The first big surprise of the early signing period (for Notre Dame anyway) occurred on Wednesday morning when it was announced that local legacy Ron Powlus III had signed his NLI with Notre Dame. The 6’3″/225-pounder out of Granger, Indiana joins a Notre Dame class that is currently ranked 9th in the country. The Penn High School product is the second 2021 quarterback to sign with Notre Dame, joining Tyler Buchner in the Irish QB Room.
Welcome one of the newest additions to the QB room, @ronpowlus.#GoIrish x #GoldRush21 pic.twitter.com/W1VtCrg9Jm
— Notre Dame Football (@NDFootball) December 16, 2020
If the name didn’t give it away, Ron is the son of Ron Powlus — the Golden Boy who played quarterback for the Irish from 1994-1997 and is currently serving as Associate Athletics Director for Notre Dame.
Recruiting Service Rankings
Rivals — 3 star (5.5 rating)
ESPN — Not Rated
247 Sports — 2 star (73 rating)
247Sports Composite — 3 star (.8035), #2257 overall, #78 Pro-style QB, #31 in IN
Irish Sports Daily — 3 star (81 rating)
Cohort
Ron chose the Irish over other offers from Kentucky, Buffalo, Bowling Green, Central Michigan, and Indiana State.
Highlights
Ron’s senior highlight tape was a bit better than I was expecting, given his rating on 247Sports. He appears to be all of his listed height and weight, he looks pretty natural throwing the ball, and he shows some nice touch on a few of his passes. I’m not that familiar with throwing mechanics, but I trust Jamie over at ISD and he thinks Ron is pretty technically sound.
Ron is most likely not going to be the guy at Notre Dame. If he ever ends up seeing meaningful snaps, he’s either greatly out-performed expectations or it’s a situation where Notre Dame is in a real tough spot at the QB position. But as a guy you land as the second quarterback in the class, you could do much worse.
Impact
It definitely sounds like the injury to Brendon Clark that kept him out for the Syracuse game is more serious than we all thought. There’s speculation that he might not even be available for fall camp next year. If that’s truly the case, it makes sense to add another guy to the QB room. I don’t quite understand why Powlus isn’t joining the class as a preferred walk-on. But if I were to take a guess, I’d say the staff probably just isn’t worried about scholarship limits at this point — either due to the rule changes stemming from COVID or expected attrition.
Regardless, we may be looking at a QB room of Drew Pyne, Tyler Buchner, Ron Powlus, and a couple of walk-ons for the start of fall camp — which isn’t exactly an ideal situation. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Irish consider the transfer portal for another quarterback this off-season. We’ll find out in due time.
Welcome to the Irish family, Ron!
Seems like either the coaches are going with my preferred “aggressively overrecruit and push guys off the team after a year or two” strategy… or otherwise I really can’t explain this take other than “he was in the area”. Good for him for getting a scholarship, but, man, woof. Next year might be rough QB wise if this became a necessity.
https://twitter.com/carterkarels/status/1339363203353096193?s=21
Nothing about that story is good! The story is basically “yeah he wasn’t that good in high school but maybe he’ll be good here.” What a weird take.
Plus side is that Brian Kelly on signing day said he thought Phil Jurkovec was better than Trevor Lawrence, so this isn’t even the worst thing he’s said about QBs on signing day lately.
Yikes what happened to the other QB’s again? was it just Jurk that transferred? Then Clark is seriously hurt so we’re left with 2 QB’s (not counting powlus) a soph and a freshmen next year when Book leaves? Did we skip a cycle of getting a guy?
So turns out we didn’t take one in the cycle after book and before Jurk. It was avery davis was considered a dual QB but I doubt we ever really expected him to play QB. So if Clark is seriously injured that’s 3 straight years of QB’s that won’t be able to play for us next year. Yikes. And that’s just one with transfer and one major injury. Seems like you need to take a guy every year no matter what.
Davis played QB his whole freshman year, and played some QB in his sophomore year Blue-Gold Game. He was actually a much more highly rated QB prospect than Ian Book.
He was more highly rated. I don’t remember how long he played QB but I would imagine if they were trying to recruit him and promised they’d give him a shot at QB they would give him a year to help him realize that’s not where his future would be. Who else was in front of him too? Don’t remember.
Davis was a freshman in 2017 behind Wimbush and Book. He only played scout team and didn’t play in any games, but I guess ostensibly he could have been considered 3rd string.
2018 he moved to RB after Jurkovec entered the program and Davis would be have been 4th on the depth chart behind Wimbush-Book-Phil.
He wasn’t ever seriously in any position to get playing time at QB, but I do think when he was recruited, the plan was for Wimbush to eventually graduate and Davis to take over at that time, with Book the #2 QB behind Wimbush then behind Davis.
Do we actually know Clark’s injury is bad or might this be protection against a transfer come spring or summer? Meaning if Buchner wins the job either Clark or Pyne move on.
Seems to be just speculation based on taking such a low-rated prospect so far. It would be a tough argument that you take such a guy based on the likelihood of a true freshmen winning the job when he hasn’t even set foot on campus.
If this kid’s last name wasn’t Powlus, they don’t take him. Therefore, it really doesn’t have much to do with anything in the current QB situation, really. They would have taken him in 2018, 2020, 2022, whenever he was ready.
It looks to me like they felt they had room, so they gave Powlus’s kid a schollie. That happens all the time for coaches kids. I think in general people are reading too much into this. Can’t wait to see RP3 take a few kneel downs at SR day in 2024.
He was not particularly impressive in high school. His Penn High School teams were the worst of my lifetime, and the offense was generally the biggest problem.
I honestly don’t even understand how he is going to “run the scout team” when college football has moved away from pocket passers. He just doesn’t move well at all. He’s very very slow. Like Jimmy Clausen slow; never going to scramble for positive yardage slow.
Ron the Elder works as an Asst AD.
I thought, as with BVG’s kid, that he cannot be a walk-on as that would constitute a form of additional compensation for the family.
No one seems to know for certain, but there’s some belief that Powlus won’t actually count against the scholarship limit because he would be getting free tuition anyway via his father’s employment.
Although now that I think about it, I don’t remember hearing a word about that in the past when other coaches’ sons played for them, so it’s probably not true.
Just to add to the confusion here, Notre Dame used to have a policy that children of all Full-Time Faculty and Staff would get full, free tuition. At some point (I’m spitballing here but I want to say around 2010), that policy changed to only 50% of tuition was covered.
What is up with ND and running back recruiting? It’s looking like Diggs is not going to sign this week, which gives LSU more time to flip him. Edwards is going to Michigan, Shipley to Clemson. You would think they would be tripping over each other to play in Rees’s offense
I agree that it seems like RB should really want to get into this offense. But if you look at it on a case by case basis it’s not quite so shocking.
Shipley- seems to really love Clemson and no official visit because of Covid to get around the other recruits at ND hurt
Edwards- local, hometown school. High school coach is a scUM grad and in several interviews really seemed to be pushing his alma mater.
Diggs- appears to have been as a kid and still is a huge LSU fan so loved finally getting the offer.
Good news it looks like Estime is going to flip, but since he hasn’t yet it is a bit nerve wracking.
The good news with Diggs is that LSU flipped a RB from Alabama yesterday and so they now have 2 RB signed in this class. They probably didn’t know about the flip which is why they offered Diggs about a week ago. So, will Digg’s offer still be committable now that LSU has 2 RB in this class? And will he even want to commit with two other RB in the class?
Obviously we don’t the answers yet but at least there is some good news.
Yep, I think there’s been some bad luck, as well as swinging for the fences. And we did get Tyree last year, one of the undisputed 10 best RBs in the country. In 2018, we would have had Markese Stepp, arguably a top 10 RB in the class, if it wasn’t for grades. If they grab Estime, that’s another guy who could be pushing for top 10 RB in the class.
Great points. As it stands, ND still has Tyree and Kyren both with 4 years of eligibility (though obviously neither are staying 4 more years). And Notre Dame will take a RB this cycle, maybe two still even. I’m not really sweating it. Is kinda odd that with this o-line and all that the stars haven’t aligned for more elite RBs. But maybe soon.
Clemson’s reporter from The Athletic had a good look at Shipley’s recruitment. It was an early Clemson lead, very heavy 90-10 he called it and almost committed early. ND did a great job to get it to 50-50 and really had him thinking but I do think that pandemic forces hurt. Also he wanted his family (grandparents) from the Charlotte area to be able to watch him play, so yet again geography was a disadvantage for ND trying to get talent out of the southeast.
I think we end up signing both Diggs and Estime.
Diggs’ spot in the LSU RB room probably disappeared with the Tigers signing both Armoni Goodwin (#94 overall) and Corey Kiner (#163 overall) yesterday. They’ll probably still recruit him to play LB, but I don’t think he’d go for it.
I agree. I think he just needed to have a few days to process getting the LSU offer and now after Goodwin’s flip to LSU he might need to wait til February just because conversations will need to be had but I think like you said that he will ultimately end up at ND.
Sorry, not sorry.
On an unrelated note, Bob Diaco is now available for the DC opening. Got fired at Purdue after 1 very poor season. Bobby D has sure fallen on difficult times since leaving ND. That whole fake rivalry trophy thing was a big red flag that dude has some uh….. personality issues perhaps?
Diaco would make for a great defensive analyst next year. And that’s it.
I’m willing to bring him back in some capacity. I know he CAN run a great defense with our quality of players. He’s not HC material and he clearly can’t win with terrible talent, but give him ND players and he has succeeded. I’m willing to let him try again