BeatSC
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Kid is a stud! 4 procedure penalties notwithstanding
'17 IL TE Cole Kmet (Notre Dame Signee)
- Thread starter ResLife Hero
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Kid is a stud! 4 procedure penalties notwithstanding
Junkhead
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Yeah, hopefully we can chalk that up to his first game. It wouldnt have been so close without him.
Some Irish Bloke
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I was streaming from a wedding and there were a few gents around me (not Irish fans) who were blown away by his size and ability. They had no idea who he was and said "That dude looks like Gronk out there."
Lots to be excited about with Kmet. He'll clean up those penalties.
Lots to be excited about with Kmet. He'll clean up those penalties.
NDBoiler
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I believe BK clarified after the game that at least some of those penalties were partly Book’s fault for clapping when they were actually on a silent count.
NDisme
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My little brother faced him in HS in the super sectionals he pitched 5 scorless and went deep. And the answer is No you wouldn't charge the mound Kid is a monster on TV and in Person.
calvegas04
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Anyone think he declares for the draft after this season?
Sherm Sticky
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MLB or NFL?
zelezo vlk
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Would definitely depend on the kind of season he has. Leaving after this year might not land him as high as he can go.
Some Irish Bloke
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You're right, Golden Tate has had a terrible career.
ulukinatme
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Kyle Rudolph is certainly not regretting it, along with Jaylon Smith, and Stephon Tuitt. There's probably more too. I'd put Fuller in the same boat, even though he's been plagued with some injuries early in his career. He's getting paid and starting though, another year of college wouldn't change that.
Feels like more guys made the right call than didn't. Who in recent memory may regret coming out early besides Kizer/St. Brown?
Pops Freshenmeyer
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I don't think Kizer should regret it.
Does anyone believe he would have been picked higher than 52nd if he waited until the 2018 draft? He was the 4th quarterback off the board in 2017 (behind Trubisky*, Mahomes, and Watson). In 2018 there was Mayfield, Darnold, Allen, and Rosen.
*Nice job with the first quarterback off the board, Bears.
Some Irish Bloke
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Pops Freshenmeyer
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Ouch.
How good would they be right now with Mahomes? They wouldn't even have needed to trade up.
Some Irish Bloke
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The mere hypothetical thought of Mahomes in a Bears jersey terrifies me. Describes my worst nightmare.
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Devil's advocate is that guys like Martin, Martin, McGlinchey, and Q all made millions by coming back for another year and moving up. Really has to do with how much you can or cannot improve your stock. For example, Julian Love was basically told he had no way to move up to a 1st round pick except magically getting faster. But someone like Kmet is in different shoes than that. Need to wait until the end of the year and evaluate all of the information.
Veritate Duce Progredi
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It's safe to say, if he replicates his performance from last Saturday in each of the next 9 games, he'll be projected as the one of the first TEs off the board. Hopefully he wants to come back for an additional year of domination and strength building/improved blocking.
Sherm Sticky
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Everyone seems to be ignoring the baseball factor. Or maybe he just isn’t an MLB prospect? IDK
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Pops Freshenmeyer
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I thought he decided to quit baseball for good this spring?
ab2cmiller
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He was dealing with elbow soreness at the time that was going to keep him out an extended period of time. So it's kind of hard to tell if he was giving up baseball for good, or just for the 2019 baseball season while his sore elbow recovered.
BeatSC
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Darius Walker? Jimmy Clausen? Tarean Folsten
Darius Walker would have come back to play for the 2007 team behind the 2007 OL. He would not have improved his stock.
Veritate Duce Progredi
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He is a potential 1st/2nd round draft pick if he keeps playing like he did last Saturday in his first game back from a broken collarbone.
If he gets even better, I don't know if we get to keep him for an additional year. He will not be going the baseball route.
stpeteirish
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Or take advantage of UVA sliding coverage to Kmet by using the WR's more. We used Claypool primarily when GA changed coverage in the 2nd half to control Kmet (who was killing them).UVA will probably put their star CB Bryce Hall on Claypool. The other two WR's should be able to win their match ups and our RB's should be open if they are doubling Kmet.
In other words, go inro the game expecting to make heavy use of your stars, Kmet and Claypool but have a plan B.
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Nice article from the Indy Star on Kmet. I remember his dad from his days at Purdue.
Product of a football family, a heartfelt talk brought Notre Dame's Cole Kmet back to the sport
Mike Berardino, Indianapolis StarPublished 12:54 p.m. ET Oct. 3, 2019
SOUTH BEND – Seven years ago, young Cole Kmet was ready to quit football.
His parents, Frank and Kandace, were disappointed but understanding. Eighth grade had dawned for their first-born son, but the joy had gone out of the game.
“I’m not a dad that pushes,” says Frank, a defensive tackle at Purdue from 1988-91 and a fourth-round pick of the NFL’s Buffalo Bills. “I’m not the guy yelling on the side. I really listen to what my boys want to do. I just want to make sure that you love what you do.”
Jeff Holdsberg, a longtime coach at Barrington (Ill.) Youth Football in Chicago’s northwest suburbs, got a head’s up from the Kmets. One of the most promising young athletes in the program would not be coming out for football that August.
“Football is a tough sport,” Frank Kmet says. “It’s a lot of time, a lot of pounding, a lot of effort you’ve got to put out every single day. It’s not for everybody.”
Jeff Zgonina, Kandace’s brother, played 17 years in the NFL with half a dozen teams after playing on the same defensive line as Frank at Purdue. Holdsberg spoke with Kandace Kmet as well, just to make sure her son was done with the sport.
No one pressured the future Notre Dame tight end, but Holdsberg gave his best recruiting pitch to the lanky 13-year-old with the strong football bloodlines and obvious talents.
“In Cole I saw a kid who had so much spirit and so much zest — for not just football but life generally,” says Holdsberg, who had coached Kmet on two previous teams, starting in fifth grade. “I felt like it’s too critical a time in his life not to get the benefit of being on the field with all of his buddies and frankly getting a chance to understand how gifted he is, not only as a player but as a teammate.”
The young prodigy, equally gifted in baseball, listened carefully as the enthusiastic coach continued.
“I just think he needed to get a jump in his step,” says Holdsberg, 55. “In eighth grade, our primary job is to teach them the game and get them loving the game. I tried to get him to understand that I’m going to make this for him a year he looks back and says, ‘That was a pretty special year.’"
By the end of that heartfelt talk, Kmet had changed his mind. He soon found himself enjoying football again, especially when it came to blocking as an H-back in a run-first offense.
“It meant a lot to him that the coach really put a lot of time into him,” says Frank Kmet, who still swaps text messages with Holdsberg during Cole’s games.
“I’m so grateful it resonated with him,” Holdsberg says. “The rest, as they say, is history.”
THE FREAK
Cole Kmet was ready to catch footballs.
Then he got tangled up with safety Alohi Gilman in a red-zone passing drill on Aug. 8, near the end of the fifth and final practice of fall mini-camp at Culver Academies. That left Kmet rehabbing from surgery to repair a broken right clavicle.
“I knew something was a little funky,” Kmet recalls. “I thought maybe it was dislocated or something, so I tried to pop it and I was, ‘No, that’s not right.’ (Trainers) felt it and they knew right away it was broken.”
The typical timeline is six to eight weeks, but the junior was back practicing inside of five weeks. He suited up against New Mexico on Sept. 14 but didn’t play; a week later at Georgia, Kmet was a full go.
“I was really bummed out,” he says. “But you have to look at it in perspective. I only missed a couple games. This could have happened later in camp. I was fortunate I was able to come back for the rest of the season.”
While redshirt freshman Tommy Tremble was a revelation in the season opener at Louisville and holdover Brock Wright did his part, Kmet was clearly missed. Affectionately called an athletic “freak” by his teammates, Kmet has a 40-inch vertical leap, wears a size 16 ½ cleat, runs a 4.65 40 and has “probably the biggest hands in college football,” his father says.
“Cole can do so many different things,” quarterback Ian Book says. “He’s got crazy skills to catch the ball, run block, pass block.”
On the Thursday of Georgia week, offensive coordinator Chip Long let Kmet know he would call his number early to get him going.
Kmet, who hadn’t been tackled to the ground since the injury, caught a short pass and lowered his shoulder on the first offensive snap of the game. He wouldn’t stop catching footballs until he’d reached nine receptions for 108 yards, the highest reception total by a Notre Dame tight end since two-time All-American Ken MacAfee in 1977.
Team doctors were cringing with every hit Kmet took.
“They came up to me on Sunday and said, ‘You got hit that first time and we were holding our breath, but you popped right up,’“ Kmet says. “That got my confidence up, just like, ‘Hey, it’s holding. It’s ready to go.’“
Playing cautiously was never an option.
“I kind of had the mindset of you just have to go for it,” says Kmet, who has grown into a 6-6, 255-pound NFL prospect. “They told me with the (surgical) plate it was good, and it was going to hold up, so I just went for it. I had no tentativeness at all.”
He even leaped to snatch a short pass that seemed intended for running back Tony Jones Jr. in the back of the end zone. That gave Kmet the first touchdown catch of his career.
“The play broke down,” Kmet says, laughing. “I wouldn’t say I stole it. I saw it. I took it. It is what it is.”
FAST HEALER
Notre Dame tight end Cole Kmet on his return from clavicle surgery and nine-catch game at Georgia Mike Berardino, IndyStar
Kmet earned that poached TD with all the time he’s spent in the trainer’s room. Over the past 13 months, he’s had to rehab a high ankle sprain, fraying in his left elbow and a broken clavicle.
While the elbow injury kept the Irish closer out for the second half of a disappointing baseball season, it didn’t require surgery or keep him from participating in spring football practice. The high ankle sprain, suffered against Ball State in Week 2 of the 2018 season, caused him to miss just two games.
Frank Kmet feared a much longer absence when he got his first look at his son’s swollen ankle.
“I thought it was broken for sure,” says the elder Kmet, who works at a commercial label printing company in the Chicago area. “I figured a high-ankle sprain is probably worse than a break. The trainers said it could linger, but by the Clemson game he was 100 percent.”
Kmet played several games with a special ankle brace designed by Mike Bean, Notre Dame’s associate athletic trainer, Despite dealing with the nagging injury, Kmet still managed to make 12 catches over an eight-game span to complete a spotless regular season.
“It was a lot of pain, but he dealt with it and kept on fighting through and looking for positives,” Frank Kmet says. “He has a high pain tolerance. What I saw is a kid that is determined to come back and be with his team. I’m not trying to knock anybody, but not everybody wants to come back as fast as that.”
Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly has called Kmet a “quick healer” at several points since that ankle scare, a notion that was developed at an early age. Frank Kmet says his son was 11 when he sprained his ankle in a baseball tournament as he rounded second base.
“It was really bothering him; he was kind of limping around,” the elder Kmet says. “I said, ‘Hey, here’s the deal. Here’s how we did it in college: You just have to put your foot in an ice bucket. It’s painful, but you got to stay with it.’"
The boy hardly squawked as he followed his father’s advice. “He put his foot in there and walked around a little bit and within minutes he was out running around again,” Frank Kmet says. “That was his quickest heal. You kind of learn to play with pain.”
BASEBALL OPTION
Next spring the Kmet boys should get another chance to play on the same baseball team.
Casey Kmet, a promising catcher-third baseman who had offers from Louisville, Purdue and South Carolina, will be a Notre Dame freshman on coach Link Jarrett’s first team. The all-Kmet battery could be reprised.
“Which we’re really looking forward to, by the way,” Frank Kmet says. “They’re extremely close brothers. It’s really awesome to see them work together.”
Born less than 18 months apart, the Kmets have enjoyed a natural rivalry their whole lives. When Cole was 9, his kid brother was brought up to play with him on a select team. Batting last and playing left field, young Casey bashed two homers and beat out his older brother for the game ball. “I’ve never seen Cole more mad in my life,” his father says with a laugh.
One of Jarrett’s first calls after being hired in July was to Cole Kmet, just to make sure he was still onboard. The lefty with the mid-90s fastball assured Jarrett that he was “all in on baseball” once football season ends.
“Cole is a tremendous talent,” Jarrett says. “You can just hear in his voice: He’s a winner. The makeup, the character is off the charts.”
Jarrett, who replaced Mik Aoki after nine seasons, sat for two hours with Frank and Kandace Kmet to lay out his vision for the program and for their sons. There’s even talk of having Cole Kmet do some hitting, maybe even playing some outfield.
Hitting was the tool that earned him a pre-draft offer in the high six figures from the Chicago White Sox in June 2017, when his Notre Dame commitment limited Kmet to workouts for just two teams. The Chicago Cubs were the other.
Had Kmet agreed, the White Sox would have drafted him in the fifth round. He could have continued his football career with the Fighting Irish, but the double duty would have been challenging.
“They probably would’ve gone for it,” Frank Kmet says of Notre Dame. “I’m sure they would have worked with us. It was tempting because we met some real good people with (the White Sox). If you’ve got that talent, it’s a good time to go, but to get your degree is a big deal.”
Cole Kmet has a 3.5 GPA with a double major in political science and economics. A post-football future as a college athletic director is one of his stated aspirations.
“He has a big vision about his life and wants to put all the things in place necessary to have a well-rounded life,” his father says. “I think Notre Dame provides that for him.”
Keeping all options open as an eighth grader proved to be a smart move.
Product of a football family, a heartfelt talk brought Notre Dame's Cole Kmet back to the sport
Mike Berardino, Indianapolis StarPublished 12:54 p.m. ET Oct. 3, 2019
SOUTH BEND – Seven years ago, young Cole Kmet was ready to quit football.
His parents, Frank and Kandace, were disappointed but understanding. Eighth grade had dawned for their first-born son, but the joy had gone out of the game.
“I’m not a dad that pushes,” says Frank, a defensive tackle at Purdue from 1988-91 and a fourth-round pick of the NFL’s Buffalo Bills. “I’m not the guy yelling on the side. I really listen to what my boys want to do. I just want to make sure that you love what you do.”
Jeff Holdsberg, a longtime coach at Barrington (Ill.) Youth Football in Chicago’s northwest suburbs, got a head’s up from the Kmets. One of the most promising young athletes in the program would not be coming out for football that August.
“Football is a tough sport,” Frank Kmet says. “It’s a lot of time, a lot of pounding, a lot of effort you’ve got to put out every single day. It’s not for everybody.”
Jeff Zgonina, Kandace’s brother, played 17 years in the NFL with half a dozen teams after playing on the same defensive line as Frank at Purdue. Holdsberg spoke with Kandace Kmet as well, just to make sure her son was done with the sport.
No one pressured the future Notre Dame tight end, but Holdsberg gave his best recruiting pitch to the lanky 13-year-old with the strong football bloodlines and obvious talents.
“In Cole I saw a kid who had so much spirit and so much zest — for not just football but life generally,” says Holdsberg, who had coached Kmet on two previous teams, starting in fifth grade. “I felt like it’s too critical a time in his life not to get the benefit of being on the field with all of his buddies and frankly getting a chance to understand how gifted he is, not only as a player but as a teammate.”
The young prodigy, equally gifted in baseball, listened carefully as the enthusiastic coach continued.
“I just think he needed to get a jump in his step,” says Holdsberg, 55. “In eighth grade, our primary job is to teach them the game and get them loving the game. I tried to get him to understand that I’m going to make this for him a year he looks back and says, ‘That was a pretty special year.’"
By the end of that heartfelt talk, Kmet had changed his mind. He soon found himself enjoying football again, especially when it came to blocking as an H-back in a run-first offense.
“It meant a lot to him that the coach really put a lot of time into him,” says Frank Kmet, who still swaps text messages with Holdsberg during Cole’s games.
“I’m so grateful it resonated with him,” Holdsberg says. “The rest, as they say, is history.”
THE FREAK
Cole Kmet was ready to catch footballs.
Then he got tangled up with safety Alohi Gilman in a red-zone passing drill on Aug. 8, near the end of the fifth and final practice of fall mini-camp at Culver Academies. That left Kmet rehabbing from surgery to repair a broken right clavicle.
“I knew something was a little funky,” Kmet recalls. “I thought maybe it was dislocated or something, so I tried to pop it and I was, ‘No, that’s not right.’ (Trainers) felt it and they knew right away it was broken.”
The typical timeline is six to eight weeks, but the junior was back practicing inside of five weeks. He suited up against New Mexico on Sept. 14 but didn’t play; a week later at Georgia, Kmet was a full go.
“I was really bummed out,” he says. “But you have to look at it in perspective. I only missed a couple games. This could have happened later in camp. I was fortunate I was able to come back for the rest of the season.”
While redshirt freshman Tommy Tremble was a revelation in the season opener at Louisville and holdover Brock Wright did his part, Kmet was clearly missed. Affectionately called an athletic “freak” by his teammates, Kmet has a 40-inch vertical leap, wears a size 16 ½ cleat, runs a 4.65 40 and has “probably the biggest hands in college football,” his father says.
“Cole can do so many different things,” quarterback Ian Book says. “He’s got crazy skills to catch the ball, run block, pass block.”
On the Thursday of Georgia week, offensive coordinator Chip Long let Kmet know he would call his number early to get him going.
Kmet, who hadn’t been tackled to the ground since the injury, caught a short pass and lowered his shoulder on the first offensive snap of the game. He wouldn’t stop catching footballs until he’d reached nine receptions for 108 yards, the highest reception total by a Notre Dame tight end since two-time All-American Ken MacAfee in 1977.
Team doctors were cringing with every hit Kmet took.
“They came up to me on Sunday and said, ‘You got hit that first time and we were holding our breath, but you popped right up,’“ Kmet says. “That got my confidence up, just like, ‘Hey, it’s holding. It’s ready to go.’“
Playing cautiously was never an option.
“I kind of had the mindset of you just have to go for it,” says Kmet, who has grown into a 6-6, 255-pound NFL prospect. “They told me with the (surgical) plate it was good, and it was going to hold up, so I just went for it. I had no tentativeness at all.”
He even leaped to snatch a short pass that seemed intended for running back Tony Jones Jr. in the back of the end zone. That gave Kmet the first touchdown catch of his career.
“The play broke down,” Kmet says, laughing. “I wouldn’t say I stole it. I saw it. I took it. It is what it is.”
FAST HEALER
Notre Dame tight end Cole Kmet on his return from clavicle surgery and nine-catch game at Georgia Mike Berardino, IndyStar
Kmet earned that poached TD with all the time he’s spent in the trainer’s room. Over the past 13 months, he’s had to rehab a high ankle sprain, fraying in his left elbow and a broken clavicle.
While the elbow injury kept the Irish closer out for the second half of a disappointing baseball season, it didn’t require surgery or keep him from participating in spring football practice. The high ankle sprain, suffered against Ball State in Week 2 of the 2018 season, caused him to miss just two games.
Frank Kmet feared a much longer absence when he got his first look at his son’s swollen ankle.
“I thought it was broken for sure,” says the elder Kmet, who works at a commercial label printing company in the Chicago area. “I figured a high-ankle sprain is probably worse than a break. The trainers said it could linger, but by the Clemson game he was 100 percent.”
Kmet played several games with a special ankle brace designed by Mike Bean, Notre Dame’s associate athletic trainer, Despite dealing with the nagging injury, Kmet still managed to make 12 catches over an eight-game span to complete a spotless regular season.
“It was a lot of pain, but he dealt with it and kept on fighting through and looking for positives,” Frank Kmet says. “He has a high pain tolerance. What I saw is a kid that is determined to come back and be with his team. I’m not trying to knock anybody, but not everybody wants to come back as fast as that.”
Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly has called Kmet a “quick healer” at several points since that ankle scare, a notion that was developed at an early age. Frank Kmet says his son was 11 when he sprained his ankle in a baseball tournament as he rounded second base.
“It was really bothering him; he was kind of limping around,” the elder Kmet says. “I said, ‘Hey, here’s the deal. Here’s how we did it in college: You just have to put your foot in an ice bucket. It’s painful, but you got to stay with it.’"
The boy hardly squawked as he followed his father’s advice. “He put his foot in there and walked around a little bit and within minutes he was out running around again,” Frank Kmet says. “That was his quickest heal. You kind of learn to play with pain.”
BASEBALL OPTION
Next spring the Kmet boys should get another chance to play on the same baseball team.
Casey Kmet, a promising catcher-third baseman who had offers from Louisville, Purdue and South Carolina, will be a Notre Dame freshman on coach Link Jarrett’s first team. The all-Kmet battery could be reprised.
“Which we’re really looking forward to, by the way,” Frank Kmet says. “They’re extremely close brothers. It’s really awesome to see them work together.”
Born less than 18 months apart, the Kmets have enjoyed a natural rivalry their whole lives. When Cole was 9, his kid brother was brought up to play with him on a select team. Batting last and playing left field, young Casey bashed two homers and beat out his older brother for the game ball. “I’ve never seen Cole more mad in my life,” his father says with a laugh.
One of Jarrett’s first calls after being hired in July was to Cole Kmet, just to make sure he was still onboard. The lefty with the mid-90s fastball assured Jarrett that he was “all in on baseball” once football season ends.
“Cole is a tremendous talent,” Jarrett says. “You can just hear in his voice: He’s a winner. The makeup, the character is off the charts.”
Jarrett, who replaced Mik Aoki after nine seasons, sat for two hours with Frank and Kandace Kmet to lay out his vision for the program and for their sons. There’s even talk of having Cole Kmet do some hitting, maybe even playing some outfield.
Hitting was the tool that earned him a pre-draft offer in the high six figures from the Chicago White Sox in June 2017, when his Notre Dame commitment limited Kmet to workouts for just two teams. The Chicago Cubs were the other.
Had Kmet agreed, the White Sox would have drafted him in the fifth round. He could have continued his football career with the Fighting Irish, but the double duty would have been challenging.
“They probably would’ve gone for it,” Frank Kmet says of Notre Dame. “I’m sure they would have worked with us. It was tempting because we met some real good people with (the White Sox). If you’ve got that talent, it’s a good time to go, but to get your degree is a big deal.”
Cole Kmet has a 3.5 GPA with a double major in political science and economics. A post-football future as a college athletic director is one of his stated aspirations.
“He has a big vision about his life and wants to put all the things in place necessary to have a well-rounded life,” his father says. “I think Notre Dame provides that for him.”
Keeping all options open as an eighth grader proved to be a smart move.
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Sampson just tweeted Kmet plans on returning for next year.
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Huge, if it happens.