Welcome back to the 18 Stripes Big Board for Fighting Irish football. Today we’re taking a look at Notre Dame targets along the offensive line and at tight end.
It may have been a disappointing game this weekend, but it was still a big day for recruiting purposes, as Brendan discussed here. There were a ton of recruits on campus, some of which will be in this Big Board update. Let’s take a look:
Tight End
No need for a board here. The Irish struck gold, landing the only two tight ends they extended an offer to. At the time of his commitment, Brock Wright was a 5-star player and the #1 overall tight end in the 247 Composite. He has since dropped a bit — he reportedly stopped going to camps after committing way back in the summer of 2015 because he just doesn’t care about that kind of stuff — but he’s still sitting pretty at #67 overall, the #2 tight end spot, and a .965 Composite score. Brock is arguably the best pure tight end in the class of 2017. He is already a skilled blocker as well as a pretty good target in the passing game.
The rankings of Notre Dame’s second tight end commit, Cole Kmet, have gone in the opposite direction. At the time of his commitment to the Irish almost a year ago, he was at low 4-star status. However, 247 recently updated their composite rankings, and Kmet made a big move. He is now the #93 overall player in the class of 2017, the #3 tight end, and holds a .953 Composite score. Cole is a big receiving threat and a nightmare match-up in the red zone.
Landing two tight ends in the Top 100 is pretty tough to do. Not many could pull that off, but BK and Co. somehow did it. And I’m confident both commitments stick. Both guys were on campus this past weekend visiting for like the thousandth time, and they seem to have developed a good friendship with the other members of the IRISH EL17E.
Offensive Line
| Score | Name | State | Ht./Wt. | Temperature |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| .997 | Foster Sarell | WA | 6-6/320 | Mild |
| .989 | Trey Smith | TN | 6-5/300 | Cool |
| .985 | Austin Jackson | AZ | 6-6/270 | Cold |
| .978 | Jedrick Wills | KY | 6-5/315 | Cool |
| .930 | Aaron Banks | CA | 6-7/345 | Mild |
In Play
Foster Sarell has gotten a small ratings boost up to the #2 player overall in the 247 Composite. He will be visiting Notre Dame for the Stanford game, which worries me a bit because Stanford is the other team in his Top 2 (with Washington coming in at 3). I’m not at all confident at this point that the Irish can stop the Stanford offense enough to make this a good game, so he may end up viewing a convincing Cardinal victory. I guess losses really don’t impact recruits that much, though. After all, the Irish did just land 4-star DE Donovan Jeter after his visit this weekend. Oh, and did you know Manti Te’o visited ND for their loss to 2-9 Syracuse?
Notre Dame has been fading with Trey Smith for a while now and Tennessee has been taking a big lead in this recruitment after hiring his sister. He should be taking an official visit to Notre Dame sometime in the fall, though, so we’ll see what happens.
Will the trouble at USC deter Austin Jackson? Too early to tell right now. In case you hadn’t heard, rumors recently surfaced that head coach Clay Helton was punched by one of his players, a significant group of players intend to transfer, and both Adoree Jackson and JuJu Smith-Schuster plan on bolting for the draft after this year. If Jackson doesn’t like the state of the USC program right now, he may look to Arizona, Arizona State, or a few other schools he keeps in contact with.
For a long time, things were looking very good between Notre Dame and Jedrick Wills. That is no longer the case. Alabama completely swept him away on a visit over the summer, and it’s honestly a surprise he hasn’t committed to the Crimson Tide already. About the only way he ends up in Notre Dame’s class right now is if he takes too long and somehow loses his spot in the Alabama class — a scenario I highly doubt will occur.
Aaron Banks was in South Bend this weekend for the Michigan State debacle. Bad loss aside, he had a pretty good time on his visit, although I’m not sure he enjoyed himself enough for Notre Dame to have real shot at landing him.
In the Fold
The Irish currently have three commits along the offensive line in Dillan Gibbons (.879), Josh Lugg (.920), and Robert Hainsey (.964). This is a pretty good haul, but the Irish are hoping to land at least one more lineman this cycle and the odds aren’t better than 50/50 for anyone on this list. The staff is probably evaluating new targets right now.
Both Gibbons and Lugg were in town this weekend for the MSU game, and both seem like extremely solid commits. Josh Lugg even went so far as to say, “I’d sign on the dotted line right now if I could.” Hainsey hasn’t taken his official visit to Notre Dame yet, but we’ll find out soon when that will happen.
Committed Elsewhere
Josh Myers, Wyatt Davis, and Jake Moretti are committed to Ohio State.
Austin Deculus is committed to LSU.
Andrew Thomas is committed to Georgia.
Austin Troxell is committed to Auburn.
Tyler Beach and Kayden Lyles are committed to Wisconsin.
Thanks for the write up Tyler, great job. I know, if one of my kids were looking at USC as a schollership opportunity, I would probably try to steer them away from that situation. Too much drama, and not enough focus on school and football for me to be comfortable with.
Thanks, Russell.
USC definitely appears to be a mess right now. They needed a homerun hire after Sarkisian and… I guess they thought they were playing it safe with Helton? I don’t know, that decision didn’t really make sense to a lot of people.
@What are these ‘tight ends’ you speak of?@
You wouldn’t know it by watching the games, but there are a few on the roster.
Hoping Kmet and Wright can restore some glory to the position. Sad thing was I’m a big Jones believer (as I think most are) so I’m sure the TE’s would be regarded differently had he been playing.