Our last roster update came on March 30th in the early weeks of spring practice. Since then, the annual onslaught of late spring and early summer commits has happened, plus the NCAA rule book continues to evolve with a crucial new update to how rosters are managed beginning this season and definitely affecting recruiting in the short-term. We’ll break it all down today.

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Out of Eligibility Following 2026:

WR Jordan Faison
TE Ty Washington
OL Ashton Craig
DT Jason Onye
DT Elijah Hughes
LB Drayk Bowen
LB Jaylen Sneed
CB DJ McKinney
CB Christian Gray
S Luke Talich

You may have been living under a rock throughout 2026 and just clicked on this article today to realize a bunch of Notre Dame players have been granted extra eligibility. If not, you may already know the NCAA is moving into a new era with regards to how college athletes exhaust their eligibility. Will it be simpler to understand and maintain? That’s the hope! Will it survive legal challenges? Well, that remains to be seen.

The “5 for 5” Eligibility Rule Explained

1) Athletes will get 5 years to play 5 seasons, beginning when they enroll on campus or turn 19 years old, whichever comes first.

2) The process of redshirts is gone. The 4-game maximum for eligibility in a college football season no longer applies. If you get hurt on the first snap of the first game, there’s no saving a year anymore.

3) There will be no waivers, with exceptions reported for religious missions, military service, or pregnancy in the case of women’s sports.

4) Eligibility will be retroactive for current athletes who did not redshirt and are on track to play 4 seasons in 4 years. Therefore, the following Notre Dame players essentially gained an extra year of eligibility once the ruling was approved:

RB Aneyas Williams
WR Jordan Faison
WR Quincy Porter
OL Anthonie Knapp
DL Elijah Hughes
DL Bryce Young
DL Loghan Thomas
DL Francis Brewu
LB Drayk Bowen
LB Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa
LB Madden Faraimo
CB Christian Gray
CB Leonard Moore
CB Dallas Golden
CB Mark Zackery
CB Jayden Sanders
S Luke Talich
K Spencer Porath
P Erik Schmidt

Nineteen players isn’t a small group, although we know the likes of Leonard Moore and KVA will be far too coveted by the NFL to ever come close to using all of their eligibility. In the more immediate term, it does open the door to a few Super Seniors (Faison, Bowen, Gray, Talich) coming back for 2027 as we’ll get to below.

Notre Dame’s top receiver in 2025 now has eligibility through 2027.

Also, it’s helpful to remember that eligibility isn’t retroactive for everyone and that the 5 years from enrollment (or 19 years old) is a hard rule. For example, Adon Shuler enrolled in 2023 where he took a redshirt, but now doesn’t get 5 more seasons to compete through 2028. His ‘clock’ started in 2023 and he has eligibility through 2027–pretty much keeping him a rising redshirt junior, although these terms will fall away in the future.

The new rule kind of stinks for the 2025 freshmen who may have been close to playing more but had their redshirts protected. It was probably a small group all the same. Still, they didn’t get to start more development earlier while the few others who did get the same eligibility track within their class through 2029.

One of the things mentioned nationally is that that the 5 for 5 rule may mean more freshmen get thrown onto the field, particularly on special teams, since there’s no need to protect redshirts anymore. I don’t see this being a huge change at Notre Dame right now where Freeman has run a fairly veteran-heavy special teams unit, but it’ll be something to monitor.

2027-28 Academic Classes:

21 Verbal Commits
30 Sophomores
24 Juniors
28 Seniors
21 Graduates
124 Total Roster Spots

Spring continues to be crazy busy for recruiting as 15 out of the current 21 commits (71.4%) have given a verbal to Notre Dame over the last 3 months since our update back in March. Here they all are in order by their Composite scores:

OT Oluwasemilore Olubobola (0.9909)
OG Albert Simien (0.9909)
DE Abraham Sesay (0.9856)
DT David Folorunsho (0.9852)
WR Julius Jones Jr. (0.9688)
DE Aidan O’Neil (0.9470)
S Zayden Gamble (0.9377)
DE Jackson Vaughn (0.9298)
RB Isaiah Rogers (0.9259)
QB Wonderful Monds IV (0.9123)
DT Segun Alexander (0.8993)
TE Titus Hawk (0.8967)
OT Jackson Hill (0.8891)
John Gay (0.8750)
Jackson Coleman (0.8700)

Olu Olu gives Notre Dame another 5-star talent.

In the recent past, we also saw linebacker Amarri Irvin (0.9011) leave the class and then commit to Virginia Tech. Additionally, safety Khalil Terry (0.9014) decommitted and ended up at UCLA.

In other roster news, rising redshirt junior defensive lineman Brendan Vernon announced a medical retirement on June 22nd. I went back and looked and when the Irish began recruiting him way back in early 2020, Vernon was the Composite no. 18 overall player in the nation. A five star! He would tumble slowly down the rankings through his senior year to just outside the top 200 overall, although he was still in the All-American Bowl before coming to South Bend. His football career ends with just a handful of snaps as one of the more disappointing for the Irish in the Freeman era.

List of Eligible 2027 Grad Students:

Tier 1

WR Jordan Faison
WR Jaden Greathouse
TE Cooper Flanagan
OL Charles Jagusah
OL Sullivan Absher
DE Boubacar Traore
DE Keon Keeley
LB Drayk Bowen
LB Jaiden Ausberry
CB Christian Gray
S Adon Shuler
S Luke Talich

Four new players join this tier following the new NCAA eligibility rules. As always, there will be a discussion between those who may have a real shot at a NFL roster and good draft position, or are interested in another run with the Irish, or could be given a larger salary at another school that Notre Dame deems too big to match.

For Notre Dame’s sake, this is a really exciting group and could drive some decisions on roster space and money with the 2027 recruiting class. Maybe there’s not an overwhelming amount of top 3 round NFL talent from this group but it’s an excellent core of graduate players that could return in 2027.

Tier 2

OL Joe Otting
DL Elijah Hughes
DL Armel Mukam

In some years, all 3 of these players could be considered tier 1 as they’d be really solid backups to return. But still, backups all the same. It’s always difficult to turn away defensive linemen though, and Otting has enough experience starting that he could be someone who moves up into Tier 1 by the end of this fall.

Otting may be a tough call for the 2027 roster.

Tier 3

WR Alex Whitman
TE Henry Garrity
OL Chris Terek
OL Devan Houstan
LB Kahanu Kia
LS Andrew Kros

This group shrinks with the removal of Vernon following his retirement. I think with larger recruiting classes and the consistent resupply of incoming transfers this group is going to be shut off from returning–even in the 105 roster era.

Remaining 2027 Needs

Notre Dame is sitting at 21 commits and doesn’t look like it’ll push close to last year’s large class of 30 commits. To me, that signals they expect quite a lot of those tier 1 graduate students to return–and could be saving money for some expensive acquisitions in the transfer portal at the end of this calendar year.

In terms of remaining needs for the 2027 class:

Wide Receiver: Only 2 commits is low but they brought in a humongous class last year and Faison (and Greathouse!?) potentially returning for 2027 means they can afford to be picky and patient for a 3rd wide receiver in this class.

Linebacker: The Irish will try to close with Roman Igwebuike out of Mount Carmel with a commitment set for this Saturday. Things look to be in good shape as he’d be the only linebacker commit of the class.

Safety: Two safeties are already committed which is the good news. The bad news is that numbers overall at this position are a little low relative to other positions. They appear happy to stand pat with the current commits, though.

New Player Numbers

#9 QB Teddy Jarrard
#24 TE Ian Premer
#51 OL Ben Nichols
#67 OL Gregory Patrick
#2 CB DJ McKinney
#36 K Micah Drescher

These are the 5 freshmen who didn’t enroll early but have arrived for the summer and have their numbers up on the official 2026-27 roster. Plus, Colorado transfer DJ McKinney coming in with the very prestigious no. 2 at the cornerback position.