{"id":868246,"date":"2026-04-17T08:57:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T08:57:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/868246\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T08:57:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T08:57:25","slug":"i-coached-jeremiyah-love-in-college-this-one-run-is-what-makes-him-special","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/868246\/","title":{"rendered":"I coached Jeremiyah Love in college. This one run is what makes him special"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story is part of Peak,\u00a0The Athletic\u2019s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak\u2019s newsletter\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ja\u2019Juan Seider is the associate head coach and running backs coach at Notre Dame. He coached Jeremiyah Love, a projected first-round pick in this year\u2019s NFL Draft, for one season.<\/p>\n

We always say at Notre Dame: \u201cThe running backs here have to play through the end of the defense or the echo of the whistle.\u201d But we don\u2019t get a lot of long runs in practice.<\/p>\n

Coach Marcus Freeman usually blows the whistle before because he wants the running backs to come back and run the next play. Sometimes I\u2019d tell a running back: \u201cEven if they blow you down, get up and finish the run.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Jeremiyah Love was already wired that way. He was notorious for that, in a good way.<\/p>\n

If it were his last play in practice, he would finish a run and go 80 yards, without me telling him. That was just his mindset. It was so fascinating as a coach. I sometimes took it for granted because I saw it every day, but not everybody does, because they don\u2019t want to be tired for the next rep.<\/p>\n

Jeremiyah didn\u2019t take shortcuts. He made practice like a game. And he did it to the highest level.<\/p>\n

There was a time last year when I caught him in practice working on jumping off the opposite foot. It\u2019s easy to jump with your dominant foot; when you\u2019re right-handed, you jump with your left leg. One day in practice, he was working on jumping off his right leg so that if he was stuck in an uncomfortable position, he could still elevate over a defender.<\/p>\n

He was always thinking: How can I get better?<\/p>\n

You want your best players to be your hardest workers. We talk about having a walk-on mentality, because they\u2019re underappreciated, but they go to work and don\u2019t look for pats on the back.<\/p>\n

Jeremiyah was our best player and our most talented player, but he also had that same mentality. It set a precedent for\u00a0everyone else:\u00a0If our best player can work this way, it entices me, as a young guy,\u00a0to mimic what I see.<\/p>\n

His thing became: \u201cCoach, push me.\u201d<\/p>\n

We always said a cheetah never stretches when it gets up to chase prey. And Jeremiyah is kind of like a cheetah. He got in the habit of finishing long runs, which showed up in games. Your habits become what you do. And what you do in the dark comes to light.<\/p>\n

The great example: He had a 94-yard run against Boston College last year. I can see the play vividly in my head.<\/p>\n

We had a timeout, and I challenged him, just joking around: \u201cHey, I bet you can\u2019t score on this play.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said, \u201cCoach, I bet I can. I went 98 yards a year ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

I said, \u201cYeah, that was a whole year ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

So we talked about the play \u2014 it was a run play \u2014 and I told him to be patient. I walked through what would happen with the defense.<\/p>\n

Next thing you know, he broke through the hole and was off. He was around the 50-yard line and started looking toward the sideline. He was looking for me. Everybody thought he was taunting the team, but he was looking for me like: Coach, don\u2019t ever tell me what I can\u2019t do. I told you I was going to do this.<\/p>\n

Touchdown.<\/p>\n

That play right there sums it up. The habit of finishing long runs in practice showed up in that game. It had become second nature to him because he had done it so many times. That mindset and approach are what make him special.<\/p>\n

\u2014 As told to Jayson Jenks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story is part of Peak,\u00a0The Athletic\u2019s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":868247,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[390,256,54,331,339,257,7,110,58,49,48,55,56,255,6,4732,4864,394,111],"class_list":{"0":"post-868246","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-arizona-cardinals","9":"tag-cincinnati-bengals","10":"tag-cleveland-browns","11":"tag-college-football","12":"tag-college-sports","13":"tag-dallas-cowboys","14":"tag-football","15":"tag-kansas-city-chiefs","16":"tag-los-angeles-rams","17":"tag-ncaa","18":"tag-ncaa-football","19":"tag-new-orleans-saints","20":"tag-new-york-giants","21":"tag-new-york-jets","22":"tag-nfl","23":"tag-notre-dame-fighting-irish","24":"tag-peak","25":"tag-tennessee-titans","26":"tag-washington-commanders"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116419221487582803","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=868246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/868247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}