There’s been a decent amount of movement on the board since the last time we checked in on Notre Dame’s 2022 offensive recruiting. The biggest development has nothing to do with individual prospects, though; it’s that the NCAA has decided to finally lift the dead period as of June 1st, which as you might imagine has led to a flurry of official visit scheduling across the country. The Irish staff has set up a gobsmackingly huge month in June on both sides of the ball. For the purposes of the board updates, it likely means things will remain relatively quiet generally as kids wait to make decisions until they get those visits in.

The Offense Board

A reminder on how we do this – we’ll include the entire big board table but only review prospects who are above “Cold” status and who have had actual developments of late. Speaking of which, the temperature scale:

  • Hot means the prospect is on commit watch.
  • Warm means the prospect has Notre Dame in a small final group and/or is a possible Irish lean.
  • Mild/Mild+ means the prospect is in regular contact with the staff and has visited or has firm visit plans.
  • Cool means the prospect has some level of contact with the staff and/or vague visit plans; also the default temperature for most new offers.
  • Cold is a known (or reasonably safely assumed) lack of contact with the staff and/or an elimination.

Also, on the 247 Composite scores: Roughly speaking above .9830 is a five star, above .9500 is a top 100 prospect, above .9200 is a top 200 prospect, and above .8900 is a four star. Those slide around a little within a cycle and from one cycle to the next, but they’re pretty solid ballpark numbers.

Remember that of course we don’t have perfect information on all prospects – we don’t know for sure whether a prospect has or hasn’t talked to the staff outside of what’s reported elsewhere. We don’t know for sure how high prospects are on the staff’s board. We try to make highly-educated guesses at all of it, but we don’t know.

Unit Position 247C First Name Last Name Temp
O OG 0.9557 Gunner Givens Cold
O OG 0.9462 Carson Hinzman Mild+
O OT 0.9952 Zach Rice Mild
O OT 0.9824 Tyler Booker Cold
O OT 0.9784 Joe Brunner Mild
O OT 0.9527 Jacob Allen Cold
O OT 0.9507 Aamil Wagner Mild+
O OT 0.9489 Julian Armella Cold
O OT 0.9382 Billy Schrauth Warm
O OT 0.9112 Jacob Sexton Cold
O OT 0.9009 Jake Taylor Mild
O OT 0.9000 George Fitzpatrick Mild
O OT 0.8739 Aliou Bah Cold
O RB 0.9814 Gavin Sawchuk Mild
O RB 0.9576 Nicholas Singleton Mild
O RB 0.9270 Gi’Bran Payne Cold
O RB 0.9096 Dallan Hayden Cool
O RB 0.8967 Damari Alston Cold
O RB 0.8958 Emeka Megwa Cold
O RB 0.8739 Quinshon Judkins Mild
O RB 0.8709 Zach Evans Cool
O TE 0.9036 Holden Staes Warm
O TE 0.8839 Eli Raridon Mild+
O TE 0.8810 Arlis Boardingham Cold
O TE 0.8784 Jack Nickel Cold
O WR 0.9885 Kevin Coleman Cold
O WR 0.9842 Evan Stewart Cold
O WR 0.9736 Kaleb Brown Cold
O WR 0.9727 Tetairoa McMillan Cold
O WR 0.9696 Brenen Thompson Cold
O WR 0.9688 CJ Williams Warm
O WR 0.9608 Kojo Antwi Cold
O WR 0.9522 Kendrick Law Cold
O WR 0.9484 Tobias Merriweather Mild+
O WR 0.9397 Darrius Clemons Cold
O WR 0.9371 Antonio Williams Cold
O WR 0.9176 Andre Greene Mild
O WR 0.9129 De’Nylon Morrissette Cold
O WR 0.9099 DJ Allen Cold
O WR 0.8977 Nicholas Anderson Mild
O WR 0.8889 Eli King Cold
O WR 0.8756 Joseph Griffin Mild
O WR 0.8743 Jay Fair Cold
O WR 0.8532 Addison Copeland Mild+
O WR 0.0000 Xayvion Bradshaw Mild

On the Board

  • WR Joseph Griffin, 0.8789 rating, #461 overall/#62 position, committed to Boston College but listening
  • TE Jack Nickel, 0.8784 rating, #484 overall/#29 position, decommitted from Notre Dame
  • RB Quinshon Judkins, 0.8739 rating, #528 overall/#39 position

Off the Board

  • WR Tyler Morris, Michigan, 0.9645 rating, # overall/# position
  • QB Gavin Wimsatt, Rutgers (!), 0.9611 rating, # overall/# position
  • WR Kaden Saunders, Penn State, 0.9447 rating, # overall/# position
  • RB Jordan James, Georgia, 0.9277, # overall /# position
  • OT Grant Bingham, Kentucky, 0.8943 rating, # overall/# position
  • WR Jarel Williams, West Virginia, 0.8638 rating, # overall/# position

Quarterback

Commits: Steve Angeli, 0.9124 rating, #230 overall/#11 position
Slots: 1

All I’m going to say here is that the kid who some message board cognoscenti pegged as an elite talent, one that the staff was stupid to ignore in favor of Angeli, just committed to Rutgers.

Running Back

Commits: JD Price, 0.9151, #220 overall/#21 position
Slots: 2

The big development here is the official visit schedule – Dallan Hayden, Nicholas Singleton, and Gavin Sawchuk will visit South Bend in successive weeks in June. Hayden seems to be trending to Ohio State (he wore his own Zeke Elliott jersey for an independent visit there, never a great sign) and it might be hard to keep Pennsylvanian Singleton away from the weirdos in Happy Valley. However, we get the sense that Sawchuk, while still a tough pull, is perhaps more in play than we thought he’d be, so June will be a very interesting month to watch indeed…

New offer Quinshon Judkins is a very interesting prospect but, one would assume, more of a fallback in case the three mentioned above all go elsewhere. Interestingly, Judkins’s offer list is dramatically out of step with his rating – he has offers from Auburn, Florida, Florida State, Miami, Michigan, Nebraska, and Penn State. Also Yale and Vandy, if you’re wondering about his academic profile.

Wide Receiver

Commits: Amorion Walker, 0.8540, #785 overall, #103 position
Slots: 3

CJ Williams (pictured) will also visit in June and, judging from analyst predictions, the Irish are in excellent shape there. In fact momentum seems to be steadily gathering… Tyler Morris suffered what appeared to be a significant knee injury last week and almost immediately afterwards committed to Michigan, who by some reports had eased off on his recruitment. Very interesting there. No doubt the injury played a part in his decision to shut it down… Kaden Saunders is a longtime Penn State commit but had been listening to other teams, particularly Notre Dame. It seems that his openness to other destinations has faded, though, so we’re taking him off the board again…

Expect to see Tobias Merriweather in town in a couple of months. We’ll be watching this recruitment closely as he’s exactly the type of guy Notre Dame needs to be able to pull from the West Coast – top 150 guy, profiles perfectly to the school, perhaps willing to leave the coast if the messaging is right… No real developments with Andre Greene, Nicholas Anderson, or Xayvion Bradshaw other than that all seem to be in regular communication with the staff…

New offer Joseph Griffin is committed to Boston College but may be receptive to the Irish. He picked up an Arizona offer a couple of days after his Notre Dame offer, and some recruiting analysts think his junior film will lead to a lot more. It’ll be interesting to see how they recruit him; I get the sense he’s a Plan B guy, but we’ll see… Addison Copeland recently named a top three of Notre Dame, South Carolina, and Rutgers (to whom he was previously committed). Not a grouping you see very often. Pitt and Penn State are around the edges here too, and some other programs are considering jumping in too.

Tight End

Commits: None
Slots: 2

Jack Nickel was the first member of Notre Dame’s 2022 class, all the way back in July 2020, which made it all the more surprising when he decommitted recently. The staff is still pursuing Holden Staes and Eli Raridon pretty aggressively, to the point where you would imagine they would take both. I think they would’ve kept Nickel in the class if he wanted to stay, but really, it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to be the third tight end in one class. It’s a tough goodbye but I understand it on both ends. Nickel now has plenty of time to find a new landing spot.

Moving on… Raridon just completed an independent visit to Notre Dame. His family is quite familiar with the school, as his father Scott played on the offensive line for Ty Willingham and Charlie Weis and his grandfather was on Lou Holtz’s strength and conditioning staff in 1988. As it looks now, he’ll back for an official in June… All indications are that the Irish are in great shape with Staes, who will also take a June official, possibly the same weekend as Raridon. Coincidence? I think not.

Offensive Line

Commits: OT Joey Tanona, 0.9385, #155 overall/#18 position; OT Ty Chan, 0.9235, #199 overall/#26 position
Slots: 4-5

There has been very little movement with offensive line prospects, with most of them seemingly content to wait until official visit season. Alabama has gained some momentum with Zach Rice lately; his recruitment continues to be a tough read. At various points over the last year or so, it has seemed like each of Notre Dame, Clemson, Ohio State, North Carolina, and Alabama has led. Stay tuned, I guess… We had pretty much written off Joe Brunner but recent scuttlebutt is that he’s looking at a June official to Notre Dame. The Irish are in decent position with Carson Hinzman and better position with Billy Schrauth too; could they really take the top three linemen out of Wisconsin in a single cycle? Eat it, Bucky…

Aamil Wagner picked up an Ohio State offer and seemed to glow about it, which isn’t great. Another thing that isn’t great is that Kiyuanta Goodwin (no Notre Dame offer), a prime target for the Buckeyes at offensive tackle, just committed to Kentucky. One would presume they would then turn up the heat on Wagner. Wagner and his parents have said many times how important academics are, and beyond Jeff Quinn’s usual solid work Wagner has made a connection with Marcus Freeman and Mike Mickens because they all went/go to the same high school. We’ll see if that will be enough to fend off the in-state power…

Nothing much new to report on Jake Taylor; Oklahoma likely still leads, but he still intends to take an official to Notre Dame this summer… George Fitzpatrick seems like he might be a fallback option if the Irish strike out on everyone else. Not bad to have a four-star top 300 fallback though.