The Notre Dame faithful received more good news Wednesday night when blue-chip defensive lineman Boubacar Traore gave his verbal commitment to the Fighting Irish. The 6’4″/250-pounder out of West Roxbury, MA continues the Irish staff’s strong week on the recruiting trail by becoming the 11th commit in Notre Dame’s recruiting class of 2023 — a class which currently ranks #1 in the nation per the 247Sports Composite Team Rankings.
BREAKING: #NotreDame has landed a commitment from Boubacar Traore, one of the top defensive linemen in the country.
A terrific win for Al Washington, Marcus Freeman, Al Golden and Chad Bowden.
Story: https://t.co/mwpgMSUzEX@24era24#IrishIllustrated @247Sports pic.twitter.com/kAwbh8EnLf
— Tom Loy (@TomLoy247) April 27, 2022
Those of you who follow my way-too-early recruiting guesses may recognize Boubacar’s name. I had him pegged into the Irish class at the time as he had just recently backed off his commitment to Boston College. Al Washington and Marcus Freeman have been making him a major priority for a good while now. After his first visit to campus earlier this week, Boubacar had seen everything he needed to shut things down and make a commitment to the Fighting Irish.
Recruiting Service Rankings
Rivals —Â 4 star (5.8 rating), #224 overall, #16 DL, #4 in MA
ESPN —Â 4 star (82 rating), #211 overall, #29 DL, #4 in MA
247Sports — 4 star (93 rating), #88 overall, #10 DL, #3 in MA
247Sports Composite — 4 star (.9351), #153 overall, #22 DL, #3 in MA
On3 — 4 star (94 rating), #83 overall, #11 DL, #3 in MA
Irish Sports Daily — 4 star (91 rating)
Cohort
In addition to Notre Dame and Boston College, Boubacar also holds offers from Michigan, Pittsburgh, and UConn. Not the kind of offer list a top 200-level prospect usually has, but keep in mind he committed super early to Boston College (back in August of 2020) and it was pretty obvious that he was a heavy Irish lean after he de-committed from the Eagles about a month and a half ago. He also missed some time his junior season with a foot injury, so the available film on him is a bit older.
Highlights
Boubacar displays some serious potential as a pass-rusher in his Sophomore highlights. He’s got a really nice blend of speed, power, and quickness that a lot of guys his size lack. He shows great twitch and burst off the line, which is a major plus at this stage. He’s a bit raw in his technique in this film and depends primarily upon his athleticism and strength to beat opposing blockers, but that’s to be expected at this stage. The physical tools are all there, the technique will come in time with coaching.
Impact
This is an incredibly strong defensive line group that Notre Dame currently has committed in the class of 2023. Keon Keeley (#9 overall), Brenan Vernon (#85), and Boubacar Traore (#153) make up a formidable group on their own, but the Irish don’t appear to be done yet. They’re still very much involved with defensive end Jason Moore (#50 overall) and DT Devan Houstan (#190), and I’m guessing the Irish land at least one of those two.
As it stands right now, it looks like Traore will play either the strong-side end spot or 3-tech defensive tackle for Notre Dame. That would require some bulking up, but he’s got the frame and plenty of time to get there. This is a guy that has multi-year starter and eventual draft pick potential. Great pickup for Marcus Freeman and Co.
Welcome to the Irish family, Boubacar!
Probably just a coincidence that the recruiting, which was a known handicap at ND, has seemingly picked up after BK left?
Marcus Freeman is shopping down a different aisle than Brian Kelly did. Brian Kelly has a new aisle now… I think it is the one with the Cajun seasoning in it
BK was not an elite recruiter, but the idea that he was an active negative is sour grapes. The bump in recruiting came from the addition of MF, not the subtraction of BK. Our commits have certainly not been better since BK left.
Defensive recruiting picked up immediately following MF’s arrival and has been growing steadily. On D, 4 out of our 5 top commits were in the fold under BK, and we aren’t likely to add anyone higher ranked than Sneed or Keeley this year.
Offensive ‘crootin’ has not improved, yet. We have lost as many offensive skill recruits (Williams/Walker) as we have gained since BK left (James/Payne).
MF is a much much much better recruiter than BK. I believe he will positively impact offensive recruiting in this class. He has by all accounts improved our chances of signing a better offensive class than normal, if for no other reason than he makes sure it’s a priority for the whole staff. But the current commits don’t reflect that.
I am an ND fan, which has turned me into a significant pessimist. I’ve seen plenty of offseason top classes that finish #10. So far, I don’t see anything on defense that makes me think we are better off without BK (we are NOT worse off). Offense is still completely up in the air, and really comes down to WRs and Dante Moore, as our TEs, RBs, and OL won’t be any better than past years.
Honestly, the biggest impact in recruiting is probably going to be Stuckey over Del. And chances are Del was gone no matter what.
Getting or not getting Dante Moore will be the big signal in whether we’ve properly turned the corner in recruiting. They have a great collection of good players right now (if they can hold onto them – another thing that will hopefully improve). But a truly elite, top 5 overall, 5 star quarterback – which usually results in WR talent coming along for the ride – would be something we haven’t been able to do under Kelly.
Fully agree. And as pessimistic as I am. I am cautiously optimistic about that.
But of course, won’t be surprised if/when it doesn’t happen. Anytime I think good things are coming for ND, I get a pre-emptive OMB feeling.
Honestly, we were losing CJ Williams and Amorion Walker whether BK was staying at ND or not. The writing was on the wall for those two already by the time BK left.
True. And by all accounts, this class should be better on offense. But those are predictions.
To suggest recruiting is better since BK left, is not a reflection of the actual state of our commitments, which don’t look any better on offense that past years. I’m not even convinced we are in better position on offense than past years at this time (I wouldn’t expect to be given a whole new staff).
People like to act as though BK was a trash coach and a trash recruiter because he left us. And I’m tired of it. I have no love for him, but it’s objectively wrong. He was a great, not elite, coach, and a quite good, not great recruiter.
Our ceiling has been elevated, no question. But as of right now, just our ceiling.
On your third paragraph, I pretty much agree, and a few general thoughts:
-Kelly is a very good coach who is very far away from being a great coach. He’s weird like that. I wasn’t alive in the 70s, but it feels like he’s fairly close to Dan Devine — he could have backed into a national title at ND if things broke jussssssst the right way but they didn’t for him. That is in no way a knock on the 1977 team.
-Collectively, ND should ignore the pissing match that Kelly is currently trying to draw us into for whatever reason. Freeman has done a great job of this; the beat writers, not so much.
-LSU fans are going to learn the hard way that Kelly means exactly what he says. If he says that he likes not having to get onto a plane to recruit, that isn’t a good thing for you, LSU.
How can you call Kelly not a great coach? He is very clearly a top 6-7 coach in CFB. He is not elite/NC level, but there’s what, 5 other coaches who have won a playoff game? He’s definitely at the top of the next tier. That’s great in my book.
I think we basically agree. What you’re calling elite is what I’m calling great.
Yup. Just replied to the wrong comment about that. I think I missed the Dan Devine comparison.
The problem with Kelly that ACS is getting at (and I’m inclined to agree) is that he is basically great but not great enough to beat other great coaches. Head to head I’d basically always take him to lose to Saban/Day/Dabo(hey he got one!)/Jimbo/Smart/Urban/etc. Those are great coaches, you may say, and yes they are, they’re basically Kelly’s nearest peers. The frustrating part is he seems pretty awful head to head against them
He came in with a good enough game plan/prep to be very competitive in a couple of those games (Jimbo in Tallahassee 2014, Smart in South Bend 2017, Athens 2019). But yes, he more often got embarrassed.
but that’s what it basically means to be a top 6-10 coach; coaches 1-5 are better than you. And in college football where the talent is so lopsided outside of the top 3 each year, it’s not super surprising that a coach 6-10 is not particularly competitive with coaches 1-5.
Kinda, except for three things: (1) that’s quite a chasm between 5 and 6 or whatever and that’s frustrating to be on the on the wrong side of it, (2) it presumes who the elite coaches are is stagnant when it’s not [e.g., Jimbo arguably isn’t there whereas in 2014 he was, Les Miles would have once been then fell off, etc.] and (3) the biggest thing that really separate us from them is the recruiting gap and it looks like a lot of that gap falls on Kelly.
We can do a whole lot worse than BK and the BK era, especially late BK era. We might have just set ourselves up for that, though I hope not. But I also did not want to really be wed to BK and getting smashed by BamClemHio State forever
Yeah. I agree with all this. It’s probably just semantics on what great means. To some great means the absolute best. To me it just means really good. For example, I would consider Frank Beamer a great coach. I think BK was/is better than him. ACS even compares him to Dan Devine. Definitely a great coach in my book.
Great = Really good, Really good = ???
Offensive recruiting hasn’t seen an improvement yet, but it most likely will.
And honestly, the writing was on the wall for CJ Williams and Amorion Walker even before BK left.
“Defensive recruiting picked up immediately following MF’s arrival and has been growing steadily. On D, 4 out of our 5 top commits were in the fold under BK, and we aren’t likely to add anyone higher ranked than Sneed or Keeley this year.“
This is definitively true then 2 paragraphs later you say you don’t think defensive recruiting will be better without BK. I guess defensive recruiting was good enough with BK +MF but was definitely not pre MF. in that way yes defensive recruiting will be better without BK. the clark lea classes left a lot to be desired in upper echelon talent and position groups (lb what’s up). Offensive recruiting was pretty darn good so agree not a ton of areas to improve, elite qb and more consistent wr recruiting, but then again rb recruiting in denison was atrocious and BK seemed content with that.
I should say, I think it will continue to improve purely because of MF. It will be better without BK, because it will continue to improve as it has since MF joined. But it won’t be better because BK is gone. Correlation, not causation.
Maybe MF can raise the D recruiting higher than he could have as DC, because he is the HC. But he was already recruiting at an elite level, and it could also be a negative for purely D recruiting because he has to devote time to all the positions.
Hmmm… Yes and no. You’re right that Kelly wasn’t an anchor that directly dragged down recruiting by being bad at it. I would argue though that he did indirectly drag down recruiting by not being willing or able to do certain things to be better at it. And I fully admit that I was a relative BK apologist on recruiting – I thought things could be better than they were but not by much, and Freeman has proven that to be very, very wrong.
As for this class, I also have been here many times before, but this class is markedly different. We have an Excel workbook that we use to track the Big Board and compile a whole bunch of stats and other context around the current class. One of the tabs in that workbook tracks the current commits, the guys that are seriously on the board, and the average 247 Composite score for a pessimistic, optimistic, and reasonable close to the class.
The class average now is .9401; our current pessimistic projection puts the class average at .9337. The Kelly era high was .9230 in the 2013 class, while the internet recruiting era high was Weis’s excellent 2008 class at .9310 (Floyd, Crist, Rudolph, etc.). Which means that our pessimistic outlook has Freeman posting the best class of the internet era in his first bite of the apple.
The pessimistic projection assumes that we would whiff on almost all the top 150 kids we’re considered the leader for right now; to get the average below the 2008 class, we’d also have to replace them with a handful of mid-level three stars. The reasonable projection yields a .9434 class average and a 247C class score of 308.78, which would’ve ranked #3 or #4 over the each of the last several cycles.
We’ll have more about this in its own post soon, but there is tremendous momentum for ND right now and a marquee weekend coming up on campus on June 10th. There’s a massive visit list already and it’s a reasonable bet that some big commitments will come out of that weekend.
WOW.
Weis’s 2008 class is something that is very, very hard for Kelly to explain when he’s suggesting, as he is now, that you can’t really recruit at a top-flight level at ND.
Yea, though weren’t Weis’s classes filled with top-end offensive players (perhaps because for a handful of years he was considered an offensive mastermind)? I wonder if Weis would have been able to keep it up after the sheen wore off his mastermindness. But it’s still true that Weis was able to do it for a few years. And the next guy seems to be able to do it even more. So it does seem to be clearly exposing Kelly’s weakness in recruiting (perhaps especially as a lack of emphasis when he was hiring assistants).
People will point out that the class was top heavy or loaded only at some positions but /shrug, Kelly didn’t manage that really either, not in the over the top way Weis did
I mean Kelly really had better classes than Weis overall unless one thinks that Kelly just developed better. But while Weis got a lot of top recruits a lot of them really didn’t pan out. Is it just development? or fit? or scouting? I don’t know.
Kelly was much better at building depth than Weis, which mattered quite a lot. I think that was a huge part of the reason that ND started being able to survive injuries/transfers/suspensions without collapsing a la 2014.
But Weis recruiting a higher-ranked class, coming off a 3-9 season, to a less attractive ND program, than Kelly ever recruited in his 12 years puts the lie to what Kelly is telling any reporter who will listen right now.
Hopefully we’ll get our QB in Moore but are we going to get enough WRs? How many can/should/will we take given the horrific numbers we have there?
And the same for corners? I know we are in on a few but how many blue-chip corners can/should/will we take given the dearth of talent currently there?
I think we were all BK apologists to some degree with recruiting and an annoying trend has occurred since his departure like juicebox mentions of rewriting his history. I think most of the beat writers have been guilty of this to some degree, airing out laundry after he’s gone, but mostly being apologists in real time. Having said that the sampson article about tyson ford on the athletic was a pretty damning indictment of BK in real time and the ND staff had to crank up the spin machine to rebuke that. If sampson was willing to go with that during BK tenure…
What Tyson ford article from the athletic are you thinking of?
I mean it’s also not super surprising that journalists go soft on a coach while he’s the coach. They don’t want to have an adversarial relationship because they rely on him to give them access. So it makes some sense that more of the “truth” would come out when it no longer affects their jobs.
Sampson wrote an article soon after Tyson Ford committed (Jan. 2021) that basically said Ford, a one-time OU pledge (not least because he’d talked to Lincoln Riley several times), wanted to come to ND but he couldn’t get the time of day from Brian Kelly. Basically had no relationship with him at all. Marcus Freeman called Ford right after getting the DC job and, with an assist from Mike Elston, basically swung him to South Bend by himself.
Eminently understandable, especially when that coach that had just delivered the most successful 4 year run in maybe 4 decades, had just picked up the hottest DC/recruiter in the market, and looked ready to keep it going for another 3-4 years…
Yea by going soft I mean not pointing out legit criticisms when they are there to point out. But it’s true that was less to criticize in the last 4 year.
I’m still one that holds that Kelly was a great coach/head of program. I think we all agree he wasn’t the best recruiter ever but that doesn’t mean he’s not a top 5, top 10 coach. It’s not like there are a boatload of other coaches/schools doing elite jobs (like Bama, OSU, Georgia).
I agree:
In fact, it feels that bringing up those little things might be a little disingenuous since there was always that large contingent at the other site looking for any reason to complain.
Now of course – different story. I enjoyed most of the CBK run and I will now enjoy his pain. I will enjoy the 0-fer X where x is only dependent on how long it goes before he gets bounced.
Totally agree it’s surprising they wouldn’t go after him, which is what made the sampson article all the more jarring
I admit to being a BK apologist. I often saw the players that we recruited turn out higher than the star level indicated, especially in the LB and D-Line corps. However, looking at Brendan’s comment above about the rating of the classes and the trajectory this one is on is eye opening. I don’t think BK is/was a bad recruiter, however, I also don’t think he was recruiting to win a national championship. The only story I heard about going after the recruit ND wanted that sticks with me, was Diaco sitting outside Ishaq Williams door to get in there at 4:30 am and reflipping Stephon Tuit. I haven’t seen/heard that kind of commitment to recruiting in the BK era otherwise. I think Marcus Freeman is bringing that and expects his staff to as well.
So which positions are better today than 6 months ago simply from having BK gone?
The defense is a push. MF has been killing it for over a year. His top 3 recruits all committed under BK.
OL/TE are always stacked, but also pretty far behind where we’d usually be at this point, no?
WR. Can’t do much worse than Del did. But at this moment, it’s pretty close to a push (James v Merriweather).
RB. Another year of mid/low 4 stars. Anyone that looks better than JD?
QB. The big what-if. Maybe it’s better now. But we’ve always heard how close Rees was to landing that big commit. So are we actually in a better spot than we have been in years past? I will believe it when Moore signs, or at least commits.
What do those average scores look like when divided between O and D?
I am not saying our recruiting isn’t going to be better, or even better right now due to the already existing trajectory of MF.
BK was nothing special at recruiting. MF is very much something special. But Freeman was already here. We didn’t suddenly start recruiting way better once BK left. Hell, half the staff has only been recruiting for ND for 3 months, and the only one who has upped the prior level so far replaced the man who left our WR room empty.
I firmly believe our recruiting will improve. But right now, the team has landed 1 WR that it might not have with BK.
Sure, the commitments actually have to come in. But I promise you, I’ve been tracking recruiting since dawn was breaking on the internet era and I’ve never seen this much buzz around Notre Dame on both sides of the ball. That buzz is 100% a result of the difference in strategy between Freeman and Kelly. Going down the line… OL is fine. We have a guy in Pendleton who is underrated by the services based on his offer sheet, and who Harry really wanted. We’re widely considered the leaders for #71 (Jagusah, 100% of the 247 CBs), #80 (Freeling, no CBs for anyone yet), and #275-ish (Absher, 3 of 5 for ND and the two that aren’t are from NC State and Clemson staff writers who are considering changing theirs). TE is fine. We have 4* Flanagan, who picked up an Alabama offer after he committed to us, and we’ll have Bauman, Evans, and Berrong still on campus when he gets here. WR is most definitely not a push. James is #72 overall, Merriweather was #122 last year. Styles was #115 in 2021. JJ was #37 in 2020; the most recent other receiver we landed who was higher ranked than James was Floyd at #14 in 2008. Sadly… We’re also the leader for top 100 Rodney Gallagher and Jaden Greathouse off their recent visits, with both coming back for an OV on June 10th (which, as we’ll cover later, is going to be a monster weekend). The most probably fourth receiver options – Micah Tease, Tyler Williams, and Rico Flores – are all top 200 guys who would’ve been headliners of a lot of BK-era classes. RB is tough because of who’s on campus. Tyree will likely be gone in ’23 but that’s far from a sure thing. Behind him are Diggs, Estime, and Price, who all look like contributors, and Gi’Bran Payne, who we haven’t seen yet but McCullough wanted to follow him obviously. Kids notice that. We have Irvin now and are the favorites to land Jayden Limar, a mid-level 4*. At QB, I believe I’ve mentioned this before, but Rees did land Walker Howard last year and admissions blocked it. I’m not at liberty to share the source for that but it’s a very good one close to the program. The tag team of him and Freeman are the reason Moore has the interest he has in ND. He has specifically said that Freeman talks to him more than any other HC. In fact he said he’s barely even spoken with Harbaugh. Kelly would’ve had a similar level of involvement. Defensive average right now is .9572, offensive average is .9196. If we land the guys I expect us to via the “reasonable” projection, the defensive average would fall to .9526 and the offensive average would rise to .9333. Again, that class average of .9434 would blow away anything Kelly or Weis did at their peaks. A relatively disappointing finish would still be better than their peaks. Yes,… Read more »
That all kind of goes to my point. MF was already going to make this the best class in decade.
People are acting like Freeman just started recruiting for us. He’s been here a year. And been absolutely crushing it the whole time.
I’ll even grant that WR recruiting has improved. But that’s really it. And we haven’t actually seen results of it yet. We could still lose out on those guys we lead for.
Just to buttress the fact that MF is very special in recruiting (Pete Sampson):
Why do you think 6 months is a reasonable barometer to compare the two when we have nothing outside of a bowl game as hard evidence?
Kelly was a very good coach and did well on the development side, often turning 3-star recruits into 4-star players. But he consistently hit a wall bc he didn’t attract enough 5-star talent to go head to head with the best programs. He can act like ND failed him in some way, but this is just retroactive excuse-making. He never got over the hump because he simply didn’t want to put in the necessary effort in that respect. This will become more obvious as he fades into the rear view, with a new coach who will put in that work.
I’m mostly a Kelly apologist too but his recent media blitz with LSU irks me. I know this will never happen but here are some questions I’d like interviewers to ask him:
-Why did your immediate predecessor and immediate successor at Notre Dame both have better recruiting classes than your best class (assuming Freeman’s first class holds)?
-Why are you 0-5 in major bowl games? Why are teams that you coached 0-7 in major bowl games?
-You have never scored more than 14 points against Alabama. How do you plan to improve that playing them every year?
One of the most obvious differences between BK and MF is that the latter’s “plan B” is in most instances much more promising and highly-regarded. I think this speaks to the effort demanded by Freeman and the extent to which he’s compelled to pursue all available avenues to find players.
Please note that the “we” in question who lost those offensive recruits was Kelly’s receivers coach. And he was out on his ass as soon as Freeman had an opportunity to jettison him. We’ve already landed James (who Del didn’t even bother to try to recruit), lead for Greathouse and may pull Gallagher, too.
The problem with trying to draw conclusions seven months ahead of signing day is that developments don’t happen in a uniform fashion. But when the smoke clears, it will be obvious that Kelly couldn’t have landed the class Freeman will sign in December because he wasn’t interested in getting his hands dirty in the recruiting process. And he’ll get outworked in the SEC and lose 3-4 games a year down there, too. It was a poor professional wager on his part.
How many years would have this been the bell weather d line recruit? and a lock to be expected to come in and play right away? I feel like pretty much every year post 2013.
Now he’s (currently) third highest d line recruit this year and 5th of the last 2 cycles. These are some good times
I feel like 2018 onward the d line has pretty solid depth and talent: Kareem, hayes, tillery, okwara, hinish etc. Agreed 2013-2017(?) Hed be pushing as a day 1 starter, but super thankful they’re turning a corner on d line. Recruit sweet players and let them be sweet!!!
So, some fun with these rankings… Keeley will be the highest DL signee of the internet era by a hair over Aaron Lynch – they’re both #9 in their respective classes, but Keeley’s 247C score is .9948 to Lynch’s .9947. Vernon will be the ninth highest. Only one of the seven guys between them committed to Kelly – Tuitt, in the same class as Lynch. The others were five Bob Weisingham guys and Nix, who committed before Kelly was hired (semantics, sure, but hey).
Traore is ranked just behind where Hayes was and higher than all those other guys you mentioned. He’s right around where Darnell Ewell, who headlined the 2017 defensive class, was, and about 25 spots higher than Jacob Lacey, who was the top DL in the 2019 class. And there’s a decent chance he’ll end up the fourth highest DL in this one class (behind Keeley, Vernon, and Jason Moore).
Pure insanity.
Are we going to see recruiting big board articles coming soon? I’m not sure if you know it, but some of us love those updates and wish they happened more. Lots of great info in them and it’s cool (pun intended) to hear your and Tyler’s opinions about warm/cold trends
Ha… We love them too but they take a lot of work, and there also wasn’t a whole lot to update for a while. Things are heating up now with OVs happening though, so we are in fact gearing up the Big Board machine again.
Hang in there!
BTW. I just saw some pictures of Sneed from the B&G game. Holly macaroni. He looks like an NFL WDE.
That would be great if he could play WDE. That’s one position where we are a bit light on whereas LBs we have plenty of talent.
He’s a little light for a DE, no ?
No idea. I’m just basing it off Juicebox’s comment that he looks like an NFL DE. And if he’s not too light and could play DE in college (at least situationally in pass rushing situations) that would be super helpful.
I don’t think Sneed’s nearly big enough, in frame or weight, to ever be a WDE. Aiden Gobaira is the guy you’re looking for there, and then Keeley.
He was really, really good at rushing the passer in high school, and I’m sure it’s something the staff will try to take advantage of at ND too. I don’t know that he can get big enough to be a full-time WDE, but I think he has the speed and power mix to be a terror coming off the edge on passing downs. Also wouldn’t rule out him eventually being a 3-4 OLB.
With all the 3 tech/Strong-side end type DL we have in the 2023 class some more 3-4 looks wouldn’t be out the question (h/t to Jamie U on this point).
Hey did anyone notice whether Freeman was with Sauce Gardner tonight? I wasn’t watching that closely but my son thought he noticed Freeman in his “corner” tonight.
Freeman was with Kyle, but he did give Sauce a hug after his name was called
that makes sense.
An interesting little thing – based on 247’s class ranking point system, we are at 222.84 points with 11 commitments for 2023, which is well shy of typical top classes. However, even if we did not sign another player, that’s good for about the #20 class in a given year. That’s a good testament to the high end recruiting the staff is doing now