Although [autotag]Manti Te’o[/autotag] received the press clippings during Notre Dame’s 2012 run to a 12-0 regular season and national championship game appearance, it wasn’t a certainty that he was the best player on the Fighting Irish defense that season.
As great as Te’o was there was a defensive line that was smothering that consisted of the likes of a young [autotag]Sheldon Day[/autotag], veteran [autotag]Kapron Lewis-Moore[/autotag], and a couple of stars in [autotag]Louis Nix[/autotag] and [autotag]Stephon Tuitt[/autotag].
Tuitt went on to the longest NFL career of any player from that team and on Wednesday announced that he was hanging up his cleats for good and retiring.
Here is a look back in photo form of Stephon Tuitt during his rise to stardom at Notre Dame and during his NFL career which was spent entirely with the Pittsburgh Steelers.