Michael Mayer Focused On Improving His Game And Playing Faster, Not Notre Dame's Opponents

Notre Dame star tight end Michael Mayer is unfazed by potential distractions. Mayer swats away post practice media questions and tunes out crowd noise in a way that is fitting of a 265-pound man with the strength of Thor and the catch radius of Superman.

For a second straight year, Notre Dame will open its football season on the road in a high-profile and hostile environment. Last year it was Florida State’s Doak Campbell Stadium, and this year it’s Ohio Stadium, which is likely to have a crowd pushing 105,000.

None of it concerns Mayer.

"I don’t even hear (crowd noise),” Mayer said. "I don’t even hear anything going on when I’m playing football out there, so I never have to worry about it. I’ve always been in my own little world out there. Even in high school, I would never hear anything going on. Whenever I catch the ball or I'm blocking out there the crowd noise is just totally blocked. It’s kind of weird.”

Mayer’s hometown, Independence, Ky., sits just south of Cincinnati, Ohio. It’s about a two-hour drive north from there to the Ohio State campus, but Notre Dame’s season opener will be the first time Mayer has been there for a game.

He took a visit there once when he was in high school, but it came after he had already committed to Notre Dame as a sophomore in high school, so he didn’t give it much thought.

"I don’t think it’s anything different than the other stadiums we’re going to be playing in this year,” Mayer noted. "To me, it’s like home game, away game, just go play football. I’m not worried about it. Go out there and play the best ball we can play.”

Notre Dame’s All-American candidate tight end is far more focused on his game than what stadium any of his games will be played in. He hauled in 71 receptions for 840 yards with seven touchdowns last season, all single-season program records for a tight end, and Mayer did it as a sophomore.

Mayer is already considered one of the top tight ends in college football and a potential first round NFL draft pick next year, but he didn’t rest on his lofty laurels in the offseason. Instead, he packed his bags and headed south to Nashville to work with current and former NFL tight ends at an event called ‘Tight End U’.

The event began last year under the direction of three of the top NFL tight ends of the past decade: current Kansas City Chief Travis Kelce, San Franciso 49er George Kittle and former tight end Greg Olsen, who is now in his second season broadcasting the NFL for Fox.

The experience with some of the best players at his position was eye-opening for Mayer.

“The first thing I knew when I got out of there was ‘Dang, I have to get better at some stuff.’,” Mayer said. "These guys were getting out of their breaks faster than me, they were getting up to catch balls. I think that was one of the reasons I wanted to go. What do these guys do differently than I do? How to they get out of the their breaks faster than I do? That type of thing. Kittle, Kelce, Olson, they were all out there. They’re really great teachers. Patient, really humble guys and I just enjoyed it. It was a great two days.”

Mayer didn’t just use the information he gathered in June for himself. Fighting Irish tight ends coach Gerad Parker asked him to come back with insights that he could dispense to Mayer’s teammates. They spent around 45 minutes together discussing the finer points of things like pass routes and getting out of breaks after Mayer returned to campus.

"Being in that environment this summer allowed him just to see a glimpse of what's maybe next, which is good if you can just glimpse it and then keep it there and come back and go to work and he now knows what's reachable what this looks like what those guys who are pros already are,” Parker said. "I think it just allowed him to take another step mentally to say I need to do this better and do this more.”

Mayer has not only honed his on-field skills, but also tweaked his body coming into this season. He played at 265 pounds all of last season and came into fall training camp at about the same weight this year, knowing he would drop a few pounds during camp.

He is now at 260 pounds, which doesn’t sound like much difference, but he says he can tell the five-pound drop has impacted his movement on the field.

"Honestly, last year at 265 I felt slow,” Mayer explained. "I didn’t like the way I was running. I mean, I was running some pretty good routes, but I feel like I was running them a little slower.

"My goal was to shave a little bit of that weight off,” he continued. "That’s what I did and I feel good. I feel fast, I feel a little bit more nimble, my break points, my outer routes. And I feel it, 265 to 260 is a big difference. I feel it and I feel great.”

And a great feeling Michael Mayer should be great news for the Fighting Irish offense this season.

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