In a development that we can quite fairly say surprised not just us but the entire college football recruiting world, blue-chip offensive lineman Aamil Wagner announced his commitment to Notre Dame today. Usually the recruiting sites have content pre-written because the recruit has tipped them off, and when the announcement comes they just push all that content live. There is was a rather noticeable dearth of pre-written material out shortly after Wagner committed, because nobody had any clue it was happening. In fact, 247 Sports national analyst Steve Wiltfong hinted that not even the Notre Dame staff knew this commitment was coming. 247’s Kentucky guy, Josh Edwards, said he found out 15 minutes before the announcement and sat on it, much to his credit. For those of you who don’t follow recruiting super closely, I can’t tell you how unlikely it is in the modern age that a kid could keep it that close to the vest. Impressive and, for Irish fans in this case, fun!
In the 2021 class the Irish pulled Ohio State legacy and Columbus native Lorenzo Styles away from the Buckeyes. Earlier this year they landed the commitment of five-star Cleveland area defensive lineman Brennan Vernon, who Ohio State pursued heavily. Now they have Cincinnati native Wagner, who at one time was considered automatic for Ohio State, in the 2022 class. Heady times indeed. Despite all the Ohio connections, the general consensus was heavily in favor of Kentucky for Wagner – his older brother Ahmad played there and just joined the staff as a grad assistant. This commitment is just a massive surprise and a big win for Jeff Quinn and the entire Notre Dame staff.
I love Mom’s reaction here – in fact everyone but Dad looked genuinely surprised:
#BREAKING: 4⭐️ offensive tackle @AamilWagner has committed to Brian Kelly and @NDFootball 🍀
Notre Dame now has the No. 3 class in the country for the 2022 cycle 🔥@TomLoy247 pic.twitter.com/sc6w2WMV5P
— 247Sports (@247Sports) November 11, 2021
If you let God decide you’ll never choose wrong #committed ☘️ pic.twitter.com/4qjz3biyiM
— Aamil Wagner (@AamilWagner) November 11, 2021
Recruiting Service Rankings
247Sports Composite — 4 star (.9448 rating), #134 overall, #12 OT, #6 in OH
247Sports — 4 star (94 rating), #116 overall, #11 OT, #6 in OH
Rivals — 4 star (5.8 rating), #202 overall, #23 OT, #9 in OH
ESPN — 4 star (83 rating), #116 overall, #18 OT, #5 in OH
Irish Sports Daily — 4 star (94 rating), #47 overall
Cohort
In addition to Notre Dame, Ohio State, and Kentucky, Wagner holds offers from Arizona State, Auburn, Duke, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Oregon, Penn State, Stanford, and Virginia Tech, among many others.
Highlights
Wagner has posted some short individual game highlights to his Hudl feed but no season highlights, so this is his junior season film instead. Wagner needs to show way more bend in his lower body or he’s going to lose leverage consistently at the next level. Let’s get that out of the way first. I’m pretty confident it’s just a technique issue rather than a physical limitation though, given how good of an athlete he is. In fact he looks a little better in that regard in those senior highlights. Moving on… That athleticism at his size is what had staffs around the country drooling over him. He has very light feet and man, he can move. He pulls a couple of times on this video . If you really want to see him run, check out this 25 second video from a game this year, in which he makes a block 45 yards downfield. I mean come on. A safety in downfield recovery mode shouldn’t have to deal with a rogue offensive lineman, yet there he is.
He also has a rather hilariously large desire to hit people. He needs to fix his leverage and get his hands away from his body quicker off the snap, but he has athleticism and attitude that can’t be taught. The biggest question on him is probably his size – listed at 6’6″ and a svelte 265 pounds, it’s fair to wonder how long it will take him to get around 300 pounds. It happened for Joe Alt in less than a year though and, as you can see in the header photo here, Aamil’s pops is, uh, not a small man. So there’s plenty of reasonable cause for optimism there.
Impact
As we hinted at just now, Wagner will almost certainly need some time to add good weight and hone his technique before he’ll be ready to get on the field. Fortunately, assuming health, the Irish offensive line looks to be very well set up for the next couple of seasons – Blake Fisher, Rocco Spindler, Zeke Correll, Andrew Kristofic, and Joe Alt could all start together through 2023 (Kristofic and Correll’s fifth year and Fisher, Spindler, and Alt’s junior year). I think Wagner has a great foundation to build toward a starting role as an upperclassman, most likely on the right side.
Welcome to the Irish family, Aamil!
You can never have too many OL.
Speaking of…any word on Schrauth? I saw some recent crystal ball predictions for him to ND, but would ND still take him after Wagner joined?
Pretty sure they would take him. Equally confident nobody anywhere has any idea what he’s going to do.
Prister has gushed that Scrauth would be NDs best guard prospect since Q. Nelson. Ya, they’d take him. Strange recruitment? True dat.
Well, that’s definitely a solid projection, coming from the guy that told us Fisher would definitely never play tackle and would need a couple of years to be ready, Diggs shies away from contact, and Ewell would be a star.
Schrauth is good and I’d love to land him. I’d also like to see what we have in Spindler before I’d be comfortable calling Schrauth the best since Q (who, it should be noted, redshirted like Rocco is doing). Or even Banks, for that matter.
You’re right that is a projection. I guess when you’re being asked for your opinion on every recruit you’ll make some errors. He had high praise for Spindler too.
“I’d also like to see what we have in Spindler before I’d be comfortable calling Schrauth the best since Q”. This would not be a projection.
Clarifying a bit… Prister has been very, very wrong on some of his evals, to the point that I’ve occasionally wondered if he’s even watched the film. With Fisher I think he saw a big kid and that was that. With Diggs I have no idea what he saw – their own national analyst wrote that he’s a north-south runner who “relishes contact.”
The part of it that bugs me is that Tim takes little digs at the kids – Fisher will have a hard time getting on the field because he’s too active on Twitter (seriously) and too fat, Diggs’s dancing means he might be soft, etc. There are other guys who are wrong on prospects, but that stuff gets me. He was down on Fisher from Day 1 because of his Twitter activity. He’s too old school to see straight on some of these kids.
In Prister’s film room analysis he didn’t say Diggs was soft. Nor did he even imply it. (Prister, “Diggs relishes contact as a blocker”, “Diggs is a dynamic athlete who shows a willingness, at least at times, to burst through the barricade.”) He said he’d need to change his style some at the college level. He said he likes to kick it outside at the HS level for the home run and will need to work between the tackles more in college. “Dancing” and “soft” were never mentioned. His review of Diggs film was very positive.
Many thought Fisher would need time to reshape his body. When Fisher first committed, it sure looked like he needed to. Many were wrong a year and a half later. I have a hard time believing you haven’t exaggerated his twitter comment.
Psych autorec. Very psyched about Wagner too!
He looks like a DE
He’s a legit 6’6″ though, I think he’ll be able to fill out. And, as noted, look at Dad. Jamie U at ISD really, really likes him.
Jamie in the comments there:
“A meaner Ronnie Stanley is his potential.”
A 1st rounder but meaner??? Yes please
Yeah. I didn’t mean anything negative by my comment, in fact, quite the opposite. He looks like an NFL DE.
Weight for OTs never worries me. If he were a guard, then I might be concerned.
In the video, the look on the woman to our left’s face is interesting. You can tell she wasn’t expecting this and she’s thinking; “really?”
(a) I don’t think that’s a woman, I think that’s his younger sister.
(b) The entire recruiting world, not just ND sites, saw his commitment to Kentucky as a foregone conclusion. I really think his father is the only person he let know, unless he was also surprised and is just really good at hiding it. The ND staff found out the same time all of us did. Really remarkable for him to pull that off.
Looking at the headline photo with him and his folks… can we get his dad on scholarship too? My man looks like he can down block a nose tackle into the sidelines
My man looks like he would knock you on your backside and expect you to thank him for it, lol.
My guess is Mom wanted ND and in the end Mom got her way. I bet Aamil got his favorite dinner last night.
Dang, Sonny Styles committed to Ohio State. That stings. Hopefully Freeman can reel in Peyton Bowen instead now.
That’s a huge blow. Did something happen too? For some reason on 247 they no longer list him as a “prospect” for ND. And I thought I saw he was planning on committing in early December.
I should add, it’s a huge blow because that was the kind of player we needed to make up ground on those elite few teams – not only because he’s an elite player (top 10 overall) but also because it takes one away from OSU.
I don’t think anything happened, he’s still a tOSU legacy with family connections and from Ohio. Those guys just end up at tOSU as a rule. Lorenzo is the exception, not Sonny. It stings for ND, like you said they need players like this to get to the top but they’re not gonna win every recruiting battle. Onto the next one, hopefully ND can get Carnell Tate.
Pete Sampson had a list of recent brothers were one went to ND and one went to tOSU, and for some reason the older brother goes to Notre Dame and the younger brother goes to Ohio State. Not sure why that is, but it’s weird like that. Rod/Jaylon Smith are a big outlier (thank goodness). Shayne Simon, Eichenberg, Daniel Cage and Mike Heuerman, all their brothers went to tOSU, and I believe they were all younger brothers too. Weird coincidence, too bad the Styles are joining the list, but it sure isn’t rare for brothers to split colleges between these two.
Assuming we don’t land Nwankpa (which looks increasingly unlikely), this might be the biggest recruiting loss for ND since… I don’t even know how long. Randy Moss?
Also, lol, I just went on 247 and their Sonny Styles thread has 310 posts, which is about 150 more posts than the longest thread I’ve ever seen before.
Wow, that’s a lot of yappin. Someone said that fanbase was going to absolutely melt down if he didn’t go there. I think he’s become bigger than 1 recruit and like a referendum on the whole program right now. Which of course is silly, but so are people that get too wrapped up in HS recruiting.
To me this is easier to take seeing that this one ND was never going to win. If playing with his brother
PLUS Marcus Freeman’s recruiting
PLUS the Kyle Hamilton effect right in his face
If that wasn’t enough to get him to Notre Dame…Like, literally nothing would have. Just always was destined to stay home, so it is what it is. That’s less of a “loss” to me than even a Paulsen Adebo that verbals and takes it back or Aaron Lynch which, I guess is technically a recruiting win, but doesn’t feel like one. I’m sure there’s more heartbreakers since Moss, and even he wasn’t a loss since it just wasn’t going to work out in that day and age.
Yeah, I don’t really think this is particularly surprising. His brother is only at Notre Dame because OSU wouldn’t take him as a wideout (because they had 3 other higher-ranked receivers that year, lol; it’s not fair). Unless he wanted to play with his brother, presumably the factors that made Lorenzo want to go to OSU would also apply to Sonny.
I’m not sure if Wagner is originally from Cincinnati or something, but Huber Heights is a suburb of Dayton, which is decidedly not Cincinnati, much to my dismay.