Mitchell Evans Continues To Blossom As A Notre Dame Tight End

Fighting Irish tight end Mitchell Evans continues to improve as a tight end after a high school career at quarterback

It’s hard to tell by watching him play, but Notre Dame tight end Mitchell Evans hasn’t actually been a tight end for that long. Evans was a quarterback at Wadsworth High School in Ohio for three of his four prep seasons. His junior season was the only one he was actually a tight end, but he was injured most of that year.

“My senior year, I went back to quarterback,” Evans recently recalled. “But I was already recruited by then. The plan was, the whole time, to play tight end, by all the schools that were recruiting me. So, then I got here and just been tight end the whole time.”

Things have worked out pretty well for the 6-5 junior. Evan as an understudy to Michael Mayer in 2021, Evans saw action in all 13 games as a true freshman. He made his first career catch against Virginia and finished the season with two receptions for 21 yards after adding another grab in the season finale against Stanford. You could say things came to him fairly quickly.

“I didn’t feel like it was that big of an adjustment,” Evans remarked. “I feel like more of being down in the trenches with all the linemen, that was kind of a big adjustment. I was a quarterback, never really got hit. Except for in games, I was hit a lot. But I would say being used to always [being] at the point of contact when I first got here, but that kind of went away in spring ball and route-running, essentially, but I picked that up quick with just how I am as a person, like I can learn things like that.”

Evans also had the benefit of seeing the entire field as a quarterback, so even though he wasn’t the one running the routes back then, he was able to log those reps up to experience.

“I have the ability to read defenses pretty well,” Evans said. “I feel like I can put two and two together, seeing the defense and having a strategy to go at the man guarding me, or if it’s zone, how to get through the zone. I feel like that was a pretty good advantage.”

A broken foot in the offseason slowed Evans at the start of his sophomore season. He missed the first five games before seeing his first action of the season against Stanford last October and went on to start the final seven games.

Evans didn’t make his first reception of the year until Notre Dame’s Gator Bowl victory over South Carolina. He had three catches for 39 yards, including the eventual game-winning touchdown. With Mayer now playing for the Las Vegas Raiders, Evans’ game has taken off on many levels this season.

“My route running, second-level release or point of contact,” Evans said of where he has improved the most this year. “That’s something about safety level or linebacker depth, being able to get off and create separation a little bit and alongside that, I feel like my ability to recognize the type of defense, like if it’s man or zone and having a strategy to attack it. Just that combination I’ve improved this season.”

In spite of missing the Central Michigan game in September, Evans is Notre Dame’s most productive receiver with 24 receptions for 356 yards. He has made a one-handed grabs that have found their way to highlights reels as well.

“That’s just built up over time,” Evans said of his hand-eye coordination. “We’re over here after practice, throwing the ball around, we’re just trying to do one-handed catches or whatever. We put enough extra work in the offseason, when we don’t have practice. If it’s winter, we come in and do the ball machine, but we do all this extra stuff that no one sees, and I think it all just adds up. I think this is all from the little details that all of us do in the offseason here.”

The Irish have had just two players top 100 receiving yards in a game this season and both have been tight ends. Holden Staes did it first with his 115-yard, two-touchdown performance against NC State and Evans followed suit three weeks later with his six-catch, 134-yard game in the dramatic win over Duke.

Big receptions make the highlight reels, but Evans is still working on other aspects of his tight end game as well.

“Just his overall route plan is where he’s made the most growth," Irish offensive coordinator and tight ends coach Gerad Parker said of Evans. "I think he has got to take another step, we challenged him too, to make sure he does the same thing in the block game because he’s had to play a high amount of reps. But on a positive note, just the way he’s led and the details he plays with in his route game has put him in a position where he has become very trusted by Sam (Hartman), so that’s the big piece of it. So now I think his expectation is to play at a high level every game instead of being flashy.. You’re starting to see a consistent guy play week in, week out that way.”

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