Shaped by his father’s example, Xavier Watts carved his own path to Notre Dame

SOUTH BEND, Ind. – Xavier Watts had felt it before, at Notre Dame, at Michigan, at Nebraska. Now Notre Dame wanted the three-star receiver to feel it again. Triggering that sensation, the feeling Watts was in the right place for the next four years, required a level of due diligence that it made the jaw of father Jeff Watts drop.

As the Watts family checked into their hotel room for a Notre Dame official visit last month, they found a small chest waiting, although really it was designed for Jeff. Inside, they found roughly 20 different selections of candy and snacks to get the family through the weekend. There were Fruit Gushers, Pringles and Doritos, as Notre Dame’s recruiting office basically recreated the Watts grocery list verbatim. The only misfire was a Cookies ‘N’ Creme Hershey’s Bar, forgivable considering how much research Notre Dame got right.

“Man, Xavier had to tell them what we liked because there’s no way they would have got all those right,” Jeff Watts said. “If there was 20 things in there, there was just one thing that I didn’t like.”

This was the feeling Notre Dame was going for while winding down Watts’ recruitment, trying to land the 6-foot-1, 190-pound athlete from Burke High School in Omaha, Neb. The visit was Watts’ third to South Bend, following a game night trip for the win over Stanford last September and a spring practice visit in April. Notre Dame’s staff believes three is a magic number: If a prospect sees the program for a third time, he’ll ultimately sign here.

Still, for all the trends pointing Watts toward Notre Dame, this recruitment was never that straightforward. An early visit to Michigan once made him think about committing to Jim Harbaugh. A trip to Iowa State shocked him. Perhaps no head coach was more impressive than Matt Campbell. And then there was Nebraska, which signed its state’s top five players last cycle, including Burke products Nick Henrich and Chris Hickman.

Watts visited Nebraska three times this spring, always comfortable in Lincoln but never necessarily home there. Still, living in a state gripped by Scott Frost fever, even if Watts is originally from Minnesota, means there is some pull to stay home. You don’t have to think about gravity to know it’s there. And so these were the currents Notre Dame navigated as Watts began that official visit, one that started with junk food.

From there, Watts reconnected with Notre Dame’s coaching staff across the board, an incredible advertisement on how much the Irish coveted him. Notre Dame first reached out a year ago via defensive coordinator Clark Lea. When Watts attended the Stanford game last September, he connected with safeties coach Terry Joseph. When Watts articulated his desire to play receiver over defensive back, quarterback coach Tommy Rees got involved. Last winter, offensive coordinator Chip Long visited Burke. Receivers coach DelVaughn Alexander got involved, too. When Watts returned for the official visit, there were asides with special teams coordinator Brian Polian and time spent with cornerbacks coach Todd Lyght.

Obviously, head coach Brian Kelly played a part too, sitting down with the family at Kelly’s lake house during the official visit weekend.

“I just had the feeling that they actually wanted me,” Watts said. “They were very genuine to me.”

Before Watts headed home from Notre Dame, the feeling returned. Notre Dame was the place. The Irish would get his commitment. Still, Jeff wanted Xavier to wait, to see if that feeling would continue after the recruiting sugar rush wore off. And the feeling did stay, just not enough to stop a potential plot twist at the end.

About a week after Watts got home, recruiting message boards flared up with supposed intel that the receiver would stay home, that he’d commit to Nebraska. That information got back to Notre Dame’s staff within minutes, intel that suggested they’d read Watts wrong all along. Notre Dame was not pleased and got Watts on the phone on the night of July 1. Long and Alexander reminded the receiver how much they needed him, evidenced by a courtship that basically involved seven different assistant coaches.

Watts listened. He said he didn’t tell Notre Dame that he was coming. But he also said he hadn’t committed to Nebraska, that all the message board buzz was wrong. That was enough for Notre Dame to believe. And when Watts scheduled a commitment announcement four days after that call, Notre Dame thought it had its man.

All Watts would have to do was tell Nebraska no, that he wouldn’t be part of Frost’s audacious rebuild, that he didn’t bleed red. And this is no small thing.

“It was pretty hard,” Watts said. “Kids here, even if they don’t get offers from Nebraska they go and walk on because they’re really big Nebraska fans. They want to play for Nebraska. That’s not really who I am. I don’t owe things to this state. I’m not even really from here.”

That’s true. Watts moved to Omaha from Minneapolis when he was barely three years old. That means he shouldn’t remember much about life back there, life in his parents’ hometown. Sometimes things don’t work that way.

Watts gets a reminder of that life every day.

Every morning Jeff Watts opens the door of his 2015 Chevy Silverado, ready for the morning commute to Big Ink. It’s a family business, a screen-printing operation that makes gear for local high schools. Even though Big Ink doesn’t outfit Burke, where Xavier stars at receiver and defensive back, the family still does some custom apparel with Watts’ number and name on the back.

Inside the Silverado is a mechanical platform where a driver’s seat would be. When the door opens, a mechanical arm reaches it down to the ground. Watts then moves his wheelchair onto the platform, and the device lifts him into the SUV, ready to drive to work. That’s how it’s been for the past 16 years, different ways of getting around while clearing the same hurdle.

Back in 2003, Watts was a young father running between two worlds, where his life was going in Omaha and where it had been in Minneapolis. One night outside a house party in Minneapolis, Watts went to the sidewalk to have a drink with friends. A vehicle pulled up. Shots were fired. One bullet hit Watts in the left side of his back near his spine. He collapsed on impact and was rushed to the hospital. Twenty-four hours later, he would learn he’d been paralyzed from the waist down.

“I immediately couldn’t move and the next day, that’s when I found out the bad news and it’s been that way since then,” Jeff said. “When I was in a rehab center for a year and a half, I just kind of saw other people who were in a wheelchair from whatever type of accident they had, a lot of them were down and out. And they didn’t have a kid. Ever since then it’s been like, ‘Nope, I’m not gonna be that way.’”

On its own merits, the story of Jeff Watts would be worth telling. He has learned hard lessons about life choices, about where to be and who to be with. Where his story has real power, though, is how Jeff Watts shares it with Xavier. It’s not enough for Xavier to just see his dad in the accessible section of Burke High School on Friday nights surrounded by a dozen family members, or heading off to work every morning in that Silverado. Father makes sure son knows the consequences of choices, and not just his own.

“We keep it really 100 in this household. This is straight real. We don’t sugar-coat,” Jeff said. “My whole family is inner-city. And you know, when you’re up there, you just seen a lot of stuff that you weren’t used to or you thought was cool at the time, just bad influences.

“I played the line was like, all right, I know I can get away with some of this other stuff. So I’m going to do it, you know what I mean? That type of stuff was not anything I wanted Xavier to be around. So I do tell him and share those types of experience with him. Ask anyone that grew up around me. What he’s doing is cool shit. Not what none of us was doing.”

Watts carries a 4.0 at Burke High School. He attends the team’s study tables after school even if he doesn’t need the structure, in part because what he’s doing rubs off on his teammates.

When Watts gets home, it’s common for his dad to have video clips saved of athletes getting in trouble. Sometimes it’s high school kids. Sometimes it’s college athletes. Sometimes it’s pros. All the messages are the same, that every decision can have an impact on what’s coming, next season, next year or for the rest of your life.

“It’s made me a better person,” Xavier said. “It’s someone to look up to, to not make the wrong decisions like he did. He wants me to have a good life, to not go down the same road he did.”

Jeff Watts wanted his son to carve his own path. He’s done that, straight out of Nebraska.

As for why the destination had to be Notre Dame, that’s another story.

The week before Chip Long and DelVaughn Alexander made their final pitches to Xavier Watts over the phone, Watts’ significance to Notre Dame’s recruiting board had changed.

On June 25, four-star receiver Jalen McMillan of Fresno, Calif., long part of the program’s perfect set of receivers with five-star Jordan Johnson and Watts, stunned the Irish by committing to Washington. Notre Dame already knew it was out for A.J. Henning, who rated behind Johnson, McMillan and Watts. Still, there was little on the board beyond those four, aside from three-star Jay Brunelle, who had impressed at camp earlier in the month.

After McMillian’s decision, Notre Dame quickly green lit Brunelle as a “Take,” landing him on June 26. Henning committed to Michigan on that same day. As much as Brunelle had opened eyes at Notre Dame’s camp, a Johnson-Brunelle combination was not what the offense needed in quantity or quality after making the College Football Playoff six months earlier.

In Watts, Notre Dame saw both a game-breaking receiver and a potential safety. If Watts went to the Irish coaching staff tomorrow and said he’d prefer defense, he’d likely rate higher than any of the three defensive back commitments. Still, Notre Dame needed a player who had 67 catches for 1,093 yards and 14 touchdowns the previous season to deliver on that side of the ball, no matter how good he was on defense.

“He might be the best safety that I’ve seen in high school football in my 25 years coaching,” said Burke head coach Paul Limongi. “He has it all. He has a great nose for the ball, he’s a great hitter, he has a knack to be in the right place at the right time.

“To call him an excellent receiver is an injustice. He’s just a great football player. He could be great if he played running back, if he played outside linebacker.”

Watts decided his future was on offense last fall after watching Notre Dame’s dominating performance against Stanford. Still, some schools insisted he played defense. Others saw a receiver only. Notre Dame was open to either, right down to Lea pitching for Long, just to get Watts on the roster in some capacity.

“It’s fun scoring touchdowns, I really enjoy it,” Watts said. “Receiver is more of my specialty.”

On July 5, Notre Dame got what it needed when Watts went public with his commitment. It was a recruitment nearly a year in the making, and Notre Dame needed all that runway to get one of Nebraska’s top talents. There has been some blowback on social media toward the family, but nothing extraordinary. When Watts told Henrich the news, the Nebraska linebacker cheered into the phone back. Basically, anybody whose opinion matters to Watts has supported the decision.

Come October, Xavier Watts hopes to return to Notre Dame as a verbal commitment when USC visits in prime time. After accompanying his son on his official visit to South Bend last month, Jeff is ready to let Xavier travel on his own this time around to the program’s massive in-season recruiting weekend.

Father knows son has been listening. Both are better for it.

Soon, Notre Dame will be, too.

(Photo: @xavierwatts6 on Twitter)