Notre Dame RB C.J. Prosise Quietly Building Heisman Campaign

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Notre Dame football running back C.J. Prosise took the first-down carry midway through the second quarter and veered outside to the right. As he crossed the 35-yard line without contact, he coughed up the football and quickly recovered.

On the sideline, running backs coach Autry Denson told Prosise to run his stomach through the football.

“I’m still getting used to that at running back,” Prosise said.

Little else has slowed the safety-turned-receiver-turned-running back through four games this season. Prosise sprinted and shook his way to 149 rushing yards and two touchdowns on 15 carries in just more than one half of work during No. 6 Notre Dame’s 62-27 thumping of UMass on Saturday.

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Prosise arrived at Notre Dame as a safety out of Petersburg, Virginia. He soon moved to wide receiver and provided a variety of big plays out of the slot for the Irish in 2014. With a thin depth chart, Prosise moved to running back in the spring, staked a claim to more playing time when Greg Bryant was ruled out for the season and, ultimately, found himself as the starter when Tarean Folston suffered a season-ending knee injury early in the season opener against Texas.

Now, through four games, Prosise is averaging 8.11 yards per carry. He’s piled up 600 yards and six scores on the ground.

“I’m a little surprised I’m doing it at running back,” Prosise said. “I always knew I could be a great player here and make big plays for us. But never did I think I’d be playing running back and be one of the top rushers.”

Entering Saturday, Prosise ranked fifth in the country with 451 rushing yards. Hours later, his 8.11 yards-per-carry average is not far behind that of LSU standout running back Leonard Fournette’s 8.64 mark, who shredded Syracuse earlier in the day.

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Prosise scampered 57 yards to start the scoring midway through the first quarter. It only took him about 12 game minutes to reach 100 yards rushing. He carried just twice in the second quarter for six yards and added 19 yards, including a 16-yard score, in the third to close his afternoon and earn some well-deserved rest.

“When you got a guy like C.J. Prosise running the ball behind you and the way he gets extra yards and never goes down, it’s awesome,” senior center and captain Nick Martin said.

At the end of one run, three UMass players took a late charge at Prosise on the sideline and still barely nudged him over. Prosise was nearly horse-collared to the ground on another carry, only to keep his footing, spin around and tack on a few more yards.

“I refuse to go down,” Prosise said. “I’m not going to let one guy tackle me. Coach Denson has this thing called ‘Get 22.’ Make every guy on the field tackle you twice. So that’s what I’m trying to do.”

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Prosise has broken plenty of tackles en route to his 600 yards, mashing through arms and squirming free from bites at the ankles.

“He’s got a strong lower body,” senior wide receiver Chris Brown said. “He’s got great balance. Someone can knock him over, you think he’s gonna go down. He puts a hand on the ground, stays up.”

“He’s about 215 pounds. Probably runs a 4.4 and has great vision. It’s tough to tackle someone who’s 215 and runs a 4.4,” senior cornerback KeiVarae Russell said. “He has extreme balance. You have to wrap up. I think that’s the tough part about C.J.”

Through one-third of the regular season, Notre Dame has leaned heavily on the ground game. The Irish totaled 457 rushing yards against the Minutemen, the most since 1996. Notre Dame has eclipsed 200 rushing yards—as a team—in five consecutive games, the longest streak since 2000. The last time an Irish team opened a season with four 200-yard rushing performances was 1989.

And the Irish are doing it with a backup quarterback and a running back who was a slot receiver just seven short months ago.

“That’s him. He’s an extreme athlete,” Russell said. “And we knew he could play whatever. I’m just glad it’s running back now.”

Irish head coach Brian Kelly is too.

“He’s a natural runner, and if he wasn’t, I don’t think that he could have been ascending in the manner that he is,” Kelly said. “He’s ascended quickly.”

Prosise keeps climbing. Running behind a powerful offensive line—“there’s times when I’m getting 10 yards before I even get touched by anybody,” he said—Prosise keeps moving the sticks and edging his way onto the national radar.

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There are still eight games to go, and Notre Dame faces a stiff bump in quality when it faces Clemson’s defense next week in Death Valley. But Prosise’s production is impossible to ignore.

“He’s just great with the ball in his hands,” Brown said. “I knew that from day one playing with him at receiver. He just breaks tackles. He continues to ball, man.”

The specifics of his situation may be surprising.

The results—the broken tackles, the long gains, the yards, the points—aren’t, at least to him.

“It’s what I’ve got to do for the team to win,” Prosise said. “The team is counting on me to make plays for us, and I’m gonna do that.”

All quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.

Mike Monaco is the lead Notre Dame writer for Bleacher Report. Follow @MikeMonaco on Twitter.