Notre Dame was looking for some in-season recruiting momentum and found exactly that as 6’4″ quarterback Deuce Knight committed to the Irish on Monday afternoon. It came as a bit of a surprise as the program had been zeroing in on Bear Bachmeier who visited campus this weekend. However, Knight, who is set to return to South Bend for this weekend’s Ohio State game, ultimately pulled the trigger on a verbal commitment.
I had to Think Big, Go Irish!!☘️ #Committed #cribbbbb @GinoGuidugli pic.twitter.com/p28hsXh56d
— Deuce Knight (@DeuceKnight) September 18, 2023
It’s not exactly a coup but it’s a big win for Notre Dame who had made Knight a priority in this 2025 recruiting class and comes through when it matters after some recent wobbling on interest, possibly from both parties.
Recruiting Service Rankings
247Sports Composite — 4 star (.9674), #70 overall, #5 QB, #2 in MS
On3 Consensus — 4 star (93.94 rating), #39 overall, #3 QB, #2 in MS
The 247 Composite and On3 Consensus both combine 247, On3, Rivals, and ESPN rankings.
247Sports — 4 star (90 rating), #203 overall, #10 QB, #7 in MS
On3 — 4 star (94 rating), #28 overall, #4 QB, #2 in MS
Rivals — 4 star (6.0 rating), #26 overall, #1 QB, #3 in MS
ESPN — 4 star (83 rating), #90 overall, #2 QB, #3 in MS
Irish Sports Daily — 4 star (93.7 rating)
Wait, there are 6 other better players in Mississippi this year, 247? No way. It’s interesting to see Rivals list Knight as the top quarterback in their class but not really elite 5-star status.
Cohort
Knight was initially offered by Notre Dame back on March 17th of this year and was being chased by some of the country’s big dogs, particularly in the SEC. In addition to the Irish, Deuce was offered by Alabama, Georgia, Ole Miss, Tennessee, Texas A&M, Auburn, Mississippi State, Washington, Oregon, TCU, Miami, South Carolina, and several more Power 5 and mid-major programs.
Highlights
Knight’s skill-set and ceiling are incredibly tantalizing. He has great height (most services have him just under 6’5″) with really long limbs that make him appear more stout and tall in the pocket. We’ll get to the weight issue below but obviously in the middle of his junior high school season Knight needs to work on developing a more muscular frame.
He’s a smooth passer able to fire a strike with good velocity or showcase a little more soft touch when necessary. As a left-handed thrower myself, I think he looks tremendously graceful as a passer.
On these sophomore highlights Knight is getting away with some tough throws that might be broken up against better competition. However, his accuracy looks very good and I don’t see many problems with ball placement. He has a nice delivery and shows plenty of polish as a passer.
Of course, he’s able to escape the pocket and buy time with his feet. Knight doesn’t look elite twitchy most of the time but with his long limbs I think he’s deceptively quick moving around and should become a weapon as a runner in college, too.
Impact
We should mention there is some trepidation around Knight and his commitment. Not only have several top SEC teams been recruiting him and we have a long way to go until Early Signing Day 2025 (15 more months to go!) but he left his high school in Mississippi this summer for Lipscomb Academy in Nashville, Tennessee only to head back to his home after just 3 games.
Knight had been living in an apartment in Nashville with his mother and sister and cited homesickness for his departure. Fair enough, but going 37 days from announcing your transfer to ultimately leaving Lipscomb in the middle of the season certainly raises some eyebrows.
He will have to sit out 3 games after coming back to George County High School in the southwest corner of Mississippi and returns to action next weekend.
There’s no denying Knight has immense potential. His transfer made sense initially as he plays in a weaker league and wasn’t putting up huge numbers as a sophomore (1,929 passing yards, 488 rushing yards, 23 total touchdowns in 9 games) before going 57 of 108 for 627 yards and 2 touchdowns in 3 games with Lipscomb.
We’ll see how he progresses once he’s back with George County. Being able to fill out and work on his weight will be a priority as he gets older. Some places list him as low as 180 pounds but he has plenty of time to add good weight.
Being able to go back-to-back with CJ Carr and Deuce Knight is a huge recruiting win for Notre Dame. It’s also nice to see taller but still athletic signal callers with national reputations jumping on board with the Irish.
Welcome to the Irish family, Deuce!
I don’t mean to be that guy who only scouts the stat line, but completing 53% of his passes at less than 6 YPA doesn’t exactly scream “star.” Hopefully that’s just some small sample size funkiness there.
New team, and one of those games was against IMG, for whatever that’s worth.
He definitely strikes me as a boom-or-bust prospect, but in the portal era, his ‘boom’ seems to me to be worth the big swing.
I agree, especially at QB – if we aren’t getting the sure-thing prospects we might as well swing for the fences, knowing that a transfer portal QB is always an option if things don’t work out. I’m happy he committed instead of Bachmeier, who seemed like a lower ceiling/higher floor prospect.
I think the bigger concern is that he’ll flake. Not only was there the homesickness thing, but the timing makes it pretty obvious that he committed out of fear of losing his spot while Bachmeier was on his official visit. We’ll see!
Old as time recruiting tactic. One spot, two players, whoever bites first gets it.
He did come out and say he is completely shutting down his recruitment. No more visits/calls. And he listed a few guys he is going to try to get to ND (French, Taylor, Streissig, and some other defender). I think it will at least be obvious fairly quickly if he’s going to flake. And I think Freeman has learned at this point, the minute he answers a call from another coach, start looking (or maybe don’t ever stop).
It will be really interesting to see how the coaching staff plays it. Bear has some good offers, but not sure any top dogs are really going after him. If he is already their second choice (seems early to be going with emergency backups already), I wonder if they try to keep communication open with him.
The next Josh Allen! Very similar numbers to Allen’s final season: 56%, 1,812 yds, 6.7 y/a, 16/6 TD/INT.
6’4″!? No sir, that is much too tall. Well, maybe we can try to turn him into the opposite of whatever kind of QB he is now.
#RollTide
Glad to hear it, hope it’s a huge win for us, but smells like it’s going to be a classic Notre Dame slide down the rankings type of commit
Well, it IS a huge win for us. He’s the most physically talented quarterback that ND has landed in many years. And he has the offers to show for it, regardless of what the increasingly-worthless rankings have to say about his potential. But most of them seem pretty high on Knight at the moment.
FWIW all the 247 guys, including Loy who is the sunshininest of reporters, all basically have said he’s not really a top-100 player. The last recruit I can recall who got the immediate “yeah, his composite is overrated” was Brennan Vernon, who fell like 200 spots IIRC.
I don’t remember Loy saying that, although I could have missed it.
He’s ranked outside of the top 200 by 247, though, so I wouldn’t expect many of their guys to give him the “elite” label.
Loy called him a “top-150” prospect on one of the boards at some point recently. Which, you know, really means 126-150.
Still good! Especially, per above, if that means he has (to make up some numbers to make the point) an 80% chance of never playing but a 20% chance of being a superstar. That’s fine! Worth a shot.
Well, 247 is the clear outlier on the low side w/r/t ranking Knight, so there’s that.
What is the deal with the 247 website? Why have they made their own rankings and *not* the composite rankings be on the main pages now?
It’s like that for their commit page, too. It drives me nuts.
yea, it’s almost unusable now if you want to know anything more than like one detail (which is almost every time one goes on a website).
I’ve started using On3 way more because of it.
247 is the new Rivals. They got lazy and are now being surpassed by someone who cares about the user experience. On3s rankings don’t even need to be particularly good, as long as they primarily show their composite (statistically more accurate than any individual ranking) and the site is easy to use. On3 is definitely getting more and more of my clicks. They are trying new things, too, which is fun, even if their prediction engine isn’t particularly good so far.
I don’t think I have ever seen so a range difference from #1QB and #26 prospect to #10 QB and #203 prospect. I wonder where he really is? I hope at the highest end.
ND has been chasing this kid for quite some time. He ‘s been their #1 target. Have to trust our new OC & QBC more so than these recruiting sites.
2/3 recruiting sites have him in the top 30, so it’s not like the staff has wildly different ideas than the industry as a whole.
He’s an insanely athletic talent that hasn’t yet put up the stats of a sure-thing star, so I get the impression the recruiting sites don’t really have any idea what to do with him.
Well Charles Power at On3 has Carr rated as something like the #14 QB in the current class, so the wide range is not exactly unprecedented.
The stretch of Minchey/Carr/Knight is probably the best three year stretch since Zaire/Kizer/Wimbush. Add the Hartman get and that Angeli is hopefully at least a better backup than Drew Pyne or sophomore year Ian Book, and the QB room is starting to look good!
Wasn’t Urban Meyer wondering a few weeks ago why ND isn’t stacking up QBs? In the transfer era, seems like that’s the move, knowing some kids will move on.
Speaking of moving on, if Colzie gets zero catches at OSU, what are the odds he redshirts and hits the portal? Seems like he has three guys ahead of him and two freshman who are going to overtake him this season. He’s looking at being the 5th receiver option next year after being the sixth this year.
FWIW, in terms of overall ranking, if both he and CJ Carr stick, it’s ND’s best trio since Frazer-Clausen-Crist.