If you thought our last scholarship update back in May was confusing with all of the new rules going on with college football there’s more to learn for the future. According to various reports, the Division-1 Oversight Committee is expected to pass a temporary law next month that will allow football programs the opportunity to add up to 7 more players over the 25-man limit per year for every transfer that leaves your school.
The rule is expected to not cover medical retirements or players who leave early for the NFL, only transfers out of the program. Most expect a permanent type of this rule, or something similar, to eventually be passed as well in this new age of mega Transfer Portal madness.
We’ll discuss the impact on Notre Dame specifically in a little bit.
Out of Eligibility Following 2021:
QB Jack Coan
DT Kurt Hinish
K Jonathan Doerer
Our update here is the same as back in the late spring, these are the only players who absolutely cannot come back in 2022 and will have exhausted their eligibility. Of course, many more will not be coming back.
2022-23 Academic Classes
21 Verbal Commits
26 Sophomores
15 Juniors
18 Seniors
19 Graduates
99 Total Scholarships
Things were quiet for a while in the spring but since our last update 8 more recruits have been added to the 2022 class including: Linebackers Jaylen Sneed and Niuafe Tiuhalamaka, receivers C.J. Williams and Tobias Merriweather, corners Benjamin Morrison and Jayden Bellamy, safety Devin Moore, defensive tackle Donovan Hinish, and offensive lineman Ashton Craig.
Leaving the program in recent months include:
2022 defensive end recruit Darren Agu left the Irish class on July 11th and committed to Vanderbilt on July 14th.
2021 defensive end signee Devin Aiupi transferred to UCLA on August 3rd.
2020 wide receiver signee Jay Brunelle transferred to Yale on July 10th.
2019 defensive tackle turned offensive guard signee Hunter Spears medically retired on August 5th.
2018 wide receiver signee Lawrence Keys left the team on September 9th.
List of Eligible 2022 Grad Students
(This is going to be complicated until the 2020 freshmen all cycle out!)
* Indicates no redshirt, 2022 eligible only due to Covid.
$ Indicates 6th-year 2022 eligible due to Covid.
# Indicates regular 5th-year eligible for 2022 but also 6th-year eligible for 2023 due to Covid.
Tier 1
OL Jarrett Patterson #
DT Myron Tagavailoa-Amosa $
LB Drew White $
WR Kevin Austin #
DT Jayson Ademilola *
DE Justin Ademilola $
WR Braden Lenzy #
WR Avery Davis $
S Houston Griffith #
CB Tariq Bracy *
LB Bo Bauer *
OL Josh Lugg $
TE George Takacs #
LB Isaiah Pryor $ (up)
WR Joe Wilkins # (up)
Tier 2
S D.J. Brown # (down)
RB C’Bo Flemister #
LB Paul Moala * (down)
LB Shayne Simon * (down)
Tier 3
OL John Dirksen #
Pryor gets moved up to the bottom of Tier 1 on the basis of him moving into a starting role at Rover a little bit by default while the receiving corps is thin enough for Wilkins to be a value-add in 2022. We’ve moved Moala down due to another season-ending injury, ditto for Simon, while Brown’s stock at safety has taken a bit of a hit although he took a step forward against Purdue following a MIA performance versus Toledo.
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As a reminder, we’re scratching off any 6th-year guys from returning in 2022 which leaves us with the following Tier 1 players as the most likely to come back:
Offense: OL Patterson, WR Austin, WR Lenzy, WR Wilkins, TE Takacs
Defense: DT Ademilola, DE Ademilola, LB Bauer, CB Bracy, S Griffith
You look at the long list of eligible grad students above and once you narrow it down these 10 players you get the sense there’s going to be a lot of turnover on the roster and maybe only half of these guys will be playing football for Notre Dame next year.
I’m sure Notre Dame would love to have all of these 10 players coming back next fall (plus maybe Brown, too) but it typically does not work out that way. Specifically, having Patterson and Austin returning feels so, so important but both could play themselves into enticing NFL Draft spots, we’ll see.
Should the Fighting Irish look to bring in more than 25 players in this 2022 class? That’ll largely depend upon the details of the new temporary ruling. The reports suggest you can add extra players from transfers once this fall semester begins (August 23rd for Notre Dame) which in that case wouldn’t apply to anyone except perhaps Larry Keys.
Disregarding all graduate students heading into next year, Notre Dame sits at 80 scholarships accounted for at the moment. Factor in roughly 6 grad students, a few more pieces to the 2022 class that have been planned, and a couple transfers through the Portal this upcoming off-season and you can get to 90 scholarships pretty quick.
Remember, even if you bring in extra players up to the 7 maximum due to transfers you still have to stay under the overall 85-man limit.
We’ll see who ends up leaving in the coming months and into 2022 to create opportunities for a larger than 25-man class. You’d think something will happen to the large 2021 class that sits at 26 players today, for example. However, I don’t see the Irish really swimming in the pool of recruits where a couple guys transfer in mid-January and Kelly tries to bring in 2 more recruits by the first week of February. Everything they’ve done since the new Early Signing Period indicates they want things to be sewn up, for the most part, in late December.
2022 Positional Needs
If we’re looking at 4 more spots in the 2022 class I would focus on the following positions:
WR (1)
OL (1)
DT (1)
S (1)
Will Notre Dame even add 4 more recruits for 2022? We’re in the last quarter of the cycle with precisely 84 days until Early NSD so the clock is ticking.
Of these 4 positions, I’d rank the need as follows with least important first:
4) Offensive Line – The current struggles of the line don’t change the 2022 cycle very much besides the fact that we’d love one more elite player in the class. With Patterson possibly following Madden and Lugg out the door this is going to be a very young offensive line next year and the beginning of a major youth movement either way. The potential of possibly 3 long-term starters from the 2021 class alone should bring some stability and brightens things down the road (even if that’s difficult to see with today’s struggles).
3) Wide Receiver – Styles and Colzie have already caught passes in their freshmen seasons and look to be future starters at a position controversially difficult to carve out snaps early in a career. We’re also super high on the incoming freshmen Williams and Merriweather, while it’s unlikely Walker ends up remaining in this class as he continued to flirt with a school who shall remain nameless. There’s so little upperclassmen remaining (zero in the 2019-20 classes) that a 3rd wideout for 2022 is needed. We’ll likely see 3 more for 2023, too.
2) Defensive Tackle – There have been only 4 interior linemen over the last 3 classes, including the current 2022 cycle, and 2 of those are just 3-stars. I think there’s a massive need to do better.
1) Safety – Paging Mr. Xavier Nwankpa! The Irish can bring back Griffith and Brown next year but long-term there are tons of questions about the back end of the defense and the talent available. Being able to bring in a near a 5-star talent as Kyle Hamilton moves on to the NFL could be crucial.
Always greatly appreciate these, but I question the no-6th-years assumption: I bet Davis and Lugg are notably more likely to be on the roster next year than Patterson and (maybe) Austin.
I think the sneaky most important guy who might plausibly come back is Jayson A. He might have such a good season this year, though, that he won’t have a particularly hard decision. (I’d say so far this year he has had a better season than anybody on that list other than Patterson.)
Also does Madden exhaust his eligibility in 2021?
For me, this just means Patterson is by far the most likely to leave as he’ll be one of the top centers in the draft. Davis and Lugg will be around 25 years old next year, I find it hard to believe they won’t be ready to move on with their life. Lugg particularly, not sure the staff is going to be working hard to convince him to come back.
Yup, academically he’s already a 6th year senior right now who’s only able to play in 2021 due to the Covid year. I believe I saw he’s already 25 right now, too.
Agreed, I don’t think there’s any way Lugg will be back.
Do you think Davis might have NFL aspirations and feel that another year might give him a shot…irregahdless of the realisticness of it.
I lean towards thinking that he’d just be ready to move on with life, whether the NFL is in the future or not. I don’t think anything he would do could move him into the top 3-4 rounds, and at that point why bother trying? Just take a shot in somebody’s camp and if it doesn’t work, go to your backup plan.
And as far as that goes, I have a very strong suspicion that whether he goes to the league or goes pro in something other than sports, Davis will do very well for himself.
BYU might look at Lugg to transfer in, 25 is prime sophomore age.
With Fisher coming back from injury and guys like Baker, Carmody, and Alt getting live reps now, I can’t see the staff bringing back Lugg next year. He’s reached his ceiling by this point in his career and is going to be surpassed by all 4 of those guys by next season, if not at some point this season.
2023 running back Sedrick Irvin, Jr. (0.9339) just committed out of Gulliver Prep from The U territory.
I remember his father of the same name being a pretty good workhorse type RB at Michigan State back in the day. Time is moving fast
Michael, Sr.?
His dad is Michael Stovall Irvin, Sr?
But they aren’t related
Any relation to Maurice?
wow isn’t that kind of surprising? I thought some thought he would go to Mich. St.
There was an early assumption of that because of the connection, and he put them in his final group, but they were never seriously in it. His other finalists were Oregon and Stanford, which were the true competition for him.
nice!
Didn’t someone ask this week about Coan’s eligibility and coming back next year and Kelly said he’d have to look into it? Has he given an answer?
I thought I heard on a podcast (though who knows if more has changed) that there was conflicting information about how much eligibility that Coan had left but supposedly (if my memory is to be trusted), Coan himself indicated this summer that while he had 2 years of college eligibility remaining, his plan and ND’s plan was for him to just play 2021 here and then move along.
I think it has to do with him playing three games his freshman year and whether it could count as a redshirt year under the NCAA’s changed four game rule? Something like that.
That could be the factor that’s confusing and leading to different people reading the situation differently. With my understanding of COVID times, it’s like last year didn’t count, so technically he could be considered a redshirt junior in this season, in terms of eligibility remaining at least. Not sure if it’s officially in the air that he still needs NCAA to grant/confirm next year if it’s still up in the air whether throwing 5 passes burned a whole year in 2017….But it all seems like a moot point anyways since he didn’t intend to play 2022 in college.
This is correct:
2017 – Listed as playing in 6 games with passes thrown in 3 games.
2018 – Started the back half of the season.
2019 – Started entire season.
2020 – Covid year, opted out.
2021 – Transfer to Notre Dame.
The 4-game redshirt rule (any 4 games rule) came into effect for 2018. I’ve only read the rule is not retroactive. Plus, Coan saw action in 6 games as a true freshman anyway with a couple later in the season–both clear uses of eligibility prior to the new rule.
I’m assuming people have noticed he threw passes in 3 games and are believing the rule is retroactive. As far as I understand it, he is not eligible for 2022.
Wouldn’t Coan in the same boat as MTA and other class of 2017’s who have redshirted?
For MTA:
2017: played in 7 games [uses a season, still has 3 years eligibility left]
2018: played in 1 game, hurt, redshirt season [Still 3 years eligibility left]
2019: played in 12 games [2 years eligibility left]
2020: COVID year, played 8 games, [no change, still 2 years eligibility left]
2021: working on another full season (hopefully) [1 year eligibility left]
2022: final season of eligibility
COVID + a prior redshirt should have any 2017 still eligible for 2022, unless I’m botching something. Like Brendan says, it’s an extra year in play that isn’t normally.
in 2018 he played 5 games – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Coan
Eric outlined that, my notes were on Tagovailoa-Amosa’s career.
The real difference or issue would be if this counts as Coan’s 4th year of using eligibility, which pre-2020 of course means he is out of it. But due to the COVID stuff, lots of players are taking advantage of a 5th year of eligibility in an abnormal situation.
But then wouldn’t Coan go like this and not be on the same track as MTA?
2017 – Listed as playing in 6 games with passes thrown in 3 games. [3 years left]
2018 – Started the back half of the season. [2 years left]
2019 – Started entire season. [1 year left]
2020 – Covid year, opted out.
2021 – Transfer to Notre Dame. [out of eligibility after the year]
Yes, I think that’s a good chart of looking at it. Coan would probably need an NCAA waiver to count 2017 as a redshirt year to be cleared for 2022, even though the rule didn’t begin until 2018 apparently there is cloudy language that may or may not allow it.
From looking more, it was Tim Prister who said Notre Dame told him Coan was coming in with 2 years, so…who knows. They could be wrong
There’d definitely need to be some type of waiver. And with the NCAA who knows!
But, otherwise if the rule was retroactive prior to 2018 we would’ve seen a lot more stories about guys taking an extra year basically recouping a year from ~2013-2017 when they burned a redshirt.
Yeah, I don’t get why this is complicated – 2020 never happened for anyone from an eligibility standpoint, so if he wants another year he can have it. But, as you note, Coan intends to move on after this season. There’s not much value to spending a sixth year in college as a quasi-game manager QB. Just get out there and get what you can.
Well depending on his program (specifically, if he has finished it), it’s another year free tuition towards an ND masters degree.
I think six years at ND is a way easier sell to us, as [inaudible]-something adults who would love to turn back the clock, than it is to early-20s kids who have the world in front of them.
I also think that the writing is pretty clearly on the wall that it’s going to be Buchner’s team in 2022, fwiw. He has already played more meaningful snaps than [checks notes] every other non-Tommy-Rees freshman QB of the BK era. To wit:
Three games into the season, Buchner has matched the highest full season responsible-for play count of any freshman QB under BK and made more meaningful appearances than all 10 previous freshman QBs combined.
Well this is encouraging for Buchner!
is it that Buchner is so much better than all those guys as freshmen or is it that what is ahead of him is also the least out of all those years (or a little bit of both)?
Yeah, I kinda wonder beyond that — if the o-line could facilitate a decent run game would they even be playing Buchner?
I agree that the plan is clearly Buchner’s team in 2022, and it doesn’t hurt to get him experience now, all that good stuff….But, IMO it’s clear he’s in right now simply because he’s able to add a dimension to the team that they desperately need and otherwise don’t have.
Yea, good point about the OL. If we had last year’s OL, no way Buchner plays a snap yet and wouldn’t this year outside of garbage time or injury to Coan.
Mm, I disagree. He got some run with the 1s in the spring and in camp; it would take some time to track that down but I don’t think that’s happened much before if at all. Golson, Zaire, Kizer, Book, Davis, and even Pyne were all clearly not ready as freshmen. Hell Kizer almost gave up football completely. When Rees went down against USC in 2013 it was Andrew Hendrix who came in, not Zaire – he literally couldn’t complete a single pass and everyone knew it. That was an even more dire situation than we’re currently in, and the talented freshman didn’t get off the bench.
Wimbush, PJ, and Clark all were more physically ready than those guys from day 1, but Wimbush and PJ were pretty raw as passers. Clark was maybe a little farther along technically but still nowhere near Buchner’s ability.
I think the staff had a plan to get Buchner meaningful run this year before the season started, otherwise there’s no way they would’ve taken first team reps away from Coan or Pyne. Certainly necessity plays a part here too, but IMO he was always going to play this season.
But I wonder if that would have been more of a long-term plan preparing for next year and perhaps already knowing that the OL was not going to be very good/consistent.
It’s just hard to imagine us running the ball like last year and Coan throwing the ball downfield to this set of WRs that the plan would be to play Buchner UNLESS it is with an eye to the future to insure that he has SOME experience for next year. In other words, it wouldn’t be an issue where Buchner was actually the better player getting snaps.
Well, Buchner isn’t the better player getting snaps today either. I wasn’t addressing the question of whether Buchner is a better QB than Coan – he’s not, at least for now – but rather whether Buchner was better than the previous freshman QBs who were much less a part of the plan than he is. I don’t believe any of those guys got run with the 1s in camp, which IMO tells you all you need to know about Buchner vs. Average BK Era Freshman *and* tells you how he figured in the plan for this year. First team reps, especially in camp, are super valuable and they weren’t going to waste them on Buchner if they didn’t intend to put him out there with the first team in live action.
I know the staff really likes Pyne and thinks he can play, but I think it’s quite clear that Buchner is the future and they always wanted to get him ready this year to start next year. I don’t have inside sources on this but I’m highly confident they were always going to get him some level of meaningful experience this year. It’s just accelerated because of how he can open up the run game.
I take it back – I’m on board with Eric’s summary above. He’s in his fourth non-COVID year of competition, so he’s likely done pending some gymnastics by the NCAA that would be truly surprising.
I stand by, though, that I can’t see him wanting to come back anyway.
To your last sentence: that’s what makes it a great internet topic since it doesn’t even really matter 🙂
HIs situation is the same as Paul Atkinson for the hoops team. He was not able to play last year, but had the Ivy League not canceled the 20-21 season- he still could have played this season for ND. You can only have the 6th year if one of the previous seasons (not 2020) met the criteria to apply for another season.
Trey Wertz was not planning on playing last season, but since 20-21 season did not count it was a no brainer to play.
If a team can add up to 7 players for every transfer, I guarantee Alabama will have just shy of 300 players on their roster within 3 years of that rule taking place. I wouldn’t doubt that somehow they’ll get players to transfer out, get the bonus and then use a loophole to bring them back as one of the 7.
That just seems poorly thought through…even for the NCAA.
I think they have to stay under 85. I thought the rule was that they can bring in more than the 25 newly recruited freshmen that is the current rule. but if you have 7 transfers you can bring in 32 freshmen. It doesn’t change the 85 rule.
That’s correct.
As noted below, you can go *one* player over the 25 limit for every *one* player you lose to the transfer portal. There are some other limitations as well: