Notre Dame incoming freshman Dallas Golden maximizes his time and effort to play both ways

New York Times

02-05-2025

Dallas Golden arrives at Flex & Flow Fitness every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 5 a.m. For an athlete used to routines, the kind that helped grow him into a national prospect who signed with Notre Dame over offers from Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State and Georgia, this is simply the next one.
The gym, located just south of the Tampa, Fla., airport, offers a stage for the former four-star prospect to play the part of an incoming freshman while still a senior at Berkeley Preparatory School. Golden may wish he could have done mid-year enrollment, but working out as the sun comes up in Florida will suffice for now. Golden will report to Notre Dame during the first full week of June, along with the 10 other incoming freshmen on the traditional summer schedule.
'Can't wait,' Golden said. 'So excited.'
Notre Dame should be too, as it onboards an athlete with legitimate aspirations to play both ways. Golden has a stronger preference for jersey numbers — 'I want a single digit, hopefully No. 1 or No. 2' — than he does for positions. It's just not what you'd think. It's common for incoming freshmen to deflect when asked about their preferred position, basically falling in line with whatever gets them on the field fastest. And Golden does hope to play sooner rather than later. But instead of picking cornerback or receiver, he chooses and.
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Basically, he wants to play both until someone tells him he can't.
As a junior during Berkeley Prep's state championship season, Golden carried 205 times for 1,467 yards and 19 touchdowns to go with 32 catches for 394 yards and another five scores. On defense, he posted five picks. On special teams, he returned kicks and punts. A nagging foot injury limited Golden as a senior, to the point there was conversation about him shutting it down as Berkeley Prep struggled to defend its championship, stumbling to a 6-5 record.
Golden kept playing. There were lessons there, too.
'We came into the season, we're gonna do it again, it's gonna be so easy. We found out real quick that it wasn't,' Golden said. 'You learn that being a leader plays a big role in how the team plays. You can't always be secluded. Sometimes you have to talk. Sometimes you have to make sure everyone is doing the right thing.
'I'm not gonna lie, I don't know if that's my natural personality. I'm more laid back. But sometimes you gotta be uncomfortable for the better.'
Which is why Golden keeps showing up at Flex & Flow Fitness with his headlights on.
Irish fans we on the way!☘️ Can't thank God enough!! @rasharddavis6 #GoIrish ☘️ pic.twitter.com/ipukL0hrZ6
— Dallas Golden (@DallasGolden8) March 18, 2025
When Golden arrives, he works with Jeremy Franklin, a trainer, former Florida State linebacker and longtime family friend. Golden and Franklin go back to youth football around Tampa, and Franklin has followed his career ever since. Golden already has a defensive backs trainer and sometimes gets wide receiver work via former Berkeley Prep star Nelson Agholor, who played at USC before a 10-year NFL career. And when it comes to old-fashioned conditioning, there's dad Pelham, who takes Dallas to run hills around Tampa on the weekends.
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Franklin is here to help Golden get ready for the weight room more than the field, although mastering one probably gets him on the other. When Notre Dame sent its offseason workout program to Golden, he shared it with Franklin, whose goal is as much to get Golden stronger as make him more confident moving weight.
Franklin went from walk-on to scholarship at Florida State. He understands there's only so much time the head strength coach can devote to a freshman. And there are only so many assistants, which can leave a freshman to follow the herd, ready or not. Does a freshman know how to do a three-position hang clean on Day 1? Some might try, just to keep up.
'You don't want to get in there and jerk it around because my teammates are doing it,' Franklin said. 'That's putting a band-aid on a bullet hole and you're gonna be hurt eventually.'
Weight room technique is hardly the most interesting part of Golden's game, but it's something these morning sessions help get right. Considering he wants to be in Notre Dame's defensive back and wide receiver rooms at the same time, maximizing time makes sense. For Golden, it can get as technical as refining his squat, changing how he balances his feet in the rack. After doing an assessment, Franklin identified that Golden was putting too much weight on his heels, then adjusted his balance forward.
Golden started to squat with more weight.
'It's watching the light go on. Do something foreign to him and then it clicks,' Franklin said. 'We did everything Notre Dame wanted him to do, plus more. He always asks for more.'
That was Golden's reputation around Berkeley Prep, too. As a freshman, he tackled Arch Manning (Texas) and covered Jeremiah Smith (Ohio State). As a sophomore, he played wildcat quarterback when needed. The state championship came as a junior, including 183 yards rushing in the title win. And senior year turned into a test of leadership when the season started to go sideways.
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'As tremendously great as any young man I've coached,' said Berkeley Prep head coach Dominick Ciao, whose career included coaching Notre Dame's new general manager, Mike Martin, and former Irish tight end Gary Godsey. 'His humbleness, through all this, the power of him leading people, that's hard to do.'
In barely one month, Golden will head to Notre Dame, not as the prospect who attended the 2024 home College Football Playoff game against Indiana or the one who returned for the spring game last month. He'll be taking the next step in his career, hoping everything leading to this point will have prepared him for it. From those 5 a.m. workouts to playing four years of varsity at Berkeley Prep, there's a good chance Golden will be as ready as any freshman could be.
And with Notre Dame coming off a run to the national championship game with its growing reputation for developing top defensive backs, it's probably a good time for Golden to join, too. Unless he plays receiver, instead. But Notre Dame would welcome that just the same.
'They told me I could try both sides,' Golden said. 'Not just one. Do both, for sure. They want to get me on the field any way possible. Special teams, too.'