Around this time a year ago I published my Way-Too-Early Guess at Notre Dame Football’s Recruiting Class of 2022.
At the time, college football was still in a recruiting dead period that would last another 3 months. Many of Notre Dame’s top targets had never set foot on campus, presenting a difficult challenge when putting together any kind of prediction for how things would shake out.
The result of this is a class prediction that is one of my worst to date (second only to the class of 2021). Aside from a couple of position groups, I basically whiffed across the board on guys that weren’t already committed to the Fighting Irish.
Let’s take a closer look:
The Best Guess
Players in Bold were correct predictions, players in Italics were already committed at the time of publishing my best guess.
QB — Steve “Peanut Butter” Angeli
RB — JD Price, Dallan Hayden
WR — Kaden Saunders, Addison Copeland, Amorion Walker
TE — Jack Nickel, Eli Raridon
OL — Joey Tanona, Ty Chan, Billy Schrauth, Aamil Wagner
DT — Anthony Lucas
DE — Tyson Ford, Aiden Gobaira, DJ Wesolak, Tevarua Tafiti
LB — Nolan Zeigler, Niuafe Tuiahalamaka, Josh Burnham, Sebastian Cheeks
CB — Nikai Martinez, Jaden Gould
S — Kevin Winston, Jaden Mangham
25 total
The Reality
QB — Steve “Peanut Butter” Angeli
RB — JD Price
WR — Tobias Merriweather
TE — Eli Raridon, Holden Staes
OL — Joey Tanona, Ty Chan, Billy Schrauth, Aamil Wagner, Ashton Craig
DT — Donovan Hinish
DE — Tyson Ford, Aiden Gobaira
LB — Nolan Zeigler, Niuafe Tuihalamaka, Josh Burnham, Jaylen Sneed
CB — Jaden Mickey, Benjamin Morrison, Jayden Bellamy
S — None
P — Bryce McFerson
21 total
The Review
At first, I assumed this was the worst guess I’d ever put together. After looking back, at 2021, though, I realized it could have been much, much worse. I only correctly predicted 5 signees that weren’t already committed to Notre Dame at publishing (compared to just 2 the year before). Maybe (hopefully?) things will be better in 2023.
Quarterback
Not much drama to be had here. Angeli committed to Notre Dame a few weeks before the best guess was published and never wavered. The Irish were actually very close to landing a 2nd QB late in the cycle, with 5-star Walker Howard allegedly attempting to flip from LSU before hitting an admissions snag.
Running Back
Notre Dame very nearly paired JD Price with 5-star Pennsylvania product Nicholas Singleton. All signs were pointing towards Singleton committing to Notre Dame shortly after he completed his official visit to South Bend last summer. Ultimately his family convinced him to slow things down, and he ended up having a change of heart and committed to Penn State.
Dallan Hayden committed to Ohio State after his round of official visits.
Wide Receiver
Big-time whiff here. Del Alexander misjudged this position basically from the beginning when he decided to prioritize other recruits over Kaden Saunders — the Irish never ended up gaining much traction on their attempts to flip the blazing fast Ohioan.
Addison Copeland is another kid who hit an admissions snag. His name faded from the board in late spring/early summer.
Do I get partial credit for Amorion Walker? I mean, the kid was committed to Notre Dame from late spring up until the December signing day, albeit incredibly loosely. The Irish also landed the commitment of Top 100 receiver CJ Williams over the summer, but that one was over as soon as USC lured Lincoln Riley away from Oklahoma.
For whatever reason, Del Alexander seemed to be the only guy in the country who believed Walker and Williams when they told him for weeks (or months, in Walker’s case) that they were rock-solid in their commitments. After their signing day flips, the Irish tried to find at least one guy to pair with Tobias Merriweather (great pickup here, by the way) but it was too late.
Tight End
I knew that Notre Dame was only going to sign two tight ends in 2022. With Jack Nickel already in the fold, and the staff targeting both Eli Raridon and Holden Staes, I figured the Irish would probably end up with Nickel and one of the other two.
Little did I know, the Irish had every intention of landing both Raridon and Staes whether Nickel liked that development or not. Notre Dame got the two they really wanted, and Nickel ended up signing with Michigan State.
Offensive Line
Hey, I actually did pretty good here!
All four of the guys I predicted to Notre Dame ended up signing with the Irish (although not without some drama). They even got a bonus guy in Ashton Craig. Harry Hiestand has a lot to work with in this group.
Defensive Tackle
I should have known Donovan Hinish would find his way into this class. Not sure what I was thinking leaving him out of it.
Anthony Lucas ended up being a case where a guy had parents who probably liked Notre Dame a lot more than he actually did. Texas A&M (and possibly “NIL” money) won out here.
Defensive End
Tyson Ford and Aiden Gobaira had already committed to Notre Dame at the time of publishing, and they ended up being the only two Notre Dame signed.
There was reportedly some kind of misunderstanding between DJ Wesolak and the Notre Dame staff. Wesolak allegedly thought he had silently committed to the Notre Dame staff and was understandably upset when he was informed that Darren Agu had taken his spot. Meanwhile, Agu developed concerns about being recruited over after Notre Dame earned the commitments of Brenan Vernon and Keon Keeley from the class of 2023. Agu flipped to Vanderbilt, Wesolak signed with Missouri after about 10 lead-changes in his recruitment, and the Irish didn’t get anybody to take the vacant spot that Agu’s decommitment left.
Tevarua Tafiti was another guy who Notre Dame stopped recruiting after landing Agu. He ended up signing with Stanford.
Linebacker
Another position group I did pretty well with. Marcus Freeman really killed it with this position group.
Zeigler was already in the fold when Freeman got hired, a legacy and holdover from the Clark Lea days. Tuihalamaka and Burnham, as expected, committed and signed with Notre Dame.
The one change between the best guess and reality is the swapping of Sebastian Cheeks for Jaylen Sneed. I’m confident that Notre Dame would have landed Cheeks if they had room for him, but they absolutely picked the right guy to take here. Cheeks signed with North Carolina.
Defensive Back
Defensive back, much like wide receiver, is a very difficult position to project most of the time. Ultimately, none of the guys that I predicted to sign with Notre Dame ended up being priorities for the Irish staff.
For a while, Notre Dame was sitting pretty with their three eventual signees plus blue-chip CB/S Devin Moore making up a four-man haul. Moore started looking around in the fall, though, and Brian Kelly’s departure gave him enough of an excuse to decommit from the Irish and sign with home-state Florida.
The Irish did also land possibly the best safety in the transfer portal — Brandon Joseph, the 2020 All American from Northwestern. He will satisfy an immediate need for Notre Dame at safety.
Specialists
This time last year, we had no idea Notre Dame would be in need of a punter. However, word got out in late summer/early fall that Jay Bramblett would likely be grad transferring down south to be closer to home. He followed Brian Polian to LSU, and the Irish flipped Bryce McFerson from Wake Forest.
And there you have it. Overall, not a very accurate guess on my part. But with the dead period going from March 2020-May 2021 I’ll allow myself a bit of a handicap.
Keep your eyes peeled for the next way-too-early guess to be published for the class of 2023 in the coming weeks. The Irish are off to a promising start, so it should be a good one.
I always enjoy the early-guess post and the follow-up post!
And, hey, overall numbers may not have been great this year but basically nobody had Aamil Wagner going to ND, so let’s call it even.
I agree with all of it. The correct Aamil Wagner pick is extra cool, because even on commitment day I think a lot of people thought he was going to UK. From Brendan’s big board after that commitment:
Well done, Tyler. I always appreciate these posts (one of my faves of the year). It takes guts to go out and directly make all these predictions at the same time and very early in the process, not too many people who write about recruiting would have the courage to do this.
And I don’t see the incorrect predictions or misses as that bad of a thing, just helps set the stage for me on what to watch and expect the key decisions to come down to.
Agreed esp. on the misses. It would be fascinating if you could get some coaches to do this and how far off they are. It’s just the nature of recruiting that things change fast and you have to adjust.
Now the question is: is our class better than yours.
Especially since we still recruited the same number of Jadens, I’d say pretty even. Lucas and Saunders are the only 2 from your list I am bummed we missed out on.
Great review — I will echo the others in saying that I love these posts (some of my favorites each year)!
I’d be willing to give you some partial credit for some of your “other possibilities” that get listed after the main predictions for each position group.
On that note, these signees were all in the “other names to watch” section of the guess:
And these three weren’t on my radar at the time:
Significantly easier to name guys who might sign with ND than it is to specifically select the guys who actually will, so I don’t give myself too much credit for that.
I hadn’t heard that previously about Wesolak, but it certainly highlights the abject stupidity of the “silent commitment” as a concept. Just go ahead and commit out loud or don’t bother.
I’m of the opinion that he would have ended up signing elsewhere regardless.
I was only slightly exaggerating when I said he had about 10 lead-changes in his recruitment. The crystal ball trend for him went something like:
ND
Clemson
USC
Penn State
North Carolina
Missouri
LSU
Missouri (again)
He also got arrested at some point in the fall, but I think his legal troubles got cleared up before the December signing day.