If you follow Notre Dame football closely, or even too closely, just like we do, you’re probably aware that the Irish have always struggled with defensive line recruiting, especially with landing elite talent on the line. Since 2000, only two 247 Composite five-star defensive linemen have donned an Irish jersey*: Victor Abiamiri (#29 overall/0.9861 rating) and Aaron Lynch (#9/0.9945). Stephon Tuitt (#32/0.9809) was really close to being a five star, and Ethan Johnson (#35/0.9787) wasn’t far behind him, but this isn’t horseshoes. Two guys in 18 recruiting cycles… Sheesh. Justin Tuck, if you’re wondering, was an unrated middle linebacker prospect. To sum it up in one word, youneverknow…
* You’ll notice throughout that I chose my words carefully to appropriately exclude that kid with the sick grandma who plays in Westwood now.
Anyway, the inability of Notre Dame to sign elite defensive linemen is either a problem or a reality, depending on how you look at it. Or both, maybe. However you slice it, it’s a thing, and it makes life harder on the Irish when they go up against elite teams. It’s one of football’s oldest chestnuts, and it has that status because it’s true: Control the trenches, and there’s a very good chance you’ll control the game. Of course scheme, player development, health, and all kinds of other things go into how well the defensive line plays on any given Saturday, but inarguably one of the key contributors is the quality of raw material – stockpile more athletic ability, and you’ll have a higher probability of putting out a top-notch product come game day. No less a luminary than Frank Leahy once said, “Prayers work better when your players are big.”
How Other Schools Perform
Let’s compare Notre Dame’s defensive line recruiting to that of a group of (mostly) consistently elite teams: Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, Stanford, and USC. I went through the 247 Composite from the 2012 cycle, which included this season’s fifth-year seniors, to the 2017 cycle, the current high school seniors. For Notre Dame, I included Daelin Hayes, Jerry Tillery, and Jarron Jones; despite their Composite positions (outside linebacker, offensive tackle, and offensive tackle), I knew the staff intended them to be defensive linemen all the way. I left out Ishaq Williams because he was originally a linebacker. For every other school, I don’t follow them closely enough to know who was recruited to play where or who is where now, so Notre Dame gets a very slight benefit in this analysis, but them’s the breaks. Home field advantage.
On to the numbers themselves…
Defensive Line Recruiting Stats
| School | Linemen |
| Ohio State | 26 |
| Florida State | 25 |
| Notre Dame | 25 |
| Alabama | 24 |
| Clemson | 21 |
| USC | 18 |
| Stanford | 18 |
As you can see here, Notre Dame hasn’t lacked for quantity – I was quite surprised to see that we have signed substantially more defensive linemen than USC and Stanford, and that we’re right there with Ohio State and Florida State. The Irish’s numbers aren’t evenly distributed from one year to the next, but that’s actually true for all these teams. So there’s no problem in terms of the staff actively trying to build depth.
| School | Average DL Rating |
| Alabama | 0.9237 |
| Ohio State | 0.9236 |
| Florida State | 0.9177 |
| USC | 0.9058 |
| Clemson | 0.9016 |
| Notre Dame | 0.8932 |
| Stanford | 0.8792 |
Not surprisingly, when we look at average defensive lineman Composite rating we start to see a very different story. Those nearly-identical ratings for Alabama and Ohio State translate to roughly a top 200 player – so their average defensive lineman has about the same rating as what would be a headliner for the position in most Notre Dame classes. In fact, our top-rated defensive lineman in this cycle is Darnell Ewell, at #150 overall with a 0.9341 rating. Last year, it was Daelin Hayes at #133/0.9371 or, if you want to stick with a “pure” lineman, Khalid Kareem at #191/0.9207. In 2015 it was Jerry Tillery at #158/0.9293. You get the idea.
What did stand out a bit is that our average rating isn’t all that far behind Clemson’s, who always has good defensive line play, or USC’s, who when they’re not utterly dysfunctional has good defensive line play. And, of course, our average rating is comfortably ahead of Stanford’s, who has been pretty decent lately as well. Hmm.
| School | Best Recruit | Worst Recruit |
| Florida State | 0.9995 | 0.7959 |
| Clemson | 0.9991 | 0.7954 |
| Alabama | 0.9978 | 0.8676 |
| Ohio State | 0.9974 | 0.8291 |
| USC | 0.9949 | 0.8278 |
| Stanford | 0.9881 | 0.8381 |
| Notre Dame | 0.9485 | 0.8377 |
Welp. There it is. This table of the highest- and lowest-rated recruit for each school tells a rather sordid story indeed. The five-star cutoff is roughly around .9830, so what those numbers in the “Best Recruit” column mean is that Notre Dame is the only school in that group not to have landed a five-star defensive lineman since 2012. Yes, even Stanford signed one five-star – defensive end Solomon Thomas, who the Irish wanted very badly, in the 2014 cycle. Thomas logged 10.5 tackles for loss and a fumble return touchdown last year, and is currently entrenched as a starter for the Cardinal. Notre Dame has the third highest “floor” in this list, a hair behind Stanford; that might seem to be a good thing, but I don’t think it’s an accident that those two schools have the second- and third-best floors and last and next-to-last ceilings out of this group. Stanford and Notre Dame can’t afford to take as many fliers as the other schools can, because their top end isn’t near as good.
If we look at frequency of five-stars a clear imbalance starts to show, as you might expect. Ohio State and Florida State lead the way with four five-stars each since 2012, USC is next with three, then Alabama and Clemson with two each, and finally Stanford with one. Florida State had three five-stars in the 2012 class alone, which… I don’t even know how to describe that, other than to say that it’s hardly shocking that they won the 2014 championship with the #1 draft pick at quarterback and elite talent across the defense.
If we expand this to look at top 100 players – roughly around a 0.9500 rating or better – we get a larger sample, and an even more obvious gulf between the haves and have nots emerges. Ohio State has landed 11 top 100 defensive linemen since 2012, Florida State has landed 9, Alabama has landed 8, Clemson and USC have landed five apiece, and Stanford has landed two. Notre Dame? Well, the Irish have logged a big fat zero here as well. That’s even more damning than the five-star picture, as there are prospects in the top 100 every year who are realistic Notre Dame targets.
If you’re curious, Sheldon Day was our highest-rated defense line recruit since 2012, at #111 overall/0.9485 rating. Isaac Rochell is right behind him at #113/0.9459, and Daelin Hayes is third.
Where To From Here?
There are any number of reasons behind the difficulty in defensive line recruiting; in my opinion, the two biggest are an extremely small talent pool, especially at defensive tackle, and institutional hurdles that kids either can’t or don’t want to deal with. The fact that there are fewer kids to pick from amplifies the negatives of Notre Dame enormously; why put up with stricter classes, behavioral expectations, weather, and so on, when you have Alabama, Clemson, LSU, Florida State, UCLA, and USC all tripping over themselves to get your commitment?
That stuff is a reality, and it’s not going to change. What can change is what I would consider the second tier of factors – recruiting strategy and effort, on-field results, and development. Build a better recruiting strategy and – gasp – put effort into it, and you’ll see kids getting more interested. Put out a better product on the field, and you’ll see kids getting more interested. Develop a few NFL draft picks, and you’ll see kid getting more interested. All of these factors are within the realm of what the Notre Dame staff can control, and if they’re done well, can overcome the natural factors that the staff can’t control. There’s no reason why Notre Dame shouldn’t land the occasional five star defensive lineman, but it will take a ton of effort in every phase by the Irish staff.
There are also plenty of teams who don’t recruit at a high level, for whatever reason, but have good defenses thanks to exceptional player evaluation ability and/or player development ability. In those three areas – recruiting, evaluation, and development – you can be sub-standard in one and still have a great defense, or you can be substandard in two and have a decent defense. Unfortunately for Irish fans, Notre Dame has been substandard in all three areas lately, and the results on the field show it. I believe we have the talent to be at least a decent defense, and I think there’s very legitimate cause for optimism that the new defensive coordinator will bring the coaching chops needed to get it done. But for Notre Dame to be a great defense again, he better bring some recruiting chops too.
Wow ask and you shall receive. Didn’t someone just ask about this today? Great breakdown. I’ve noticed this more and more with our recruiting – our numbers in terms of 4 stars are better than the typical 60% threshold for championship level quality. And if I remember from a comment I wrote a few weeks ago outlining the talent we have on D it was like 64% offense and 56% defense which should be enough talent for a really good D (maybe not top 10-15, but still really good). Looking briefly at the other top teams, the difference is in what you show here with the DL is that our top-end quality is not nearly as good so our 60% 4 stars rate are without the benefit of a few elite (high 4 star/5 star) players at most positions. My point is that I think this happens more than just on the DL and only at QB, WR, OL and (interestingly) LB do we get an elite prospect (maybe a RB too). Hence offense has been set with recruiting but the D while close to 60% 4 stars has been lacking in the elite players.
I think the big problem is we have compounding errors – we have this elite talent problem on the defensive line and in the secondary. Either unit could provide cover for the other if it had one or two elite guys, but if both have average to above average talent we’re going to have some vulnerabilities that we just can’t do anything about.
Think about this: How different would the defense look if you swapped out Jarron Jones for Malik McDowell? Or Drue Tranquill, bless his heart, for Juju Smith-Schuster? Or Nick Coleman for Minkah Fitzpatrick? I know, “duh.” But those guys have a much, much bigger impact than just the upgrade at their position. Put McDowell in the middle, and all of a sudden Rochell and Hayes get more one-on-one matchups and Morgan doesn’t have guards blocking him. Put Juju in centerfield, and that area of the field is gone. Put Fitzpatrick man-to-man on their best receiver, and it frees up the safety on that side to effectively take away a third or the field. Every one else’s job gets easier. You need to get those guys to reduce the pressre on everyone else – because as we all know, pressure busts pipes.
Well put Brendan. That’s why a number of 4 stars don’t add up quite the same as a few less 4 stars and one more elite player – even if the average is exactly the same. That’s why the 60% 4 stars or better is, in this case, a bit misleading. Almost every other team who recruits a lot of 4 stars include a few elite players.
I would hazard that “lack of bodies” is on no one’s list of shortfalls, though I do wonder occasionally where Mokwuah, Tiassum, Taylor and Dew-Treadway might be hanging out. Despite the obvious shortage of 5 star recruits, we do seem to have a plethora of 4 star guys across the board. One would think a good to very good defensive front could be cobbled together out of the horde.
A question has been percolating in my mind for the last few years. I remember a clever goal of “Unconscious Competence” being set. I understood this to mean knowing your position, your assignment, or your job, however you wish to express it, so well it became as second nature or instinctual. My question is. While attempting to commit “The Mandarin Defense” to unconsciousness, is it possible this is dampening their, you know, actual instincts?
A couple of examples on the defensive line spring to mind.
1. Isaac Rochelle is a 3tech DT being held back because he can competently play DE. If Jay Hayes is as good as every one seems to think he is he should be immediately moved to the other side of the formation so that Rochelle can be moved inside. Once Rochelle moves on to the NFL (and he will) he will be correctly identified as a 3tech DT or a DE in a 3-4 and he will excel. A secondary effect of keeping Rochelle at DE has been watching J.Hayes and Kareem languish on the sidelines to date. In my opinion these two should be building through this season towards breakout Jr. and So. seasons next year when we lose Rochelle and Jones. Speaking of Jones we come to example no. 2.
2. It has become pretty obvious that unless you give Morgan a cattle prod you are not going to get the production from Jones that a hungry Cage will give you. Jones is competent for the most part, but honestly Florida St. is looking more the outlier than the norm. By all means include him on all field goal and point after attempts though. In the mean time Cage just looks more aggressive, to the eye at least.
Both of these examples, I feel are directly attributable to trying to get your most competent players on the field at a detriment to your increased aggressiveness and hunger. I think a better balance needs to be found.
Good stuff Lep. I would hazard that “lack of bodies” is on no one’s list of shortfalls… I agree there, but I think there’s a general perception among Irish fans that Alabama, for example, succeeds on the defensive line by throwing massive numbers at the position that we can’t match. The real numbers tell a different story. That point didn’t quite make it into the copy here, but that’s what I was getting at. While attempting to commit “The Mandarin Defense” to unconsciousness, is it possible this is dampening their, you know, actual instincts? The progression – and this has been around way longer than BK, btw, it’s classic organizational development theory – is from Unconscious Incompetence, to Conscious Incompetence, to Conscious Competence, to Unconscious Incompetence. The last stage, as you note, is comfort to the level where things are instinctual; to crib from Stan Lee, it’s like Spiderman’s reflexes, which are “so fast they border on precognition.” Manti was the exemplar. I think the problem with The Mandarin Defense is that it was so complex that the players were never going to get past Conscious Competence, so they were always going to operate at best a step or two behind. Interestingly, with BK talking about moving to more odd fronts, they’re going to deploy Rochell exactly the way you’ve described. Hayes hasn’t languished because Rochell is at SDE – they moved him to WDE, and he languished there because Trumbetti is more able to do the things VanGorder wanted his WDEs to do. I think you’ll see plenty of Hayes going forward; I’m sure we’ll keep a rotation of him, Daelin, and Trumbetti, but I’d expect Jay to become first among equals there. Bonner has looked really good at SDE, which isn’t helping Kareem get on the field faster, but I do expect him to become more a part of the rotation as well. As for Jones, regardless of what the depth chart says (he’s still listed as the starter), I think he has effectively lost his job to Cage. Jones had fewer snaps than Cage against Texas (-7) and Nevada (-27, probably heavily affected by garbage time), but once he got some conditioning back he had more snaps against MSU (+10) and Duke (+2). Out goes BVG, and Cage gets 41 snaps to Jones’s 33 against Syracuse. The coaching staff sees the same things we do, and I think it probably didn’t sit well that Jones liked Davaris Daniels’s tweet about not throwing players under the bus, and he’s one of the guys Kelly was trying to motivate with those comments. I think Cage is more consistently aggressive, and he’s also more persistent. Jones has a bad habit of getting stoned and stopping. In fairness, VanGorder was asking him to do some pretty absurd things that might have had him gassed more than usual, like drop into coverage – I mean, he’s a 300 pound guy coming off a knee injury. Come on, dude. Even so, I agree, Cage has shown… Read more »
Great stuff as always. That our recruits average out close to Clemson despite their defense being light years ahead of ours really is the most damning statistic to our player development/coaching/BVG.
Our player development and coaching has definitely stunk, but there is a big talent gap between Clemson and us. In talent terms, our second string might be a little better than ours but their first string is way better than ours – Clemson landed five top 100 linemen in the last several cycles compared to our none. Our higher floor is pushing our average up to be not that far from theirs.
Now, there’s still room for your point if we add a little more context. Their ceiling is better so their performance should be better, ceteris paribus (thanks Econ 201!), but overall the unit isn’t so dramatically far ahead of ours in raw talent that they should be better than us by as much as they are. We don’t have elite talent on the line but we have enough to be, say, a top 40 unit on the field.
Thanks for the analysis Brendan! Your findings of ND being deficient when recruiting the cream of the crop is what I suspected (the number of 4*s is misleading, as you noted, because not all 4*s are the same quality). I wonder how much of this is DIRECTLY the fault of BVG? His lack of effort in recruiting and willingness to take a large number of bodies (e.g., Mokwah, Tiassum, Dew-Treadway, etc.) instead of focusing on bringing in elite talent has hampered the program. In previous years BK showed that ND can bring in some quality linemen (Lynch, Tuitt, Day), but since the arrival of BVG that has dropped off quite a bit.
I really hope that ND can hire a d-coordinator who is competent and, importantly, can recruit. As you said, ND already has a few recruiting disadvantages from the onset, but these numbers show that ND is not currently in the same league as these other teams when it comes to recruiting elite d-linemen – ND needs to get at least a few.
Ascribing the success in the early years to BK and the failures in recent years to BVG is, uh, inconsistent (or wishful thinking).
I do think that this is *partially* BVG’s fault because the dude just didn’t recruit hard, and then his scheme didn’t provide results that would be attractive to recruits. However, there has been a staff failure in picking the right guys to recruit as well, from the recruiting coordinators to BK. Irish Illustrated did a review of both our commits and our “misses” in recent years, and on the d-line even the guys we didn’t get have turned out to be meh or worse. I don’t know how to fix that, but it’s a problem. One easy step in the positive direction, as you note, would be hiring a coordinator who enjoys the whole process of recruiting.
I think the success and failure during Kelly’s entire tenure here is largely independent of him, quite frankly. He flipped Stephon Tuitt back, but otherwise he tended not to get all that involved personally until the just-concluded 2016 cycle. That’s a separate discussion, of course, but on the upside he has been heavily involved in the 2016 and 2017 cycles in what looks like a clear shift in approach. That should help.
Diaco wanted elite “werewolves” on the line that anybody else would want, so that’s who we recruited. Lynch, Tuitt, Vanderdoes, and so on. Even Nix, who committed before Kelly was hired, was exactly the type of guy Diaco would’ve wanted. VanGorder had a different approach. He wanted SDE’s who could hold up well against the run and interior guys who had the flexibility to move around, and he wasn’t concerned about getting elite WDE’s because he was confident he could get pressure through scheme. So we took project WDE’s like Kolin Hill, or tweener guys like Trumbetti who have versatility. Plus, BVG didn’t not recruit hard, he really didn’t recruit at all off campus, either in person or by phone. We were done before we started with a lot of top guys because of that.
Im loving the articles and the comments guys. One of my favorite aspects of this site is how responsive the authors are to the peanut gallery. I always love Larz’s breakdowns, and then the quick response from Brendan on this follow up article, well it’s just fantastic and part of why this is the best ND site in the business.
I’m riding this hurricane out in SE Georgia, and busier than a one legged man in tail kicking contest, but I’m digging what y’all are doing. Keep up the good work.
Thanks Russ! And stay dry and safe!
Knockout article, Brendan! Congratulations and thanks for the most fact based discussion I’ve ever seen on this topic, a far cry from the usual “just look at our recruiting class rankings, we should be winning championships, fire Kelly” . I really appreciate you basing your article on RELEVANT data, instead of “look at all the 4 stars we get”.
Regarding BVG not participating in recruiting, to me that’s all on Kelly and as much as anything makes it an awful decision by Kelly to hire him. You cannot win without the horses. And as you point out, one or two “special” guys makes all the difference. Lamar Jackson comes to mind as a player that changes the whole dynamic for a team. If Kelly is only recently engaging heavily in recruiting, he’s been overpaid. The elite coaches recruit intensively and it shows in the numbers. Is also likely the toughest part of the job, which is why a lot of less successful coaches are weak at it.
Funny thing about Lamar Jackson… He was a three-star, 0.8788 rating, #401 overall in the 2015 cycle. He had a really good offer list – Auburn, Clemson, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, Mississippi State, and Ohio State, among others. But he also had a few teams recruiting him who could’ve really used him and didn’t offer – most notably Oregon, even with the train wreck they’ve had of a QB pipeline since Mariota left, but also Miami and even lesser programs like Kentucky and Purdue. Yet another piece of evidence supporting the notion that recruiting is a very inexact science…
Kelly recruited – kids have mentioned him plenty of times in the past, and I remember him saying that Drue Tranquill was a “head coach’s offer” because he liked Drue but his assistants couldn’t decide what his best position was – but he’s much more active now on the road and in calling kids. I think he viewed himself as a closer in the past, like a sales manager coming in to finish off the transaction, where now he realizes he needs to be more of a sales leader. I don’t fault him necessarily for hiring BVG as a bad recruiter, because it’s hard to tell how good a guy will be at it until he does it, but there’s something off in not either forcing him to be more involved or levying consequences if he flat out wouldn’t do it. Definitely an issue that Kelly is paying for now and hopefully will remedy with the next DC.
Totally agree on the inexactitude of ratings, Brendan.
During the Louisville/Clemson game, the announcers said Jackson is the only QB Petrino ever recruited without seeing him throw in person–he must have a pretty good nose for talent. Things were down to the wire and Petrino eschewed the in-person throwing. Jackson chose Petrino/Louisville due to the type of offense they run.