Notre Dame would welcome injured DE Jordan Botelho back for sixth season in 2025
Jordan Botelho said he was blessed and humbled to be asked by the Notre Dame coaching staff to return for a fifth season in 2024. In his greatest time of physical peril, he ought to be blessed and humbled once more.
Fighting Irish head coach Marcus Freeman said on Sept. 26 that Notre Dame would welcome Botelho, who went out for the season with a significant knee injury in the first half of the third game of the year at Purdue, back to South Bend for a sixth season in 2025.
“That’s something we told him is an option for him if it’s something that he wants to do,” Freeman said. “But more than anything, wanted him to know that if he wants the opportunity to come back next year, we would love to have him back.”
Freeman previously said Botelho was playing the best ball of his Notre Dame career, and the numbers back it up. Through four games, only two players posted a better Pro Football Focus overall defensive grade than Botelho; freshman safety Kennedy Urlacher, who had only played 25 defensive snaps to that point, and All-American graduate student safety Xavier Watts.
Also through four games, Botelho was tied for the team lead in quarterback pressures with his former backup and, as a result of Botelho’s injury, current starter at Vyper end, sophomore Boubacar Traore. They both had 7, but Botelho did it on 15 fewer pass-rush snaps — 61 for Traore and 46 for Botelho.
That coincides with Botelho’s PFF win rate of 23.3 percent. Only two players on the Notre Dame defense had a better mark than that through four games, and they either a) hardly play, in the case of freshman defensive end Loghan Thomas or b) hardly rush the passer in the case of sophomore safety Adon Shuler. Thomas had a win rate of 100 percent on his 1 pass-rush snap. Shuler won 1 of his 3 pass-rush snaps in which he faced an opposing blocker for a percentage of 33.3.
If Botelho does come back, Notre Dame will be loaded at the defensive end positions. Traore, junior Vyper Junior Tuihalamaka and Thomas will all be back at the rush-end spot. Notre Dame is expecting to return junior Joshua Burnham and freshman Bryce Young on the strong side.
Traore could be asked to fill out a bit and play the strong side to even out the numbers with Duke transfer RJ Oben exhausting his eligibility. Or, Notre Dame could leave Traore where he’s a most natural fit and take on a strong-side end from the transfer portal to bolster the numbers there for the third year in a row following Oben this season and Ohio State’s Javontae Jean-Baptiste in 2023.
One thing has been made clear by Freeman; he wants Botelho back in 2025, especially if it’s the version of him who was an unstoppable force in two and a half quarters to start this season before the injury.
