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After being reported missing on Wednesday, the former defensive tackle from Notre-Dame Louis Nix III was found dead the Saturday. Nix was 29 years old.
Nix had disappeared in the Jacksonville area since Wednesday, last seen on Tuesday. Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office pulled a car from a pond near Nix’s apartment which matched his vehicle description on Saturday night.
Nix was shot dead in December during an attempted armed robbery at a gas station in his hometown Jacksonville while he was putting air in his car tire. The bullet in his chest left Nix in hospital for almost two weeks, and some of his fragments remained in his sternum and left lung.
“I know it sounds cliché, but more than anything, I’m happy to be alive,” Nix said in mid-December. Eric Hansen from South Bend Grandstand.
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office did not indicate that the shooting was in any way linked to Nix’s death.
Nix was the defensive backbone of Notre Dame’s undefeated 2012 regular season. Then a junior, he started 11 games and led all Irish defensive linemen with 50 tackles and managed a five-pass break. As this defense allowed 10.3 points per game in the regular season, it was Nix who held the point of attack and, more often than not, penetrated it.
When No.17 Stanford scored the first goal from the 4-yard line in overtime in October, it was Nix who stood up to stop Cardinal’s running back Stepfan Taylor from reaching the goal line. On the first try, Nix absorbed the head blocker helmet against his chest, as Taylor only gained a yard. Slow to get up, Nix missed the second run, when Taylor pushed from 3 to 1.
We remember the goal line stall that followed for Manti Te’o’s tackles, for cornerback Bennett Jackson who swept the rim and hit Taylor before he even got to the line, for safety of Zeke Motta’s conclusion, but it was Nix who bounced off the middle and collapsed the line in the third down, then absorbed two blockers in the fourth down.
Taylor’s reach for the end zone in the final game remains a point of contention, but without Nix Taylor would have crossed the goal line with no problem, if not even on an earlier snap.
The Notre Dame defense knew it, Te’o taking the time of his celebration in the locker room to find Nix.
“Hey Lou, they can’t block you,” Te’o said, emphasizing every syllable. “You are the best nose guard in the whole country.” (Go to the 3:44 mark in this video.)
That would be the theme of Nix’s career, active for the Irish from 2011 to 2013, finishing with 122 career tackles including 14 for loss and eight breakouts.
“Louis Nix was a beast” Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly said in 2013 after a loss at Michigan in which Nix had alone four tackles including one for loss and the Irish lost 41-30. “They couldn’t block it. (He) played as well as he played for us. (Michigan) simply had no answer for him inside.
It is the underrated and anonymous duty of most quality defensive tackles. They absorb double teams without giving an inch to propel a Te’o to the rank of superstar.
Nix’s 2013 year ended prematurely after being sidelined by a knee injury. In an effort to give him time to rehabilitate and protect himself from further injury, the Irish intentionally held Nix against Air Force and Navy triple option offenses, but Nix did not appear. that once more for Notre-Dame before a knee operation at the end of the season.
He had done what he could to play through a torn meniscus to help the Irish defense – a 7-2 season fell to 8-4 as Nix missed the end of the year – and long-term damage caused to his knee had an impact on his NFL. career. Drafted in the third round of 2014 by the Houston Texans, he needed a second knee operation before his first training camp and a third knee surgery ended his rookie year before appearing in a game. .
Nix played four games with the New York Giants in 2015 before moving from their practice squad to the Washington practice squad to join the Jacksonville Jaguars practice squad.
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