Deland McCullough Has A Loaded Running Back Room, And It's A Great "Problem" To Have

Notre Dame’s running back room is bursting with talent. It starts with a pair of rising juniors, Logan Diggs and Audric Estime, who entered last season as unproven commodities but combined for 1,741 yards and 15 touchdowns by the end of last December’s Gator Bowl win over South Carolina.

Both backs return this fall, and both are expected to be joined in the backfield by Jadarian “JD” Price, who enrolled early last spring only to tear his left Achilles tendon during summer workouts last June. If having a wealth of talent is a problem, Fighting Irish running backs coach and run game coordinator Deland McCullough knows it’s a good problem to have.

“It's going to be a good thing,” McCullough said after practice this week. “It's going to be good problems. I don‘t even want to call it problems. It's going to be a good discussion. When you get all the guys back, get JD back and some of the other guys coming in. We have some good things happening.”

Diggs entered last season with 52 carries for 239 yards (4.4 YPC) as a freshman understudy to Kyren Williams, who led the Irish with 1,002 yards and 14 rushing touchdowns behind a makeshift offensive line in 2021. He started slowly with just 16 yards on 11 carries combined in Notre Dame’s first two games of the season, but he finished with a team-high 165 carries for 821 yards (5.0) last season.

Estime led the Fighting Irish with 920 yards, 5.9 yards per carry and 11 touchdowns on 156 carries last season. A far cry from the seven carries for 60 yards as a freshman. He only went below seven carries in a single game once last year.

“They set the tone just because of their productivity last year,” McCullough said of Diggs and Estime. “So, OK, you have to look at them. But those guys know there are other dudes who want to play. Ain't nobody just bowing down and saying, ‘OK, you guys are just it.’ They know they have to continue to enhance their game. That's the beauty of this situation. Everybody is trying to grow every day.”

The “other dudes” list begins with Price, who opened eyes with his play when he enrolled early last spring. His exclamation point game with eight receptions for 104 yards that included a 51-yard touchdown on a screen pass. Price is still working his way back from last summer’s injury, but his return appears imminent.

“I'm very optimistic about him,” McCullough said. “We’ve seen from a front row seat of what he did during the spring last year and it was really, really, really good. He'll be starting to reintegrate into everything we got going on. (I am) feeling confident that by the time we get in June he'll be a full participant.

“The guy’s put together,” McCullough continued. “He’s smart, fast, explosive. He has all of the competencies you want at that position. And the thing is if you go off one year ago, he showed it on a really high level. So yes, he hasn't been physically doing things, but he's continuing to be locked into what we're doing mentally. I'm excited to get him back out on the physical part.”

While Price works his way back into playing shape, Estime has reworked his body through the first part of the offseason by scaling down his weekly fast food consumption. The bulldozing back has looked leaner and even quicker on his feet this spring.

“He's more twitchy,” McCullough said of Estime. “He’s more explosive. That's very evident. It gave him another step that we really can see.

“I'm really excited about him,” McCullough continued. “Just the things he does from the leadership perspective, but then obviously, on the field he continues to be a guy, just like last year, who grades out on the upper end of the room or at the top as far as his grading every day.”

Diggs has missed the last couple of weeks of spring practice with a minor leg injury. His absence from practice has left Estime and rising sophomore Gi’Bran Payne as the only two scholarship running backs at practice. Payne has made the most of those extra practice reps.

“I wanted to see this spring Gi’Bran show that he can be a guy that we can plug in there and not lose anything as far as effectiveness,” McCullough explained. “Attention to detail, discipline, dependability, and all those different things. During this camp live situations, he had two very long runs. Really good in pass protection, really good route runner, sure hands, different things like that.”

The wealth of all that running back talent, which also includes incoming freshman Jeremiyah Love, means only carries to go around. That, combined with questions at wide receiver, pushed the coaching staff to move Chris Tyree, who has 229 career carries for 1,162 rushing yards of his own, to receiver this spring.

“I said, ‘Man, look at what you can do here',” McCullough said of an early January conversation he had with Tyree about the move. “You look at the NFL part of it.’ I said, ‘Man, there are some things you can do,’ and I’ve talked to a bunch of NFL guys when those conversations are what they are.”

The conversation started because of what Tyree has already shown he can do as a receiver. He has 56 receptions for 461 yards and four touchdowns through his first three seasons. His most productive receiving game came in the January, 2022 Fiesta Bowl when he set career highs with six catches and 115 yards.

“I think he's shown what he can do as an outside guy,” McCullough said of Tyree’s receiving skills. “Natural route runner, really, really good hands, explosive in space guy. Rather than as a running back, trying to create those scenarios, I said, ‘Shoot, why don’t we just put him out there?’ He's already out there. You don't have to come up with packages. You just run our offense. You put him out, and he's just a receiver.”

Tyree’s listed roster position is “RB/WR”, so his running of the ball is not likely to be a thing of the past. McCullough envisions him being able to motion into the backfield for carries as well.

Estime, Diggs, Price, Payne, Tyree, and the incoming Love give the Irish six viable options to carry the ball in 2023. A good problem to have.

“You have a couple of guys who jumped out, because of their production last year,” said McCullough. “But everybody in that room knows how I operate. None of that really matters, because you have to continue to show it every day.

“The motto of the room is either you’re gaining on a guy or you’re separating,” he continued. “It just continues to make the room raise up. That's the challenge I give to these guys.”

Be sure to check out the Irish Breakdown message board, the Champions Lounge

Irish Breakdown Content

2023 Scholarship Chart
2023 Football Schedule

Notre Dame 2023 Scholarship Offers
Notre Dame 2024 Scholarship Offers

2023 Recruiting Class Grades - Offense
2023 Recruiting Class Grades - Defense

———————

Become a premium Irish Breakdown member, which grants you access to all of our premium content and our premium message board! Click on the link below for more.

BECOME A MEMBER

Be sure to stay locked into Irish Breakdown all the time!

Join the Irish Breakdown community!
Subscribe to the Irish Breakdown YouTube channel
Subscribe to the Irish Breakdown podcast on iTunes
Follow me on Twitter: @SeanStires
Like and follow Irish Breakdown on Facebook

Sign up for the FREE Irish Breakdown daily newsletter