February signing day came and went quietly last month for Notre Dame, which means it’s time for me to once again look back at my early guess for the cycle. My Way-Too-Early Guess at Notre Dame Football’s Recruiting Class of 2023 was released in mid-March of 2022 when the Irish were sitting pretty with the #1 ranked recruiting class in the country. A promising start to the cycle stayed strong throughout most of the cycle, but a few major roadblocks prevented it from achieving legendary status.

The Best Guess

Players in Bold were correct predictions, players in Italics were already committed at the time of publishing my best guess.

QB — Dante Moore

RB — Sedrick Irvin Jr, Jayden Limar

WR — Braylon James, Rodney Gallagher, Malik Elzy, Ronan Hanafin

TE — Cooper Flanagan

OL — Chase Bisontis, Charles Jagusah, Sullivan Absher

DL — Keon Keeley, Brenan Vernon, Boubacar Traore, Devan Houstan

LB — Drayk Bowen, Preston Zinter

DB — Peyton Bowen, Justyn Rhett, Adon Shuler, Christian Gray, Daeh McCullough

22 total

The Reality

QB — Kenny Minchey

RB — Jeremiyah Love

WR — Braylon James, Jaden Greathouse, Rico Flores, Kaleb Smith

TE — Cooper Flanagan

OL — Charles Jagusah, Sullivan Absher, Sam Pendleton, Joe Otting, Chris Terek

DL — Brenan Vernon, Boubacar Traore, Devan Houstan, Armel Mukam

LB — Drayk Bowen, Preston Zinter, Jaiden Ausberry

DB — Christian Gray, Adon Shuler, Micah Bell, Brandyn Hillman, Ben Minich

24 total

The Review

Since we are in the transfer portal era and the era of NIL, I probably should have guessed that Notre Dame would be going for higher numbers that I was originally expecting. The Irish just won’t be able to dip into the portal as much as some of these other schools to replace their own portal entries, so signing an extra guy here and there is likely to be the norm moving forward. I’ll give a brief overview of each position group here as I usually do and then add my final thoughts at the end.

Quarterback

Unlike previous cycles, QB recruiting in the first year of the Freeman Era was nothing but drama for months. In March, the Irish starting picking up steam big-time with Detroit 5-star QB Dante Moore. In early April, Moore privately committed to the Notre Dame staff (he later denied this happened, but I’m not buying it) yet decided to hold off on the public commitment so he could take his official visits. Things got messy from here. “NIL” suddenly became a huge factor. Instead of quickly setting up visits to get the process over with, Dante took multiple UNOFFICIAL visits across the country and never returned back to Notre Dame. Rumors starting circulating online about Dante’s father getting heavily involved in his recruitment and acting as something of a manager. His dad starting doing most of the interviews for him, and the timeline for a commitment kept getting pushed back seemingly every time his dad spoke — from sometime in June, to before his senior season started, to sometime in the fall because they wanted to catch a couple of games, to maybe even as late as December.

By the time talk of things being extended all the way into December started, Notre Dame was done waiting. They accepted a commitment from another 5-star from the state of Michigan in the class of 2024, CJ Carr, and it basically ended Notre Dame’s chances of signing Moore. Considering how things went for Oregon (the first school Dante publicly committed to) I’d say Notre Dame eventually made the right decision, but probably shouldn’t have waited so long to do it.

Right after CJ Carr committed to the Irish, the ND staff started discussing the possibility of reclassifying from 2024 to 2023, while still working on Dante and other 2023 recruits. Eventually CJ decided to stay in his current class, and the Irish ended up flipping Kenny Minchey from Pitt (and Pat Narduzzi lol). Minchey was another Elite 11 member who actually won the Pro Day event during the Elite 11 camp.

Running Back

This time last year, the Irish had Sedrick Irvin Jr already in the fold at running back and things were trending well with Jayden Limar out of Washington. Limar would later commit to Notre Dame, but the Irish continued to push for a couple of other running backs as well. I think Irvin saw the writing on the wall of where he would be on the totem pole if the Irish continued to land more running backs, so he decommitted and ended up signing with Stanford. The Irish would later get commitments from speedster Dylan Edwards from Kansas (flipped from Kansas State) and Jeremiyah Love from Missouri.

A couple of weeks before signing day, Colorado hired Deion Sanders as their new head coach and Edwards decided to hop on the Coach Prime hype train, flipping to the Buffs. Jayden Limar would also suddenly get cold feet about moving so far from home, and he ended up flipping to Oregon on early signing day. This left Jerimiyah Love as the lone running back Notre Dame would sign.

Wide Receiver

Not a ton of drama from the wide receivers this cycle. Braylon James committed fairly early, and there was some smoke from TCU sources that he was going to break Freeman’s “no official visits to other schools” rule, but that never materialized. Rico Flores committed in the summer and didn’t show any sign of wavering. Jaden Greathouse also committed to Notre Dame in the summer, and he stuck firm in his commitment despite Texas trying to flip him. Kaleb “KK” Smith was the last receiver to join the Notre Dame class, flipping from Texas Tech to the Irish just a few weeks before signing day.

As for the three recruits I had in my best guess that didn’t end up at Notre Dame…

Rodney Gallagher allegedly received a very large NIL deal from West Virginia and signed with the Mountaineers.

Malik Elzy never seemed to be a priority for the Notre Dame staff (I’m guessing the staff just preferred Greathouse). He ended up signing with Illinois.

Ronan Hanafin was recruited as an athlete by Notre Dame but preferred to play receiver, and allegedly wasn’t too keen on being the #4 receiver in a recruiting class. He signed with Clemson, where he’s (surprisingly?) the highest-rated WR commit in their class at #322 overall in the 247 Composite.

Tight End

Absolutely ZERO drama from tight ends this cycle. Cooper Flanagan was one of the first few to commit to Notre Dame this cycle, and there was never any sign of him considering other schools afterwards. Gerad Parker didn’t see a need for a second tight end after signing two good ones in 2022, so this position group was wrapped up very early in the cycle.

Offensive Line

Notre Dame ended up signing more offensive linemen than we originally thought. Charles Jagusah and Sullivan Absher committed to Notre Dame, as expected. Chase Bisontis said a bunch of glowing stuff about ND shortly after Hiestand was re-hired, which led to me adding him to the prediction with a lack of other known targets available. However, nothing materialized there and it’s not really clear why.  The Irish landed commitments from Sam Pendleton, Elijah Paige, and Joe Otting before losing Paige’s commitment to USC and replacing him with Wisconsin flip Chris Terek.

Defensive Line

Keon Keeley and Brenan Vernon were two early commitments for Notre Dame along the defensive line. Boubacar Traore and Devan Houstan would later join the class as well, just like I predicted.

What I wasn’t able to predict, however, was the drama that would eventually surround Keon Keeley’s recruitment. He looked like a solid commit in the spring despite the heavy interest from a bunch of other schools. In hindsight, alarm bells probably should have started ringing in the summer when his mother admitted (advertised?) on Twitter that there was no way the Keeleys would be able to turn down a $1 million NIL deal if another school offered it. I’m sure the usual NIL/bagmen culprits took notice of that and ended up making things harder for Keon. Shortly after that, Ohio State insiders were reporting that one of Keon’s uncles had suddenly gotten heavily involved in his recruitment and was handling recruiting calls from other schools on Keon’s behalf. It all went downhill for Notre Dame from there, and the Fighting Irish wouldn’t be able to hold his commitment through the end of summer.

His spot was filled by former Stanford commit Armel Mukam shortly after, and Keon signed with Alabama.

Linebacker

Linebacker was another position group that was pretty drama-free this cycle. Drayk Bowen and Preston Zinter were early commits that never wavered. The Irish also pulled Jaiden Ausberry basically right from LSU’s campus late in the summer.

Defensive Back

Adon Shuler was an early commit for Notre Dame and never wavered despite offers from schools like Georgia, Alabama, and Ohio State. Justyn Rhett was not so loyal to the Fighting Irish after the Georgia Bulldogs started sniffing around, though. He made it clear to the ND staff that he planned on breaking the “no official visits to other schools” rule, which led to both sides parting ways. The Irish would quickly zero in on Texas speedster Micah Bell after losing Rhett, and eventually earned his commitment. Christian Gray committed to Notre Dame over LSU even though Brian Kelly hired his former high school head coach and mentor to be the Tigers’ cornerbacks coach. Ben Minich and Brandyn Hillman are two guys that weren’t really on the top target board for Notre Dame until the summer, but the Irish landed both blue-chippers anyway.

Now, Peyton Bowen. I’m sure most of you have heard all about his recruitment. One could probably create an entire article dedicated to the ups and downs of his commitment to Notre Dame, but I’ll try to keep things short…

Peyton committed to Notre Dame on January 1st of 2022, shortly before the Fiesta Bowl. Less than three weeks later, he took an unofficial visit to Oklahoma without telling the Notre Dame staff. For the next 11 months, there was A LOT “will he or won’t he?” talk with regards to a flip. Oklahoma kept expecting one to come any day now, throughout basically the entire year. He never took official visits anywhere besides Notre Dame., but he was in Norman at pretty much every opportunity with his close friend and QB, Jackson Arnold, as well as his girlfriend (an OU soccer commit). At first he was going to make a final decision regarding his recruitment before his senior season started, but that quickly changed to after the end of his season. OU and Texas A&M seemed like the biggest threats initially. Then all of a sudden Oregon got involved in the fall and he took an unofficial visit to Eugene — but they were never considered a serious threat to land him.

On early signing day, ND optimism was super high. The consensus among the insiders was that he would be signing with ND.  He held a selection event (even though he was still currently committed to Notre Dame). He picked up the ND hat, much to his mother’s delight. But then he tossed it to the side, picked up an Oregon hat, and threw up the “O” — dad looked SUPER pleased about this and his mom appeared to bury her face in her hands out of embarrassment.

So, that’s that, right? Nope.

It later came out that Peyton signed, but never submitted his NLI to Oregon. He allegedly called the ND staff later that day in tears to apologize, saying he made a mistake and he still wanted to go to Notre Dame. Like an hour after this came out, Oklahoma insiders said he did the EXACT SAME THING with the Oklahoma staff. Personally, I completely checked out at this point. I actually muted the name “Peyton Bowen” from appearing on my Twitter feed, it was so obvious where this was going.

He signed (and submitted) his NLI to Oklahoma before the end of the early signing period.

And that does it for the Class of 2023. I ended the cycle with a 46% hit rate on guys who would end the cycle by signing with Notre Dame, despite the four guys who were committed at the time but eventually decommitted. That’s pretty much where I’m usually at with these pieces.

Looking back on everything, this was both the most fun and least fun recruiting cycle I’ve ever followed. The highs were very high (multiple five stars committed at the same time and probably more to come!), but the lows were so low (where’d all our 5-stars go?) that it was very hard to follow recruiting for a while. Not to say that this group of 2023 signees isn’t good — it’s clearly the best we’ve signed since 2013. But sometimes you wonder: what’s the point of getting invested if the stud 5-star is just going to end up getting lured away by up-front NIL deals and girlfriends?

Anyway, the best guess for 2024 will be coming up soon and I’m sure we won’t lose our top recruits this year! Right?