Graduate defensive lineman Howard Cross III, senior quarterback Riley Leonard and graduate safety Xavier Watts have all been named to the 2024 Walter Camp Player of the Year Watch List. Both Cross III and Watts have previously earned selection to the 2024 Walter Camp Preseason All-America First Team.
Notre Dame is one of just two schools with three players on the list; no other program has more players on the list.
The 2024 watch list consists of 41 offensive players, while Cross III and Watts are two of just nine defensive players on the list.
Notre Dame players have been named the Walter Camp Player of the Year on four occasions: TE Ken MacAfee (1977), FL Tim Brown (1987), FL Raghib Ismail (1990) and LB Manti Te’o (2012).
Cross III has already been named to the watch lists for the Outland Trophy, Nagurski Trophy and the Lott IMPACT Trophy, after earning Second Team All-America honors from FWAA, Walter Camp, the Associated Press and The Sporting News in 2023. He was a semifinalist for the Bednarik Award, starting all 13 games for Notre Dame. He piled up 66 stops in 2023, which ranked second among all Power 5 front-four defensive lineman.
In 2023, Cross III and Watts helped Notre Dame to become the nation’s top pass-efficiency defense (97.09), and the fifth-overall defense (276.3).
A 2024 Maxwell Award Watch List selection, Leonard started all seven games in which he played for Duke in 2023, going 95-for-165 and 1,102 yards (57.5 percent completion rate) and three touchdowns. He rushed 58 times for 352 yards (44-yard long) and four touchdowns on the season.
In 2022, he started all 13 games for the Blue Devils, completing 250-of-392 (.638) passes for 2,967 yards with 20 touchdowns, while leading the team in rushing with 699 yards on 124 carries and 13 touchdowns. He was one of three FBS quarterbacks to amass more than 2,900 passing yards and 695 rushing yards, joining LSU’s Jayden Daniels and North Carolina’s Drake Maye.
A 2023 Unanimous All-American, Watts enters 2024 as one of the preeminent defensive backs in college football, also having earned selection to watch lists for the Nagurski Trophy and the Thorpe Award. In 2023, he tied for the national lead with seven interceptions, averaging an interception every other game.
Watts played and started in all 13 games during the season, finishing with 52 tackles, 30 solo, three tackles for loss and 0.5 sack, adding four pass breakups. He forced a fumble and recovered a fumble, returning it for a touchdown. Watts’ seven interceptions led to 33 total Notre Dame points on the subsequent drives.
Off his consecutive two-interception games vs. Pitt and USC, Watts was the first Notre Dame defender to pick off two passes in back-to-back games since at least 1996. He was one of three FBS players to achieve two multi-INT games in 2023, and the only to do so in consecutive games. He earned Nagurski Defensive Player of the Week honors for both of those performances in 2023.
The 2024 Player of Year watch list will be narrowed to 10 semi-finalists in early November and three finalists will be announced on November 26. The 2024 Walter Camp Player of the Year recipient, which is voted on by the 133 NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision head coaches and sports information directors, will be announced on ESPN’s College Football Awards Show on December 12.
Walter Camp, “The Father of American football,” first selected an All-America team in 1889. Camp – a former Yale University athlete and football coach – is also credited with developing play from scrimmage, set plays, the numerical assessment of goals and tries and the restric on of play to eleven men per side. The Walter Camp Football Foundation (www.waltercamp.org) – a New Haven-based all-volunteer group – was founded in 1967 to perpetuate the ideals of Camp and to continue the tradition of selecting an All-America team.