Notre Dame landed a potential #1 receiver today when blue-chip prospect Jaden Greathouse announced for the Irish. The 6’2″, 215-pound Texan joins Braylon James and Rico Flores to give the Irish three four star wide receivers in this class; for a program that signed only nine such prospects combined in the previous seven recruiting cycles, that’s notable. Greathouse is the highest ranked 2023 receiver commit at #113 overall in the 247 Composite, but even at that he might be underrated. Greathouse’s commitment pushes the 247 Composite class score to 285.34 with 20 commits, just past the Brian Kelly era high of 284.77 with 23 commits in the 2013 class. Just saying.
Time to go home 🍀💚 pic.twitter.com/kzKnTOrka8
— Jaden Greathouse (@jadengreat1) July 15, 2022
Greathouse took an official visit to Notre Dame on June 17th, the week after the mega visit weekend but still a significant one with multiple key targets in town. He had kicked around the idea of an official visit to Texas the next weekend but never made it, and a couple of weeks later announced a decision date of July 15th amidst speculation that his decision could come in the fall. The dots weren’t hard to connect at that point.
As to our note about a potential future #1… He has put up excellent production at the highest level of Texas football for three years running – over those three seasons, he has logged 182 catches for 3,134 yards (17.3 yards per reception) and 43 touchdowns (almost exactly one score every four touches) en route to three consecutive state championships. In his most recent state title game, Greathouse claimed MVP honors on the strength of a state record-setting seven catch, 236 yard, two touchdown performance for Westlake against fellow Irish commit Peyton Bowen’s Denton-Guyer squad.
He’s, uh, pretty good.
Recruiting Service Rankings
247Sports Composite — 4 star (.9479 rating), #113 overall, #17 WR, #18 in TX
On3 Consensus — 4 star (92.00 rating), #128 overall, #21 WR, #21 in TX
The 247 Composite and On3 Consensus both combine 247, On3, Rivals, and ESPN rankings.
247Sports — 4 star (90 rating), #224 overall, #25 WR, #40 in TX
On3 — 4 star (91 rating), #191 overall, #31 WR, #34 in TX
Rivals — 4 star (5.9 rating), #69 overall, #9 WR, #12 in TX
ESPN — 4 star (85 rating), #85 overall, #4 WR, #15 in TX
Friend of the Stripes Jamie Uyeyama does the recruit evaluations for ISD, and we trust his evals as much as anyone’s. So while the 247 Composite and the On3 Consensus don’t factor in ISD evals, we put a lot of weight on them ourselves.
Irish Sports Daily — 4 star (92 rating)
Cohort
In addition to Notre Dame and Texas, Greathouse holds offers from Arkansas, Baylor, Miami, Michigan (lol), Oklahoma, Oregon, Penn State, South Carolina, TCU, and USC, among others.
Highlights
The fun starts on the very first play, in which our hero takes a fairly nondescript midrange pass and proceeds to toy with, well, the entire defense. It continues on the second play with an absolutely filthy double move that had the cornerback looking like Wile E. Coyote. There’s a nice contested ball win against double coverage on the next play. Dominant run blocking on the next play. More filthy moves. More pancakes. Broken ankles, broken tackles, broken hearts.
I think Greathouse’s long speed is very good but not elite, and that’s the only nit I can pick. He has soft and strong hands, he’s explosive in and out of his breaks, he’s extremely physical, he’s an excellent leaper, and he turns into a running back after the catch. I don’t know what’s up with 247 and On3’s rankings for him, because he looks like a no doubt top 100 player to me. He has fantastic film at the highest level of high school football in the country.
Impact
As we covered with the commitments of James and Flores, opportunity will be there right away for Greathouse. All three will have an excellent chance to be in the two deep immediately just by default, with a maximum of only four veterans in the picture at that point. I think Greathouse has tremendous potential as a boundary receiver who can do real damage after the catch, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see him work his way into the rotation there very quickly. He doesn’t quite have the size of these guys, but I could see him developing into a Drake London or Chase Claypool type player down the road. He’s going to be a pain for Irish opponents.
Welcome to the Irish family, Jaden!
Freeman era!
As a macro on this, is CB and WR the most improved for initial recruiting stock? This is now three top-200 WR in the class (first time in internet era) and lots of talent CB too.
So I guess I’m saying the really wonderful thing is the difference in total quality is nice, but it’s made up from the type of talent and athletes that Notre Dame typically didn’t get enough of in the Kelly days. Lookin forward to see what Greathouse can do.
Yes WR/CB easily have to be the most improved positions in recruiting. QB could join those two next year.
I’d argue DL recruiting has improved more than QB. We haven’t had a top 100 DL make it to campus since Lynch/Williams/Tuitt. Vanderdoes is the only other top 100 who ever signed with us under BK, but I don’t count that as a successful recruit.
Obviously, the on field performance for DL has been way ahead of QB, and we’ve landed a number of guys in the #110-150 range, especially since that 2016 class. But QB wise we’ve signed #323, #70, #225, #522, #83, #254, #519, #45, #232, #168, #27, #275, and TFR.
Under BK (including last year with Freeman)
5*: DL – 2 (Lynch, Williams), QB – 1 (Kiel)
Top 100: DL – 3, QB – 4
4*: DL – 55%, 2.1/yr, QB: 83%, .8/yr
2023-2024
5*: DL – 1, QB 1
Top 100: DL – 3, QB – 1
4*: DL – 100%, 3/yr, QB: 100%, .5/yr
Basically, big bumps in both areas, but QB recruiting just wasn’t as bad as DL recruiting. We had more top 100 QBs than DL! That is insane.
Yea in some ways that’s true of a lot of positions outside of OL/TE – namely that we haven’t had many top 100 players at the position.
We’ve gotten a lot of blue-chip at DL (compared to the rest of the roster) and have done a great job turning in pretty good play from that talent. But you are right it’s been without the top 100 level guys.
It’s a little tough to compare to QB because of the #’s difference and 2024 would only be one year (with a 5 star QB). But it still might be the case that all the top 101-150 type DL we got made for better recruiting than at the QB position which was all over the place. But you are definitely right that there is a big uptick in talent level at the DL already.
Yeah, a DL ranked #150 is probably more likely to make an impact than a QB ranked #150. But we have gotten some undeniably big QB recruits. I definitely think there’s a big recruiting gap between nabbing a top 100 QB every 3 years (all you need for EA’s NCAA Football) and never getting any top 100 DL since that first class, even if our pure # of 4 stars is decent.
But we haven’t landed all that many top 150 DL even. 10 in 11 years from ’12-’22 (even includes 1 year of Freeman).
We have only landed 2 top 200 DL in the same class 3 times from ’12-’22, 2012, 2016, 2020. That is less often than we land a top 100 QB.
What we have done, is gotten a decent amount of low 4* DL and developed the heck out of them.
I think the main thing is that this came from a most improved conversation. Overall, our recruiting hasn’t been particularly bad anywhere, which is why the outstanding development along the DL makes people think it’s probably been recruited better than QB. But I’d say it was notably worse, especially when you consider you want 3-5 DL/yr compared to 1 QB.
We’ve even landed more top 100 DBs and WRs than DL, including the 2011 class. And I think most would agree those have been our worst recruited positions.
Also the average rating right now is 93.29 which ranks 3rd currently behind OSU and Bama.
As long as there isn’t a school that gets a handful more commits than we get, it looks like we might stick closer to 2nd than to 5th. I’d guess more like 3rd at this point since looking around it seems like the top talent is being spread around a bit more – Miami, Penn State, Tennessee – in addition to the usual suspects. It’s going to be close whether Bama (or anyone) will be able to get double digit top 100 guys. I think it’s going to be more like 2019 in terms of final rankings with how high the top teams are – which (with a recruit or two more) would likely place us 3rd.
Nowadays the portal is as important as is the high school recruiting, and probably more predictive of actual performance on the field. Saban pretty much said that in a recent interview, and watching what he’s doing in bringing in a relatively small number of portal players, but all starters and potential stars, it seems to me an area of concern for ND with its stance on undergrad transfers.
What’s WR situation for next year? It’s hard to keep track with injuries/covid years, etc.
Who is eligible to come back? And who is likely to come back? My guess is the answer to those questions are different – though given lack of numbers I’d think we’d welcome anyone who wanted to come back.
I believe Davis is the only one truly out of eligibility. So eligible to return from the roster:
Lenzy
Wilkins
Salerno (walk on given scholarship)
Styles
Colzie
Thomas
Merriweather
Commits:
Greathouse
James
Flores
Plus hopefully Hanafin to come.
I’d think Lenzy and Wilkins who would be 6th year eligible because of COIVD may want to get on with their lives at some point, but they’re very likely better than whoever is in the transfer portal, so I’d think they warrant an invite back.
yea I’d agree that Lenzy and Wilkins would be welcome back but are not likely to return.
You’d think they’d be looking for a grad transfer again.
Styles and Merriweather (already getting some great reviews) would seem to be at least 2 of the starters. Leaving Colzie/Thomas and the freshmen to compete for the 3rd spot but for snaps behind the starters. And it sounds like the 3 WR commits are all pretty polished and might be ready to go (James is the only one I’m less sure about with respect to polish/playing right away).
Styles/Merriweather/Greathouse might be one of the most talented WR corps that we’ve had in a long time.
If Wilkins and Lenzy did want to come back and we land Hanafin we’d basically have a full complement of ten scholarship receivers next year, which would be a nice change from the last couple offseasons.
I’ve also heard the Merriweather is going to be ready to contribute right away, which would be great news for this season, and I think Greathouse is going to be cut out of the same cloth for next year.
I will say, don’t jump too far away from the Colzie bandwagon though, he’s very young for his class and lost a year of HS football, so I think he’s still got a lot of space to grow into his ceiling and be a great receiver still even though he clearly wasn’t on Styles’ level as a true freshman.
Still absolutely love to see it.
With that string of commits we had over the July 4th weekend, I was starting to wonder when the next would come in.
Excited to see him take it to the (great) house, once he starts catching balls for ND on a regular basis.
Some thoughts on the class close, btw…
I think you can just about write Ausberry and Love down in ink. I think Hanafin will end up in it too even though it seems like he’s wavering right now (Adon Shuler had a tweet yesterday that sounded like maybe Hanafin wavering isn’t even real). I think the staff will probably offer and land S Ben Minich when he visits in a couple of weeks.
That gets us to 24 and a class score of 297.19, which would almost certainly rank us 3rd or 4th – I don’t see that score being enough to rank higher, and *maybe* it could be as “low” as 5th if, say, Texas goes on a run of top 100 guys (which is possible).
I don’t know how the QB situation is going to sort out. That’s obviously a big question here, but if the eventual take is someone like Novosad or Minchey it won’t change the picture much – Novosad is the higher ranked prospect and would only move the class score to 298.00. To get over that mythical 300 point line we would need a five star surprise or some kind, likely either CJ Carr reclassifying or landing one of Caleb Downs or Samuel M’Pemba. If we get there we might have a chance at getting up to 2nd, obviously heavily dependent on how things go elsewhere.
TL,DR: As the staff works to put the finishing touches on this class, take some time to appreciate what they’ve done in their first cycle at ND.
Great update. Saw some CBs in for Downs to Bama. Stinks but not surprising. Hopefully M’Pemba can be the surprise. That’s really great to hear about Ausberry and Love.
I think Downs is a tough read but ND likely has an uphill battle against someone, whether it’s OSU or Bama. Probably everyone is trailing Georgia for M’Pemba but I don’t think he’ll decide soon and the key is getting him to make that OV in November and see what happens.
And then I would also count on this staff to surprise us with pulling a couple of kids onto the radar in the fall. No idea who they would be at this point but I’m quite sure these guys won’t sit on their laurels.
Yea as I mentioned above – looking around at how the top 100 players are spread out so far (and who is in on the remaining ones), it looks like such a score would be good for 3rd.
Also crucial the staff makes sure both Keeley (looks good for him sticking IMO) and Peyton Bowen (less clear here) stay in the class and sign in December.
Yea I’ve seen some things about Bowen that makes it seem like it’s still a bit of a toss up – more like 60/40 or 70/30 for ND.
Now imagine if Brian Kelly had actually put effort into recruiting.
He did, very strongly and repeatedly!
(Wait, “recruiting” is a key word for “short game”, right?)
Everything always looks great on paper, let’s see what translates on the field. Kelly contributed greatly to ND and did remarkably well given ND’s strictures.
Hopefully we’ll improve, but it isn’t a given, and I see no need to bash the guy who turned around ND football from the abject misery he inherited.
Of course you are right, Kelly changed the culture in the locker room and the performance on the field, bringing ND back to relevancy. There is no guarantee that such continues under Freeman.
To this point though, we have not had any indication that it won’t continue, and Freeman is recruiting at a higher level than Kelly did. So when we see what can be done, it is easy to criticize the last coach for not doing so.
However I am grateful that we got Kelly when we did, and that he changed the program the way he did. He was way better at recruiting the Tyrone Willingham.
Big get here. Javon McKinley vibes though? Semi big receiver, with incredible stats, against great competition?