Laken Litman
Football and college football analyst
Nicole Giles couldn’t watch.
With 4:38 remaining in the Orange Bowl and Penn State leading Notre Dame 24-17 after back-to-back touchdown drives, Fighting Irish quarterback Riley Leonard dropped back and found Jaden Greathouse wide open for a 54-yard score. On the play, Greathouse lined up in the slot, pushed a defender to the ground, found himself alone, caught the pass, and made a second defender fall to the ground before running into the end zone untouched.
Entering the game, Greathouse, a sophomore, caught just 29 passes for 359 yards and a touchdown this season. In the College Football Playoff semifinals, he made seven catches for 105 yards and a touchdown, becoming the first Notre Dame wide receiver to have 100-plus receiving yards in a single game this season. Two of those catches came on the tying drive, including an 11-yarder out of a second-and-14 situation, then one for 6 yards on the following third-and-3.
“That game was definitely a confidence booster,” Greathouse said this week.
In the locker room afterward, Greathouse’s teammates were calling Greathouse “one of one,” Greathouse explained, a reference to his recent “Gunna” album. But Giles, Greathouse’s mother who was sitting in her seat inside the Orange Bowl, didn’t see any of those big plays her son made. She had to keep her head down and cover her eyes.
“I wasn’t watching the game because I was so nervous,” Guilds told Fox Sports this week, laughing as she spoke. “I know, isn’t that psycho? Every time I didn’t watch, they were doing something really good offensively, and I’m superstitious, so I continued that trend throughout the whole second half.
“It’s as if anything I do affects the game at all,” she continued. “I know it’s not like that, but I’m just a psychopath I guess.”
Cornerback Christian Gray, who was a member of Notre Dame’s 2023 recruiting class along with Greathouse, intercepted Penn State quarterback Drew Allard later in the fourth quarter. When the Fighting Irish got the ball back, Greathouse made a crucial 10-yard catch on third-and-3 to give kicker Mitch Jeter a few extra yards before kicking a 41-yard game-winning field goal. Now, the Irish face the highly touted Ohio State team in the CFP National Championship game on January 20 in Atlanta.
Leonard, who is in his first season at Notre Dame after transferring from Duke, has shown exceptional strength and toughness as a runner, which has been a key component of the Fighting Irish offense this year. While Notre Dame has a top-15 rushing attack (averaging 210.8 yards per game), it actually has one of the worst passing attacks in the country, ranking 102nd nationally (194.3 YPG). The receiving team’s by-committee approach is one of the reasons no player before Greathouse has ever breached the 100-yard receiving mark.
In order to beat Ohio State, the passing game will have to be more effective. The Buckeyes’ defense plans to make it difficult for Leonard to take off — whether it’s on a run or a designed scramble — and force him to be one-dimensional. Regardless, he will need to look to reliable options like Greathouse, with whom he has developed chemistry over the past year.
The 6-foot-1, 215-pound receiver is capable of coming up with clutch plays on a stage like this. After all, he’d done it before.
Greathouse won three straight Texas high school state championships from 2019-2021 with Westlake in Austin. In his senior year, Westlake beat Denton Guyer, 40-21, and Greathouse hauled in seven receptions for a state-record 236 yards and three touchdowns en route to being named Offensive MVP.
Giles didn’t watch that entire game either. She and her younger sister, Riley, were running around AT&T Stadium to distract themselves. Before Westlake pulled away, the game was close, with Denton Goyer leading 14-13 at halftime. Then, Greathouse caught “absolute big bombs,” as Westlake head coach Tony Salazar described it, from then-Clemson quarterback Kade Klubnik for runs of 69 and 71 yards in the second half.
“We could hear the cheers,” Giles said. “As soon as it was safe to start watching again, I did.”
Heading into the national championship game on Monday night, Greathouse is looking to build on his outstanding performance in the Orange Bowl. And if Leonard can get the ball, well, he’s never had a problem making plays. His mother’s favorite was his first catch at Notre Dame, which turned into a 35-yard touchdown in last year’s season opener versus Navy in Ireland.
“I mean, you’re talking about a guy who was the MVP of a state championship on the biggest stage in Texas high school football, so he’s not afraid of that moment,” Salazar told FOX Sports. “I think he’s built for the moment. I certainly hope he can have another great game this week to help his team go top.”
“I think he has the skill set and the toughness to be able to do it, but it’s going to be tough. There’s going to be tight windows, contested catches, and [Ohio State is] It’s going to be really good, just like Notre Dame is going to be really good. He’s a confident young man and I think you can see that in the way he plays.”
Thinking back to what it was like to coach Greathouse in high school, Salazar was quick to mention the fact that he was the first freshman to commit to the varsity in Salazar’s 11 years with the program.
The summer before Greathouse’s junior year, he was the starting receiver on Westlake’s 7-on-7 team that won the Summer League championship. He proceeded to start the next four years, was voted a senior by his teammates, hit a three-peat, and was part of the program’s 54-game winning streak.
Greathouse is the type of athlete who “practices his game, and that’s not something you take for granted in sports,” Salazar said. What struck him most when Greathouse was in eighth grade was that he already had the ball skills needed to contribute in a meaningful way.
“He could attract the attention of the circus,” Salazar said. “He can catch up to people, he can catch up to people, he’s got a great frame, his legs are really built, he’s got big shoulders. He’s just a physical specimen and he’s never dropped a football. I can’t imagine someone Jaden-Greathouse has dropped that big of a ball in any practice or any Game we’ve ever played.
“Any time they throw him at him, you’re going to say, ‘This kid is different,'” Salazar added. “Every time he touched it, he scored. He was probably more physically developed than most eighth graders. He had to be, playing as a freshman in football at a 6A high school in Texas. Most freshmen aren’t strong enough or aren’t big “Enough, it was.”
Greathouse got some of those physical gifts from his parents, who were college athletes. Giles, who coaches girls’ athletics at Westlake, once served as her son’s middle school basketball coach, but that was the first and last time. “I think we had a fight, and it didn’t go well,” she said, laughing. Greathouse also has an uncle, Oscar Giles, who is currently Houston’s defensive line coach and spent a large portion of his career on the Texans’ staff.
“He was raised by a coach and he understands hard work, he gets it out there [are] “There are no shortcuts,” Salazar said. “He trains at full speed all the time and he never says, ‘Hey, I’ll wait until Friday to do my best.’ No, it was every day, and I think that’s why he’s where he is.” now.”
Greathouse didn’t want to give away too much, but he admitted he’s been working on the moves he used on those two Penn State defensive backs during that huge fourth-quarter drive.
“I’ll definitely take credit for him landing on that ball,” Greathouse said with a smile. “It’s something I work on every day during the offseason, in the season, and in practice, just working on different versions and that kind of thing. And throughout the game, I was working on different versions and seeing what was working against them, and I was able to capitalize.”
As the CFP title game approaches, the mother is nervous again. Giles isn’t sure yet whether she’ll have to avert her eyes or keep her head down on Monday. But it will be in Mercedes-Benz Stadium regardless.
As for Greathouse, that self-confidence was on display again this week when he received a text from Westlake offensive coordinator Kirk Rogers, who used to coach the team’s wide receivers.
“Go get it, go get it,” the text message read. Great House’s response? “You already know.”
Laken Litman covers college football, college basketball and soccer for FOX Sports. She previously wrote for Sports Illustrated, USA Today and The Indianapolis Star. She is the author of “Strong Like a Woman,” published in the spring of 2022 on the 50th anniversary of Title IX. Follow her on @lakinlitman.
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