Gentle Giant: Why Aamil Wagner is all Notre Dame wants, needs at right tackle

The middle of a Notre Dame football spring practice isn’t exactly a time for bright smiles and chipper attitudes. Those sessions are all-business, especially on the cold, late-winter days in South Bend that make it feel like you’re Washington crossing the Delaware when running across the street from the Guglielmino Athletics Complex to the Irish Athletics Center.

But if you’re Aamil Wagner, there’s always time for blissful liveliness — no matter how frigid the weather, how grueling the work.

Wagner meandered from one drill area to another at Notre Dame’s practice facility this past spring. His offensive line position mates, dripping sweat that clung to their clothes and would make it even colder getting back to the Gug, kept their heads down and minds focused on their forthcoming functions.

Wagner had his head up. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have seen two people dear to him he had no expectation of getting a gaze of on that particular day, one that felt like all the others in the grind that is spring ball.

His high school coaches, Roosevelt Mukes and Cole Newsome, made a surprise visit from Dayton (Ohio) Wayne to watch Wagner.

“He didn’t know we were coming,” Newsome told Blue & Gold. “He was running on the field and looked to the side of his buddy and said, ‘Coach Mukes? Coach Cole?’ That giant paw just started waving, and he just started smiling ear to ear mid-practice like an 8-year-old seeing his dad. And then went out there and balled out.”

That’s who Notre Dame has as a junior right tackle in his first year as a starter. Someone who reaches out, literally, to those who go out of their way for him. And to those who don’t, for that matter. Newsome said Wagner often helped opponents up off the ground after pancaking them in games. The 6-6, 293-pound behemoth of a human has a heart to match his substantial stature. A “gentle giant,” Newsome called him.

His Irish teammates view him the same way.

“He’s very goofy,” sophomore running back Jeremiyah Love said. “He likes to joke a lot. He’s a very cool person to be around inside and outside the locker room. A really fun person to be around. When it comes to football time and time to work, he locks in. But outside of football, he’s a really cool dude.”

Of course, Mukes, Wagner’s high school head coach, sees him that way too.

“Besides the football player he is, he’s a great person,” Mukes said. “A great human being.”

Nothing Is Perfect

Ironically, the aforementioned physical stature was an issue early in Wagner’s college career. He showed up in South Bend as an undersized tackle prospect, tipping the scale at just 245 pounds. That wasn’t ever going to be enough to push entrenched starters Joe Alt and Blake Fisher, both of whom have made starts as rookies in the NFL this year.

Who better to learn from than those two, though, Wagner thought, while downing 2,000-calorie protein shakes and getting his body right for when both Alt and Fisher would presumably leave Notre Dame as juniors, leaving two vacancies open at the book-end positions along the Irish offensive line? Rhetorical question, but the answer is nobody.

Wagner has notebooks full of tips and tricks from Alt and Fisher. One of the pieces of advice he goes back to often is from Alt; “nothing will be perfect.” Having to hear how you’re never going to be big enough to be a starting tackle at Notre Dame is not perfect. The abnormal caloric intake required to prove doubters wrong isn’t either.

Observing what it takes to achieve desired outcomes from two all-time standard setters? As close to perfection as it gets.

“It made it so much easier,” Wagner said. “I think having guys that were some of the best tackles in the country, period, that’s setting the example. Whether that’s Joe being detailed-oriented or that’s Blake with an aggressive mindset, you can take away from those guys as much as possible.”

At some point, though, Wagner’s got to go out on Saturdays and do it himself. And he has. It took two years of standing on the sideline while watching two players who were ready to do what he ultimately wanted to do as true freshmen, but Wagner’s journey was always going to be a lengthier one. As long as the destination was the same as that of Alt and Fisher, Wagner wasn’t worried about the time it’d take to get there.

Now here he is. The gentle giant who’d wave at his offensive line coach, Newsome, in the hallways at Wayne and then again on the field at the IAC is violently waving his arms at opposing defensive linemen as one-fifth of the always highly touted and/or scrutinized Notre Dame offensive line.

He’s been all Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman could’ve asked for in playing his part.

“Aamil’s done a great job,” Freeman said. “In his first year starting, he’s played well. Him, like every other coach and player, has to continue to improve. But I’m really proud of the way he’s performed as our right tackle. He works consistently. He’s a great team player.”

Holding His Own

Wagner drew a tough assignment for his first career start — 2023 Big Ten sacks leader Nic Scourton, a former Purdue Boilermaker, and the rest of a talented Texas A&M defensive line. He admitted to being nervous going into a season-opener with implications severe enough to make a fragile individual falter.

Not Wagner.

By halftime, he acquired the self-assurance all first-time starters must muster up if they’re to be successful for a prolonged period. Wagner reaffirmed he belonged as Notre Dame’s starting right tackle in a game the Irish ultimately won, 23-13, and held up enough in the trenches, all things considered, to make such a score attainable.

“It was really just a confidence builder knowing I could hold my own and continue from there,” Wagner said.

Getting to that point began in earnest when Wagner had to routinely block — or try to block — all-time Notre Dame sacks leader Isaiah Foskey as a scout teamer in 2022. Wagner mentioned Howard Cross III and Rylie Mills as defensive linemen who not-so-nicely welcomed him to this level of ball. Eventually, though, those “welcome to Notre Dame” moments became fewer and farther between.

In reps against Cross and Mills, plus Jordan Botelho, Boubacar Traore and others, in spring ball and preseason training camp, Notre Dame offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock saw someone in Wagner he knew could play winning football against Scourton, Louisville’s Ashton Gillotte and anyone else on the Irish schedule.

This wasn’t a situation where Denbrock and offensive line coach Joe Rudolph got together and determined they needed to make a change like they did in replacing fifth-year graduate senior Tosh Baker with true freshman Anthonie Knapp at left tackle. This was quite the opposite.

Denbrock and Rudolph knew Wagner possessed the mettle of a starter.  

“I loved, from the beginning, his consistency,” Denbrock said. “And he’s an incredibly intelligent young man that even though he didn’t have a lot of experience from a game atmosphere standpoint, nothing that was thrown at him by our defense — which, as you guys know, throws a lot at him — shook him. He was always able to pull himself back and refocus on the task at hand. And he’s continued to do that.”  

He’s been doing it since his days in Dayton. There are reasons Wagner lights up when he sees Mukes and Newsome. They’re the ones who got him going in this endeavor.

There are reasons Mukes and Newsome make efforts to remain a part of Wagner’s life, too. Sometimes a student-athlete so exceptional comes around that you just can’t let him go.

Wagner is one of those.

“To see him finally reap the fruits of his labor and to be out there representing Notre Dame and Wayne High School, it’s an honor,” Mukes said. “It’s a special thing.”