At a position where the Notre Dame football could use a spring surprise or two, freshman wide receiver Elijah Burress has been a jolt-in-progress.
With more room to grow as the Irish finish up their unusual run of post-Blue-Gold Game spring practices, set to conclude next week.
His two catches for 21 yards and a TD in the Blue’s wonkily scored 76-31 victory over the Gold Saturday at Notre Dame Stadium in the annual intrasquad matchup hinted at the whispers that the 6-foot, 182-pound son of former NFL 12-year veteran receiver Plaxico Burress might just be having the most impactful spring of the 13 early enrolled freshmen on the Irish spring roster.
His new teammates didn’t confine it to whispering.
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“I want to shout out Elijah Burress,” new grad transfer nickel Devonta Smith, from Alabama, offered earlier this spring. “He’s going to be a great receiver coming up. Hopefully, he gets some playing time this year. He’s been having a really good spring.
“He has good speed. He has great wiggle at receiver. He has good route-running ability. He’s got great hands. Really been an exceptional player for us on offense.”
Sophomore cornerback Karson Hobbs, a spring surprise himself, had similar superlatives for Burress, who’s competing at the field receiver spot with juniors Jordan Faison and KK Smith.
“On the first day of one-on-ones, I’ll never forget, he just offered us a release game,” Hobbs said. “I realized he had a little shake to him. I noticed at that moment he’s going to be nice. And then I started watching him every day.
“The way he runs his curl routes, he’s able to get out of his breaks in one step. Literally one step. Very efficient in movement. He has a really nice dig route to him. … He’s going to be good. Really good.”
And it wasn’t exactly expected to work out that way.
Eight of Notre Dame’s 25 recruits in the 2025 class, including 12 June enrollees, were Rivals250 players. Burress wasn’t one of them, and in fact was a three-star prospect with his only other power conference offers coming from Duke, Cincinnati, and dad’s alma mater — Michigan State.
“I’m a student of the game,” said the humble but confident Burress earlier this spring. “I watch a lot of good receivers. I try to take a part of everybody’s game and put it in mine.”
Wisconsin grad transfer slot receiver Will Pauling singled out Burress and freshman cornerback Cree Thomas as the two freshmen who had impressed him the most.
“Not only on the field, but they hang out with me a lot off the field,” Pauling said. “We go to Bible study together. We kind of dive into God’s work together, which is awesome.
“Because we’re here to play football, but it’s so much bigger than that. So to see how interested they are and how enthusiastic they are about those things kind of excites me.”
Faison (30 recs., 356 yards, 1 TD in 2024) is expected to be the eventual starter and has put more time into football this spring during the lacrosse/football overlap he’s taken on than he did last spring. But the Irish need quantity and quality at the field receiver position.
Smith has just three career catches in his first two years in the program, two last season against Purdue and one against Stanford, teams the Irish beat by a combined score of 115-14.
The Irish appear loaded at slot receiver in 2025, with Pauling joining returning starter Jaden Greathouse, promising sophomore Logan Saldate and another freshman, Scrap Richardson.
ND’s leading receiver overall in 2025 may not yet be on campus, as grad transfer and boundary receiver Malachi Fields arrives in June after finishing his academic commitments at Virginia this semester.
A likely rotational player at the boundary position, sophomore Micah Gilbert, also missed the contact parts of spring practice after having hand surgery early in the spring. That left sophomore Cam Williams and freshman Jerome Bettis Jr. to gobble up the opportunities at the boundary position this spring.
“I love having guys I could talk to every day and learn the offense with together,” Burress said. “It’s great having all of them with me.”
And offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock loves the sounds of that, with Notre Dame leaning more into the passing game in 2025, with prolific runner Riley Leonard no longer at the top of the quarterback depth chart and instead chasing his NFL dream.
And whether it’s senior Steve Angeli, junior Kenny Minchey or sophomore CJ Carr succeeding Leonard, Denbrock has high expectations for the QB position and the wide receiver room.
“We dropped the football way too much last year,” he said. “We’ve got to make the plays. I don’t know if you’d call them ordinary plays, but we need to make the plays — the ones that are 100 out of 100, we’ve got to be 100 out of 100. That comes with consistency in depth, consistency in route-running.
“For a receiver, it really shouldn’t matter who the quarterback is. I need to understand space and spacing and depth and specifics of techniques of route-running. Going into year 2, I know [wide receiver] coach [Mike] Brown’s had a great opportunity to really have a whole year with these guys now. You can see that starting to come along. I like the depth we have there. We’ve got to get some guys to emerge and play more consistently.”
Could Burress be one of them?
“I’m not ready to single anybody out,” Denbrock said. “I just like the direction of the entire group. They just seem like their understanding of what we’re asking them to do is at a whole ‘nother level than it was a year ago.
“The details are so important in everything that we do. The things that they’re doing and showing on the practice field now are way more detail-oriented than they were at any time last year, even at the end of the season. We’ve been able to make some progress just because of them understanding what to do better.”
And sometimes even surprisingly so.
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At a position where the Notre Dame football could use a spring surprise or two, freshman wide receiver Elijah Burress has been a jolt-in-progress.
With more room to grow as the Irish finish up their unusual run of post-Blue-Gold Game spring practices, set to conclude next week.
His two catches for 21 yards and a TD in the Blue’s wonkily scored 76-31 victory over the Gold Saturday at Notre Dame Stadium in the annual intrasquad matchup hinted at the whispers that the 6-foot, 182-pound son of former NFL 12-year veteran receiver Plaxico Burress might just be having the most impactful spring of the 13 early enrolled freshmen on the Irish spring roster.
His new teammates didn’t confine it to whispering.
“I want to shout out Elijah Burress,” new grad transfer nickel Devonta Smith, from Alabama, offered earlier this spring. “He’s going to be a great receiver coming up. Hopefully, he gets some playing time this year. He’s been having a really good spring.
“He has good speed. He has great wiggle at receiver. He has good route-running ability. He’s got great hands. Really been an exceptional player for us on offense.”
Sophomore cornerback Karson Hobbs, a spring surprise himself, had similar superlatives for Burress, who’s competing at the field receiver spot with juniors Jordan Faison and KK Smith.
“On the first day of one-on-ones, I’ll never forget, he just offered us a release game,” Hobbs said. “I realized he had a little shake to him. I noticed at that moment he’s going to be nice. And then I started watching him every day.
“The way he runs his curl routes, he’s able to get out of his breaks in one step. Literally one step. Very efficient in movement. He has a really nice dig route to him. … He’s going to be good. Really good.”
And it wasn’t exactly expected to work out that way.
Eight of Notre Dame’s 25 recruits in the 2025 class, including 12 June enrollees, were Rivals250 players. Burress wasn’t one of them, and in fact was a three-star prospect with his only other power conference offers coming from Duke, Cincinnati, and dad’s alma mater — Michigan State.
“I’m a student of the game,” said the humble but confident Burress earlier this spring. “I watch a lot of good receivers. I try to take a part of everybody’s game and put it in mine.”
Wisconsin grad transfer slot receiver Will Pauling singled out Burress and freshman cornerback Cree Thomas as the two freshmen who had impressed him the most.
“Not only on the field, but they hang out with me a lot off the field,” Pauling said. “We go to Bible study together. We kind of dive into God’s work together, which is awesome.
“Because we’re here to play football, but it’s so much bigger than that. So to see how interested they are and how enthusiastic they are about those things kind of excites me.”
Faison (30 recs., 356 yards, 1 TD in 2024) is expected to be the eventual starter and has put more time into football this spring during the lacrosse/football overlap he’s taken on than he did last spring. But the Irish need quantity and quality at the field receiver position.
Smith has just three career catches in his first two years in the program, two last season against Purdue and one against Stanford, teams the Irish beat by a combined score of 115-14.
The Irish appear loaded at slot receiver in 2025, with Pauling joining returning starter Jaden Greathouse, promising sophomore Logan Saldate and another freshman, Scrap Richardson.
ND’s leading receiver overall in 2025 may not yet be on campus, as grad transfer and boundary receiver Malachi Fields arrives in June after finishing his academic commitments at Virginia this semester.
A likely rotational player at the boundary position, sophomore Micah Gilbert, also missed the contact parts of spring practice after having hand surgery early in the spring. That left sophomore Cam Williams and freshman Jerome Bettis Jr. to gobble up the opportunities at the boundary position this spring.
“I love having guys I could talk to every day and learn the offense with together,” Burress said. “It’s great having all of them with me.”
And offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock loves the sounds of that, with Notre Dame leaning more into the passing game in 2025, with prolific runner Riley Leonard no longer at the top of the quarterback depth chart and instead chasing his NFL dream.
And whether it’s senior Steve Angeli, junior Kenny Minchey or sophomore CJ Carr succeeding Leonard, Denbrock has high expectations for the QB position and the wide receiver room.
“We dropped the football way too much last year,” he said. “We’ve got to make the plays. I don’t know if you’d call them ordinary plays, but we need to make the plays — the ones that are 100 out of 100, we’ve got to be 100 out of 100. That comes with consistency in depth, consistency in route-running.
“For a receiver, it really shouldn’t matter who the quarterback is. I need to understand space and spacing and depth and specifics of techniques of route-running. Going into year 2, I know [wide receiver] coach [Mike] Brown’s had a great opportunity to really have a whole year with these guys now. You can see that starting to come along. I like the depth we have there. We’ve got to get some guys to emerge and play more consistently.”
Could Burress be one of them?
“I’m not ready to single anybody out,” Denbrock said. “I just like the direction of the entire group. They just seem like their understanding of what we’re asking them to do is at a whole ‘nother level than it was a year ago.
“The details are so important in everything that we do. The things that they’re doing and showing on the practice field now are way more detail-oriented than they were at any time last year, even at the end of the season. We’ve been able to make some progress just because of them understanding what to do better.”
And sometimes even surprisingly so.
• Talk with Notre Dame fans on The Insider Lounge.
• Subscribe to the Inside ND Sports podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, Podbean or Pocket Casts.
• Subscribe to the Inside ND Sports channel on YouTube.
• Follow us on Twitter: @insideNDsports, @EHansenND and @TJamesND.
• Like us on Facebook: Inside ND Sports
• Follow us on Instagram: @insideNDsports
