Welcome Drue Tranquill, ILB, Notre Dame

[Formula 21]

Drue Tranquill, linebacker


(Matt Cashore-USA TODAY Sports)

The 6-foot-2, 234-pound linebacker is projected to go anywhere between the end of the third round or as late as the fifth or sixth round. Pro Football Focus predicts he'll be the No. 92 overall pick with the Kansas City Chiefs, but NFL.com thinks he'll fall to the third day.

At the NFL combine, Tranquill ran a 4.57-second 40 and had 31 bench press reps, which was the most among linebackers. He was third for Notre Dame with 86 total tackles (63 solo, 23 assist) and added 3.5 sacks for 24 yards. As NFL.com draft analyst Lance Zierlein explained: "What evaluators are going to see is a player who has below-average size, recovery athleticism, and man cover skills."

[Xenos]

Drue Tranquill, linebacker


(Matt Cashore-USA TODAY Sports)

The 6-foot-2, 234-pound linebacker is projected to go anywhere between the end of the third round or as late as the fifth or sixth round. Pro Football Focus predicts he'll be the No. 92 overall pick with the Kansas City Chiefs, but NFL.com thinks he'll fall to the third day.

At the NFL combine, Tranquill ran a 4.57-second 40 and had 31 bench press reps, which was the most among linebackers. He was third for Notre Dame with 86 total tackles (63 solo, 23 assist) and added 3.5 sacks for 24 yards. As NFL.com draft analyst Lance Zierlein explained: "What evaluators are going to see is a player who has below-average size, recovery athleticism, and man cover skills."

Nice to know about the last part. Hopefully he recovered completely from all his ACL tears.

[Formula 21]

We got a FOOTBALL PLAYER in the 4th. AJ would call him a hammer. Great pick at the end of the 4th.

[captaind]

Is Notre Dame our farm club?

[sonorajim]

I'll be darned. The 2019 draft hit the fans top positions of need 1-4. Adderley was my top name guy I wanted.

[Formula 21]

PON draft. Definitely not BPA.

[Xenos]

PON draft. Definitely not BPA.

Is that a good or bad thing in this round?

[richpjr]

As a ND fan I have seen him play quite a few times and should easily supplant Dzubnar on ST and won't be the liability he is when he sees the field. Perfect LB for the modern NFL I like the pick a lot.

[21&500]

First step, learn to spell name correctly
step two, work yo ass off
welcome DREW!

[Formula 21]

Great piece on ESPN on him. Called one of best leaders ND has ever seen. Graduated with Mechanical Engineering degree, 3.73 GPA. Very smart guy. Great community guy. Only thing holding him back is injuries.

[Formula 21]

Is that a good or bad thing in this round?

its the 4th round. Everybody's board is different now.

[Xenos]

Athletic article on Drue. He definitely knows the importance of recovery after his injuries. If he gets injured, it won't be for lack of preparation on his part.
https://theathletic.com/610144/2018/...hest-opponent/

Recovery Road: How Drue Tranquill beats Notre Dame's toughest opponent



By Pete Sampson Oct 24, 2018 19



SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- The work starts Sunday when Drue Tranquill flips his football calendar, usually well before Notre Dame's supposed 24-hour rule allows it. That's the internal clock Brian Kelly wants players to keep, granting them the time to either celebrate success or ruminate on failure, before flushing both. It all comes with a hard stop, which is sort of the point.

Tranquill needs no such contrivances because he has a very real schedule to keep, a literal process that gets him from the final gun to the next kickoff. His recovery regimen is not the reason why Tranquill leads Notre Dame in solo tackles or why he's been able to come back from ACL reconstructions in both knees while playing three positions.

But it is a critical piece of the puzzle that has helped him thrive as a two-time captain and future NFL linebacker while being one of the first engineering graduates from the football program in nearly 20 years.

"I would think he rates up there with the top guys that I've coached relative to nutrition, hydration, seven days a week," Kelly said. "It's a lifestyle for him more so. Generally you see that from much more mature professional athletes."

In that way, Tranquill's recovery work represents something of a conundrum for Notre Dame in the sense that he's an aspirational model but not one anybody could be expected to re-create. That's because there just aren't enough hours in the day to do it. There weren't when Tranquill was still in the engineering school, designing concept cars and studying materials to improve nursing home flooring. This semester his course load is light enough for a Music and Worship course.

Tranquill now spends 10 to 12 hours on recovery every week while maintaining a militant eight-hour sleep schedule. That doesn't account for practice, meetings or film sessions. Run into Tranquill outside of regular interviews and he'll arrive with a gallon jug to assist hydration. During team victory dinners on Sunday nights, Tranquill skips dessert. The sleep, diet and hydration make Tranquill unique. But it's that recovery routine that sets the linebacker apart.

"It's tough," Tranquill said. "If you really want to be a pro about it, it's tough to do with your class load."

Tranquill is religious enough with his schedule that he canceled on interviews for ABC's television crew in advance of the Wake Forest game last month. Every day has a recovery item, and that chain can't be broken for Tranquill to peak Saturday, when he's already logged nearly 500 snaps and has played the past three games with a broken left hand.

Getting there starts with a 30-minute deep-tissue massage on Sunday from specialists contracted by the university. If there's enough time for Tranquill to do a double session, he will. The Sunday group of players seeking massages pushes three dozen.

"It's painful," Tranquill said. "It doesn't feel good. But it gets all the knots out. It gets the blood circulation through my muscles to help relieve any aches."

After the massage, Tranquill will enter the float tank for an hour session. Notre Dame has just one Revolution Float Orb situated in the aquatics training room. It's a $30,000 device that takes roughly one thousand pounds of Epsom salt and simulates weightlessness while mimicking REM sleep.

"If I don't have any nagging injuries from the game that I need to get treated, I'll hop in the float tank and that will kind of help rejuvenate my central nervous system," Tranquill said. "And if I'm really feeling sore, I'll do some contrast, hop in the ice bath, hot, cold, some contrast to finish it off."
Monday's recovery is more in the weight room, Tranquill working to flush muscle groups. More ice bath and hot tub contrast usually follows to keep inflammation down. If Tranquill can get another hour in the float tank, he'll usually take it. On top of that, he'll work muscle groups aside from the major ones.

"We don't do a great job of activating our glutes or our hips or smaller muscle groups that tend to not fire and tend to get dominated by muscle groups by your quads and your hamstring," Tranquill said. "A lot of rehab is focused on when you have a knee injury, working muscle groups that you don't normally activate to help support those areas. That's important in terms of how you play on the field and how you move. When you use those muscle groups you're a lot more powerful, you can accelerate a lot better."

Notre Dame's practice schedule ramps up Tuesday and Wednesday, which necessitates a different kind of recovery at midweek. Tranquill will seek out another deep-tissue massage on Wednesday post-practice, this one focused on his legs coming back from the heavy lifting of game-plan installation.

Where the Sunday massage session draws a crowd, the Wednesday one does not, limited to Tranquill and a few others despite mass availability.
More ice baths follow, too.

Beyond those conventional recovery methods, Tranquill adds acoustic wave therapy to his routine to help tendonitis in both repaired knees. Laser work also is part of the schedule, which amounts to light therapy that stimulates cell regeneration and decreases pain.

Tranquill's process maximizes Notre Dame's recent investments in recovery, ones that should expand after the completion of the nearly $50 million new indoor practice facility next year. Preliminary ideas are in process to build onto the Gug, expanding availability to some of the recovery techniques Tranquill is using.

"If you just look at the things we've tried to do -- recovery room, float tanks, massage therapy, cold tubs, nutrition, all of those things -- it's the battle of how you can stay just ahead of the needle relative to recovery," Kelly said. "I think that's not necessarily just here, but some of the schools that are really on a tightrope as it relates to the load that they have in the classroom."

Tranquill closes the week with "Feel Good Friday," a wild card of treatments that he'll use to fit the pains of that week. But Tranquill finishes his routine the same way regardless of what's come before it, drawing a low-tech Epsom salt bath at the team hotel that night. Usually he lets roommate Asmar Bilal go first. Other teammates have adopted that part of the routine, too.

"I get the eucalyptus Epsom salt. I love that smell," Tranquill said. "It's kind of a tradition. Asmar has his bath and later I'll go and do mine. I kind of introduced him to it last year. Te'von (Coney) did it. Shaun Crawford did it. They all started taking my salt and I was like, 'What the heck? Go buy your own.' "

Maybe imitation is the sincerest form of recovery.

But good luck keeping up with Notre Dame's master of that process.