Notre Dame Football: Xavier Watt’s return to the Irish in 2024 is a massive win

The Sun Bowl was nothing but good vibes for Notre Dame and the football program, and coming out of that good time was an announcement from safety Xavier Watts — he’s returning to play football for the Irish in 2024.

First of all… I have to give that big cowboy hat tip to the Notre Dame media crew for the video (and for continuing the fantastic use of Dead or Alive).

Second of all… this is fantastic news for Notre Dame. With the departures of D.J. Brown and Thomas Harper to the NFL Draft and Ramon Henderson in the transfer portal, the Irish safety room really needed Watt’s experience in 2024. And by the way — this is now the returning Bednarik Award winner, so having the best defensive player in college football on the roster gives a huge bolt of confidence in Notre Dame’s future.

We saw the Irish defense dominate in the Sun Bowl thanks in large part to so many starting players from the 2023 season playing in the game. Below was the final depth chart before the Sun Bowl, and as you can see, the Irish will return most of what they had. Even a departure like that of Javontae Jean-Baptiste will have a replacement of Duke transfer, RJ Oben. If the Irish also hold onto Al Golden for one more year — we are cooking with nuclear fuel (whatever that looks like).

So hell yeah. This is a massive win for Notre Dame. Xavier Watts just won the award for the best defensive player of the year, and would likely test very very well at the NFL Combine, and he’s choosing to come back for another season under the Golden Dome.

Notre Dame unanimous All-American safety Xavier Watts has elected to return to the Fighting Irish for the 2024 season.

Watts simply said “run it back” on his various social media sites while pitching the video of his announcement. The video was filmed in a Western outdoor setting in El Paso, site of the Sun Bowl, and Watts dug up a gold bar out of the ground that said, “XAVIER WATTS returns in 2024.”

Notre Dame finished its season with a 40-8 shellacking of Oregon State at the Sun Bowl in El Paso on Friday.

Watts won the Bronko Nagurski Award as the nation’s top defensive player among a slew of honors.

Watts led the nation with seven interceptions. He added 52 tackles, one forced fumble and one fumble recovery. He scored a touchdown on the fumble return during a 48-20 win over Southern California on Oct. 14.

Watts was a receiver when he arrived at Notre Dame and he played in two games in 2020 and redshirted. He moved to defense during the 2021 season when the Fighting Irish were dealing with injuries in the secondary and he has been a fixture at safety the past two seasons.