Notre Dame picked up its second commitment in as many days as offensive lineman Styles Prescod gave a verbal to the Fighting Irish. The in-state product from Fishers, Indiana in the northeast suburbs of Indianapolis had been one of the top target linemen for Notre Dame during this cycle. With 7 months to go until Early Signing Day, the Irish sit at a healthy 19 commitments.
Kid from Indy! Go Irish☘️ pic.twitter.com/IUGEYjePZc
— Styles Prescod (@styles_prescod) June 6, 2023
Prescod had just visited this weekend for Irish Invasion and is ready to shut things down.
Recruiting Service Rankings
247Sports Composite — 4 star (.9087), #283 overall, #26 OT, #4 in IN
On3 Consensus — 3 star (87.74 rating), #613 overall, #44 IOL, #6 in IN
The 247 Composite and On3 Consensus both combine 247, On3, Rivals, and ESPN rankings.
247Sports — 3 star (88 rating), NR overall, #36 OT, #4 in IN
On3 — 4 star (91 rating), #189 overall, #10 IOL, #2 in IN
Rivals — 3 star (5.5 rating), NR overall, NR IOL, #12 in IN
ESPN — Not Rated Yet
Irish Sports Daily — 4 star (91 rating)
Rivals straight up be hatin’ with their assessment so far. Get it together, Rivals.
Cohort
In addition to Notre Dame, he carries offers from Alabama, Tennessee, Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, Vanderbilt, Penn State, Wisconsin, Duke, Kentucky, Kansas, Pitt, Iowa State, Louisville, Iowa, Purdue, Cincinnati, Indiana, and West Virginia among the Power 5 programs.
Highlights
Prescod’s footwork immediately jumps out and he looks like a really strong athlete at left tackle. He’s listed anywhere from 6’5″ to 6’6″ and looks to have a really long and impressive frame. If he’s around 280 pounds as listed by 247 Sports, I don’t think it’ll take him very long to get over 300 pounds. With his athletic ability, Prescod moves well and you can see him in his highlights pulling quickly and anchoring well while setting up to stop a pass rusher.
Prescod’s physicality is impressive, too. His high school Hamilton Southeastern sometimes moves him inside and he looks like a tackle who could also excel at guard. Like many young, tall lineman he does play high at times. He’s used to over-powering using his upper-body and that’ll be something to clean up once he arrives at Notre Dame.
Impact
We’ll see what happens with the highly rated Guerby Lambert who also came off a recent visit to Notre Dame but Styles Prescod is an important piece at tackle for this recruiting class. We should see Prescod’s ratings increase once he’s covered by ESPN and I have to think there will be decent jumps by 247 and Rivals, too.
Last cycle, Charles Jagusah was a huge prize at tackle. If Prescod doesn’t reach that level of hype he will still be a long and athletic athlete that should develop into a starter at Notre Dame.
Welcome to the Irish family, Styles!
Have some of these recruiting sites cut staff? There seems to be some wild differences in the ratings of players and some way off ones too.
Welcome to ND SP.
Good question. Especially for OL I think they just throw their hands up and wing it a lot of times. I like 6’6, 280 and a true tackle prospect though. Throw him in the S&C for a few years and we’ll see how it goes
Remarkable that recruiting by teams and the recruiting sites have expanded to cover and rate over the years. With camps, film and unofficial visits, prospects have more national exposure. Whether those are accurate long-term is another question.
An example to me, is Tight End recruiting this year. Carter Nelson from Ainsworth, NE plays 8 on 8 is an example. He just visited Georgia, who has already gotten two TE commits.
One of those was Jaden Reddell from Peculiar, MO near KC – another target by ND staff. Nelson bumped up from #8 to #2 while Reddell went from #2 to #4 (247). The composite still has Nelson at #8. Reddell committed to Georgia which already has two TE commits. (Three of their TEs transferred this offseason, leaving only four on the current roster. One of those transfers was once a #1 TE recruit, who went to LSU, then Florida, then Georgia, now Nebraska)
Anyway, nice to have another Hoosier player on the roster. It seems like we may be nearing finishing out 2024 offense recruiting.
30 years ago Carter Nelson would not have been noticed by any Power 5 schools except, maybe, Nebraska. And Nebraska probably would have gotten away with giving him a preferred walk on opportunity. And then Nelson would have the opportunity to decide between a partial scholarship offer to the University of South Dakota or Chadron State College, or walking on at Nebraska, and inevitably the siren call of a power 5 program would draw him in. NB would redshirt him, his sophomore year he might see some special teams, and then as a true junior, get some decent playing time and Nebraska would give him a scholarship his senior year. The TV announcers would throw out every chance they got how this player came from an 8 man football team in Ainsworth as a walk on and developed into this great tight end.
This is what we do, stockpile low .90s talent. Good news is we build up depth, and some of them become elite.
Bad news is they’re not 5 stars and so the hit rate on elite talent is lower.
Prescod was initially offered by Hiestand. I think Hiestand definitely had a type that he was looking for, aggressive lineman that kept on their block through the end of the play. Prescod matches that pretty well. I don’t think Hiestand cared if they were 3 stars or 5 stars, he wanted the mentality. Just my opinion though. Not sure if Rudolph has a type of player he is looking for, or if he is a person that goes more by measurable traits, or something else.
Yeah the fundamental question is whether the real but not-huge increase in average recruit and more-significant increase in the Blue Chip Ratio (though, again, mostly by stocking up on low-to-mid 4-stars instead of high-ranked 3-stars) is enough of a talent improvement to make up for the program-management gap between Kelly and Freeman. An interesting way of seeing exactly how much recruiting stars matter.
Ultimately I suspect three years from now it will come down to how good CJ Carr is.
So far, I think that MF and his staff have improved over BK in terms of raising the blue chip ratio — more 4 stars leads to more quality depth and greater odds of hitting on good players.
However, as you noted, the next step is to improve dramatically when it comes to 5 stars (or at least top 100 players) — this will be needed to win in the playoffs
Agreed. Also, I realize these can be anecdotes but for OL I feel like top-100’s can more frequently be like Tommy Kraemer, Quinn Carroll, Tosh Baker, Rocco Spindler etc and not really mean too much. Certainly does mean an awful lot at other positions.
So I don’t really care about .90s talent for OL, though again, point stands across the board and generally speaking. Need to get more in the top-50 to 100 range to be a factor. Ideally Freeman’s got to make a change and break the cycle and get the Keeley/Scott/Rushing types in eventually. Nice he’s making runs at them but it’s gotta be frustrating get close but not quite so far.
I think that someone at the Athletic (maybe Staples?) did an article about a year ago that showed that star ratings mattered more for certain positions than others. Consistent with what you noted, I think OL was one where stars did not matter as much as it seemed, possibly because sites had more difficulty rating those players accurately. In contrast, I think that DL players’ performance seemed to correlate better with the star ratings.
I’m thinking in high school on the OL you can just forage and maul weaker kids, but at the college level smarts and cohesion with your OL teammates makes a huge difference. Hard to predict that.
On the DL side, you can beat your man one on one just like in high school.
/0.02c
I think physical development is also more specific. You can play on the DL at anywhere between 240-330. But for OL, you essentially have to be 300+ lbs, and if you aren’t, they can’t really find sub packages for you, no matter how athletic and technically refined you are.
So I guess more of an all or nothing position. At least making the misses more obvious.
Anyone know what 24K is in regards to recruiting? Staying at the Embassy Suites passing through SB and they have a sign up to welcome the 24K recruits