SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Before there was a 6-foot-6, 305-pound mastodon stampeding 70 yards on a lustrous green field in Dublin, even before a child-beast nicknamed “TuTu” took cross-field pursuit angles from behind plays to vaporize ball carriers 25 yards later, there was the summer day Stephon Tuitt decided to play football.
Weightlifting at Monroe Area High School began on this particular June day in 2007. Tuitt lived in a subdivision on the fringe of Georgia’s Walton County. He had no available transportation, so he walked. He walked 11 miles. Down a road with barking dogs, stray or otherwise, arriving after weightlifting ended, saturated with sweat.
This was how Matt Fligg, the football coach, met Stephon Tuitt. This was how Fligg responded to the sight of a sopping, 6-5, 220-pound freshman-to-be: Where do you live, Fligg asked. We will pick you up and take you home every day.
“Talk about a story about commitment,” Fligg said of that 11-mile jaunt. “And look where that has taken him now.”
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More relevant is where Tuitt can take No. 22 Notre Dame. He is one game and one spectacular highlight into his sophomore season and draft guru Mel Kiper Jr. already has hailed him as perhaps the best defensive lineman in college football. Asked what was on Tuitt’s offseason to-do list, Irish coach Brian Kelly said the word he heard most was “dominate.”
“I won’t use the word ‘dominate,’ ” the perpetually self-effacing defensive end said as he prepared to face Purdue on Saturday. “I just wanted to be the best that I could be, better than what I could be. I know that I can do anything that I want to do if I work at it, and that’s how I took every day. (Kelly) saw that.”
Ambition launched Tuitt’s football life, and it remains. Uncompelled, he runs extra on Mondays, just as he did en route to becoming a five-star, top-25 high school recruit. Last summer, he joined linebackers and even defensive backs for running workouts because sprinting against linemen wasn’t a challenge.
He credits this drive to his mother, who also is raising his three younger brothers ages 13, 10 and 2, and determination is a necessary trait to boost an entire defense.
There is another trait that is helpful, too.
“He’s just a freak of nature,” defensive end Kapron Lewis-Moore said. “It’s crazy, what that guy can do.”
The world got its glimpse in Notre Dame’s opener when Tuitt picked up a fumble and returned it 77 yards for a score, easily out-chugging a Navy quarterback and a running back in pursuit, all while wearing knee braces.
Fligg just shook his head.
He remembered the dozens of times Tuitt made cross-field chase-downs. He remembered Tuitt leaping for a touchdown pass in the playoffs while several also-leaping defenders’ heads were at Tuitt’s belt. He remembered Tuitt shattering a backboard with a dunk in basketball practice.
The Irish? They remembered a Cover-0 blitz during summer camp when Tuitt dropped into coverage. Tailback Cierre Wood flared out on a wheel route up the sideline. Tuitt followed. And he stayed with Wood, a 1,000-yard rusher, the entire way.
“Everyone was like, ‘That’s pretty ridiculous,’ ” guard Chris Watt said. “Plus, he had a beach towel hanging out the back of his pants that looked pretty ridiculous as well. Any receiver should be able to outrun a D-lineman. But it was Tuitt.”
Said cornerback Bennett Jackson: “I’ve seen Tuitt just completely throw linemen out of the way and get into the backfield. If he wants something done, he can do it.”
Tuitt arrived with Aaron Lynch as the type of carnivorous bookends Notre Dame just never could get and justifiably frothed over when it did. Tuitt was the one with freshman hiccups — a missed class and one-game suspension, then a bout with mononucleosis — but it was Lynch who left the Irish last spring.
Tuitt politely declines to discuss Lynch. He has enough on his mind, anyway, this protoplanet of a defensive end, an entire unit now basically orbiting him, Tuitt running and running and pulling everyone along.
“It has just been more of an increase, just going at a higher level,” Tuitt said of his work ethic. “You just know you have to take it another level because there are many players out there who are working the same way you are.”
Notre Dame bumper stickers and hats and assorted paraphernalia have popped up in Monroe, Ga. Facebook pages exploded after the Navy game. A burg in the maw of SEC country, hemmed in by Athens and Atlanta, turned converts by their beloved “TuTu.” It seems unreal. But it’s Tuitt.
“It’s amazing, where he is now,” Fligg said, “from where he started.”
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