Irish's Manti Te'o fit and focused

At 2 a.m. Friday, Manti Te'o finished wee-hour film study and got on the phone with his people back in paradise. He had been dealing with a sore ankle. A loss to USC lacerated his pride. Then his coach took a cudgel to Notre Dame's upperclassmen in remarks like a nasty cut block.

Te'o needed mooring and concluded he would strip everything down and just play for the love of playing football. It was corny but curative. That afternoon the junior linebacker moved past the tumult. The next day he was cold-blooded in dismantling Navy. He resurfaced Wednesday appearing healed in all ways.

"I'm going to be honest — I was hurt," Te'o said in his first public comments since the Oct. 22 loss to USC, referring to Brian Kelly's statement about his recruited players versus inherited players last week.

"But like everybody said, this is a family, and we deal with it as a family. And we dealt with it on Friday and everything was fine. Everything was back to normal. We walked in on Saturday ready to play against Navy and demonstrated that, hey, no matter what happens, nothing can break apart a family."

It had been 10 days laden with reflection, recuperation and renewal for the Irish's tackling dervish, a span Te'o labeled a "roller-coaster." Physically, he recovered, practicing at length for the first time since injuring his ankle before the Air Force game. Mentally, he reconfigured, starting when he entered the football complex the morning after losing to USC.

Te'o walked in for treatment with tailback Jonas Gray, lamenting his performance, how he lacked focus, how he too often guessed instead of reading his keys. Six mornings later, Gray glanced Te'o's way before the Navy game and the sight was chilling.

"Just a different type of focus I've never seen from him," Gray said. "It was, 'Get out of my way.' I wouldn't want to go against him. You look at him and you're like, all right, I need to be in that mode, too."

Said receiver Theo Riddick: "He had something to prove."

He did, with a relentless 13-tackle effort. But this was a changed Te'o on a much less empirical level, too.

"I'm not that much of a yeller, I'm not that much of a rah-rah kind of guy," Te'o said. "I was never that type of player. But I found myself being more rah-rah (recently), trying to get everybody pumped, and I think by trying to be that player I lost who I was.

"So I told (defensive coordinator Bob Diaco) before the game, I hope you don't mind, but I'm just going to be pretty quiet. I'm going to be humble. If I need to say something, I'm going to say it, but I'm not going to yell. I'm not going to try to get everybody pumped up. It worked out well."

Diaco viewed it as a triumph of preparation after Te'o had been "less-than, healthwise" for a time. Te'o injured his ankle midweek before the Oct. 8 Air Force game and, apparently, Irish coaches had to manage his practice participation through the USC game two weeks later.

The limited workload threw off Te'o's timing. On Wednesday, Te'o bemoaned relegation to extensive film study with safety Harrison Smith and asking players "out there who are practicing" for tips so his performance didn't dip. The junior was full-go or near it for Navy preparation, and it showed.

"He had an opportunity to prepare himself, where he hasn't had an opportunity to prepare himself at times," Diaco said.

After Te'o turned his gaze inward, it now pivots in the other direction as the Irish (5-3) get ready to visit Wake Forest (5-3) on Saturday night.

His only lingering hurt, he said Wednesday, dates to 2008 and a Senior Day defeat for the graduating class. Te'o said his sole focus is a raucous stretch run for the current seniors, including a home finale victory in three weeks.

"That's what I owe them," Te'o said. "I owe them my best effort."

After a turbulent 10 days, he emerged untroubled and positioned to provide that.