There have been so many “yeah but wait until next year’s class” comments made about Notre Dame football recruiting that it’s hard to keep track of which cycles received this tag in the past. In recent years it seems like it has been every cycle as the Irish inevitably start strong and close with a thud outside of the Top 10 in the national rankings. I can’t remember a recent cycle where that hype wasn’t coming from all over the internet.
Following a promising start for 2021 Notre Dame recruiting is drifting again. After spending months early on with one of the best classes in the country the Irish now sit in a more familiar 12th place nationally.
What happened?
As usual, other programs simply started recruiting better. One only has to look at Ohio State who sits atop the rankings and has been humming right along like nothing in the world could bother them. The Buckeyes sit with 17 prospects, including verbals from 6 commitments since the COVID-19 pandemic began, 3 of whom are Top 100 recruits.
The Irish also sit behind the lesser recruiting powers such as Tennessee (2nd), North Carolina (3rd), Iowa (6th), and Minnesota (9th), and while Notre Dame has plenty of room to grow with only 8 commits in the fold, you could make the case these opponents can easily be jumped.
Except for the fact that Texas, Penn State, Georgia, Oregon, Texas A&M, Washington, Oklahoma, Florida State, Auburn, and Alabama (only 3 commits!) are all behind Notre Dame with low commitment hauls and have equal or better recent recruiting track records. If history is any guide, many of these programs will finish above the Irish.
Notre Dame has also lost the mysterious momentum, so key to recruiting. The top two anchors of the class in QB Tyler Buchner and OT Blake Fisher committed 14 and 11 months ago, respectively. Since 2020 began while coming off an 11-win season, the Irish have their 3 lowest recruits in the class with no one inside the Top 300, lost Top 50 wide receiver Deion Colzie, and perhaps most painful of all just struck out on No. 24 overall and the country’s top all-purpose back Will Shipley to Clemson.
Back in July 2019 I wrote a piece titled Are the Irish Recruiting Appreciably Better than the Past? It was a tale of two cycles for Notre Dame last year. On the one hand, they identified elite skill offensive players being the highest priority and performed well in that fight. On the other hand, the Irish started to fade once spring ended and the summer months arrived.
Last July, the 2020 class was 5th nationally and the program ended up settling for 17th in the country. This has been one of the most undying trends for Notre Dame football under Brian Kelly.
Why should fans expect anything different now?
Again, you could say this most cycles but 2021 was supposed to be a different year for Notre Dame. Kelly was sometimes burned from elite recruits early on, pivoted to more of a Right Kind of Guy (RKG) approach in his career in South Bend, and was curiously eager to talk about top 5 recruiting classes this off-season for someone who rarely sets the bar too high unprompted.
Many will take this as a sky-is-falling panic but it’s far from that. The current Irish class is quite good in its small size. The class average only trails Ohio State, Clemson, and LSU for programs ranked ahead of the Irish in total Composite points. The class should finish with one of the country’s best offensive line hauls, and if Buchner can actually be the superstar quarterback we all desire, his development will color a lot of belief in this class and certainly paper over many of its cracks.
The foundation is solid as it often is for each recruiting class, it’s just now sputtering and certain areas of the roster are struggling too much for this to be a difference from the past.
Certainly, the loss of Shipley puts the running back room in dire need. Yes, Chris Tyree is a diamond to cherish from last cycle. However, the current roster and outlook for recruiting are not strong enough to withstand Tyree not being fantastic. That’s the problem with spotty recruiting interjected with blue-chips–you feel joy in the talent coming in but have to rely so heavily on making sure those players are not misses or fail to live up to the hype.
Whiffing on Shipley doesn’t mean a whole lot to the defensive side of the ball where Clark Lea, for all his strengths, seem to be employing one heck of a strange plan.
There are a couple 4-star defensive linemen in the fold, plus a surprising number of irons in the fire for the cornerback position which may not yield elite talent but decent and much-needed depth.
Linebacker recruiting has been puzzling to say the least. We’re now up to 534 days without a commit at the position and little recruiting updates to even discuss for this position. While the offensive side of the ball has boosted itself recently, there is still a ton of work to do for Lea on defense coming off a 2020 cycle where only 3 out of the top 10 recruits in the class are on his side of the ball.
Is it fair to blame the current pandemic with harming Notre Dame recruiting more than other programs? There’s probably some truth to it forcing the Irish to do more work than your average blue-blood and suffer more consequences from national recruits when things are as shut down as they are across the country.
Still, we’ve seen a trend with Brian Kelly-led Notre Dame and with or without the pandemic it was likely heading in this direction anyway. A hot start, visions of a breakthrough top 5 class, eventually more talk of recruiting averages, and wait for next year.
Just like that, one of the irons in the fire comes through as (FL) CB Philip Riley just committed.
The Shipley loss hurts, too true. Did not even know until I read your post. Not bring able to get him on campus had to be a major factor. I do think it’s true overall that the virus hurts ND more than most.
Sorry, but Riley is rated as the #20 CB so sadly, I am not impressed.
I’ve been an Irish Illustrated member since 2017, and Tom Loy has said some variation of “next year is definitely a top-10 class, maybe top 5” on signing day each year.
“A hot start, visions of a breakthrough top 5 class, eventually more talk of recruiting averages, and wait for next year.”
My theory is that they identify the players who are Notre Dame culture fits early and very good at getting them to sign. Then they’re lesser across the board at making impressions on the prospects who aren’t inclined (via geography, academics, whatever) to be drawn to a smaller, Catholic, independent school in Indiana.
I’d hope the better position coaches (shoutout Mickens for today’s commit, which top 300 overall CBs have been rare as of late) help. More Kelly involvement too, which was mentioned by Shipley and the CB Riley who committed today. Glad to hear that’s seeming to turn around.
I doubt they’ll ever be top 5, barring drastic changes in culture and how they handle roster management. Notre Dame isn’t Notre Dame if they operate like a modern day football factory. Thus, they’ll probably never recruit the elite in huge numbers that other programs will, and be stuck in development mode rather than pure material.
I’d think and hope they do cast a wider net to make runs at Shipley-esque players, even if it’s uphill climbs. Have to start picking some of those guys up to join the party. But they’re not at that level yet. Notre Dame really, really needs that program-defining QB that pushes them to the next level and makes the Amon-Ra St. Brown’s and Will Shipley’s think of the ND offense and program on par with more designer schools.
You would think with ND’s Oline history and one of the top QBs in the nation signed up, that a top flight RB with acceptable grades would see a great opportunity at ND. I like the film of Prophet Brown, who may be the next best hope. He doesn’t look to have the home run speed in the secondary of Shipley but his initial burst is quite impressive. He’s rated as the #21 RB in the country. He looks like an every down back on film. Meaning he can catch the football.
Hey, I mean it did work for Tyree! The problem for Notre Dame is there’s a lot of opportunity at places like Clemson too. Probably more since they actually win playoff games regularly and they churn out more draft picks, if you step back and look objectively.
Just tough circumstances here. If Shipley was from Fort Wayne like Jaylon, maybe he picks ND over Clemson based on a lot of the same variables that pushed him to Clemson in reality. Just the way it goes sometimes.
Shame on me. I thought this year was different. As nd09 says 247 has some variation of this article every year and I had been a subscriber from 13-19 and I’m pretty sure it goes back that far.
But I talked myself into how this year was different; they had a really strong foundation; good coaching staff, 3 straight double digit win seasons, a recruiting board that shaped up well and most importantly kelly was talking top 5 class. It looked like a legit possibility to have 5-6 top 50 offensive players. Then the offensive line dream team doesn’t develop then they lose Colzie and lastly they miss on Shipley. Honestly i can’t even tell where anymore top 100 recruits would come from. Yep shame on me.
The most brutal part of this is the ultimate test coming in 2023-2024 with back to back years of Clemson Ohio state on the schedule. This class was going to be a huge part of those potential matchups. We know what good coaching against superior talent looks like, it’s Michigan vs Ohio state every year, Nd vs Clemson in 2018. Kelly and his staff are really good; it won’t matter. The only equalizer is a transcendent quarterback and I know better than to talk myself into Buchner. Ahhh who am i kidding, 2 Sampson articles into 2021 and I’ll have done it.
Either way this sucks and is really disappointing. I honestly thought this year would be different and if anything it’s going to end up a touch worse
I think an underappreciated aspect of all this is losing Long. He was pretty clearly the staff’s best recruiter.
Who’s your favorite Notre Dame QB Long was the lead recruiter for? What about RB? Or WR? Other than Jordan Johnson, and to an extent Tyree (both of whom still liked Notre Dame enough to stay on after Long left), it’s not like Long was a juggernaut. I don’t disagree with the notion he was a good recruiter, but it’s not like he elevated skill recruiting in the 2017-19 classes all that much either.
(For the record 247 has Long the primary on Lenzy, Tremble, Tyree and Mayer…Austin was listed under Autry Denson, how accurate that is, idk. Jurkovec was committed before Long was hired. Long was listed as secondary for Johnson. Still, 2018-19 classes weren’t impressive skill-wise would be my point).
Long is the overwhelmingly predominant reason we were in on Tyree in the first place, so I think he counts as the RB you were asking about. Tyree is also the most unique ND recruit of the last 5 years in terms of improbability of signing him, probably (Kyle Hamilton was a three star when he committed), so that speaks very well to Long.
Mayer is our only offensive five-star since Kraemer (at least until Buchner just got bumped up… and of course Long was involved in the Buchner commitment too), and, while I don’t think it’s fair to give him even as much credit for Mayer as Tyree given that ND somewhat recruits TE by itself, well, he was the primary recruiter on Mayer.
It’s unclear how much of a recruiting dropoff it is from Long to Rees as OC, but it’s likely something and could be a lot.
Is it? Rees already grabbed a higher rated QB in Buchner than Long did in his whole career. I do agree, as I mentioned, Long deserves credit for Tyree. Mayer, I mean, ND is TEU, congrats on it, but that’s shooting par that Notre Dame gets a private school elite TE from basically Cincinnati.
I’m not disputing Long isn’t a good recruiter, just saying that he still brought in almost ZERO elite skill talent in 2018 and 2019. Maybe that was trending better with Tyree in 2020, but still, not like Notre Dame has lost a lot with Long since he didn’t get a lot of top commits anyways. Rees + Taylor should be able to pick up any slack lost. I don’t see Long’s recruiting as having paid off much. Tyree is nice, but that’s one prospect in four classes that Long had a part of bringing to ND who otherwise might not have considered it. Doesn’t seem a huge loss in results.
The thing that frustrates me isn’t the loss of the 5* players. Those players have everyone after them and there are legitimate reasons to choose other schools. What is frustrating is when we lose recruits due to complacency and when we fail to cultivate relationships with quality backup options. I have a big problem with losing players due to lack of effort on the part of the coaching/recruiting staff. It seems like more often than not we have a legitimate shot at around 5-10 top 50 players but the second option is outside the top 300. We can’t create a binary where our options are top 50 talent or low upside player from a catholic or pipeline school. I’d much rather take a chance on a really raw player with unique attributes because the strength of our staff seems to be development.
I also can’t fully get behind the idea that it’s impossible to recruit top tier talent to ND. With ND’s recent record of success on the field and in the draft we should be doing better than 50% 4* and 50% 3*. We just don’t seem to have the same will and persistence in recruiting that other programs do. 2019 was a positive outlier on that front but beside that year we’re pretty much right on 50/50 with a 90 player average according to 24/7.
Well, there is a fair amount of handwringing going on. I have to think that a lot of the Shipley thing was owing to the Virus. He needed that physical visit.
As much as I like BK and how he has brought ND back to double-digit win season, recruiting seems to be an area where he is not as strong as the Urbans and Dabos of the world. It seems like a needs a staff of superstar recruiters to help him. I like that he brought in Taylor (seemingly a recruiting upgrade at RB) and Mickens (already he seems like a recruiting upgrade at CB), but some hires like McNulty do not seem to be made with improving recruiting in mind. Elston and Polian have good reputations as recruiters, but as Eric noted — what exactly is Lea doing right now recruiting-wise (especially with LBs)?
And another one — Onye is Irish! So far, Tyler did really well with predicting the d-line commits