'We'll have a plan for him': How OSU is prepping for test against Notre Dame tight end Michael Mayer
Scott WrightOklahoman
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — With 13 games worth of Oklahoma State film to break down in preparing for the Fiesta Bowl, Notre Dame offensive coordinator Tommy Rees found himself particularly interested in the Iowa State matchup back in October.
In that game, Rees saw how Oklahoma State defended one of the best tight ends in the country, Iowa State’s Charlie Kolar.
Iowa State focuses its offense heavily on Kolar, who finished the year with 756 yards and six touchdowns on 62 receptions, second-most on the team.
Rees and the Notre Dame offense focus even more heavily on their tight end, Michael Mayer, who produced similar numbers to Kolar this season, but is targeted much more frequently than his teammates. Mayer has 64 catches, while no other player has more than 42.
In the meeting between ninth-ranked Oklahoma State and No. 5 Notre Dame at noon Saturday in Glendale, Arizona, the Cowboys’ ability to contain Mayer will be critical to their hopes of winning.
“He's been a major focus,” defensive line coach Joe Bob Clements said of Mayer. “Our players had better know where No. 87 is on the field. Notre Dame is going to do a good job of moving him around and getting him involved.
“He's had 100-plus targets on the season. So we know, when they need to make a play, the quarterback is probably going to be looking in that direction and we need to be looking towards him.”
In reviewing that Iowa State game, Rees saw the ideas Oklahoma State had for containing Kolar, who finished with an average day by his standards, six catches for 69 yards and no touchdowns.
“The kid from Iowa State, they had some things on third down to double him,” Rees said. “That's clearly part of what they do. I think the biggest focus for them will probably be third down. How do we get a couple people around him on third down? The kid at Iowa State, they literally put two guys on him and said, ‘Hey, we're going to take him away.’”
Mayer finished the regular season with 768 yards and five touchdowns on 64 catches, playing in 11 of Notre Dame’s 12 games.
The 6-foot-4, 251-pound sophomore had at least 50 receiving yards in nine games, and went over the 100-yard mark twice, including his most recent game when he had nine catches for 105 yards against Stanford on Nov. 27.
“I think when you play against a really good tight end — and 87 for them, he's really good in the pass game,” OSU senior safety Kolby Harvell-Peel said. “He's also really good in the run game. He's a great blocker.
“They bring an edge to the offense that when a team runs a lot of spreads, you can kind of hone in on the pass and try to make sure that you cover well in the back end. When you add that element of a tight end that can catch passes well as well, they are just versatile and it makes you have to always know where he's at and always account for him on the field.”
OSU coach Mike Gundy said Mayer “looks like Tom Brady’s friend,” referring to Tampa Bay Buccaneers tight end Rob Gronkowski. And Notre Dame has a knack for producing talented tight ends. In just the past decade, they’ve put out NFL starters like Tyler Eifert, Kyle Rudolph and Cole Kmet.
Mayer is next in that lineage.
“He can both do good run blocking and he's good in the passing game,” OSU senior linebacker Devin Harper said. “You don't see that very often with tight ends in any conference. He has it all.
“But we'll have a plan for him.”
That’s the big unknown — what will OSU’s plan for Mayer be? Rees figures to see a lot of what he watched on that Iowa State film, but without defensive coordinator Jim Knowles calling the shots this time around, Rees knows the plan could look different.
“There's a lot of unknowns right now with their defense, obviously, with the change in coordinator and extra time to prepare and what they want to do,” Rees said. “We got to be multiple in how we use Michael and make sure that we don't become stagnant with where we want to play him and find ways to create opportunities.
“Look, if they want to double him, that usually means we got a favorable matchup somewhere else. So we got to make sure that we're seeing that and adjusting to it.”
