In four years with Clark Lea on the Irish coaching staff, Notre Dame has always leaned on one Buck linebacker above all others. With Lea’s development of linebackers perhaps his trademark, those linebackers seemed to come out of the woodwork from one season to the next. But statistically, that has not happened in 2020.
Instead, Lea has developed a rotation of junior Shayne Simon and sophomores Jack Kiser and Marist Liufau. As a whole, their success measures up to their one-man show predecessors. Most notably, in two of its last three games the Irish defense held two of the best running backs in the nation in Clemson’s Travis Etienne and North Carolina’s Javonte Williams to 28 rushing yards each.