Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM MAY 2024 21 Steve Elmer in the rising senior's build and athletic ability. The next step was to find out more about the person, and the two built a strong relationship in phone conversa- tions right away. "He didn't want somebody to ask him what he had for breakfast, where he's going tonight and what movies he was gonna go see," Hiestand told Blue & Gold Illustrated. "We hit it off that way because I wasn't doing that and he didn't want to hear it. "Our communications were always about specific things that mattered, about training or technique. He loved talking technique." Jagusah picks up technique quickly. He 's a p u z z l e so lve r a t h ea r t , a s Dieudonné described him. If you give him an assignment and ask him, "If your opponent does this, what do you do?" He'll run down scenario after scenario, always ready to adjust. Hiestand could see on film that Jag- usah helped his teammates understand what was going on in real time, too. "Players like that help bring out the best in other people," Hiestand said. "That's another huge aspect of what we look for, is we want teammates that are gonna help others succeed. He's the ultimate, in that fashion." After Hiestand left, Joe Rudolph took over as the Notre Dame offensive line coach and made similar observations about Jagusah. "He's very conscientious about the communication, details, footwork, schoolwork, whatever he's doing," Ru- dolph said. "He's got a really good feel- ing for the mental aspect of how it all fits and how it applies." Complementing that preparation, Ja- gusah has superb instincts as a blocker in large part due to his wrestling back- ground. He went 41-0 and won an Il- linois state championship as a junior. It's a big reason why he can adapt to what the opponent throws at him on the fly — like he did in that rep against Stanford — better than most offensive tackles. Jagusah can register an oppo- nent's action and make the necessary adjustments in a split-second, which is huge for sparring in the trenches as a blocker. "It's almost like he is on the wrestling mat when he's on the football field," Dieudonné said. "He's constantly pro- cessing the move, the countermove and the counter to the counter." Hiestand appreciated Jagusah's wres- tling pedigree for a different reason. It gave him the mental and physical toughness, he explained, to lock in on every rep and dominate his man. "The physical stuff of balance, stay- ing on your feet, using your athletic ability, staying in your position, all those things were just so obvious," Hiestand said. "But the thing we love the most is the guy's ability to go one- on-one and knowing that everybody's going after him and trying to get him to slip up." SWEATING THE DETAILS Jagusah has a perfectionist streak, but only in a micro sense. As a recruit, he didn't stress about whether or not he could play right away at the school he chose. Throughout the 2023 season at Notre Dame, he didn't worry about the depth chart. He does, however, sweat every rep down to the last detail. "He'll tell you, 'Yeah, I got the block done, but my hand placement was off a little bit,'" Dieudonné said. "It's really not always good enough to get the block done." On his flight back from the Sun Bowl this past December in El Paso, Texas, Jagusah was watching film despite tech- nically being on vacation. He's "a freak about film," he explained, and he has to watch it immediately. "Just watching it through to see the things that I messed up, things I could do better," Jagusah said. "Honestly, the biggest takeaway from that game was just relaxing at the start, because you don't need to freak out." Rudolph noticed the same thing. He saw Jagusah give up a sack when he gave up too much ground in his pass set be- cause he was too cautious. The first- time starter didn't trust his technique on that particular rep, but when he did, he was successful. "I thought he really did carry over a lot of his practice traits to the game," Rudolph said. "I think when you see him not confident is when you see him not play strong. Because he's got the ability to be very powerful." Jagusah can be overly critical of himself at times, to the point where he gets in his own head and doesn't work past mistakes quickly enough. He is working on moving from one play to the next — but knowing that's a weakness and pointing it out is half the battle. Besides, even if Jagusah hits a rough patch during his first full season as a starter, he won't panic or do something rash. Hiestand and Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman were sure of that when they recruited him. In getting to know Jagusah, Hiestand was particularly impressed with his loy- alty to Alleman, which had 27 players in 2021. That was Jagusah's junior year and Dieudonné's first season with the team, and the Pioneers went 0-8. Their clos- est game ended 47-7. Some on the outside advised Jag- usah, who was already a well-known co l l e ge p ros p e c t by t h e n , to f i n d greener pastures. But he chose to stay with Alleman. "He stuck around and stayed with his school," Dieudonné said. "That was im- portant for him, to stay at this place." Jagusah's senior year, 2022, wasn't a storybook season. He didn't single- handedly drag a team that now had 30 players to a winning season. The Pi- oneers went 1-8 and haven't played a varsity game since, citing the need to preserve the health and safety of what few players they had. What he did do, though, is show Hi- estand and Freeman that he would fight through difficult situations at Notre Dame. "He could've easily done what a lot of kids do, which is go somewhere else," Hiestand said. "But he stuck with his team, because the team is more impor- tant than himself." ✦ "He's very conscientious about the communication, details, footwork, schoolwork, whatever he's doing. He's got a really good feeling for the mental aspect of how it all fits and how it applies." IRISH OFFENSIVE LINE COACH JOE RUDOLPH ON JAGUSAH