The 2022 Notre Dame class picked up its fourth linemen recently when weakside defensive end Aiden Gobaira announced for the Irish. The 6’6″, 235-pound Virginian joined recent commit Tyson Ford in the 2022 defensive line group. Ford is more acclaimed at the moment, but there are some similarities between them – both are long, quick, fast, and powerful. Gobaira needs some refinement, which we’ll get into below, but has has a lot of promise.
As with many other prospects around the country, Gobaira didn’t have any camps available last summer and also didn’t have a 2020 season. However, Notre Dame offered all the way back in May 2020, so the staff must’ve liked his sophomore film enough to pull the trigger then. He finally made it to campus for an independent visit at the beginning of February and committed within a couple of days. The campus clearly resonated for him and Mom is, um, excited…
— Aiden Gobaira (@aiden__gobaira) February 6, 2021
My sons going to play football at Notra Dame!! This young man never ceases to amaze me. I’m so beyond proud elated beside myself with joy and emotion. I couldn’t have planned it. I love you baby!!! Be who you are meant to be. A Sicilian / Dominican w Lebanese Fighting Irish!!!!
— Dignastar2003 (@dignastar2003) February 6, 2021
Sicilian/Dominican/Lebanese? How do I get invited to dinner at their house?
Also, Gobaira is on the right in the header photo. Five-star ND OL target Zach Rice is on the left, but don’t get your hopes up – he’s probably going to land at North Carolina. Big dude though.
Recruiting Service Rankings
247Sports Composite — 3 star (.8839 rating), #377 overall, #23 WDE, #12 in VA
247Sports — 3 star (89 rating), NR overall, #15 WDE, #10 in VA
Rivals — 3 star (5.7 rating), NR overall, #26 WDE, #16 in VA
ESPN — Not evaluated
Irish Sports Daily — 4 star (90 rating)
Cohort
In addition to Notre Dame, Gobaira holds offers from Arizona State, Duke, Louisville, Michigan State, Penn State, Vanderbilt, Virginia, and Virginia Tech, among others.
Highlights
Standard caveat that this is sophomore film and the next time we’ll see anything from him will be two years removed from this. Now, with that out of the way… I really like Gobaira’s first step and how he breaks down in the backfield when appropriate. He shows plus quickness and speed, and absolutely outstanding hustle – it’s no small thing for a defensive end to chase down a sweep from the weak side, or to be the first man down in kick coverage. As a pass rusher I think there’s quite a bit of promise there. I’d like to see a little more of a plan with his hands but they’re active and violent, which is a nice start. He uses that athleticism to shoot past tackles and through gaps with impressive ease, and he has enough strength to hold the point of attack pretty well against the run. One negative that stands out is he plays really tall in this film – I’d definitely like to see him use more leverage as a senior. He doesn’t show much bend here either, but again, he was a sophomore. He has certainly developed physically since then, so it’ll be very interesting to see how his game has developed as well.
Impact
Man, I don’t think I can make any kind of reasonable projection using year-plus old sophomore film. A bit broken record-ish, I know, but it is what it is. I think Gobaira certainly has the frame and athletic skills to be an eventual starter at end. How soon and how good a starter, we can revisit after his senior season. We know the Irish just landed a big, athletic kid who hustles his tail off. You can build a pretty good team out of guys like that.
Welcome to the Irish family, Aiden!
I’m glad you mentioned the the kid on the left was. Having no idea, I was jokingly (kind of) going to ask if we could please recruit him as well. Now that I know he is a 5 star, I won’t hold my breath. But why would a 5 star go to UNC? Unless he’s also going to play power forward.
They have an active and charismatic veteran HC who always is DGT on the recruiting trail. (Must be nice..)
“Nice” is a fair description of life under Mack Brown, who loses about 4 games a year at UNC and got the bum’s rush down in Austin because he kept frittering away all of the talent he recruited.
Mack has always been a very good recruiter, at UNC and at Texas. In his two full recruiting cycles of his second act in Chapel Hill, he has signed two five stars (CB Tony Grimes in 2020 and DT Keeshawn Silver in 2021) and four other top 100 kids. Something about him resonates with kids, plus there’s a natural fit aspect to it – Rice is about a two hour drive from UNC and went to a bunch of games last season.
Also, FWIW, he’s trending to UNC even though Alabama and Ohio State both really want him. I guess Saban and Day are short on charisma too.
Recruiting rankings of kids are probably going to be extremely volatile this year with a lot of kids missing seasons and/or camps for a whole year. It’ll be interesting to see where these guys land. Perhaps he’ll move up the rankings. (which also means this year’s incoming freshmen may be the least accurately ranked class – for everyone – in a long time – a little caveat when we are talking about rankings in the next 4 years).
Are those Rivals/ESPN rankings correct? How is he #3 in MO but #10 in VA by 247?
Ha, no they’re not. I was heavily multitasking yesterday and missed updating those lines. Fixed now.
I would expect the actual rankings to be an utter mess as well this cycle. Every service is in the same position – no camps, often no season, no chance to see the kids in person or even see video of how they’ve developed. There are going to be a lot of prospects in the lower rankings who rocket up if things open back up again. For comparison, Kyle Hamilton was around #1000 overall at this point in the 2019 cycle. He needed camps to get up to a top 300 player, and his senior season to get up to five-star status.
I’ve read, Virginia is going to have a spring season. (6 games) So we should have more film before next fall.
The first play in his film got my attention. He just looked like a DE on that play. The way he zeroed in on the QB.
Yes, VA is scheduled to start later this month. It’s still very touch and go though, so we’ll see how it works out..
That said, really like this, especially as the second DE add for the class behind a top 125 player in Ford. 6’6 + athleticism. I agree with Brendan that this kid could be a riser or be expected to outperform his rankings now, since we really don’t have that much on him just yet.
DL recruiting has been on a tear lately, so I think they’ve earned benefit of respecting it. Do like that all the guys they’re taking clearly fit a profile (6’5+ and having physical frames/potential).
Elston has always done a good job coaching up the DL. It has been a long time since we had guys playing there that looked like they didn’t belong.