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!