Though Deion Walker wasn’t in the mix at receiver at all last fall as a freshman while preserving a year of eligibility, he found himself squarely in it heading into the spring as a nice position battle took place to replace departed senior David Grimes in the No. 3 spot.
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Walker capped off a good spring camp with a catch for 17 yards in the Blue-Gold Game.
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“Just the other day I talked to both [John Goodman] and Deion; it's time not to be freshmen anymore. They went through their year sabbatical. But it's time to now go ahead and get in the mix. I really like what I've seen out of them. I really do,” Charlie Weis noted in March as the Irish opened the spring workouts.
And for the most part, Walker and Goodman did their parts to enhance the competition and certainly did nothing to fall behind the pack heading into the fall. Walker capped off a respectable spring by catching a Nate Montana pass for 17 yards in April’s Blue-Gold Game in his first true introduction to Irish fans in a Notre Dame uniform beyond snippets of practice video here and there.
Walker hasn’t stood out like classmate Michael Floyd or junior Golden Tate on the field or even when going through drills in the practices thus far in his career, but there is no denying his ball skills. It’s the dangerous, perhaps meaningless “P” word, but for what it’s worth he has a lot of potential.
The key for Walker, like fellow classmate and enigma John Goodman, is to translate that potential into tangible production. In order to do so, he is going to have to continue to develop a body capable of withstanding some punishment at the high school level into a body capable of withstanding a lot of punishment at the collegiate level, and Walker knows it.
“I hit the weights pretty hard. I gained a pretty good amount of weight,” he said. “Now, I feel like I’ve hit the weight room, I’ve seen the game, and now I think I can capitalize on it if I finally get in there.
“Now that I know the offense, I think I can get open a lot better and help the quarterbacks. And me gaining weight, I can block a little bit better.”
Walker still needs to fill out his frame a bit more. But when he does, his talent and confidence could make him a Rhema McKnight-type of contributor.
“I’m shooting for the No. 1 spot,” he said this spring. “If it doesn’t work out, and if I go hard, I’ll take whatever it gets me.”
What’s A Good Season?
It would be unfair at this point to expect Deion Walker to enter the opener against Nevada as Notre Dame’s No. 3 receiver. It’s not unreasonable to believe it could happen over the course of training camp, but it’s a bit much to expect, currently, given the experience, minutes played and production of players such as Duval Kamara and Robby Parris.
A good season for Walker would be to rise to that spot in the rotation by season’s end. That means taking advantage of every practice and game rep, and working his way up the depth chart by outworking the player ahead of him.
“I’m setting my sights on the top. I want to be the go-to guy,” he said proudly. “And, that’s my job to push whoever is at that position to want to stay there.”
So my statistical expectations come in two stages for Walker: a handful of catches, five or six, for 50 or 60 yards over the first six games followed by more steady production in the second half of the season in the neighborhood of 10-15 catches for 150 yards, give or take.
This spring the attention was on the competition for the No. 3 receiver. If Walker can have a season in 2009 that puts the attention on the No. 2 or No. 1 spots next spring, then he’s doing his part as a competitor on the Irish depth chart.
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