SOUTH BEND, Ind. — The worst part was the protein shakes.
But there had to be some worst parts for Aamil Wagner to put on 50 pounds during the past two years, growing from a high school power forward to a college-ready offensive tackle. It’s just that the 2,000-calorie shakes prescribed during the spring of his freshman year stood out for their absolute awfulness.
“It was so thick that you couldn’t go through a straw. It was almost pudding,” Wagner said. “And I’ll be in class like taking spoonfuls and drinking it down with water and just trying to get down as much as possible.”
Wagner eventually negotiated the calorie intake of those shakes, even if he could never completely eliminate them. Such is life for a college athlete with the metabolism of a skill position player and the physical demands of working the line of scrimmage. Wagner said he’s around 293 pounds now midway through his junior season. It’s a long way from the former three-sport standout at Wayne High School outside of Dayton, Ohio — Wagner played football and basketball and threw shot put — at the same place that produced coach Marcus Freeman and defensive backs coach Mike Mickens.
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When Wagner enrolled at Notre Dame five semesters ago, he was a recruiting oddity, a 240-pound offensive tackle, a developmental story at a place that turned out regular draft picks at offensive tackle. Wagner joined Notre Dame’s program in the recruiting class after Joe Alt and Blake Fisher did. Then he sat behind them while also taking notes. Wagner believes he was strong enough to play at the lighter weight, it’s just that Notre Dame never needed it in a game.
“It made it so much easier,” Wagner said. “I think having guys that were some of the best tackles in the country, period, that’s setting the example. Whether that’s Joe, being detail-oriented, or that’s Blake with an aggressive mindset, you can take away from these guys as much as possible where I have notebooks full of things that either Joe said or Blake said to correct me.”
What sticks with Wagner from Alt is the fact there’s no perfect rep, that everything can be improved upon in every moment. When a top-five draft choice adopts that mentality, a first-year starter doesn’t have much of a choice. But whatever Wagner picked up from Alt and Fisher has helped smooth a transition that has been rough on other parts of the offensive line.
Within a group that returned six combined career starts among the first team heading into the Texas A&M game to the current group that has changed centers (Ashton Craig to Pat Coogan) and right guards (Billy Schrauth to Rocco Spindler), Wagner has been noticeably anonymous. The junior is Notre Dame’s top-rated offensive lineman per Pro Football Focus this season among regular starters, although he’s behind Coogan and Schrauth overall.
This is all exactly what it’s supposed to look like along an offensive line, a player like Wagner cooking for two seasons in the background before charging forward. If Alt and Fisher are exceptions, Wagner is a healthy version of the rule. For how much has been a surprise about Notre Dame’s offense this season, not all of it good, the Irish are getting almost exactly what they hoped from Wagner.
“I loved, from the beginning, his consistency,” offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock said. “And he’s an incredibly intelligent young man that even though he didn’t have a lot of experience from a game atmosphere standpoint, nothing that was thrown at him by our defense shook him. He was always able to kind of pull himself back and refocus on the task at hand. And he’s continued to do that.”
Wagner isn’t sure how big he can get under the direction of strength coach Loren Landow and nutritionist Alexa Appelman. He could clear 300 pounds by next year if his body allows it, meaning he maintains that power forward’s athleticism in an athlete a few sizes bigger.
“Landow has been a game changer, in my life especially,” Wagner said. “I feel as fast and as explosive as when I was 240 as I do right now. Maintaining that speed, and I feel like I’m almost faster as I was when I was 240. So he’s been tremendous, and Alexa the same way. The combination of those two great people can get me to any weight I need to be.”
In an ideal world, Wagner can be Notre Dame’s starting right tackle for the rest of this season and two more beyond it. With left tackles Anthonie Knapp and Charles Jagusah having three seasons of eligibility after this one, plus interior linemen Sam Pendleton, Craig and Schrauth all eligible through the 2026 season, the Irish could be looking at the first year of their next great offensive line.
Whatever shape that takes exiting this season, Wagner figures to be a part of it. He has worked too hard the past two years to stop now after getting a taste of first-team football. He acknowledged his nerves at Texas A&M to open the season but said those went away by halftime. It has been a steady climb ever since.
Now Wagner is experiencing a different part of moving from young player to veteran presence, the fact some of Notre Dame’s younger linemen see him in similar terms to how he saw Alt and Fisher before.
“I think the amount of people, the amount of young guys that come to me for advice. I’m so used to going to the older guys for advice,” he said. “Being able to communicate looks back to … young players, the rest of the line, that’s probably the biggest, ‘Wow, I didn’t expect to be doing all this.’”
That’s fine for a player whose career arc hasn’t gone exactly to plan but hasn’t taken too many wrong turns, either. For Wagner, food always has been for thought, a necessary point of view for a player who needed more growth than most when he arrived at Notre Dame two years ago. But these days, Wagner is showing all that investment has been worth it. Even if it didn’t always go down easy.
(Top photo: Michael Clubb / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
