Hold up, we’re not done with the 2022 recruiting cycle yet. On Friday evening the Fighting Irish signed their 22nd member of the class as Cincinnati, Ohio running back Gi’Bran (pronounced Juh-Brawn) Payne joined the fold.
Offered by Notre Dame in the summer of 2020, Payne would commit to Indiana the following summer and signed during the early period this past December. After then Indiana running back coach Deland McCullough left Bloomington for South Bend we saw Payne ask out of his NLI with the Hoosiers which was granted.
just because y’all waited..@NDFootball @Hayesfawcett3 pic.twitter.com/3wEQubk7EU
— Gi’Bran Payne🧸 (@upnexxt03) April 15, 2022
He dealt with injuries during his junior and senior seasons after attracting some national attention following his 2019 sophomore season. Following a visit to campus last weekend, Payne decided to pull the trigger and join Notre Dame’s 2022 class.
Recruiting Service Rankings
247Sports Composite — 4 star (.9036 rating), #275 overall, #22 RB, #10 in OH
247Sports — 4 star (90 rating), NR overall, #27 RB, #13 in OH
Rivals — 4 star (5.8 rating), NR overall, #21 RB, #14 in OH
ESPN — 4 star (81 rating), #269 overall, #23 RB, #10 OH
Irish Sports Daily — 4 star (91 rating)
Cohort
In addition to Notre Dame and Indiana, Payne held offers from Alabama, Florida, Michigan, Penn State, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Iowa, Purdue, Cincinnati, and Kentucky among others.
Highlights
Gi’Bran has quick feet and impressive acceleration. He uses a swift and tiny hop step to find open holes with relative ease. He can make a quick bounce and get upfield in a hurry. Gi’Bran has a compact body and shows good balance with a low center of gravity.
He’s a pretty versatile athlete who can catch the ball out of the backfield and played a lot of defense in high school, too. He’s a bit of a mystery as to what his ceiling can be without a ton of upperclassmen tape. However, he showed a lot of talent at a young age and may surprise a lot of people in college.
Impact
Most people are probably thinking, “Why isn’t Notre Dame bringing in an extra receiver for 2022 instead of a running back?” I hear you, and that is probably going to be addressed more so in the transfer market coming up soon. That’s not to say more help wasn’t needed at running back, though. Towards the end of the calendar year there was plenty of talk that the Irish were open to taking a second back in this class, although it never seemed like a huge priority.
At one point, Payne was rated a bit higher in the Composite and he was an absolute steal for Indiana’s class being their 2nd highest rated recruit for 2022. He ends up committing to Notre Dame at an extremely weird time for the 2022 cycle a week before the spring game and likely comes into this upcoming season well behind the 4 other running backs.
Still, he’s an athlete worth bringing in and giving some time to grow in a college strength program and see where he stands a bit down the road. There’s a lot of tools to like and a little extra surprise for the 2022 class.
Welcome to the Irish family, Gi’Bran!
Speaking of recruiting, Rhett is one of first major decommitments in a long time that I can remember (besides the obvious wr one from last year at the last second). I thought I read somewhere a few days ago that it was “mutual” based on “fit” – whatever that means exactly. Weird.
Though finishing with at least 2 CBs including Gray and Micah Bell (newly cbed to ND) would still be a pretty good class with 2 corners in the top 150.
A verbal commitment isn’t worth much these days in some cases, with kids still looking to take official visits to other places despite being “committed” somewhere else. Not just an ND thing, seems to happen a lot.
Definitely a credit to the Freeman recruiting machine that when trouble strikes and your prime CB recruit starts flirting with other places, ND can quickly shift gears to two other top-150 players, who they’re in good shape with like you mention. If this were Brian Kelly days it would be “send in the 3 stars!”
yup absolutely. It’s nothing to worry about exactly. Just a bit of a bummer at a premium position (esp. for us). But I thought it was weird that I read it was mutual based on fit. I wonder what kind of fit. Has Golden coming in changed what we might ask our CBs to do and so since Rhett was still thinking about elsewhere we went ahead and cut the cord or was it some other kind of fit?
I suspect this time has been easier for Freeman because we are already hoping to take 3 corners in this class (I assume anyway) so we were already in the mix with more corners but point taken about Kelly for sure. We are in it for so many more top whatever (top 100, top 150, etc.) players than ever before it seems.
So does that mean we are totally out of it?
What I read on CBS was that the staff said no “committed” prospects were allowed to take official visits. So once he set up an official to UGA, he became uncommitted. It never mentioned whether we were moving on from him completely.
I guess never say never, but looks like he’s gone. He’s checking out other places and Notre Dame is recruiting other people. 247 called it a “parting of the ways” so I don’t think either side is really considering the other at all as they both move forward in different directions.
Makes sense. So…basically… he gone.
Haven’t others guys (Keeley) taken visits though committed ? Isn’t it more of a “if you’re looking we’re looking” type of attitude ND is taking rather than a “nope you’re not a commit anymore” approach ?
Keeley and Peyton Bowen have taken unofficial visits elsewhere. The staff seems to be drawing a line at OVs.
Wonder if that’s why Moore has not yet committed. Thought I read that he wants to enjoy the process and plans on taking all his OVs. He also mentioned that he wasn’t worried about joining early as a QB since any of his desired schools will have the horses for them all to do well.
Do you think that’s a good way to do things? I suppose it can cut both ways. It does make it clear how committed one really is.
The II guys on the podcasts have all but said Moore has silently committed to the coach (e.g., they will stress that he has not *publicly* committed). But, per the commentary above, even verbal commitments only mean so much, and if you’re not willing to go public with it it means even less.
Right it only means so much especially if that means Moore is still taking OVs elsewhere. I suppose a silent commit in this case, given ND’s parameters, means something like: “After I’m done taking all my OVs I expect to come to ND.”
Not sure about fit, but I’m not really too hung up on that. I doubt it’s because Notre Dame didn’t think he would play well, just more ND parting ways and moving on when he’s looking at other places still. He’s doesn’t fit when he’s not actually committed, more than anything on the field…At least the way I was reading it.
When they say “fit” and “mutual” separation, I start to wonder if grades/academics might be an issue. This is just speculation as I don’t have any evidence either way, but it could be a possibility
I actually think this is a big pick up. With the lack of bodies at WR it seems that 2022 will be the year of using many more 2 RB formations. I can see Tyree and Diggs being on the field quite a bit together and then even Estime and Price seeing time potentially since I think Tyree should see around 12-15 snaps in the slot or in a 2 RB set this season.
The issue with only having 4 RB’s in available is that one injury makes doing a lot of 2 RB formations a bit more difficult. Even if Payne is just an insurance policy this year and never sees the field I think it is important to have him just in case. He seems like he is talented enough to be able to handle a handful of snaps by midseason if he needed to.
I would love to see them put Tyree into a Deebo Samuel type role (even though they are very different players). Primary position is something like slot WR, but gets about as many carries as catches. Or, if he’s good enough, just a straight up full time move to slot. If I remember correctly (BIG if) he had a similar role in the bowl game.
Anything to give the WRs a boost in talent and decrease in snaps. So while a WR would be more exciting, the more offensive skill talent this year, the better.
What is going to be weird for the RBs is next year. Everyone is back (assuming Tyree doesn’t go pro). I feel like 4 good RBs in 2 classes isn’t sustainable. As stated, Gi’Bran should be well behind the others at this point and has durability concerns. Will he want to be the 5th back 2 years in a row?
I suspect one of Diggs, Estime, Price, or Payne will be gone before 2023. No idea which one, and it will probably be good roster attrition as the cream will rise above the chaff.
Overall I agree, but I want to pick out one part of this especially. The cream will rise above the chaff, lol. That’s one of the best mixed metaphors I’ve read in a long time and I’m totally going to use it whether it was intentional or not. I choose to believe intentional (and thus hilarious). Thanks for the laugh. If it wasn’t intentional, I promise I’m laughing WITH you.
Wait, maybe it’s not a mixed metaphor if we’re talking about cold cereal…
Hahahahaha. Definitely intentional. I am glad someone enjoyed it!
After listening to the Inside the Garage crew interview Luke Kuechly last week and recounting the headache inducing decision by ND not to offer him a spot it feels instinctually good to get a guy from Cincinnati this week. I don’t know that the kid will ever develop into a world beater or anything, but karmically it seems like a good add, and having a fifth guy in the RB room also seems correct.
Didn’t listen to the podcast, but I was curious about Kuechly’s recruiting ranking after reading the series about “your highest recruit” for the ACC. IIRC he was a 3 star only, which is a little surprising.
Yeah, seemed like no one really picked up on how good he was. Believe he was a day 1 starter in college, over 100 tackles and all for three years and right to the NFL.
I looked it up, it’s crazy he’s still just 30 years old. I know he retired young but it seems like he should be like 35 or something.
MaxPreps followed his program around, ND recruited a QB and OL from his school in the 2010 class (one class after Luke), and everyone knew the Kuechly was the best guy to play there since at least Rocky Boiman. My contention is that his misevaluation is due to the explosion of camps around that time and him only participating in local ones, but still, it was indefensible at the time, Luke has always been an unfathomably good football player.
Wiltfong just CBed Carr (5 star QB) to the Irish for 2024.
This would be championship QB recruiting if we could pull in back to back classes top 5 (and 5 star) QBs with Moore and Carr.
I actually wonder if the transfer rule will help make it a bit easier to continually recruit elite QB talent year after year. E.g. Carr may not care as much if they took Moore the year before because if Carr can come in (or at least after a year or whatever the QB thinks is a reasonable time-frame) and beat him out then it’s his job. If not Carr can relatively easily transfer.
Wonder if this would entice Rees to stick around longer (and maybe wait for more of a legit top tier job). Who wouldn’t want to work with this level of talent at the QB position?
It would be really fun to see what TFR and HCMF could recruit with a 5 star QB committed from the very beginning of the cycle.
And it would be really really fun to take highly sought QBs from Detroit and Saline (even closer to AA than Detroit) away from UM in back to back years.
Yes, it would be a lot of fun to see that!
Not to mention one of them is a kind of legacy recruit for Michigan (Carr is the grandson of Lloyd Carr).
This would almost be better than beating them on the field in a 37-0 shut out (remember the #6) in the final game of the series for four years.