Notre Dame football: The rise and fall of Max Redfield

He came to Notre Dame as one of the top prizes in his recruiting class. He’s leaving a year early, in disgrace and with his football future in doubt. What happened to Max Redfield?

Back in late 2012, Max Redfield was as highly coveted as just about any recruit in the country. A five-star safety with size (6-foot-3, 195 pounds) and speed (a 40-yard dash time around 4.6), he had 18 offers from major FBS programs.

Associate head coach Mike Denbrock and Brian Kelly were making in-home visits to Redfield in Mission Viejo, California. USC, who at one time had a verbal commitment from him, was just as aggressive. In the run-up to the dead period of December, the pressure was enormous on one of the best athletes in the country.

He told Irish Sports Daily at the time, “I’ve been up to both schools, I’ve been in contact with the coaches three or four times a week, so I think I know everything I need to know to make the decision. They both have great academics, great athletics and great coaches who I’ve built relationships with,” he said.

“My phone has been getting blown up for a while, so it’s going to be nice to relax a little bit and focus in on basketball.”

Then, finally, at the Under Armour All-American Game on Jan. 4, 2013, Redfield made his decision.

On National Signing Day a month later, Kelly was effusive in his praise for Redfield, one of three five-star recruits (according to Scout’s ratings) in the recruiting class for the Irish.

"” … [W]e think Max is an elite player. He’s a young man that has a specific skill set that could see him play offense, he could play defense, he’s going to play in that safety position for us, and we think he’s a young man that can come in and compete. He’s got all the athletic ability, and he’s a very smart young man.“I remember when he decided to come to Notre Dame and made that decision, it was a fairly lengthy process where he wanted to really take time to make the right decision. But those are the kind of kids we’re not getting … these quick knee jerk reaction kind of decisions, these are kids that really took their time to make the right decision. Max is a great young man, great family and a really good player.”"

Fast forward to Aug. 21, 2016, when Brian Kelly released this statement:

In three years and seven months, Redfield had gone from dazzling recruit to out of the program. In between, his journey was anything but predictable.

Freshman hype

Coming into preseason camp in August 2013, many expected Redfield to challenge for a starting role as a true freshman at some point in the fall, if not necessarily right away. Indeed, had the Irish not had depth at the position (a healthy Austin Collinsworth, Matthias Farley, Eilar Hardy, Nicky Baratti and Elijah Shumate), Redfield would almost certainly have played right away.

Instead, he spent a great deal of the season on the bench, and when he did see the field, it was on special teams. His final stat line of 12 tackles and 0.5 tackles for loss in 12 games was hardly on par with the preseason hype. He did, however, make it into the starting lineup for the team’s bowl game against Army at season’s end, reigniting hopes for a standout sophomore campaign.

Sophomore shakeups

Entering 2014, there were a few big changes for Notre Dame that affected Redfield specifically. For one, defensive coordinator Bob Diaco left to take the head coaching job at UConn, leaving Brian VanGorder as the new DC. VanGorder installed a complex, pro-style scheme designed to make bigger plays happen more often.

On one hand, this move should have been perfect for Redfield, a superb athlete with the ability to make the kind of big plays VanGorder desired. But on the other, for a sophomore who had spent his entire first season learning and adjusting to one system, this switch could also have boded trouble on the mental side.

And then, right before the start of the season, academic scandal struck. The “Frozen Five,” as they came to be known, included two members of the secondary, KeiVarae Russell and Eilar Hardy. While the scandal never touched Redfield, it did rob the Irish of depth in the defensive backfield and put added pressure on him to step up.

And the pressure only increased when captain and expected starter Austin Collinsworth went down with a knee injury. Suddenly, Redfield, while not quite a veteran, was essentially the last man standing at safety.

Kelly himself did little to tamp down expectations with quotes like these:

“Max is an extremely, as we all know, a very gifted player. We’ve just gotta continue on the learning curve. We have days where you miss and assignment here and you can’t miss an assignment back there. That’s where some of our inexperience, we have to be vigilant in making sure that we’re clean back there. But he is, as we all know, an extremely gifted player.”

Looking back now, that sounds like Kelly was trying to put a positive spin on a bad situation. In the moment though, there were plenty of stories like this one, which portrayed Redfield as a man reborn, flush with opportunity with the departure of Diaco.

Maybe that’s really how Kelly, VanGorder and Redfield all saw the situation. But it’s not how it played out.

Benched and back again

Through nine games in 2014, Redfield had 48 tackles, one interception and one pass defended. After Arizona State unleashed a savage 55-31 beatdown of the Irish on Nov. 4, which included three passing TDs for the Sun Devils, Kelly and VanGorder benched him in favor of a true freshman, Drue Tranquill.

Kelly’s comments following the move sound remarkably similar to those at the beginning of the season, and that would form the basis for a trend that eventually became a broken record on Redfield: Physically, he’s a freak, with all the measurables an NFL team could want. Mentally, though, he was missing something.

Still searching as a junior

Entering spring practice in 2015, the hype train was back up and running for Redfield, as VanGorder said the benching actually benefited him in the long run and demonstrated his mental toughness.

Brian VanGorder said he was impressed by how safety Max Redfield (@maxired10) responded to being benched last fall. pic.twitter.com/5QVRisYEU7
— Nick Ironside (@nironside) April 13, 2015

Once again, the usual stories about how the adversity of last year had changed him came out. Once again, he was tabbed as a potential breakout star for the season.

But once again, a combination of bad luck and mental issues did Redfield in. That August, speaking with the media, Redfield admitted that the complexity of VanGorder’s scheme was intimidating, even going so far as to say it was harder to learn than Chinese.

At the time, it was just a good quote illustrating that it takes time to adapt to VanGorder’s style, especially after coming in under Diaco. Looking back, it was telling of Redfield’s continued struggles with the overall system.

In the season opener against Texas, the safety went down with a broken wrist that didn’t force him to miss any time, but did slow him down considerably in the first few weeks.

He did have an outstanding game against Clemson, recording 14 tackles, 11 solo, but he was also benched against Georgia Tech’s triple option offense. He was benched again against Navy, speaking to the coaching staff’s concerns about his ability to handle the intensity of such a difficult scheme.

Redfield finished the season fourth on the team in tackles, with roughly similar statistics to his sophomore year: It was hardly the breakout, All-American performance some had predicted, but it was serviceable. Then, just before the team’s Fiesta Bowl matchup against Ohio State, Kelly suspended Redfield and sent him home.

After the game, it came out that Redfield’s suspension was the result of his being late to team meetings and missing curfew. He issued an apology on Instagram.

A quick note about this apology: While for the most part Redfield said all the right things in this apology about taking responsibility and making it clear he realized he messed up, there is one line that stands out. Specifically, where he wrote, “Although I was not alone in my 2 incidents of being punctual, I SOLELY take responsibility for my actions.” This little part seems to suggest that he didn’t quite agree with the punishment and still harbored some resentment about it. It’s a small thing, but looking back now, it’s interesting.

One more rebirth

Heading into the spring before his senior year, Redfield’s back was against the wall. After being suspended and failing to play at the level many thought he could, he was finally being challenged for his starting job by a true freshman early enrollee: Devin Studstill.

Throughout spring practice, Studstill emerged as a viable competitor with Redfield for one of the safety slots, even taking reps with the first team. While spring football is a far cry from the regular season, it seemed as though Kelly was preparing himself for another underwhelming season from Redfield.

But things could have hardly been more different once the team reconvened for fall camp. Over the summer, Redfield apparently reinvented himself and seemed to be a new football player, one Notre Dame fans had been waiting for.

And then, of course, came Aug. 20. Redfield was in a car with four other Notre Dame players, all underclassmen, that was pulled over for speeding and a broken taillight. The police officer smelled marijuana during the stop and used a narcotics dog to search the car, finding the weed and a loaded handgun in the backseat. Redfield was one of three players with easy access to the gun and was thus charged with possession of a handgun without a license.

Kelly kicked him off the team the next day. Now, Redfield’s NFL hopes, while certainly not dead completely, are hanging by a thread. He posted this to Instagram a week ago:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BJNSEcmD0sM/?taken-by=maximus.10

Home/Notre Dame Fighting Irish