{"id":306924,"date":"2025-11-22T11:03:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T11:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/306924\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T11:03:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T11:03:08","slug":"notre-dame-safety-tae-johnson-suffers-hand-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/306924\/","title":{"rendered":"Notre Dame safety Tae Johnson suffers hand injury"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tae Johnson<\/a> is having a phenomenal season, taking the must-see Notre Dame safety torch from Xavier Watts<\/a> and Kyle Hamilton<\/a> and running with it. It might be a while before we see him get to try to add to his team-high interception total, however.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Blue & Gold learned Johnson suffered a hand injury in practice this week and will not play Saturday against Syracuse, which Notre Dame confirmed on social media<\/a>.\u00a0He may be out for longer than just one game as well.<\/p>\n

Johnson has 4 INT this season, three of them coming in the last three games. He had 2 on the road against Boston College on Nov. 1, and he returned one for a touchdown last week at Pitt. His first of the season \u2014 and his career \u2014 came at home against Boise State on Oct. 4.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Johnson began the season as a backup but he quickly made his way into Notre Dame\u2019s starting lineup. His talent and the way he\u2019s mentally picked up the game as a redshirt sophomore makes him undeniably someone Notre Dame needs on the field as much as possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Per Pro Football Focus, Johnson leads all Irish players with 573 defensive snaps this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always said how athletic he is, but he\u2019s now continuing to add that with work and understanding concepts,\u201d Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman<\/a> said Monday. \u201cNow when you can anticipate things, that\u2019s when some of the success comes, right? He\u2019s anticipating. We\u2019re in zone coverage here. He\u2019s anticipating that quarterback looking there and went and picked it off.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s just continuing to get better. He is. He\u2019s putting in the work, too. He\u2019s starting to get those rewards. It becomes a little, like, contagious. I want this. Like, I want to get it again. You\u2019ve got to remind them in order to put yourself in that position, you\u2019ve got to put in the work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Without Johnson, Notre Dame will turn to a rotation of redshirt junior Luke Talich<\/a> and graduate transfer Jalen Stroman to play alongside redshirt sophomore and team captain Adon Shuler<\/a> at safety. Talich has played over 20 defensive snaps in a single game four times this season, and Stroman was a starter before Johnson took his spot.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear when Johnson will be able to return. Notre Dame finishes the regular season at Stanford on Nov. 29, and then it\u2019s the waiting game to see if the Irish qualified for the College Football Playoff and when and where that journey begins if so. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tae Johnson is having a phenomenal season, taking the must-see Notre Dame safety torch from Xavier Watts and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99,159041],"class_list":{"0":"post-306924","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-tae-johnson-24-north-side"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}