NEW ORLEANS — Anthonie Knapp did not need the extra motivation this week, but the Notre Dame offensive tackle’s coach still tried to push the Georgia native’s buttons leading up to a Sugar Bowl showdown against Georgia in the quarterfinals of the College Football Playoff.

After all, it’s Marcus Freeman’s job to get the best out of his players when practices become monotonous in the lead up to big games.

“It’s kind of funny, because Coach Freeman was like, ‘It’s personal this week,'” Knapp said. “I was like, I mean, it’s always personal, coach.”

If you don’t know Knapp’s story, consider just how much history he has made in just a few short months. Forget that he grew up just up the road from Georgia’s campus dreaming of playing for the Bulldogs, or that he weighed only 265 pounds less than one year ago.

Knapp is a starting left tackle, one of the most difficult positions to master in the sport, in his first year playing college football. So rare is that accomplishment, he’s only the third true freshman offensive lineman in Notre Dame’s storied history to start a season opener.

“Anthonie’s a unicorn,” Irish offensive line coach Joe Rudolph said. “That just doesn’t happen.”

Now a freshman All-American with 13 starts under his belt, he faces the biggest challenge of his budding career: his hometown Bulldogs. Is it personal? Sure, but that’s how Knapp navigates life as a football player.

“This might sound a little cliche, but as an offensive lineman, I think if you don’t take any game personally, you’re not playing the game correctly,” Knapp said. “You’re not playing the game to your full potential.”

Knapp’s story began as a 185-pound tight end in Roswell, Georgia, where football is king and practically everyone is a Bulldog. Standing at 6-foot-2 as a freshman in high school, coaches realized his potential to hit a gigantic growth spurt.

“We didn’t have to be the most intelligent coaches in the world to look at his arms and body and project what he was going to look like moving forward,” said Chris Prewett, Knapp’s head coach at Roswell High School. “Let’s kill the tight end dream now. Let’s go ahead and understand that you’re going to be a tackle and you’re going to have a chance to do some good things.”

Knapp hesitated. He played tight end and outside linebacker his entire life, and he saw no need to make a change, even if he was “quick, but not quick enough for the positions I was playing.” His first snap at left tackle was a rude awakening. 

“I hated it at first,” he said. “I don’t want to be an offensive lineman. I wanted to go make plays.”

He was also small. He bulked up to 225 pounds as a sophomore, then added more weight to blossom to 260 pounds before his junior season. It was at that time colleges started calling after a dominant sophomore campaign. UMass offered, and then came a chance to perform at a mega camp at Virginia Tech. He showed out in one-on-one drills, catching the eye of Rudolph, then the offensive line coach for the Hokies. They exchanged information, and later a scholarship offer was extended in January 2023.

Meanwhile, Knapp was still trying to fill out his body, which would soon have a 6-foot-4 frame to build the prototypical sculpture of a left tackle. He trained in the offseason with Vince Vance, a former Georgia offensive tackle, working on hand placement and pass-blocking angles, something that has allowed Knapp to excel today at Notre Dame, even if he is still undersized.

“He was strong, crazy strong,” said Vance, who played at 6-foot-7 and 330 pounds at Georgia until 2011. “I knew I could develop him and I knew he was going to grow.”

Knapp, however, gained the weight too quickly early in the process. He ballooned to nearly 290 pounds in high school. “I went into my first game and I couldn’t move,” he said.

“He complained every second of the day that his knees were hurting,” Prewett said. “That’s the bad weight, so he slimmed down to 275 again.”

Knapp committed to Virginia Tech in late January 2023. Two months later, Rudolph left for Notre Dame. Rudolph didn’t immediately offer Knapp a scholarship at Notre Dame, but Knapp visited in March and committed to the Irish after an offer was extended a few days later in late March.

Down the road in Athens, the Bulldogs were quiet, even with a direct line to potentially lure Knapp to sign with his dream team. Georgia offensive line coach Stacy Searels was also Vance’s position coach in college.

“We had many connections there, but I remember coach Searels walking in my head coach’s office as Roswell High School and we were gonna kind of talk,” Knapp said. “They never bit on me. That was always my dream school growing up. A little chip on my shoulder. I don’t know if it was a size issue or what, but I’m excited to play them now.”

The challenge is immense. He’ll face All-SEC pass rusher Mykel Williams, who has five sacks this season. Knapp phoned Vance on Sunday night to go over the tendencies Knapp noticed while studying film of Williams, a five-star recruiting prospect from Columbus, Georgia, three seasons ago.

 “He didn’t call me to tell him what to do,” Vance said. “He called for confirmation. That shows maturity of the game, that shows he’s a student of the game.”

Knapp was rated a 3-star prospect, ranking as the nation’s No. 62 offensive tackle in 247Sports’ recruiting rankings for the class of 2024. Georgia coach Kirby Smart said he remembers Knapp “vividly being on our list and being a good football player.” 

Knapp said Georgia extended an invitation to a camp, but an offer was not made. At that time, however, Knapp said he would not have decommitted from the Irish.

“I can’t say it surprised me,” Vance said. “I wanted them to (offer), trust me, but coming out of high school he was probably 6-foot-4, 270. Let’s be honest: at Georgia, that’s small. Hell, in college football that’s small. But I knew what Knapp was going to be capable of.”

Knapp arrived at Notre Dame at 265 pounds in January 2024. Notre Dame’s strength and nutrition staff developed a meal and workout plan for the freshman, and by August he weighed 290 pounds. He bounced back and forth between right tackle and center in the spring, then moved to left tackle in the summer. Then, on the fourth practice of preseason camp in August, projected starter Charles Jagusah tore a pectoral muscle. The competition at left tackle was wide open.

“My goal was to make the travel roster,” Knapp said with a laugh. “Start with small goals. It all just kinda happened pretty quick.”

Graduate senior Tosh Baker was expected to step in by default, but it became clear to Rudolph during preseason camp that Knapp earned the job.

“He just never makes the same mistake twice, and for someone his age to be able to do that and make that type of adjustment is pretty rare,” Rudolph said.

Knapp’s first start was on the road against nationally-ranked Texas A&M and potential first-round draft pick Nic Scourton. He allowed only one quarterback pressure, finishing with an 82.3 pass-block grade in the Irish’s 23-13 win, according to Pro Football Focus. As the season progressed, so did the growth and improvement, and Knapp picked up freshman All-American honors from multiple organizations, including 247Sports.

“I don’t think athletically he’s anywhere near Joe Alt or  Ronnie Stanley, those kind of guys that Notre Dame has had before, but he’s got that grit,” ESPN analyst and former offensive lineman Cole Cubelic said, continuing: 

“He’s got the toughness that Notre Dame offensive linemen have, and I think he wins with that first. Technically, he’s fundamentally really sound. You don’t see his feet get crossed up. You don’t see missed hand placement. He understands angles, hat placement. He’s a little bit more of a technician than some of the overpowering Notre Dame offensive linemen we’ve seen in the past.”

For now, everything is working for the undersized freshman. Perhaps, too, Knapp will continue growing physically, allowing him to develop into another future first-round draft pick like Alt, who was picked fifth overall in April by the Los Angeles Chargers.

If that happens over the next few years, it’s easy for Georgia to wonder what could have been. Heck, why wait? He might deliver the Bulldogs a harsh reminder on New Year’s Day at the Caesars Superdome.

“The one thing you learn quickly being the head coach at Georgia is you can’t sign them all, and there’s a lot of them that you end up missing on,” Smart said. “For a guy to start as a freshman at tackle is really hard to do. It’s probably one of the hardest things to do in football, and he’s doing it at a high level.”

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