We are working our way through Notre Dame’s 2025 recruiting class composed of 24 signees from all over the United States. Today we’re taking a look at the wide receiver position where the Fighting Irish will hope their scouting department will have done a much better job than the national ranking services.
Wide Receiver Antavious Richardson
Bio:
Richardson is from the small western Georgian town of Greenville and committed to South Florida last summer. A couple of months later, he was offered by Notre Dame with several other Power programs doing the same. A couple weeks after an official visit, Richardson left USF’s class and committed to Notre Dame.
He played all over the field on both sides of the ball in high school, including quarterback. On the track, he was a state champion in the 100, 200, and 400 meter competitions so he’s got some legit speed.
Ranking:
369th overall, 16th ATH, 53rd in Georgia with a 0.8978 Composite score.
Size: 3/10
Richardson is listed at 6’0″ by Notre Dame but at just 166 pounds he’s very much a sprinter’s body-type right now. He’s not exactly skinny at the moment and shows pretty decent muscle build for someone projected to play receiver.
There should be room for additional size in his upper-body, though. I would expect Richardson to settle in around 185 pounds within 18 months after working with the Irish strength program.
Hype Factor: 4.5/10
Richardson walking into the Gug and immediately being one of the fastest players on the team offers plenty of intrigue about his future. A fast guy named “Scrap” has my attention!
Outlook: Guess the Position
Notre Dame was one of the only schools to offer Richardson as a wide receiver while other schools, like Alabama, preferred him on defense. I have done zero research on this but my feeling is that in Notre Dame’s modern history it’s extremely rare to see these athlete types, who do not play much receiver in high school, go on to then play and excel at receiver in college. My bet is that he will eventually move to cornerback, although he could remain a weapon as a return man on special teams.
Wide Receiver Elijah Burress
Bio:
Burress comes out of New Jersey where he was teammates with 2025 classmate and running back Nolan James. If you’ve been living under a rock during this cycle, his dad is former Michigan State and NFL star Plaxico Burress. The younger Burress was offered by the Irish in January of 2024 and ended up committing to the program a month later.
Ranking:
429th overall, 61st WR, 12th in New Jersey with a 0.8929 Composite score.
Size: 6.5/10
It looks like we’ll need to see a growth spurt for Burress to have the same size as his father. Notre Dame lists Elijah at 6’0″ and 173 pounds whereas his dad was listed at 6’5″ and 232 pounds. With a 4.59 time in the 40-yard dash, people forget what a unicorn his dad was!
Burress does look really long though and his overall body-type still resembles his father quite a bit. Right now, the focus has to be adding some additional good weight to his frame. He should easily push past 190 pounds early in his career.
Hype Factor: 6.5/10
I’m going to zag here quite a bit, especially compared to the national narrative around Burress. He’s far more college ready than you would expect looking at the player rankings. He also brings a unique body-type where he should definitely play on the outside but has the explosiveness and play-making ability to be a very good field receiver.
Outlook: Spring Surprise?
If there’s one player I’m focusing on from this class who could make some noise immediately this spring it’s Burress. I’ll be watching closely how the development of Cam Williams goes. Remember, we won’t see Jordan Faison much if at all during spring as he chases a lacrosse 3-peat and while there’s been good things said about KK Smith behind the scenes, it’s possible Burress is the most naturally talented field receiver out of this group.
Burress is polished, extremely quick out of his routes, and has the playmaking ability to make tough catches down field. I welcome all of this to the Notre Dame receiver corps.
Wide Receiver Jerome Bettis, Jr.
Bio:
Okay, you’d have to be living under several rocks to not be aware of this father/son duo. Dad certainly doesn’t need any introduction! The Junior Bus comes out of Georgia where he played at Westminster in Atlanta before transferring to Woodward Academy for his final 2 seasons of prep competition.
This was one of the earliest offers of the 2025 cycle by Notre Dame. Bettis was extended a scholarship by the Irish back on March 17, 2023 and he verbally committed to the program exactly one year later.
Ranking:
886th overall, 131st WR, 105th in Georgia with a 0.8714 Composite score.
Size: 7.5/10
While dad is built like a refrigerator and sneaky not that tall, the Junior Bettis is built quite a bit different. Listed at 6’2″ and a hefty 201 pounds on the new Notre Dame roster, Bettis is bringing really good size for the boundary receiver position.
Some are wondering how much bigger can Bettis get? As we’ll discuss below, that might impact his future at the college level and ultimately decide at which position he settles at with Notre Dame.
Hype Factor: 2/10
With such an early offer was it Notre Dame spotting a diamond in the rough or just trying to keep things in the family? In terms of national rankings, Bettis is the lowest rated non-special teams recruit to sign with the Irish in several cycles. You have to go back to Kahanu Kia and Jason Onye to get close to Bettis’ rankings, while it hasn’t been since Alex Ehrensberger in the 2020 class that we’ve seen a recruit this lowly rated.
Outlook: Development Somewhere
The debate throughout this cycle has been if Bettis will stick at receiver for the Irish. On the surface, I like him better at safety where he played on defense in high school. However, I think it’s more likely that Richardson (mentioned above) moves to defense and can Notre Dame really afford for 2025 to be a 1-person receiving class?
Additionally, there won’t be a shortage of opportunity for Bettis. The Irish won’t have incoming transfer Malachi Fields this spring as he finishes up his degree at Virginia and that leaves a pretty big gaping hole at boundary receiver following the loss of 3 players at this position from the 2024 squad. So, Bettis is likely to stick around at receiver for 2025 at least. He has pretty good athleticism and very good size, can he put it together and develop into a quality receiver for the long-term?
My first thought looking at this is LMAO at how much Jerome Bettis Jr. resembles his dad. You could show me that dude’s face with no other context clues at all and I could probably guess that he’s Jerome Bettis Jr.
Like an AI prompt of “Jerome Bettis if he was born in 2007”
Having pretty much neglected this recruiting cycle (and honestly don’t follow that much ever) my reaction is, OMG, we really didn’t… do well, and in a position of need at that
Recruiting being only a little bit better than it was Kelly but the program achieving new heights because it is distinctly better-managed is basically the opposite of how I thought the Freeman Era would go, but here we are!
Is it really only a little bit better in general? Isn’t the blue-chip ratio up like 20% with Freeman? We’re obviously not getting it done at WR but I’m not sure that means recruiting is only a little bit better than with Kelly.
Kelly’s last three classes:
2019 – ranked 16th, 22 recruits, 90.78 average
2020 – ranked 18th, 17 recruits, 90.92 average
2021 – ranked 9th, 27 recruits, 89.94 average
Freeman’s last three classes:
2023 – ranked 12th, 23 recruits, 91.82 average
2024 – ranked 9th, 23 recruits, 91.46 average
2025 – ranked 12th, 24 recruits, 91.02 average
So, better, but not really materially better. As fightin_eyerash said, where it probably makes most difference is in depth. But, I think people were thinking we’d have top-5 or top-5-adjacent classes under Freeman at the start with 5-stars etc., and that hasn’t come to fruition. And yet by F+ we’ve had the two best ND teams in recent history the last two years!
It’s true it’s not the top 5 class/bunch of 5 stars type of bump but that doesn’t mean it’s not materially better. That’s why I was wondering about blue-chip ratio. But even using those averages – Freeman’s classes are on average .89 better. I think that’s a pretty sizeable jump. To get a better sense, one would have to track how many spots ND would have dropped by having an average .89 worse – it might have been between 3-10 spots depending on the year I’d imagine.
The difference in having a handful of more good players every year though is not just with depth it’s also that it’s more likely that 1 or 2 of the whole group will turn out to be very good. That’s why the blue-chip ratio is a good indicator of bringing in more talent. And I thought I had read somewhere that it’s been significantly improved from Kelly.
Just eyeballing those years, if we had done Kelly-level averages on the recruits instead of Freeman-level averages, we’d probably be at the following:
So, overall, again I would not consider that material improvement along the lines that I was expecting when Freeman was hired. But, yes, definite improvement, and when combined with the overall program management and seemingly near-elite overall portal recruiting the program is in a much better shape than at any point during the Kelly era right now (and is playing like it). Just not how I anticipated getting there – was my original point.
I would say it is materially better than BK in a vacuum, but when you look at the national rankings, not much better compared to other programs. Simply being better than BK doesn’t necessarily mean anything, when you aren’t advancing yourself nationally.
It isn’t exactly recruiting per se, but I think the evaluations and development have gotten a lot better. We are getting better low 4 star guys (both BK and MFs wheel house), that don’t move the needle nationally, but really help ND.
I also believe most of BKs lower rated recruits tended to be higher floor, lower ceiling type guys. Safe players that can help you win 10 games a year. While Freeman’s are high ceiling/low floor with a focus on measurables.
Well it does mean something because of Kelly never left and continued on the same path we’d be getting worse rankings with recruiting. But point taken.
And the other paragraphs seem to be right too.
At least we are getting some depth. One thing about BK was there would be holes in classes, like getting one receiver and one only, or no safeties. Recruiting is an inexact science, so not having holes and upping the blue chip ratio definitely lifts the floor.
That said, wish we had one high ceiling WR for sure, would be nice to land at least a top 100 guy once in a while.
Well we did get Cam Williams last year… but from all indications that might be another Jordan Johnson situation. I think there’s a widely shared view that if any WRs from that class are going to be a hit anytime soon it will be Micah Gilbert.
I don’t get the sense that Cam is in the same bucket as Johnson – unless Johnson was just so bad because he didn’t know how to play WR. I get the sense Cam is a great athlete and is still learning the ropes because of his high school program whereas I didn’t get the sense that Johnson was an elite athlete as well.
Agreed on Gilbert.
Braylon James, Greathouse, Merriweather, Colzie, Styles were all top 150 recruits, some being pretty close to top 100. I’d say once in a while is about where we land with top WRs. But once in a while isn’t enough.
Wasn’t Golden Tate an Athlete recruit?
That was a long time ago!
Rivals did have him listed as an athlete.
I recall as a freshman the narrative was that he was extremely raw as a receiver and that the only route he actually knew how to run properly was a go route.
Go into the band route.
Total eclipse… of the heart
Golden Tate dives into the MSU band: A Music Video