Elite defensive back Houston Griffith became the newest Notre Dame commit of the 2018 cycle when he announced for the Irish today. The 6’1″, 192-pound IMG prospect recently hosted Todd Lyght, decommitted from Florida State, hosted Brian Kelly and Mike Elko last week, and hosted Lyght again the other day. While Griffith hasn’t trekked to South Bend since September, he’s a Chicago native and has been to campus many times over the last couple of years. He knows all he could know about Notre Dame at this point. Of note, Griffith has said in the past that he intends to sign early and he will be an early enrollee.
While he’s rated as a safety by Rivals and many Irish fans have pegged him there as well, we’ve heard from football people we trust that he has the ability to play corner at an elite level in college. He’ll get his shot there first and our money says he’ll stick. Griffith joins upside corner prospects Joe Wilkins and Tariq Bracy, elite strong safety prospect Derrik Allen, and local breakout star Paul Moala in the 2018 defensive back class. Stay tuned, Irish fans, because even with all those guys in the fold the staff probably isn’t quite done with the secondary.
Recruiting Service Rankings
247 Composite — 4 star (.9666), #60 overall, #9 CB, #12 in FL
247 Sports — 4 star (93 rating), #133 overall, #14 CB, #20 in FL
Rivals — 4 star (6.0 rating), #47 overall, #6 S, #12 in FL
ESPN — 4 star (84 rating), #84 overall, #10 CB, #20 in FL
Note: You may notice that Griffith’s Scout ranking is conspicuously absent. 247 and Scout merged a few months ago; they kept some things separate for a while, but just in the last couple of weeks they phased out the Scout rankings.
Cohort
How much time do you have? In addition to Notre Dame and Florida State, Houston Griffith holds offers from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Oregon, Penn State, Texas, UCLA, USC, Virginia Tech, and Wisconsin, among many, many others. So pretty much everyone.
Highlights
Man, I tell you what, there’s not a lot to complain about, and this is Griffith’s junior film. It’s the most recent available on Hudl, which shows some confidence on his part. Smooth, smooth, smooth. If I could pick one word to describe Griffith as a football player, that would be it. His backpedal is really good, and he transitions effortlessly into coverage. He has elite speed and doesn’t even look like he’s trying when he turns it on; he runs so easily with the receiver that it’s no big thing for him to – hold your breath, Irish fans – turn and look for the ball. When he recognizes short stuff unfolding in front of him, his close is scary fast. He uses his length very well to disrupt the basket and to compete for jump balls. He likes to mix it up too, filling credibly in the run game and laying some wood on receivers.
If I had to pick out an area for improvement, it’s that he occasionally gets stymied on his attempts to jam the receiver. While most of his camp work was exceptional, particularly at the Opening finals, this showed on occasion during the summer as well. I think he might need some work on positioning too as guys were sometimes able to get an inside release in press coverage. That’s really nitpicky and easy to fix, though, if he hasn’t fixed it already during his senior season. And, it’s worth noting, he also wins more jams than he loses, so it’s not like he has an issue with physicality. This kid is the total package.
Impact
Houston Griffith has the look of a Day One contributor, and not just on special teams. I don’t think he’ll start immediately but I do think he’ll be in the corner rotation right away, especially since he’ll enroll early. He has a combination of physical tools and polish that just doesn’t exist on the Irish roster today, which makes me think it’ll be impossible to keep him off the field. He’s more athletically gifted than Nick Watkins and Julian Love, and he’s far more polished at this point than Donte Vaughn and Troy Pride were. Shaun Crawford might have had the same level of polish with some elite physical traits, but Griffith is four inches taller.
However the secondary falls out in 2018, Griffith will be a part of it, and he’ll have a great shot at a starting role when Nick Watkins moves on after the season. Welcome to the Irish family, Houston!
Huuuuuuge
“…he runs so easily with the receiver that it’s no big thing for him to – hold your breath, Irish fans – turn and look for the ball.”
Big if true. I’m given to understand that the only play in football harder than this is throwing a successful swing pass.
That’s a hell of a writeup. I’m excited.
Free article from our old buddy Jamie Uyeyama at ISD that goes more in depth on Griffith’s coverage skills: https://irishsportsdaily.com/s/4862/film-dont-lie-houston-griffith
I’M TOTALLY GEEKED, GUYS.
Huge recruiting win because of his talent on the field.
Also huge recruiting win because it’s a Top 100 player that we’ve worked for since Day 1 and beat out the big dogs days before NSD.
DB class is coming together quite well after striking out last cycle.
We didn’t beat out the big dogs. Jimbo and staff stopped recruiting before leaving FSU, which caused Griffith to reopen his recruitment.
Do you think no one else wanted him at that point?
Ok, sorry. We didn’t beat out ALL of the big dogs. The staff did excellent work to put ND in great position and this is absolutely a huge get. But it still doesn’t happen without the fiasco at FSU.
Most likely true
Actually it’s not – this had been in the works long before anything about Jimbo became an issue. I don’t want to overshare premium info, so I’ll just leave it at that Griffith reached out to the ND staff almost immediately after committing to FSU to ask if he still had a spot, and they were talking to him continuously throughout.
Interesting. Not a pay site subscriber…why commit to a school if you don’t actually plan to enroll? I understand changing your mind or looking for other options after program changes, but this scenario is weird.
It’s not that weird. Kids get caught in the emotion of a visit or the people around them, and then have second thoughts.They don’t generally back out right away – although sometimes that happens too – but a kid committing and then contacting other staffs shortly after to ask if they’re still interested isn’t that unusual.
Anyway, I’m glad it worked out for us. Huge get.
This is a epic get by this coaching staff. This kid has the look of a true shutdown corner. Love this kids tape. His talent leaps off the screen and thats what I look for. I dont know what the people at 247 sports are smoking to have this kid ranked at #133. Huge reason why I put them behind Rivals and ESPN when it comes to recruiting. There is still one more premier corner out there that we have a good shot at getting. He is picking between us and Washington. Washington must be nervous with the amount of negative recruiting they are doing. If we land him this will be the best DB class that I can remember any ND staff getting in decades. You hear how relentless this new coaching staff is on the recruiting trail and they are showing it.
Outstanding pickup!!
No one should be behind ESPN in terms of recruiting. Or really anything. They are complete garbage.
247 is heavily invested in their composite, which if you are only going with one ranking, is the one that should be used.
Yeah, agreed. I do think 247 missed on their evaluation of Griffith, but ESPN is awful – they barely put any effort into their recruiting coverage. For example, Rivals, Scout, and 247 all ranked Jack Lamb between 96th and 147th overall when he committed (he’s higher now), and between 4th and 7th at his position. ESPN had him as an unranked three-star and 45th at his position.
I could go on – I’ll just leave it at that there are a whole lot more Jack Lambs than Houston Griffiths with ESPN’s coverage. I think 247 is generally pretty good. I think they might favor Nike camps, while Rivals clearly favors their own camp events, but those biases tend to offset in the Composite.
I logged in to give this a thumbs up.
This just shows incredible perceverence from this staff.
Perfect player fit, love that he’s enrolling early too. Should be a huge get and upgrade for the secondary starting in 2018. That’s awesome. For the negatives that this coaching staff has, recruiting and selling Notre Dame all across the country doesn’t seem like one at all, glad to see them reel this in. Now, hopefully a few more.
Tyler/Brendan/anyone else who may know- what’s the ceiling on the recruiting class ranking nationally assuming most the ones expected to commit do and something fortunate happens like St. Brown joins in? Would that boost to top-5ish?
We’re 6th right now in the 247 Composite class rankings. If we close with, say, Nick Petit-Frere, Kyler Gordon, Braden Lenzy, Lawrence Keys, and Luke Jones, or something like that, I think we’ll end up somewhere between 6th and 8th. If you add in Tuliaupupu, probably secures 6th a bit more. If you add ASB, it *might* push us up to 5th.
With Griffith in and what we still have in front of us as realistic closing scenarios, I’m pretty confident we’ll finish with a top ten class at worst. It’s going to be pretty hard to get above 7th/8th, though.
Interesting, thanks for the details I didn’t have a sense of really how easy/difficult it would be to slide around.
There’s a pretty decent amount of volatility between probably 8th and 12th or so. If you have some high-quality four stars you should be pretty much locked into that range, but a few things here or there could move you around within it pretty easily. To get above 8th you really need to have a five star, and to get to 5th or better multiple five stars. That’s something of a recent development; for example, ND’s 2013 class with three five stars (including Vanderdoes) ranked 3rd in 2013 and would’ve ranked 5th in 2016 and 6th last year, barely ahead of #7.
Alabama and Ohio State have locked up two top five spots (generally top three, really) as they’ve hoarded five stars over the last few years. The rest of the top five is usually filled with some combination of Georgia, USC, LSU, Florida State, Clemson, etc. It’s really hard to crack into that group, but not impossible if we combine a great year on the field with a boss effort by the staff. 2019 *could* be that kind of year – we have more traction early with five stars than we’ve had in some time – but obviously it’s a long way off.
Couple of other notes here…
Griffith’s commitment gives Notre Dame a whopping seven Opening finalists in this defensive class – the others are Jayson Ademilola, Derrik Allen, Ja’Mion Franklin, Jack Lamb, Ovie Oghoufo, and Shayne Simon. I believe that’s the most of anyone as of right now, one ahead of Ohio State. Without looking it up, I’m pretty confident in saying that’s the most defensive representation we’ve ever had there.
Griffith is the sixth early enrollee in this class, which I believe is also the most we’ve ever had. The others are Lamb, Oghoufo, Bo Bauer, Jahmir Smith, and George Takacs.
Finally, Todd Lyght. He got commitments from Julian Love, Donte Vaughn, and Troy Pride in 2016, and Houston Griffith, Tariq Bracy, and Joe Wilkins in 2018 and we’re not done. The 2017 cycle was full of weirdness in corner recruiting, true, but can we put to bed the notion that Lyght is a horrible recruiter?
One day I’ll stop thinking about how Thomas Graham got away but that won’t be soon.
Oof. And he was *good* as a true freshman too.
I’ve heard a couple of stories on that from what I would consider trustworthy independent sources, and the stories align pretty well. One source had heard that it was something like the family was upset that Lyght didn’t eat the dinner that they either ordered or made. The other source said that Kelly forgot to mention that Lyght needed a gluten-free meal, so they made a plate for him that he couldn’t eat and they got offended.
I believe that it went down either as described or very, very close, given how similar those accounts are. I don’t believe that was the real reason we lost Graham, though. I think he just reconsidered and wanted to stay out west. His HS backfield mate Jaylon Redd committing to Oregon gave them a big leg up as well.
Not football related, but just had to announce that my son has formally been accepted into the University of Notre Dame!
Congratulations! Going there changed my life. And after attending an Ivy League for my PhD, I can tell you that Notre Dame is actually a much, much better university for undergrads to attend than some of the places that are ostensibly ranked above it.
Hey, congrats! Go Scttmtclf 2.0!