During Monday afternoon’s weekly press conference, Notre Dame head football coach Marcus Freeman announced the loss of junior cornerback Benjamin Morrison for the remainder of the season. Morrison will require surgery on a hip injury, leaving the Irish with a team captain and All-American-sized hole to fill in the defensive backs room.
Morrison, who burst onto the scene with six interceptions as a freshman in 2022, had spent the last two seasons as Notre Dame’s top cornerback. He led the Irish with 10 pass breakups last season and added three interceptions. Through six games this year, he had four passes defended and ranked fifth on the team with 20 tackles. Most experts projected him to find a professional home about halfway through the first round of the 2025 NFL Draft.
“Obviously, it’s a blow to our team. You lose a captain — a great football player — and you feel terrible for the kid because he gives football and preparation everything he has,” Freeman said. “It’s tough, but he’s a tough kid … He’s been through this before, and he’ll have surgery and get to work on becoming the best version of Benjamin.”
Morrison’s injury is far from the first significant one Notre Dame has dealt with this year. Elsewhere on defense, graduate defensive end Jordan Botelho and sophomore defensive end Boubacar Traore suffered season-ending knee injuries within two weeks of one another at the vyper position. On offense, projected starting left tackle sophomore Charles Jagusah went down for the year in August, while junior center Ashton Craig and junior right guard Billy Schrauth each picked up long-term injuries in mid-September.
Moving into the second half of the season, tremendous responsibility now rests on three underclassmen (that’s all Notre Dame currently has listed on the depth chart) to carry the position forward. Sophomore Christian Gray, who has started opposite Morrison all season with four pass breakups and an interception, becomes the top Irish corner. Freshmen Karson Hobbs and Leonard Moore, who respectively started the year as Notre Dame’s fourth and fifth corners, will play a larger role, especially with former third cornerback Jaden Mickey having recently entered the transfer portal.
During Monday’s presser, Freeman spoke about what Moore in particular has to offer as his workload increases.
“You understand he has the talent, he has the length, he has the skillset and he’s a super intelligent young man. But it still takes time to play fast in a new defense,” Freeman said. “He was a guy in fall camp that you said, ‘Okay, he’s playing fast already.’ We knew he would help us this year, and at some point if injuries happened he would have to start for us. He’ll be ready.”
Notre Dame, in the first week after Mickey stepped away from the program, got somewhat of a dry run for handling personnel shifts at cornerback on Sept. 28 against Louisville. With Gray unable to play, the Irish leaned on Moore for 76 snaps, also calling on graduate safety Jordan Clark to adjust his nickelback responsibilities to accommodate more traditional cornerback snaps.
“I’m very confident in the room,” Freeman said of his defensive backs group.
Fortunately for the Irish, none of their next five opponents are real juggernauts through the air. Georgia Tech, Navy, Florida State, Virginia and Army each rank outside the nation’s top 40 in passing yards per game. Southern California, which ranks 26th nationally in that category, will pose more of a threat at the regular season’s end, but Notre Dame should have more stability at the position by that point barring additional injuries.
