The Irish faithful received a bit of good recruiting news heading into the bye weekend when linebacker/defensive end Dom Hulak verbally committed to Notre Dame on Friday. The 6’3″/225-pounder out of the Chicagoland area is the 8th commit in Notre Dame’s recruiting Class of 2025 — a class which currently ranks 3rd in the nation.
100% Committed! ☘️GO IRISH☘️@NDFootball @Marcus_Freeman1 @CoachWash56 @Bullough40 @CoachAlGolden @ICCPFootball @MattBowen41 @MDohertyICCP @MrBettinazzi pic.twitter.com/Gqmxs2ZPDR
— Dominik Hulak (@DominikHulak) November 10, 2023
Dom has visited South Bend on multiple occasions this year, most recently for Notre Dame’s dominant win over USC. That visit made a big impression on him, as well as his close relationship with director of recruiting Chad Bowden, and he made a silent commitment to the Notre Dame staff shortly afterwards before making things public on Friday.
Recruiting Service Rankings
247Sports Composite — 3 star (.8759), #440 overall, #39 ATH, #14 in IL
On3 Consensus — 3 star (87.83), #447 overall, #44 LB, #13 in IL
The 247 Composite and On3 Consensus both combine 247, On3, Rivals, and ESPN rankings.
247Sports — 3 star (88 rating), NR overall, #27 ATH, #8 in IL
On3 — 3 star (87 rating), NR overall, #52 LB, #16 in IL
Rivals — 3 star (5.7 rating), NR overall, #19 LB, #11 in IL
ESPN — Not Yet Rated
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 — 3 star (89 rating)
Cohort
Dom chose the Irish over other offers from Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Iowa State, Louisville, Missouri, Kansas, and Purdue.
Highlights
Dom plays a multitude of positions for his high school team — mainly linebacker but also defensive end and occasionally defensive tackle as well as tight end and fullback on offense. This might be due to the size of the guys around him, but he looked bigger than his listed 6’3″/225 on film to me. He moves well, shows good burst off the snap, and looks like he has some potential as a pass-rusher.
As always, take a look at ISD’s Film Don’t Lie piece on Dom Hulak for a professional’s perspective.
Impact
Whether Dom ends up at Money (Marist’s spot) or Vyper is going to depends on his weight. At 6’3″ he’s sufficiently-but-not-ideally tall to play Vyper and he has good length. If he bulks up to 250ish or heavier that’s probably where he ends up. The Irish currently have three other defensive players committed in 2025 — all of them along the defensive line. Dom’s potential might be highest on the edge, but the DL Commit room is already starting to get a little crowded with even more recruits still in play at Vyper/DE. With this in mind, and with reporting being that the Money position is the spot the staff has discussed most with Dom, I think he likely plays linebacker at Notre Dame — at least starting off.
Welcome to the Irish family, Dom!
It sounds like Hulak has been pretty high on their board since the beginning, despite only a high 3 star ranking. The staff has taken a lot of low 4 star, high 3 star prospects pretty early in the ’25 cycle. Only Knight and Flanigan are 4 stars in all of 247/rivals/On3. Yet another class that will rely on evaluations, rather than 5 stars?
Fortunately, this staff seems to be quite good at evals. I feel like we’ve seen a lot more players rise up the rankings than under BK and seen more young talent show potential on the field.
I don’t think there is too much question that the overall talent is improving, even if our class rankings aren’t. I think that’s because the biggest improvements in recruiting have been the quality of the back half of our recruiting classes. We are getting more guys like Hulak, in the 300-500 range, as opposed to 500-900 (2024 final updates pending, currently sitting with the 6 lowest ranked recruits in the 4 class span since MF became DC, ’22-’25 classes). These have little impact on a class ranking, but make a big difference when you fill out the back of the roster with competent, albeit not spectacular, play.
Can we finally also improve the top half of our recruiting class and finish in the top 5? Or are we destined for another #1 ranked class in January before NSD that finishes #10 when the fax machines start whirring.
Do kids still fax LOIs? Can ND not afford a docusign account?
There’s been some rumblings that the staff thinks the 2024 class will be better than 2025. But, it’s early.
Hopefully they continue to be solid at evals – seems like Greathouse was a hit, even if he was falling down recruiting rankings last year – but I think really whether or not the program levels up depends very significantly on whether Carr or Knight end up being top-3ish national QBs. Their rankings don’t indicate as such, and I think the message board hype is starting to fade a bit for Carr, which I don’t take as a great sign, but I like taking a solid recruit like Carr that seems like he has a pretty low floor and following it up with Knight, who seems like will be a boom-or-bust type recruit.
2024 was already the base level it seems for getting better as it was a step down from 2023 and 2022 in terms of Blue chip count. So if 2025 turns out worse, that’s not good news and not the few steps up we were hoping from from Freeman.
Part of it was enthusiasm about some of the relatively lower-ranked 2024 guys being guys the staff was very into (eg Young, who has rocketed up the rankings) but some of it was just that we seemingly aren’t in on a ton of very highly rated 2025 players.
It’s disappointing we never got JOK’s little bro to visit.