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DALLAS – Alizé Mack needed another chance, aware he’d already burned through more than most players get in the first place. Back home in Las Vegas last January following a Citrus Bowl suspension that nobody seemed to really notice, Mack met for lunch with his stepdad Anthony Mack and his high school coach Tony Sanchez, who had just finished his fourth year at UNLV.

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Sanchez was good for Mack at Bishop Gorman, which doesn’t mean things were always great. A five-star prospect who didn’t always train like one, Mack was an athlete Sanchez loved even if it was sometimes hard to get there. The group met at Ferraro’s, an Italian restaurant a block away from UNLV. The afternoon let Mack reconnect with a mentor. It also represented another hopeful reset in a college career that kept restarting from zero.

“I’ve always said that your best horses are the hardest ones to ride, and he’s one of those guys,” Sanchez said. “We all face our own battles and make the decision to stay the course or not. You have to look internally to find answers, because you’re not going to find them looking at everybody else.”

The easy narrative here is to declare Mack fully right, locked into what might be the final game of his Notre Dame career against Clemson in the College Football Playoff. Mack is committed to the Senior Bowl after this, bypassing a fifth year of eligibility that makes more sense in theory than practice.

But Mack’s career has been too turbulent to assume anything, suspended for his entire sophomore season due to academics and up-and-down during his junior season as he struggled to adapt to offensive coordinator Chip Long before that bowl game suspension. And yet, if there ever was a time for reasoned optimism on Mack, it might be right now as he carries his senior season of 34 catches for 349 yards and three touchdowns into AT&T Stadium on Saturday afternoon.

“Back in January when I flipped who I wanted to become and be, it’s really just getting back to your old self,” Mack said. “It’s easy sometimes when you get away from home when you have certain things going for you and you don’t have mentors and you don’t ask for help. You can lose yourself. That’s what I did.”

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It’s too late for Mack to have the full college experience assumed as birthright for a 6-foot-5, 247-pound tight end with a 36-inch vertical jump. He has posted just 66 catches for 705 yards and four touchdowns in his Notre Dame career, which amounts to one good season for some of the program’s best at the position. And yet, those touchdowns against Florida State, wrestling the ball away from one defender and acrobatically getting one foot down on the other, remind everybody around Notre Dame what Mack can do on his day.

And should Saturday be another one of those days, it will validate why Notre Dame stuck with Mack in the first place.

“It’s all about the relationship with him,” Long said. “Alizé wants someone who will listen to him. You have to pick your spots. He’s not a guy who you can really get after in a group setting. It’s more 1-on-1 all the time, at your house, in my office. It has to go beyond football for him to ever trust you.

“I think I caught him at a good time. Now, I wish I would have had him as a freshman.”

It took the better part of two years for Long to figure out Mack, Notre Dame’s offensive coordinator now accepting that he can’t coach Mack the way he coaches everybody else. And though that’s put Mack in a position group of one at times, again, that’s what happens with elite athletes who tease with their potential. They keep getting chances because if it becomes good, it will look great in an offense.

Mack leads the tight ends group in offensive snaps played, despite missing the Northwestern game with a concussion. Only Miles Boykin, Chase Claypool and Chris Finke have played more this season among the skill positions.

“Just growing up, that’s been the biggest transformation for him,” Long said. “Everybody is different. You just have to know what buttons to push sometimes.”

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Before Long arrived, that was often left to head coach Brian Kelly, who basically had to beg Mack to stay on the straight and narrow, even if there was little guarantee Mack could or would. In some ways, Mack got the worst of the recruiting rankings industry, a five-star on Rivals.com without the body of work to earn it. That led to Mack sometimes skipping a step mentally, looking beyond Notre Dame before he found his bearings at Notre Dame.

“I think maybe Alizé came in here with the sense of ‘I’m one and done,’ almost like in basketball,” Kelly said. “Certainly Notre Dame is not that. You can’t function here unless you really get your feet on the ground and commit to what Notre Dame is all about.

“I think once he was able to understand that, he began to really feel more comfortable with who he is and what his purpose was to be here.”

Maybe there’s more to come for Mack this weekend and potentially beyond if Notre Dame can upset Clemson. For everything that has come before, there’s still one more chance to deliver and potentially two. Make good on those opportunities, and Mack will depart Notre Dame with a perfect closing chapter despite an uneven plot.

“This is my goal,” Mack said. “This is how I want to be remembered by my coaches, by my teammates. How do you want your name to be carried around the building? I hadn’t gained a lot of respect from people. I knew I hadn’t gained a lot of respect from people and I didn’t want to walk around here and be that guy.

“Better now than never. I wish stuff would have happened earlier, but at the end of the day everything happens for a reason.”

(Top photo by Robin Alam / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

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