Notre Dame Football All-Decade Team: Defensive End

Stephon Tuitt (2011-2013)

Tuitt is a much different player than the other guys on this list, sitting the majority of his career at 290+ pounds. While the other three are more traditional 4-3 defensive ends, Tuitt offers more versatility as 3-4 defensive end. He was dynamic on the edge in his three years at Notre Dame, but also showed off incredible power against the run and pass.

During his sophomore year, everything came together, as he accounted for 12.5 sacks and 13 TFLs — a huge part of the reason Notre Dame made the BCS National Championship game. He was also one of a few players on that team that matched up and looked like he belonged in that game. His junior season was less impressive from a statistical standpoint, but he was also coming off a sports hernia surgery the previous off-season. He was still able to add 7.5 sacks and 9 TFLs during that junior year, and declared for the draft after the bowl game.

Due to the injury, he skipped all the drills in the combine minus bench and ultimately fell to the second round. I am still of the opinion that he would have been a 1st round pick if in full health.

While with the Steelers, Tuitt has started 64 of his 76 career games (all of the non-starts coming in his rookie season). He hasn’t had a perfect bill of health, only playing a full 16 games once, but has played 14+ games in 4 of his 6 seasons. Tuitt has 23.5 career sacks and when healthy is one of the best 3-4 defensive ends in the NFL. Pittsburgh rewarded his talents with a contact extension to start the 2017 season — 5 years 60 million with 13 million guaranteed.

This one of the harder positions to limit to two guys, but I sided with the Twitter poll. Stephon Tuitt was never not making this team, and while Kareem and Julian Okwara was a close race, I opted to put Kareem on the list alongside Tuitt.