Our positional previews for Notre Dame continue today with a look at a traditional area of strength for the Irish at tight end. After just 2 seasons on campus, assistant coach John McNulty is off to coordinate Boston College’s offense while in comes Gerad Parker from West Virginia to take over a deep depth chart led by a record-breaking rising junior.
Predicted 2022 Lineup
*Official 2022 roster size
DEPTH CHART
Michael Mayer, JR, 6-4 1/2, 251*
Mitchell Evans, SO, 6-5 1/8, 250*
Kevin Bauman, r-SO, 6-4 1/2, 242*
Cane Berrong, r-FR, 6-3 1/2, 235*
Eli Raridon, FR, 6-6, 225
Holden Staes, FR, 6-4, 224
3 Questions
1) How many records will Michael Mayer break in his final season at Notre Dame?
As a true sophomore, Mayer set the single-season school records for receptions (71), receiving yards (840) and touchdowns (7) all while missing the road win at Virginia Tech. It apparently wasn’t worthy enough to be a Mackey finalist.
There are too many variables for touchdowns in a season (it’s rather crazy that the record isn’t at least in double digits given Notre Dame’s rich history) so we’ll avoid any predictions for that stat. However, I’d like to think that a 1,000 yards on the season is a decent goal. Also, Mayer bumped up his yards per reception by over a yard as a sophomore–can he do the same again and push towards 13 yards per catch?
2) Can Mitchell Evans build upon a surprising freshman season and be the next star tight end in South Bend?
It seemed as if Notre Dame was ready to carry 7 tight ends once George Takacs was returning, but he reversed course and has since left the team. While he would’ve been the nominal backup to Mayer in 2022 I’m sure he would’ve been pushed by younger players, especially in the pass-catching roles where Takacs only finished with 8 catches over 3 seasons of play.
I’m not sure what we have in Bauman and Berrong just yet. Both are coming off injuries last year and haven’t turned heads quite like Mitchell Evans did last season. The Ohio product was a lot like fellow classmate Joe Alt in that both looked like they aged 5 years during their freshman seasons. Each came in seemingly under weight with baby faces and now look like seasoned veterans.
Evans’ ability to move at his size really exciting. He’s also another big body to help with blocking, too. If we see a modest rise in his ability it’s possible he’s a nice weapon for the Irish.
3) Will the Tommy Rees offense move away from multiple tight end formations?
With the depth chart at wide receiver, you’d think not!
However, this may be sacrilegious but I’ve never been a big fan of a lot of 2 or 3 tight end sets. Like most teams these days, Notre Dame never really seems to get the offense humming or run the ball super well in these jumbo sets against really good teams. It’s a nice change of pace to throw out there against lower-level Power 5 teams or Navy for sure.
If you’re asking me if I’d rather see Kevin Bauman in largely a one-dimensional blocking role or a more spread out offense with someone like Tobias Merriweather the answer is obviously the latter for me. of course, that all hinges on whether a young receiver like that can be ready.
Overview
Gerard Parker has to feel pretty lucky to be walking into this job and coaching Michael Mayer. I’m sure he’s already working on his Twitter drafts praising the junior tight end as the best in the country.
I don’t see a lot of problems coming for 2022 unless we see injuries. For Parker, he’ll have to spend this upcoming year working out the tight ends role in the offense with Rees and developing the younger players for when Mayer inevitably leaves for the NFL Draft next spring.
This is Notre Dame so no one should be shocked to see a young tight end come out of nowhere, just like Evans last year. Here at 18 Stripes we were modestly high on Holden Staes (87 grade, probably a redshirt given Mayer’s penchant to stay on the field) but gave Eli Raridon (95 grade) the highest marks of any of the freshmen offensive playmakers, the highest grade of anyone on offense, and the 2nd highest grade in the entire class behind linebacker Jaylen Sneed.
Now, Raridon tore his ACL during a basketball game on December 19th and most are expecting him not to be ready for fall camp in August. I’m not saying, I’m just saying…if he’s healthy I don’t think he’ll redshirt.
I’m really bullish on Evans. Takacs leaving gives him a great chance at a larger role. He’ll be a better pass catcher than Takacs, so if he can block as well, he’ll be an upgrade.
The last II podcast mentioned Raridon being ahead of schedule in his rehab.
He tore it December 20th, so if the modern “schedule” for ACL rehab is 9 months being ahead of that could let him participate in some of fall camp. That seems like a positive for a non-EE freshman, but it’s a really tight turnaround to think he could be ready for meaningful snaps this season.
Tight indeed. It’s really crazy how quickly ACL recoveries have advanced in our lifetimes.
That said, I mean by like October or November Raridon is going to be ready to be on the field and have some kind of role, if he is as good as so many people tend to think he’s going to be.
I guess we could debate what “meaningful snaps” means, but he’s probably not coming back for a 5th year anyways. There’s no point in not playing him this season, whenever he is ready to do something he should be out on there.
Good point, but I wonder if he’ll be ready to take any snaps away from the other TEs. At that point, he’ll be coming in as a fresh who missed spring and summer camp, and competing for reps with a number of quality of TEs who have been in the program.
To me, if there was ever a good time for Raridon to have this injury happen, it was now while Mayer will be taking the majority of the TE snaps this year anyway.
Given the ACL recovery it may be an interesting wrinkle where he only plays the last 4 games of the season anyway, and yet plays a significant role the last few games.
Starting TE while Mayer sits out the NY6 Bowl game? I would take that.
That might be an indictment of the other TEs, to think he can show up in the fall and pass each of them on the depth chart.
Passing the others would be the end result, but ppl are already saying Raridon has the athleticism and buzz to be in line as the next great ND tight end. If that’s true, he will rise past everyone (besides Mayer) pretty quickly. Similar to how Mayer did with Tremble and Wright in 2020 (two NFL players, one a fairly high draft pick). Says more about Mayer then it does the others.
That said, I see the point and agree it’s a huge and probably unfair projection for Raridon to quickly establish himself over a player like Evans immediately. Could happen, but seems like a really big expectation too.
Especially in season coming off a major knee injury. I think the kid could be excellent and have from the start. That said, he’s had a meteoric rise in expectations.
Ever since E mentioned that the 247 guy launched On3, I have been poking around more. This is totally unrelated to TEs, but this page is really cool.
https://www.on3.com/college/notre-dame-fighting-irish/football/2023/visits/
The predictions are what is really cool. It’s an ML algorithm that uses insider info, visits, social/media sentiment, geography and geographic history, past coach recruiting success. This is just awesome.
They also do NIL value. Again based on algorithms. On3 is basically a technology site that applies their work to recruiting.
Also, this might make the commit posts even easier, unless you’re already using it. They have an industry comparison page for each player that gives the rankings from each site: https://www.on3.com/db/keon-keeley-73611/industry-comparison/
That is pretty neat. It would be interesting to see a little more about the algorithm they are using.
Bad news on Tate, but good news on Dante Moore and the DL could turn out to be the best haul in the country if we added M’Pemba (who is an athlete but I assume given his dimensions 6’4 245 that he’d be a DE of sorts) and Jason Moore. For the DL that would be 2 top 15 (247) 3 top 50 and 4 top 75. Though after a quick check – that would at least put us in the conversation to have just as good a haul for the DL as a Bama, Georgia, A&M.
Could be wrong but I swear I read somewhere that ND was trying to pitch M’Pemba on being in the rover role. He does seem big to the point of being a classic DE/edge though.
Also I saw that Keeley moved up to the #9 overall recruit in the latest 247 release. At this point it would be a huge blessing just to play defense from all the other programs going at him and getting him to sign. I think he visited Alabama. Probably just a sign of the times, but it seems like more players are taking visits now after they verbal (the safety Peyton Bowen has too). A verbal really isn’t the finish line any more, just signifies being in the lead with plenty of time to go in a lot of cases.
Yeah, the DL would be amazing. It will be very interesting to see how these predictions work. For 247, it was just insiders voting, so they would be patient and wait. For this, it just uses factors, so you think would be less reliable early on, but very accurate the more data it receives over time.
That is a very cool and modern idea. It’ll be interesting to track how accurate they are and how it evolves.
Yea it’ll certainly be interesting to see how those all turn out. It’s certainly a lot more info than what 247 offers. Hopefully at some point they’ll analyze the data after a few years. Potentially, they could become the new kings of recruiting with that kind of data to share.
If I were them, I would figure out at when these predictions hit 50%,75%, 95% accuracy. Then basically put a confidence rating alongside it. Or even wait until it’s at least 50% accurate to include on their profile at all.
But whatever they do, this is really cool from a technology predicting human behavior standpoint. If this gets super accurate, I wonder if it could actually influence kids who hate that they can be predicted so easily, so they pick something else just to be contradictory, ending up with it working against itself. Law of unintended consequences! But at this point my mind is just running wild with possibilities.
haha yea i could see that happening (guys picking against the predication).
It’s hard to imagine it would ever be that accurate – at least when it really comes down to close calls.
I wouldn’t bet on it or against it. But it would not surprise me if humans are way more predictable than we think with decisions like this. We are animals who can be trained after all.
yea or I would think of it in terms of that a lot of people value the same things in a culture. So for those who share those values it may be relatively easy to predict (if you can be precise about what those things are) but for those who don’t it’ll be a lot harder to predict.
But I’d be with you that there are probably a lot more in the former camp – who have a shared culture that may be easier to predict if you can be precise enough about it – rather than in the latter camp.
I’m not actually in either camp. I am just in a purely wait and see approach. That is why I find this so interesting.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up near 90% accuracy with 6 months lead time. I also wouldn’t be surprised if it’s around 50% the day people commit.
All of that will be fascinating to watch. Like right now they have Dante Moore 73% ND, 15% Michigan. Not really sure how accurate that could be at all, given that he is really wide open and doesn’t seem like he’s even 10% decided himself right now. Like you said above, some sort of confidence level would be helpful, because I can’t imagine right now there actually is that big of a commanding lead for ND on Moore right now (though, obviously, I hope there is!)
I’ll be interested to see the swings, when he visits another school and takes some pics in their jerseys and likes some tweets from coaches, will their projection wildly swing back and forth?
It isn’t saying that ND currently leads, necessarily, just that he is most likely to select ND in the end (according to their model).
But, yes, the swings will be very interesting. With any ML algorithm it will get better over time. They need a lot of good data to become accurate.
This year in particular I would imagine big swings, it will be really interesting to see what causes them (if anyone pays enough attention to try to really figure that out) and if it gets better at an earlier prediction over time.
yea i wonder how serious analytic guys do they have? Will it turn into something similar that 538 does for politics since they are similarly trying to analyze people making decisions (votes)? Though I would think politics may be easier (!) to predict since there are only 2 choices most of the time – and there is a lot more data in the past to sift through searching for things that matter and things that don’t.
I would have to imagine that they have a pretty good team to even attempt this. ML developers are very expensive and they wouldn’t know anything about cfb recruiting. Chances are they have a decent sized analytics team functioning as product owners.
It would be a huge waste of money to kick something off like this without fully committing. It is also the type of thing that you could get huge amounts of VC money for, who would make sure you aren’t skimping on an analysis team.
Do you know if 538 uses machine learning in their prediction models?
It may take a few years but it could get pretty good then if they are doing that.
I don’t really know what 538 uses. They do usually (always?) have an explanation of their models whenever a new one comes out (or a new year of it). So I would think you could find it somewhere or be on the lookout when the next model comes out (probably this summer for mid-terms).
If only I cared as much about election models as I do about CFB recruiting.
haha, exactly why I haven’t read those explanations and can’t answer your question!
Gotcha, “leads” was a bad word choice by me, but even the width of that projection for a final selection feels…Like a big leap based on unknown. I do hope it proves to be accurate!
For instance, on implied odds based on their percentages would make ND a -270 betting favorite, Michigan at +490 and the field at +730.
From all accounts based on where he is in his process, not a bet I would make. If they could point out this is more wide open or the picture is a bit fuzzy at this point than the % would suggest, I think that would be helpful.
Yeah. I definitely wouldn’t bet on anything they put out at this point.
To me, the big question is, how long until this is good at predicting people 6mo to 1 year out? I would think it will be 2-3 cycles at least before anyone should start getting excited about seeing a 5* QB predicted to them at 75% 12 months before they sign.
And it wouldn’t surprise me if this never becomes better than the 247 crystal ball. But it has the theoretical potential, given enough input, to fairly accurately predict kids final destinations 1-1.5 years early.
Those percentages moved heavily in ND’s favor after Mike Singer (primary recruiting guy at On3) put in a prediction for the Irish to land Moore. Because it’s the first & only prediction logged, I think the algo is putting a lot of value on that data point. IIRC, campus visits are also a consideration, and Moore has been to South Bend a number of times, too.
Yea I just meant if it turns out to be accurate the reasons I gave above would seem to be why it could be accurate.
I don’t see how the multiple TE’s is a good thing when one considers both that (1) running with a spread formation is easier and (2) TE’s are usually not nearly as explosive as WR’s. So having two TE’s be a common lineup would require having a pretty explosive TE lineup outside. But even then it seems generally better to have players to spread the field more or be more explosive than a 2nd TE.
Considering that Kyle Pitts in his Jr year before being drafted, put up 770 yards on 43 receptions for a healthy 17.9 avg and 12 TD’s, I’d be willing to take Mayer for 900 yards, 10 TD’s at a 15 yard average. That is only 60 catches vs the 71 he had this last season, but hopefully we have a more dynamic offense with a bit more balance and don’t have to rely on him to be the main receiving weapon.
I also think that Evans can be just as good in the passing game as Mayer is. Just has to wait his turn.
Pitts was much faster and much more fluid with the ball in his hands than Mayer. I don’t see a world in which Mayer ND’s #1 or #2 deep threat and ND is considered a contender. Pitts would have been, at worst, the #2 deep threat for 99% of the teams in the country.
That makes sense. Pitts is another level up from our guys at TE. Brock Bowers from GA is the best TE in cfb now, IMO.
given our WR paucity, I think Mayer ends up with most receptions and yardage and will be a first or second round pick.
Georgia just won the NC with Brock Bowers as their #1 pass-catcher. He lapped every receiver on the team in yards & TDs. I don’t see why Mayer being a primary target within our offense is some kind of limiting factor for the team.
Well they didn’t win because they had a great offense. So unless you are going to have a generational defense, it would seem not having an elite WR would be limiting. While a TE can pose certain matchup problems, I’m not sure that anyone would prefer an elite TE over an elite WR. There are few TE (even the so-called elite ones) that are deep threats or big-play threats – even in the NFL.
I love Michael Mayer very much. But Brock Bowers was in a whole different league than Mayer last year. He averaged 4 more yards per catch than Mayer. Comparing the two of them as guys who can stretch the field just isn’t reasonable at this time.