Floridian Joe Wilkins became the 19th Notre Dame commit of the 2018 cycle when he announced for the Irish today. The 6’2″, 180-pounder just took an official visit for the Wake Forest game with his mother; they had planned on visiting a few more schools, but apparently they saw all they needed in South Bend.
Joe Wilkins is the first cornerback of the 2017 or 2018 recruiting cycles to pledge to Notre Dame, which is big news in itself. He’s a solid developmental prospect with an excellent frame – more on that below – and his addition lets the staff really focus in on the rest of their secondary targets.
Recruiting Service Rankings
247 Composite — 3 star (.8560), #697 overall, #59 WR, #109 in FL
247 Sports — 3 star, #443 overall, #28 WR, #67 in FL
Rivals — 3 star (5.5 rating), NR overall, NR WR, NR in FL
Scout — 3 star, NR overall, #95 ATH, #10 in FL
ESPN — 3 star (80 rating), NR overall, #82 WR, #82 in FL
Something’s obviously up with Scout’s state ranking, but I don’t have much interest in filtering through the list to figure it out. So, use your imagination.
Cohort
In addition to Notre Dame, Wilkins holds offers from Arizona, Louisville, Maryland, Michigan State, NC State, Pitt, South Carolina, and Washington State, among others.
Highlights
There are three things that jump out for me on Wilkins’s senior film. First, his athleticism is obvious – he shows good acceleration and top-end speed, and some of the cuts he makes with the ball in his hands are absurd. Second, he’s aggressive all the time, whether as a receiver, returning kicks, in coverage, or in run support. He seems to have a mindset that the ball and the turf belong to him. Third, and sort of feeding off that, the kid has some swagger; whether it’s the era of Shane Walton or Robert Blanton, the Irish defense has always benefited from having a little attitude on the back end.
If you’re looking for something to work on, the list has a single entry: everything. I kid, mostly, but in addition to the physical tools and mentality, it’s also pretty clear that Wilkins is raw, raw, raw. He’s not completely clueless out there, but he definitely is getting by on athleticism right now, on both sides of the ball. He’s doing a lot of the right things, like breaking on throws or selling a double move, but they’re not always as crisp or decisive as they should be. The good news is that you can teach technique but you can’t teach athleticism.
Impact
Joe Wilkins is probably a down-the-road contributor; in addition to the technique work he needs, the depth chart will be pretty stacked for 2018. Nick Watkins, Julian Love, Shaun Crawford, Troy Pride, and Donte Vaughn will all return and will all have multiple seasons of game experience. 2019 is a different story, though, with Watkins definitely gone and Crawford possibly gone. The most likely scenario seems to be that Wilkins gets a redshirt year to hone his craft, then works on special teams and mop-up duty as a sophomore, then gets a shot to push his way into the rotation as a junior. The tools are there – it just rests on how much he can develop.
Welcome to the Irish family, Joe!
When we’re taking 3 star guys, this is the type of 3 star I like. High upside, swing for the fences, type of take. In this case there’s reason to think you might be getting 4 star talent for the cost of a 3 star recruit and a little bit of time. Throw in the fact that he wants to major in medicine and there’s a decent hope that he’s a pretty smart kid that will pick up technique quickly.
In that regard, he is a lot like Julian Love.
In the last ‘crooting post, it sounded like he’d only be a take if things moved against us with some other guys. Is that what happened?
As Brandon and Scarponi both get at, a raw CB is pretty ok given our depth chart – if we avoid injuries (to the fair, that’s a big, borderline unrealistic if), we don’t really *need* a CB to play for the next couple years. Still, it seems pretty remarkable how much trouble we seem to be having recruiting CBs overall. Would feel a lot better about the future depth chart if we had kept Thomas Graham in the fold; he looks like a player for Oregon.
Yeah sounds like the staff is looking to get three corners, and right now things are starting to trend in the wrong direction for Alontae Taylor.
The other two guys we are currently in good position for are Kyler Gordon and Tariq Bracy, and neither of them are locks just yet.
Wilkins also has positional flexibility as well. Could play CB, S, or WR from what I’ve heard.
I’m thinking the staff reads 18S, saw that Alontae is pretty excited about Bama, and that it’s time to grab anyone we can. I credit 18S with this commitment.
FWIW, Alontae Taylor pinned this tweet yesterday: https://twitter.com/TaeTaylor6/status/927711970807238656
Edit: @Obviously Twitter is the most important medium so everything he says there should be taken as 100% fact.@
I don’t know if it’s just how things are trending elsewhere, but it seems like the staff got much more interested in Wilkins after getting him on campus. Lyght and Denson have seen him in person before, but obviously the whole staff met with him this time. He’s 6’1″/6″2″ and, reportedly, has run a legitimate sub-4.6 40. If that’s true, that’s plenty to work with as a developmental guy.
We lost a metric poop-ton of ground in recruiting DBs as it became obvious that VanGorder’s defense was an unmitigated disaster for them. You had five-star Max Redfield flopping around (which may have been as much about Max as anything else, but that matters little to perception), Drue Tranquill flopping around, Nick Coleman looking like he didn’t know which way was up… Coupled with 4-8, that really hurt us. Elko and Lyght have been working really hard to make that ground up; I think we’ll finish in a bit of a scramble this year, but we’re already doing much better in 2019 and I expect some good results there.
In the end, if it’s Gordon, player X, and Wilkins, that’s a pretty good corner class. There are some very vague rumors on a particular player X being in play for a flip, but no idea who it is yet. The situation isn’t great, but I don’t think it’s quite as dire as it might seem either.
Excuse me good sir, but Max Redfield has led Indiana University (Pennsylvania) to a 10-0 record and a birth in their conference championship game. How dare you disparage his good name.
Fair enough, but the “they got more interested in him while he was on campus” also coincided with a 4-star trending away from us. I am inherently skeptical of the “we think he’s great; should be 4-star!” type stories that come out most of the time we get a 3-star (not saying you implied that above; quite the contrary… but the “we got more interested in him when we met him!” is kind of along those lines).
Completely agree that this is a fine flyer as a third corner in the class, but if he’s the second corner we probably have a long-term depth problem.
I think that’s where he slots in – I don’t get the sense that the staff intends him to be a front-line guy, at least not early. And again, there are some rumblings that the actual second corner is in play at the moment, definitely a situation that bears watching.
Kyler Gordon, btw, is the clear top-of-the-board guy at corner.
So we go from struggling to get d-linemen to struggling to get cornerbacks. It’s always something.
I am glad we got a CB, any CB, but a bit disappointed that with the season we are having, our last 3 commits are among the lowest ranked in the entire class (Moala and Wilkins are the 2 lowest). Really shows what a struggle we are having recruiting DBs.
Lyght seems to be doing a good job with DBs now that he has an actual living breathing DC, but hasn’t been particularly impressive on the ‘crootin’ trail. He seems kind of buttoned up, rather than a dynamic personality like Denson or Alford, not totally surprised that isn’t resonating with kids.
I think he’ll be fine in time. The kids seem to react well to him. He didn’t have much of a recruiting background coming in and BVG (and Kelly, to be fair) didn’t do much to mentor him or hold him accountable. I’m not saying Lyght coasted, he most definitely didn’t, he just didn’t have any guidance. Elko has been working very closely with him on the trail to do exactly that, so I’d expect to see more from him going forward.
Also, I wouldn’t be so down on Moala. The staff loved him and pushed for him from the moment they saw him work out at Invasion. One of the Scout national guys who was at the camp compared Moala favorably to Shayne Simon – not as good, of course, but he said Moala displayed a mix of coverage ability and physicality that only Simon exceeded. He’s a potential diamond in the rough, and the fact that he’s Polynesian doesn’t hurt either.
Lyght seems kind of like a dork, for a former NFL player.
I didn’t think of the lack of guidance/mentoring/teaching for him. I can see how that could leave him in a state where he didn’t really know what to do. As much as a natural skill/charisma seems to differentiate the very top recruiters, I suspect added coaching/training from your boss can go a long way in lifting his ability. It certainly appears Elko has the skills in recruiting to help him out.
And as to Moala. I am not down on him individually. I am pretty indifferent toward him. I am down on the macro level that the last 3 players are fairly lowly rated. Chances are very very strong that not all 3 will turn into particularly good players.
Moala in particular reminds me a lot of John Turner (local, very lowly rated, coaches offered after seeing at camp, reportedly ran fast 40). Turner was a fine guy to have on the team, but hardly someone worth getting excited over. I do love Polynesians though.
*sigh*
Yaaaaay…..
8th ranked class in the country right now. Likely to finish between 6 and 12 or so. You can probably summon just a little more excitement than that if you try really hard.
Yeah, I’m pretty happy that any corner at all has joined the class at this point. Now hopefully some more will be on the way too.