Notre Dame’s solid Class of 2019 received a nice boost this Saturday night, as blue chip cornerback Isaiah Rutherford has decided to verbally commit to the Fighting Irish. The 6-0/175 pounder out of Sacramento, California is the 19th commit in this Irish Class of 2019 — a class which now includes nine players on the defensive side ranked 4-stars or higher in the 247Sports Composite Rankings. Notre Dame now sits at #11 in the 247 Composite Class Rankings.
Recruiting Service Rankings
Rivals — 4 star (5.9 rating), #83 overall, #9 CB, #14 in CA
ESPN — 4 star (80 rating), NR overall, #27 CB, #37 in CA
247Sports — 4 star (91 rating), #216 overall, #23 CB, # 27 in CA
247Sports Composite — 4 star (.9227), #191 overall, #22 CB, #26 in CA
Cohort
Isaiah chose the Irish over a top group that included Cal, Colorado, and Oregon. He also held offers from Alabama, Arizona, LSU, Oklahoma, USC, Tennessee, and others.
Highlights
Notre Dame is landing a really good athlete in Rutherford. He’s got great length for the position as well as a nice blend of speed, fluidity, and physicality. He sticks to receivers like glue in man coverage and tracks the ball pretty well in the air. He performed well at The Opening against some of the best athletes in the country, earning his blue chip status.
Impact
The addition of Isaiah Rutherford gives the Irish a really solid duo of blue chip cornerbacks in this 2019 Class — which might end up being more important than we would have known 8 months ago. With true freshman Joe Wilkins starting his career at receiver and both Houston Griffith and DJ Brown splitting time at safety, that five-man CB haul from 2018 is down to two true corners. Rutherford and KJ Wallace really have the potential to be important pieces of the Irish defense in a few years. Isaiah will need to add some weight and strength, but he’s got a solid 10 months to do that before his first game in a Notre Dame uniform. There’s no reason to believe that he can’t see the field in some capacity as a true freshman.
I’d expect Notre Dame to try to land maybe another two or three guys to close out this class, putting them at about 21-22. It seems like that would be a lot, but with the usual attrition it will probably end up putting Notre Dame just under the 85-man limit as it usually is. Pretty sure Eric will have a scholarship update within the next week or two that will go over all of this, though.
Anyway… Welcome to the Irish family, Isaiah!
Thanks for the good news. Makes it even sweeter that he’s in USC colors!
Great article, Tyler! Big get for sure.
Not to get too greedy, but is there any chance of an overall recruiting update during the bye week? It seems like recruiting news has died down significantly, and after Rutherford I don’t have a great sense of who are likely/reach targets are over the next few months. Admittedly, that’s partially my own doing as I unsubscribed to Irish Illustrated after Sampson left.
Scholarship update coming tomorrow or sometime this week!
I think I read somewhere this is the 9th 4* or better commit for the defense alone this cycle? And 4th in the secondary. That’s very exciting.
Anyone have an easy answer for this? It seems like ND has been on an up-tick in recruiting this past year or year and a half (e.g., Hook’s comment about so many 4* commits). So, how is it that they are only ranked 11th right now? Have I been overrating the class in my head as I see the commitments?
0 Top 100 players in the 247 composite is definitely dragging it down.
The way the composite is calculated not only aren’t all blue chips identical, but they vary pretty widely. If you go to the “Class Calculator” (linked below for ND) you can see that some 4 stars add as much as 27 points to the class ranking and some add as few as 8 points. So the Irish 11th ranked class has 13/19 blue chips for a great blue-chip ratio of 68%, but the value added by each of the individuals doesn’t catch us up to, say Clemson’s 5th ranked class, which has 11/24 blue chips for a ratio of only 46%.
https://247sports.com/college/notre-dame/Season/2019-Football/Commits/Preview/
The reporting about this class has been as if the class is very good, which it is not, at least by the 247 composite. It’s solid/average-trending-towards-above-average, maybe marginally better than last year on a per-player basis, but not much.
It will be good for helping us towards the blue-chip ratio, but really that ratio should probably rank five stars as 2x or 3x, and we have zero five stars.
That bit of negativity said, we did get our most important recruit (NaNa), and the defensive depth going forward is very promising. Just no Jaylon/Manti-type transcendent players over the last few years, it seems.
No love for clearwall’s boy Bo Bauer, smh.
I’m not quite sure it’s this dramatic, really. For example, we have 0 Top 100 recruits on our defense currently except for true freshmen Houston Griffith (plays about half the snaps), Shayne Simon (barely plays), and Jack Lamb (doesn’t play) and our defense still rocks because it’s littered with 4-star guys.
If you have, like, 30 really good prospects on one side of the ball and a good coaching staff, you’re gonna find your way to a really strong 11 and plenty of “transcendent” talents (Coney, Tranquill, Love, and Tillery). It’s great to have a five-star because you can be pretty damn sure that position is locked down with a great player for a couple years, but your odds are really great to lock that position down if you have 3-4 really really good recruits wherein you can find 1 NFL-quality talent, too.
I mean it’s not like we are talking ourselves into middle-of-the-road 3 star players here. There are Top 150ish players at damn near every position. We should be pretty good.
Number two punter in the country, get hyped!
Oh, I don’t disagree, I think the past two classes are of the level where if offered, you take. I’m just saying that we don’t appear to have a can’t-miss, sure-thing first rounder from the group, though just given the numbers it seems likely that we’ll eventually get a first rounder.
I would not rate anybody on our current defense as a Manti/Jaylon level, but together they’re all pretty darned good. If we can get this year’s level of play from the defense with any consistency, that’d be tremendous, and recruiting like this gives you a shot at that.
But it ain’t recruiting like Bama, Georgia, or Ohio State. Or even Oklahoma, really, when you factor in the offensive recruiting.
We’re ranked 11th, but our average caliber of player is 90.46, which puts us in a virtual tie or ahead in terms of quality with 3 of the teams in front of us (these teams each have more players currently in their class). The other teams ahead of us do have higher quality top-end talent in their classes. ND seems to hover around the number 10 ranking, just always lagging enough behind in elite-ness to quite compete with the Ohio States and Alabamas consistently.
Good thing Isaiah Robertson moved to WR because having Isaiah Robertson and Isaiah Rutherford both at corner would hurt my brain.