Reviewing the Redshirts is an off-season project meant to resurrect discussion about the 2022 Notre Dame freshmen who retained a year of eligibility and discuss their possible impact in 2023 and beyond. The Fighting Irish were able to redshirt 17 players this past season while 1 player medically retired (Joey Tanona) and another player has transferred already to Syracuse (Jayden Bellamy).
Today we’ll take a look at an extremely promising tackle prospect who is on the quest to get big enough to start for Notre Dame.
OL Aamil Wagner
Hometown: Yellow Springs, Ohio
Height: 6-6
Weight: 267
247Sports Composite Ranking: 4-star, No. 11 OT, No. 7 OH, No. 112 National, 0.9548 score
18 Stripes Grade: 91.7
Murtaugh’s Blurb from the Class Grade:
Light in the britches but super athletic for an offensive lineman. Moves extremely well and is very fluid without any lumbering. Plays a little high but shows good power and arrives at defenders with a punch. Genuinely looks like he will need to add 40 pounds but has the frame to support that much weight. Not a big hurry to rush his development which is good. Wagner is both a great prospect but also a bit of a project for some with this type of a grade.
Wagner was truly one of the few recent “Wow, really? Cool!” commitments we’ve seen for Notre Dame when he gave a verbal to the Irish in November 2021 and signed just a little over a month later. He wasn’t on the radar a ton and was predicted by many to Kentucky.
The big worry coming in with Wagner was his weight, and yup, that was justified.
Need at Position: Medium-to-High
There’s a reason why Notre Dame signed 5 offensive linemen in the 2022 class. The upperclassmen numbers at the time were abysmal (fast forward to now and the 2020 class isn’t likely to have anyone contribute to the program on the field) and it made sense to bring in 10 total offensive linemen over 2 cycles in 2021-22.
Wagner may not be needed for 2023 but it isn’t difficult to envision a scenario where he’s an important piece to 2024.
Expected Spot on the 2023 Depth Chart: 3rd string
In the recent Ty Chan article in this series I talked about building depth at tackle and the possibility of losing some upperclassmen at this position who are stuck behind Joe Alt and Blake Fisher. This spring is going to be a big one for Wagner as one of the more highly rated offensive line recruits for Notre Dame in recent years and the top-rated player on offense from the 2022 Irish class.
How quickly can Wagner re-shape his body? With his height he could gain up to 50 pounds and still carry that weight pretty well. Is it realistic to expect anything close to that in one year? Or, are we looking at a situation where he’s making progress but still around 290 (still impressive gains for most humans!) heading into the fall?
Notre Dame really needs to hit on Wagner and establish him as the next in line at the tackle position but until we see his size increase questions will remain.
I very much enjoyed that he did not tip off any of the pay sites or even apparently the ND coaching staff before committing.
Getting a borderline top-100 recruit with no prior notice was kind of a fun change of pace.
Hopefully he can be Built By Balis. Did MB ever get sent a Balis workout plan?
He won the ohio state championship in shot put last year, and the most amazing thing was how he DOMINATED with some of the most straight forward technique. He threw over 65′ (high school elite number), which demonstrates his explosiveness and athletic ability to maximize power output quickly, aka perfect lineman attribute. This fella has some foundational material to be excellent