Notre Dame Football: Results of “Pick Three Former Defensive Players”

Here are the results from a Twitter poll asking Irish fans to pick three players from a list of nine of the best defensive players in Notre Dame history:

Earlier this month, I tweeted a graphic that included: Alan Page, Ross Browner, Todd Lyght, Bryant Young, Jeff Burris, Justin Tuck, Manti Te’o, Harrison Smith, and Jaylon Smith. I then asked Irish fans to pick only three of the top defensive players from the graphic.

When I was choosing which players to include, I started with the best of the best. Then I grouped them all by position and the years they played. I wanted to make sure the different eras and positions were represented.

The players on the final list have collectively won: two Lombardi Awards, two Maxwell Awards, two Butkus Awards, an Outland Trophy, a Bednarik Award, a Nagurski Trophy, a Walter Camp Award, and a Lott Trophy.

These nine players were also part of four (should have been five) national championship teams during their time at Notre Dame.

You can read about the results of the “pick three offensive players” poll in the article that was published yesterday.

Jaylon Smith received the most votes by a significant margin. He had 33 total. Manti Te’o was second with 19 votes – just edging out Ross Browner and Bryant Young, who received 18 votes each.

Rounding out the list: Alan Page had 16 votes, Justin Tuck had 14, Todd Lyght had 12, Jeff Burris had 11, and Harrison Smith had nine.

I was not surprised to see that Jaylon Smith received the most total votes. However, I was surprised at the margin between him and the player with the second-most votes.

Some voters also nominated players that were not listed. The most popular write-in vote was a former defensive tackle and fan-favorite Chris Zorich, who received four votes.

Other players that received write-in votes included: Tom Zbikowski, Michael Stonebreaker, Bobby Taylor, and current sophomore Kyle Hamilton.

As I mentioned in my last article, this is definitely an imperfect process for determining the best former defensive players. However, in the absence of all sports, fans around the world are all just looking for some content about their favorite team. And this Twitter trend gave us just that.