According to yesterday’s South Bend Tribune, Sam Young has taken the lead in the Notre Dame weight room this winter and is up to 330 pounds after hovering above 300 last season.
Junior-to-be Sam Young talked the talk with Weis late last fall, in a not-so-secret, early-morning rendezvous. Since that time, he has shown plenty of signs of becoming what he hoped to be. The 6-foot-8 offensive tackle, who struggled to keep his weight above 300 last season, has set the tone in the weight room this winter and returns this spring at a ripped 330-plus.
Young has made it no secret that he wants to take on a leadership role on this team and he is showing it in the weight room so far this off-season.
The Notre Dame offensive line got push around a lot last year which makes seeing Young add some additional weight a pretty good sign. There were times last year when the ND line didn’t know its assignments and there were times when they were just overpowered. Bulking up won’t help the former, but it will help the latter.
When you consider the recent performances of Notre Dame offensive linemen in the bench press competition in the NFL Combine, this should be seen as a very promising sign. It’s been a long time since Notre Dame has had an offensive line that could knock a defensive line back on its heels – let’s hope this is a sign that we are getting closer and not farther away to getting back to that.
Just goes to prove he can’t block regardless of his weight. ND continues to recruit big slow lineman who get whipped on game day.
He definitely has the frame for the additional weight too. Even in the picture I used for this post he looks “thin” for an OL. As a whole, the OL needs to get stronger so that QBs are no longer putting up better numbers in the bench press at combine than our OLs.
I agree. Those are the stories that give us hope this year. If the OL continues it over the summer, we may dare to dream. You can’t run or throw if you can’t block.
Now that’s the kind of stories I want to be hearing more of this spring.