For every praise of Notre Dame’s cornerbacks’ performance in 2017, some slight portion of it should go toward mitigating the criticisms of the Irish safeties. While Julian Love broke up 20 passes and picked off three passes, all of the safeties combined for five breakups and no interceptions. At some of those moments, though, Love could break on a pass because he trusted the safety behind him to provide support.
Hard as it may be to believe, and partly because there was hardly anywhere to go but up, Notre Dame’s safeties showed improvement this spring. Juniors Jalen Elliott and Alohi Gilman emerged as a starting duo, the former still with room for improvement in tackling and the latter’s nose for the ball perhaps bordering on too ambitious.