Luke Jones became the third lineman in Notre Dame’s 2018 recruiting class when he committed today. The 6’5″, 292-pound Jones was on his official visit for the football banquet, following up his unofficial visit for the USC game. Jones committed to Arkansas back in July, but the rough season and the unceremonious exit of Bret Bielema opened things back up for him. He gave new head coach Chad Morris a shot before he left Arkansas’s class, but ultimately Notre Dame won the day here. As with many offensive linemen, his recruitment was pretty drama-free – he visited once and loved it, visited again and committed. Linemen are straightforward folk, it would seem.
Recruiting Service Rankings
247 Composite — 3 star (.8776), #495 overall, #35 OT, #4 in AR
247 Sports — 3 star (88 rating), #404 overall, #32 OT, #3 in AR
Rivals — 3 star (5.7 rating), NR overall, #45 OT, #4 in AR
ESPN — 3 star (78 rating), NR overall, #57 OT, #5 in AR
Note: You may notice that Jones’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
In addition to Notre Dame and Arkansas, Luke Jones holds offers from Arizona State, Iowa State, Missouri, and Oregon. Also Georgetown, Princeton, and Yale, among others. Clearly no dummy.
Highlights
Whoa. Jones moves remarkably well for a man of his size, and when I say “remarkably well” I mean “really freaking awesome.” I’d like to see a little more knee and hip bend – if that’s a physical limitation it could be a problem, but if it’s a technique issue it’s easily fixable. Other than that, though… His team uses a lot of pulls and screens, and you can see why just based on how he runs. I mean, he actually ran a jet sweep as a slot receiver and scored untouched! Holy cripes. He moves his feet in pass protection very well. He does a good job of looking for work, too, coming off a combo block to knock down a free blitzer or running to the second level if he has nobody to hit at the line. He looks like a very good prospect that fits well with what Chip Long wants to do.
Impact
Jones needs some time to get stronger and, as noted above, work on playing lower. He’ll almost certainly redshirt in 2018 – or at least we should hope he would – and then have a chance to compete for a spot in the two deep as a sophomore. His long-term prospects depend on his development, but with the prevalence of pulling in Chip Long’s preferred blocking schemes, I can definitely see a role for him down the road. I think he’d make a very good guard or possibly even a right tackle in time.
Welcome to the Irish family, Luke!
BTW – remember when I said “I like our chances with Luke Jones” earlier this morning? I’m not as crazy as I might seem. 😀
Other than forgetting his name by the end of the post 😉
Arrrrghh… Hoisted by my own petards! Fixed. Pride does, indeed, goeth before the fall.
This guy must be one of if not THE most athletic OL we have ever recruited. Based on the fact that he is the #45 rated CB by Rivals.
You guys all got jokes… Some day I’ll show EVERYONE… Just wait…
I mean, the guy did run a jet sweep for a TD. Maybe he plays some CB.
Out of curiosity, any OT can be moved to OG, which is good since we only recruit OTs it seems. However, who is going to be the back-up to Mustipher this year and his replacement next year?
Could Jones be a C? We seem to like Hainsey, who was an OG recruit at OT and Banks is probably too large to become a C.
I don’t like to DCE, but we seem thin at C.
Trevor Ruhland was the backup this year and reportedly did pretty well in practice. He has eligibility through 2019, so if he continues to develop there he’ll be the natural choice.
Hainsey was ranked as an OT last year but, due to his height, a lot of people DCE’d him to the interior. Turns out he’s too good on the edge to slide inside… Banks is definitely too big at 6-6/325. Dillan Gibbons, who was also rated as an OT, might get a look at C at some point – I love the ferocity he plays with but I don’t think he has the athleticism to be on the edge. And who knows, maybe Colin Grunhard, who was a true freshman walk-on this season, will blossom and follow in his father’s footsteps.
This is very interesting – http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/sports/lsu/article_11922afe-eb6d-11e7-922e-23c9a102ca3d.html
Hopefully the news doesnt bring Chase Claypool down too much…or Larz
They’re far too polite to ever indicate any despondency though, so don’t worry about it.
ho hum stanford on its way to another 10-win season. Assuming they hold on to this game, Shaw has six 10+ win seasons and one non-10 win season.
Are you certain about that?
never post anything about TCU at halftime of the Alamo Bowl
yay Stanford lost
Normally i would’ve wanted one of our opponents to win their bowl, but since this prevented a 10 win season for them i’m not too broken up about it…mostly because i had this game at the lowest confidence level in my pool.