After lunch time on Wednesday word began to spread that some good news could be coming imminently for Notre Dame in the recruiting world. Surely it couldn’t be Jeremiyah Love? Would it be one of the 2024 targets? Perhaps it was really nothing and we’d all forget about it in the morning.
Nope, a new commit stolen from Stanford!
100% commited!!!!
Irish Country, Let’s Ride ☘️ pic.twitter.com/h0vmQgk5VC— Armel Ngueyam Mukam (@mukam_9) August 24, 2022
Irish Country, let’s ride. You truly love to see it.
Recruiting Service Rankings
247Sports Composite — 3 star (.8578 rating), #1013 overall, #90 EDGE, #29 in VA
On3 Consensus — 3 star (86.17 rating), #806 overall, #91 DL, #19 in VA
The 247 Composite and On3 Consensus both combine 247, On3, Rivals, and ESPN rankings.
247Sports — 3 star (86 rating), NA overall, #89 EDGE, #32 in VA
On3 — 3 star (87 rating), NA overall, #76 DL, #21 in VA
Rivals — 3 star (5.6 rating), NA overall, #65 SDE, #17 in VA
ESPN — 3 star (78 rating), NA overall, #76 DE, #14 in VA
Irish Sports Daily — 3 star (89 rating)
Well, those rankings will hurt the old class average. After Ben Minich received a bump in his Composite (over 200 spots!) and is now a low 4-star, Mukam assumes the spot as the lowest-rated commit in the Irish class, by more than 500 spots in the national rankings. At this spot, Mukam would be the lowest-rated recruit for Notre Dame’s defense since Alex Ehrensberger in the 2020 class.
After a brief scouting report, he has no business being rated this low.
Cohort
Mukam’s recruitment picked up earlier this year, particularly with a handful of high academic schools offering scholarships. In March, things began to heat up with offers from Vanderbilt, Duke, Cal, Virginia, North Carolina, Syracuse, Virginia Tech, and Wake Forest. Earlier this summer, Virginia and Stanford offered while Mukam committed to the Cardinal just a few days after David Shaw & Co. reached out.
Things had been quiet with his recruitment until Wednesday’s flip.
Highlights
A former hockey player from Montreal with just 2 years of football he’s kind of outgrown his former sport at 6’4″ and 250 pounds. Mukam is extremely quick off the ball with twitchy feet and a high motor. I think you can point to his lack of experience for his lower rankings but his athleticism jumps off the screen. Plus, he was first-team All-Virginia at Woodberry Forest, home of former Irish players C.J. Prosise and Greer Martini. It would seem insane to think he’s a low 3-star or that he’ll remain at that ranking.
He’s pretty polished for a pass rusher, too. He uses his speed to his advantage but also displays a combination of good power and finesse when necessary to beat blockers. I also like how well he finishes plays. If he beats his initial blocker his quickness doesn’t let him down–he’ll be near the ball to make a play. I really look forward to his senior tape, what we’ve seen so far is a really complete package.
Impact
There’s some video of Mukam doing drills at Woodberry and he moves really well (much better than smaller players on his team) but he’s carrying a really big lower-half. That physical build screams 3-tech to me. If he’s 250 already his upper-half will start to develop and it’s possible he’ll be pushing 280 early in his college career.
In terms of his skill-set, I hope he can stay at strong-side end for the Irish. He may not have the perfect height for the edge but Mukam looks to have good pass-rushing length and wingspan.
Welcome to the Irish family, Armel!
Not to argue with the headline, but I think he’s a ’23 recruit.
Ooops.
I like the play he makes at the 2min. mark of his film. This kid should not be a 3 star.
at around 2:15 he’s playing right tackle, sustains his run block, and eventually puts his man on his back in the end zone.
Dude comes from a hockey background (and soccer). Not worried about his attitude, toughness, or his footwork. I see upside.
Is this replacing jason moore? Either way the optics of going from your top recruit in a decade to a kid who is the #90 DL is a tough pill to swallow. Man the “pessimistic close” is so much more pessimistic than anyone could’ve imagined
Yes, seems to be the Moore replacement.
More like the less replacement.
(But in seriousness, good for you, kid. Not crapping on you, just going for the obvious killler joke.)
Take your rec and now you get out of here.
I absolutely agree the pessimistic close is a hard pill. Yet this is worth looking at: here are all the composite scores of players for recruiting classes back to 2002 (specialists removed). With Freeman on staff, even if we get no more recruits this year, we already have 2 back-to-back classes that basically match Kelly’s only really upper level class (w/o Freeman on staff).
P.S. Willingham: Ooof!
That’s a great graph.
Conditionally Format Like A Champion Today
That’s tremendous. Also comports with my very unofficial and unscientific look-back I did about a year ago, whereby one can basically look at whether or not a recruit is above or below .92 as the rough cutoff between “more likely to be starter instead of washout” or “more likely to be washout than starter”. Obviously there are only so many starting spots so if we keep recruiting that many above-.92 recruits the number will almost necessarily go up, but that’s good problems to have!
and that’s pretty close to the the composite average of .93+ that the elite teams typically have.
.93 is more like a 160-175 prospect, .92 is more like 200-215ish.
So the elite classes have as much top 150 prospects as they do below 150. But even .92 average for us would be a big improvement if we did it consistently.
Yeah, if one does the graph for Alabama (depressingly I have), one has to use a number significantly higher than 0.92 to make a visually meaningful graph.
Great research, but I can’t get the resolution on my computer large enough to read it. Is there a way you could blow it up a bit please?
also wouldn’t mind seeing the one you did for Bama if you have time to post it?
Did you click on the graph ?
Thanks, you’re a genius. Compared to me for sure.
Blind squirrel finds nut.
Just remember, you asked for it. Don’t blame me if you get depressed…
Alabama
Notre Dame set to the same center line (0.94)
Side by side (look away!!!!)
Image.
We just gotta trick Alabama into bringing back Shula and we’ll be fine.
Wouldn’t hurt!
What are you talking about? The takeaway from this is that Freeman’s current class is better than Saban’s first 3 classes. Freeman is already ahead of the curve and should be recruiting like Saban in no time!
Which basically shows that ND’s best recruiting classes of this century – Weis after a 3-win season (How did that happen???), and our current class – are approximately equal to Saban’s worst recruiting classes.
The only positive is that the Freeman climb looks a little like the early Saban years. But only time will tell if that trend continues.
Thanks! What a great visual!
I think the adjective you’re looking for is somewhere between “insightful” and “sickening.” “Great” doesn’t seem quite right.
haha, yes great to see how bad it really is!
It’s like looking at the skyline of Des Moines and NYC.
Eric always has such a skill of taking something that seems potentially depressing, and putting it in terms to make it dramatically depressing!
Maybe if I have some time I’ll do Clemson. It’d be interesting to see what their path to a championship looked like. I suspect a more reasonable Pittsburgh, rather than another NYC.
Yea those 5 star QBs count for a lot.
Less than I expected, maybe just Kansas City.
Identical
Thanks, that certainly puts things in perspective.
Looks like Bama had their own versions of Willingham pre Saban. And ND never went as deeply in the red as them.
Now I’m just going chart crazy….
Definitely underrated due to short time playing football and not doing camps…but check out his interview with Driskell…this kid is a Notre Dame kinda guy.
If there’s any desire for a positive comp, SDE Greg Scruggs only played one year of high school football, finished ranked 931 in the composite as a 230 pound defensive end, had a great career at Louisville and then won two Super Bowls with the Seahawks and Patriots, so don’t necessarily count out super athletic kids who don’t have a full high school football background.
Especially super athletic DL with an 80″ wingspan which, i guess is only a few inches long for someone of his height…but it just seems huge in an age where coaches are constantly talking about length.