? What’s your favorite thing about this group of guys this year, what makes y’all so special?

XAVIER WATTS: Definitely, a lot of teams say they have a brotherhood and a family, but I think this is truly an amazing brotherhood because you got to be a special type of person to come to Notre Dame.

So all the guys here are well-minded, good on and off the field, classroom guys as well as football too. We’re all able to bond with each other so well. I think that makes it special, that brotherhood and how alike we are.

Q. After Northern Illinois, how were you guys able to bounce back and refocus?

XAVIER WATTS: Yeah, I think Coach Freeman. Obviously, he’s our leader and the message he related to us throughout the week, obviously, our season wasn’t over, but we had so many more games left. Only the second game of the season. So we could have went downhill or continue to improve.

So relaying the message that the season isn’t over, and we have so much to get better with, and that’s what we did.

Q. Was it a matter of just cleaning things up on your end?

XAVIER WATTS: Yeah, we had a lot of missed assignments in that game. Not really prepared. I think maybe we overlooked those guys a little bit. So kind of just coming in, you know, relayed that we can get beat every week, and guys took that to heart and didn’t want that to happen. So cleaning up a lot of the mistakes and preparing the runway.

Q. Could you imagine after that loss being in the playoff?

XAVIER WATTS: No, he talked about all the time, it’s crazy, you never think about it. Especially with a loss like that, it’s like, all right, what’s fixing to happen the rest of the season? You really don’t know. But getting into the playoffs after that has been amazing.

Q. What was his messaging that next week?

XAVIER WATTS: Yeah, cleaning up those mistakes. He had felt that we didn’t prepare the right way just all week. Feel like we overlooked them. Didn’t think we could beat ‚Äì we couldn’t get beat. So it kind of just clean it up and be ready to play against anybody every week.

Q. What have you seen from [Gunner] Stockton on film?

XAVIER WATTS: Yeah, it’s been difficult. There’s not a lot of film on him. So just basing off what we saw in the SEC Championship game and some of the other games he came in. He’s dangerous with his leg, I would say. He’s a hard runner. Obviously, he can throw the ball when he needs to. But it’s been really difficult. So we’ll see what happens.

Q. As the defense, how do you approach a quarterback like that you know is going to throw in some wrinkles, especially with his legs?

XAVIER WATTS: Yeah, at the end of the day, it’s playing our style of ball. We can’t let them dictate the game. Coach [Al] Golden is going to be aggressive, and we have to play aggressive, regardless what the offense wants to run. Kind of doing what we do and letting it take care of itself.

Q. What did you learn about your defense or solidify what you already knew in what you guys were able to do to Indiana’s quarterback?

XAVIER WATTS: Yeah, just a credit to our coaches. Getting us this the right position and preparing us all week. Just being able to go against a really good quarterback like Kurtis Rourke and do the things that we did to him. Making him throw interceptions, making him feel uncomfortable. And letting us know that our style of defense has been really good all season, and then doing it against a quarterback like that, gives us more confidence for a deep run in playoffs.