Mike Elston Provides End-Of-Spring State Of The Union At Linebacker

Notre Dame has carried only four healthy linebackers through spring practice, so it’s difficult to get a true feel for how the unit will fully shake out by the time the season begins at Texas in less than five months, but linebackers coach Mike Elston feels good about where everything is headed.

“If we had everybody healthy right now, we would be [feeling] very, very good,” Elston said after Notre Dame’s penultimate spring practice Wednesday. “Assuming Te'von [Coney] and Greer [Martini] come back healthy at the level that they were and they can move their game forward during the fall camp, summer and fall camp, we're going to have a very solid linebacking corps.”

From what Elston indicated Wednesday, Notre Dame expects the two-deep to play out something like this in the fall:

Mike linebacker

Nyles Morgan

Josh Barajas

Will linebacker

Te’von Coney OR

Asmar Bilal

Sam linebacker

James Onwualu

Greer Martini*

*Martini can play any of the three linebacker positions

While Barajas has only seen reps at Mike linebacker while learning the most intellectually rigorous of the three spots, he is a candidate to eventually play anywhere.

As of now, Elston projects Martini as the backup Sam linebacker behind Onwualu, but noted that the junior could contribute anywhere as well.

“Greer would afford us the opportunity to cross-train him,” Elston said. “We go to a nickel package and we put a dime in the game. Greer's got very good understanding of our coverages and stuff like that, so Greer could go from the Sam and when we put a nickel in for the Sam, he could pop over and play the dime position. Greer's got a lot of flexibility, but he would in base defense be with the Sam.”

As for the freshmen that will enroll in June, Elston expects Jonathan Jones to begin at Mike linebacker with Jamir Jones at either Sam or Will, which the coaches consider to be interchangeable.

Elston said he is pushing for stronger leadership from the unit, which loses those abilities from Joe Schmidt as well as the production of Jaylon Smith.

“[With] a lot of guys it's natural,” he said. “It comes with confidence in yourself, being able to know, 'I have my job taken.' I'm going to do my job. You get your job done.' It's like that. When Nyles was a freshman, he didn't know what the hell he was doing. How can he demand that from somebody else? Now Josh is in that group. How can he demand something from Isaac Rochell in front of him when he doesn't even know what he's doing right now? Leadership is a process, especially at linebacker.”

That process took three years for Morgan to feel fully comfortable as the No. 1 Mike linebacker, but Elston expects the junior to have a “hell of a year” in 2016.

“I think about Nyles had a really good preparation for the season a year ago. I think Nyles did a really nice job and then about seven or eight games into it, he hurt his knee and that's where I saw a little bit of a dropoff,” Elston said. “Prior to that, there was some great growth with Nyles and like I said in the last presser, once Nyles became the guy and Joe left the campus and he was done and Nyles wasn't looking over his shoulder when he was out there, that's when I saw a different demeanor from him and a different confidence and different swag.

“He's going to get us lined up and he's going to be flying around and physical and he's going to be making a lot of plays.”