Why Notre Dame WR Avery Davis is no longer afraid of failure: ‘I had to hit bottom’

When Texas native Avery Davis arrived on campus at Notre Dame in 2017, failure was a foreign concept. He was a top-300 dual-threat quarterback and attended the Elite 11 Finals, a quarterback competition reserved for the nation’s best high school signal-callers. He threw for 2,876 yards with 37 touchdowns during his senior season at Cedar Hill (Texas) High.

Davis had reached the pinnacle of high school football. Now, he was hoping to be the next in a long line of famed Notre Dame quarterbacks, a fraternity reserved for just a handful of golden boys who now live in Irish lore. 

What Davis didn’t know was he was about to embark on one of the more turbulent Notre Dame careers in recent history, one which would involve playing in four different spots — quarterback, running back, defensive back and wide receiver — and switching positions five times. 

“Every position change is a huge adjustment,” Davis told former Notre Dame and current Rice safety Litchfield Ajavon on his podcast, “Living Athletics.” “If you’ve only played quarterback, but you can also run at the same time, just because you’re athletic does not mean you’re easily applicable to any other position. That’s not how it works.

“Yeah, I was fast. I knew how to make people miss, but I didn’t know how to run inside. I didn’t know how to run a route. I didn’t know how to read a hole from a running back’s perspective. From a defensive back’s perspective, I didn’t know how to do anything — backpedal, shuffle, identify what the offense is doing. I didn’t know any of that.”

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Davis would redshirt his freshman season at quarterback. He wouldn’t see the field for chunks of time once he switched to running back. He would lose rep after rep after rep at practice as a defensive back. After two full seasons in South Bend, it became hard to get out of bed for those early morning workouts, especially once the infamous Northeast Indiana permacloud arrived.

The waters? Uncharted. The losses? Piling up. The desire to keep playing a sport he once dreamed of making into a career? Hard to maintain. The joy was gone.

“I made a few plays here and there, but it wasn’t anything that made me feel like this is what I need to be doing or this is where I belong, at this position,” Davis said.

It kept weighing on him, and it all came crashing down in early 2019. 

“I had a breakdown at the end of spring ball that defensive year,” Davis said. “I broke down in my car. I shed some tears, and I was just yelling (out of) frustration. I couldn’t be around people when that happened, so I just drove to a parking lot and broke down.”

At this point, Davis debated everything. Everything. Leaving Notre Dame was technically an option, but he didn’t want to go down that road. He grew up around people who would dream of getting an opportunity to earn a degree from Notre Dame. He was already in the metaphorical door. He wasn’t going to throw it away. 

A mental change was needed. It arrived at the perfect time. 

“Something just came over me,” Davis said. “(I realized) to just control what you can control. I thought about everything that I went through. I thought ‘What am I doing wrong?’ 

“I would go into certain situations tentative or hesitant. So I was like ‘Alright, what am I hesitant about?’ I’m hesitant because I don’t want to lose. What was on my mind the whole time was losing. That was the only thing I was thinking about, this loss that I could potentially take. By not having confidence in myself, I’m giving that other person, my opponent, whoever is lined up against me in this rep, I’m giving him more power, and he doesn’t even know.”

The lack of failure during his middle and high school years seemed to be a blessing at the time. Now, it was the cause of severe angst and self-questioning. Davis had recognized the root of the problem and was determined to address it. 

“Once I analyzed that, I was like ‘Alright. Let me stop doing that,’” Davis said. “Let me stop giving power to things I can’t control. I can’t control what a defensive back is going to do to stop me, to an extent, but I can control what I’m about to give him on this route, what look I’m about to give him, how well I’m going to get in and out of this break. Stuff like that.”

He took the new mindset back to practice, determined to make things work. Slowly but surely, he started to piece his trust in himself back together. 

“Once you start (doing well), that false confidence, that ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ turned into ‘Oh no, I’m really good. I really can win. This works. This doesn’t work, but I’m OK with taking this (loss) because I see what I did wrong, but I also see how he reacted when I went this way or did this move,’” Davis said. “So the biggest change was perspective. Losses are going to happen. Losses are inevitable. I had to learn that, experience that, go through and live it to really put it in perspective for myself. Just hearing it or watching an inspirational YouTube video is not going to do it.

“I really had to get knocked down and figure out how I was going to get back up. Getting back up wasn’t a question. I’m getting back up. But how am I going to go forward now? It took a breakdown. I had to hit bottom.”

Davis would be knocked down once again in 2021, just as things were starting to turn around. After 27 catches, 386 yards and four touchdowns, he tore his ACL in a Nov. 6 game against Navy on a seemingly routine step. There was no weird cut or hit. He was merely blocking for former running back Kyren Williams on the play, and it ended his season. Add another career interruption to the list.

Eight months later, he’s nearly made it through that setback, too. Davis is now about to embark on his sixth year of college football, and the individual goal remains the same: make it to the NFL. Giving it everything he has one last time is the only option. It’s how Davis is wired, and Notre Dame is better for it.

What if he isn’t successful? That possibility doesn’t matter. The fear-of-failure curse is not going to monopolize his psyche anymore.

Davis is getting back up one last time.