Best Notre Dame football players: Modern-era Mount Rushmore

While Tim Brown joins Quinn on the Notre Dame football Mount Rushmore as the only players to make the top four to not win a National Championship with the Fighting Irish, he’s also arguably the greatest player in the modern era of the program. In fact, you could make the argument that the only thing that held him back was the style of play he was a part of.

Despite that, Brown was absolutely electric for the Fighting Irish throughout his career. He flashed his potential early with 53 receptions for 737 yards and four touchdowns combined over his freshman and sophomore seasons. When Lou Holtz took over in 1986, though, Notre Dame became the Tim Brown show.

As a junior, Brown had 45 catches for 910 yards and five scores while also rushing 59 times for 254 yards and two scores and registering 698 kick return yards and two more touchdowns. It was in his senior year that he won the Heisman Trophy, truly doing it all (even if the numbers were slightly worse in some areas compared to the previous year). Brown had 39 receptions for 846 yards and three touchdowns, 144 rushing yards and a score, 23 kick returns for 456 yards and 401 punt return yards with three touchdowns.

Winning the Heisman would be enough to land Brown on this list. What speaks even more to his ability, though, is that he ranks sixth all-time in career receiving yards for Notre Dame despite not being in the top 10 for career receptions. He was an unprecedented playmaker that was set to go to the house — or at least go a long way down the field — anytime the ball got into his hands.

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