31 days until Notre Dame football: How Benjamin Morrison can be better

BlueandGold.com will release a countdown article highlighting a significant Notre Dame football statistic every day until the 2024 season opener at Texas A&M at 7:30 p.m. ET on Aug. 31 in College Station, Texas. Today, there are 31 days until the Irish and Aggies kick off at Kyle Field.

Benjamin Morrison was named Blue & Gold’s second most important player of 2024 on Tuesday. He’s deserving of the spot and maybe even more. He’ll probably be the first player from Notre Dame taken in the 2025 NFL Draft.

But there is one area in particular Morrison could stand to improve upon. Tackling.

He had 31 total tackles in 12 games last season. That’s fine for a corner. The idea is you don’t want to be in a position to make many tackles anyway. You want to intercept passes instead. Bat them down. Stick to the man you’re covering so much like glue that opposing quarterbacks don’t even attempt a pass in your direction.

Morrison is quite good at all of that. He led all Notre Dame defensive backs with a Pro Football Focus coverage grade of 84.6 in 2023. Only linebacker Jack Kiser had a better mark among Fighting Irish players at 90.3. Morrison played more than twice as many coverage snaps as Kiser, 339 to 160.

Morrison missed 7 tackles in 2023 according to PFF, though, and only three Notre Dame players missed more. His PFF tackling grade of 60.1 ranked 27th among 36 Notre Dame defensive players who registered a number in that category.

The good news: he was in good company with those players being All-American safety and Bronko Nagurski Trophy winner Xavier Watts and NFL Draft linebacker selections JD Bertrand and Marist Liufau . The bad news: those players tend to be in position to make more tackles than a cornerback. NFL draftee Cam Hart , Notre Dame’s other regular starting corner last year, only had 4 missed tackles.

PFF has a missed tackles rate calculator, and Morrison’s mark was 17.1 percent. That was the ninth-highest percentage among Notre Dame players behind Jaylen Sneed , Clarence Lewis , Jaden Mickey , Adon Shuler , Antonio Carter II , Liufau, Watts and Ramon Henderson .

Seven of the nine being defensive backs could be cause for concern for Notre Dame. Of course, you tend to trust defensive linemen and linebackers to bring players to the ground more reliably than much smaller DBs. But there is also no doubt guys like Morrison and Watts, unquestioned leaders of the Notre Dame defense, need to be better at it. Period.

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