Marcus Freeman gives Ramon Henderson, DJ Brown injury update

Notre Dame is back in action this week against No. 16 BYU, following a bye week for the team. The extra week off gave a few players extra time to recover, and coach Marcus Freeman provided a Ramon Henderson and DJ Brown injury update on Monday.

The news is quite positive for the Fighting Irish.

“As far as Ramon and DJ, Rob Hunt, our head athletic trainer, texted me this morning that both of them look really good today and expect them to go and practice,” Freeman said. “Obviously we still have four days, five days before our game, but I would expect both of those guys to be ready to go.”

Henderson missed the team’s 45-32 win over North Carolina on Sept. 24 with an ankle injury. The talented safety had recorded eight tackles, a half tackle for a loss, a half sack and one quarterback hurry in the first three games of the season.

Brown, also a safety, was dealing with a hamstring injury that limited him.

Should they return they would significantly bolster the defensive backfield going against a BYU team that ranks No. 24 nationally in passing offense, averaging 293.2 yards per game.

Ramon Henderson, DJ Brown injuries gave Xavier Watts valuable snaps

With both Henderson and Brown banged up, the Fighting Irish were able to get third-year safety Xavier Watts some valuable reps. He played in 11 games a year ago, tallying 15 tackles.

He got significantly more experience against the Tar Heels, who boasted one of the nation’s most prolific offenses.

“X did a really good job. There was the play, the touchdown that we’ve got to make sure that we take an angle where we can get that guy down, but X is a guy that continuously improves,” Freeman said. “And he’s been playing the safety position close to a year, hasn’t even been a year yet. We moved him, obviously, last year during the season. But he’s getting better and he has a lot of natural ability that we have to continue to coach and mold to be an excellent safety, but he has the talent to do that.”

Watts was a former four-star prospect in the 2020 recruiting class, ranked as the No. 339 overall player in the nation that year by the On3 Consensus Recruiting Rankings.

Notre Dame will take on BYU on Saturday in a game that kicks off at 7:30 p.m. ET with a broadcast on NBC and streaming on Peacock.