Notre Dame Football’s End of Season Superlatives: Defensive Player of the Year

With Chase Claypool winning overall Team MVP, we thought it would be best to also recognize someone on the defensive side of the ball for Notre Dame.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have a preseason or mid-season Notre Dame football defensive player of the year to vote on, but a few guys stick out as such. Before the year started, it would have been silly to not include Julian Okwara on this list, however a season ending injury shut the door on that plan. At the mid-season update, a case could have been made for Kareem, Hayes, or any one of the three starting linebackers — of course we know Hayes was also lost for the season.

Now that the regular season is over, defensive player of the year was probably a pretty clear decision, but plenty of guys deserve mention.

Ade Ogundeji and Jamir Jones really stepped up in the absence of Okwara and Hayes. Kyle Hamilton led the team in interceptions and rarely gave up a catch he was targeted on. Elliott and Gilman were rocks in the Irish secondary, and Drew White, Asmar Bilal and Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah were consistently stellar all season. With that said, one guy was more deserving than the rest.

Defensive Player of the Year: Khalid Kareem (5 of 7 votes)

Others receiving votes: Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah (2). 

Kareem also received one vote for overall team MVP by contributor Carlee North, and quite honestly an argument could be made. For a lot of the season, the defense was the best unit on the field and Kareem was the leader and best player on that unit.

Stepping away from stats for a second, we need to first recognize how much of a warrior Kareem is. The past two seasons, Irish fans have seen him battle through injury after injury, but he has never missed a game and very rarely wants to come off the field. Against Stanford, we saw Kelly almost beg him to take the rest of the game off once it was already in hand. This type of attitude alone deserves all the praise.

Now, the stats. He led the team in both tackles, sacks and forced fumbles. He was a constant force against both the run and the pass, and his high motor forced opposing offenses to account for him on every snap. To go along with this, once Hayes and Okwara went down, he became the clear best player that teams needed to plan for along the defensive line. This meant more double teams, more tight ends lined up wide on his side, and simply put a tougher ask for stat piling.

He made Jones and Ogundeji better players and thus they were able to account for 11 tackles for loss and 6.5 sacks as a duo – and as mentioned both playing their best football toward the end of the year.

Much Like Claypool, Kareem will be entering the NFL draft in 2020 as a senior and will make whoever drafts him a very happy organization. I haven’t seen his name too often in the 1st or 2nd rounds of the draft, but it wouldn’t come as surprise to Notre Dame fans if his name was heard early. He should impress in many facets of the pre-draft process. Congrats Khalid on a magnificent college football career.