The long wait between seasons is always a grind. For fans, it’s filled with recruiting updates, future ticket purchases, and rearranging wedding dates to avoid a clash with fall Saturdays. For players, it’s about closing the gap between who they were last season and who they need to be this year.
For Notre Dame linebacker Drayk Bowen, that gap has closed quickly — and the 2025 season is set to be his breakout.
The Andrean High School standout was already a two-time Indiana Gatorade Player of the Year (2021, 2022), a Butkus Award winner as the nation’s top linebacker, and now enters this fall on multiple preseason All-America teams and watch lists for the Bronko Nagurski Trophy and Chuck Bednarik Award.
Still, Bowen hasn’t let the spotlight turn inward. He credits much of his growth to the linebackers who came before him.
“Jack (Kiser) taught me a little bit different than JD (Bertrand),” Bowen explained. “Jack was more of a guy that thought a lot. He wanted to understand every little detail and asked a bunch of questions. JD was more like, I understand it, just whatever. I don’t really need questions.
“Jack taught me to think through the game. He taught me how to understand route concepts and what the offense was trying to do against different coverages. So that was something I was really able to learn under Jack and that’s kind of where I grew last year and I want to take the next step.”
From Learner to Leader
Taking the “next step” for Bowen isn’t about stats or bench press numbers — it’s about becoming the type of leader who can pull the best out of everyone around him, just like Kiser and Bertrand did.
“Jack was such an older guy and had seen so much,” Kiser admitted. “He had seen so many different playbooks, different offenses and so that was something he helped me with a lot. And then along with leadership, being able to talk with different people. Jack had to learn how to talk. He was an older guy, and a lot of our teammates were younger. He had to learn how to talk to a younger person.”
Bowen has taken that lesson to heart.
“I like to play with emotion,” Bowen added. “I like to help others play with emotion. I feel that’s something our defense does well. When one person gets going, it’s just like a chain reaction. That’s how I like to lead, and communication is something I worked on a lot throughout the summer and that’s something that’s come through in fall camp. Just being able to talk to different personnels. Learning how to talk to each person is something JD taught me like you need to be able to talk to different people in different ways.”
Ready for the Load
With Kiser and Xavier Watts now in the NFL, Bowen enters 2025 as Notre Dame’s returning leader in tackles after posting 78 stops last year. That comes with a heavier workload, but Bowen embraced it in his offseason prep.
“I did some linebacker work, but mainly some edge rush stuff,” Bowen stated. “Just learning some moves and being able to edge rush is something I wanted to be able to add to my arsenal. So just a couple of moves like learning how the offense is going to set against me and what I can do. That was the main takeaway.
“It was mainly physical,” Bowen concluded. “Just making sure my body’s refined. I wanted to lean out and make sure I’m quick and flexible still. That was my main goal this summer. Doing linebacker training and edge rush. Then a little bit of mental making sure I’m going through the playbook, learning the details as it is a little bit of a new playbook, and just making sure I know the details to be able to come back and help others. That’s pretty much what my summer consisted of.”
Keeping the Pain
There’s one more layer to Bowen’s motivation — and it’s one that’s been in his pocket all offseason.
“For me it was motivation,” Bowen said of Notre Dame’s 34-23 loss to Ohio State in last year’s national championship game. “I’ve kept the score on my phone every day. It was just the way we went through the playoffs and then being that close. We were eight points, a score away. It’s just more motivation. It’s remembering what happened. We have a saying keep the pain. So it’s just keeping that pain as motivation too throughout the spring, summer, and into the fall.”
The Irish have a new-look linebacker corps in 2025, but Bowen isn’t just another returning starter. He’s stepping into the role of tone-setter for the defense — a leader who’s learned from the best and is now ready to pass that on.
For Bowen, the time is now. And for Notre Dame, that’s exactly what they need.
