Notre Dame has struggled recruiting in the secondary for numerous years and just hired a new defensive coordinator who emphasizes defensive backs on the field in a way that really hasn’t happened before in school history. Recently, a swath of new offers for these types of players went out which suggests this is now a major emphasis for Marcus Freeman and the Fighting Irish.
Why has it been so hard to recruit defensive backs, though? Here are some thoughts:
1) The normal geographical struggles present in Notre Dame recruiting are more exacerbated with defensive backs. The position is reliant on so much speed and quickness, this speed lives predominantly in the southeast, Texas, and California, while the Notre Dame campus is far away from these places.
2) Race certainly plays a factor, too. Since the first full recruiting class under Brian Kelly in 2011 he’s signed 40 players from the Top 100 national rankings with 21 of them (52.5%) being black. Juxtapose that with the 83 defensive back recruits inside the Top 100 from 2018-22 with 80 of the players (96.3%) being black. Notre Dame signed one of those 3 non-black or mixed race defensive backs (Kyle Hamilton) over this time span and I’m sure hiring their first black coordinator will be a major added value to connecting with corners and safeties of color throughout the country.
3) The industry as whole doesn’t seem to evaluate defensive backs very well, either. The rise of 7-on-7 culture and the opening up of passing games in college is helping to publicize the need for defensive backs but the sport as a whole still feels too tilted toward offense. Plus, the vast majority of fast players would rather play receiver than corner, so the sport is sending a majority of its best athletes with defensive back body-types to offense.
I was curious how the top recruits were broken down by each position over the last 5 cycles:
Top 100 Recruits by Position per 247Sports (2018-2022)
QB: 37
RB: 36
WR: 71
TE: 15
OL: 73
DE: 60
DT: 43
LB: 64
CB: 49
S: 33
ATH: 18
This is actually more balanced than I would’ve guessed.
Having 7 or 8 quarterbacks per cycle feels about right, we obviously don’t value running backs as much anymore, while offensive line–and especially defensive line–eat up so much of the rankings due to a ton of players seeing the field and the general idea that humans 6’4″ and taller who can move well are generally freakishly talented.
My initial guess is that we’d see more receivers (71) than defensive backs (82) but that’s not the case. Still, an average of 9.8 corners and 6.6 safeties within the Top 100 over this 5-year span doesn’t leave Notre Dame a lot of room to work with given some of the constraints mentioned above.
I thought maybe a majority of the designated “athletes” would play in the defensive backfield but so far for the 2018-20 classes only 1 out of the 7 are playing safety in college and no one is playing corner. We also have 8 athletes listed for 2022 among the Top 100 and we’ll see if several of them find a permanent position in the recruiting rankings before the end of the cycle.
Now, let’s look at where the defensive backs are coming from by U.S. states:
Top 100 Corners by State (2018-22):
Florida: 13
California: 9
Texas: 6
Georgia: 6
Alabama: 3
Michigan: 2
Missouri: 2
South Carolina: 2
Arizona: 1
Connecticut: 1
Louisiana: 1
Maryland: 1
Pennsylvania: 1
Tennessee: 1
Virginia: 1
Top 100 Safeties by State (2018-22):
Texas: 10
Florida: 6
Oklahoma: 3
Georgia: 2
Louisiana: 2
Maryland: 2
California: 1
Illinois: 1
Iowa: 1
Nevada: 1
New Jersey: 1
North Carolina: 1
Pennsylvania: 1
Tennessee: 1
For over 100 years, Notre Dame’s traditional pipeline states have been Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Just 6 defensive backs from these states inside the Top 100 over a 5-year span is slim pickings, indeed.
Like everyone else, the Irish have been establishing pipelines in Florida, Georgia, Texas, and California for decades and these states account for 64.6% of the Top 100 defensive backs. Compare that to the 2021 recruiting cycle where 44% of all top 100 prospects come from these 4 states and with the defensive backs removed it drops down to just 39.7% from Florida, Georgia, Texas, or California.
Here’s where all of these defensive backs have signed:
Top 100 Defensive Backs by Team (2018-22):
LSU: 10
Alabama: 7
Georgia: 6
Texas: 6
Ohio State: 5
Florida State: 5
A&M: 5
Clemson: 4
USC: 4
Florida: 3
Oregon: 2
North Carolina: 2
Miami: 2
Oklahoma: 1
Maryland: 1
Notre Dame: 1
Michigan: 1
Michigan State: 1
Washington: 1
Utah: 1
Tennessee: 1
South Carolina: 1
We’ve had one defensive back from 2021 yet to sign while 13(!) for 2022 are still uncommitted as of this writing. Of course, it’s possible the rankings get re-shuffled or that things are a little out of whack due to the Covid recruiting rules but this is a bountiful defensive backfield cycle coming up this year. Here are the amount of corners or safeties among the top ranked recruits in recent years:
2020
15 inside the top 100
22 inside the top 150
32 inside the top 200
2021
13 inside the top 100
20 inside the top 150
26 inside the top 200
2022
18 inside the top 100
30 inside the top 150
39 inside the top 200
Either way, 55 defensive backs or 67% being signed to date by just 10 separate schools over the past 4+ cycles is, like many things with recruiting, a major hurdle to jump over for Notre Dame. There’s really no puzzle to solve here, the Irish have to either lock down more quality defensive backs in their traditional pipelines or do better grabbing others from the big, warm states where recruits are largely staying local. It’s just, doing so with corners and safeties is pretty much harder to pull off than any other position.
Here are the 3 from the top 100 who got away recently from the traditional pipeline states:
CB Julian Barnett
Class: 2019
Composite: 0.9724
Home: Belleville, Michigan
Offer: Yes
School: Michigan State
At one point, he looked like a Notre Dame lean but abruptly committed to Michigan State in December 2017. Barnett started out at receiver with the Spartans before switching to corner this past year. He recently entered the transfer portal and committed to Memphis.
S Antonio Johnson
Class: 2020
Composite: 0.965
Home: East St. Louis, Illinois
Offer: No
School: Texas A&M
Johnson was never offered by the Irish with possible academic reasoning. He committed to Tennessee in June 2019, left their class 2 months later, and signed with Texas A&M with help from Mike Elko. He played in 6 games for the Aggies this past year.
S Derrick Davis
Class: 2021
Composite: 0.972
Home: Monroeville, Pennsylvania
Offer: Yes
School: LSU
He visited Notre Dame and there was some strong indications he was seriously considering the Irish despite deep ties to Penn State. Davis ended up picking LSU where he enrolled earlier this month.
There are 3 defensive backs from the Top 100 in the current 2022 class from these states, including:
- Safety Keon Sabb from Williamstown, New Jersey is the top safety in the country. No offer yet from Notre Dame.
- Corner Will Johnson from Grosse Pointe, Michigan is a 5-star and top player in the state. He’s been offered by Notre Dame but is considered a strong lean to Michigan where his father played in the early 1990’s.
- Corner Keenan Nelson from St. Joseph Prep in Philadelphia is a high 4-star and is carrying a Notre Dame offer.
Including these 3 above, Notre Dame has offered 24 blue-chip defensive backs with only 3 off the board at this time. Those players come from Texas (6), Florida (4), California (2), South Carolina (1), New Jersey (1), Louisiana (1), Missouri (1), Nevada (1), Iowa (1), and Michigan (1).
Someone who has to be a must-get is corner Jaeden Gould from Bergen Catholic in New Jersey. The 0.942 Composite rated defender is someone the Irish can’t lose out on in this region of the country, especially if it’s to Michigan. The most recent defensive back news for Notre Dame concerns Mater Dei athlete Cooper Barkate (recruited for safety) who would be a pull out of California. Still, if he’s brought aboard it’s a very comfortable recruitment for the Irish: 3-star, white, and from a Catholic school.
So far, Marcus Freeman has amped up the offers and is casting a wider net at defensive back while chasing more talent. It’s a deep and talented year for corners and safeties–and while it’s going to take some time for Freeman to put his stamp on Notre Dame recruiting–he still faces a big challenge to sign a terrific haul at the back end for 2022.
Great, detailed, analysis.
It does help put things in perspective. And hopefully the new emphasis (and skill) in recruiting DB by Freeman will pay off big this year. In some ways we need to hit a couple of homeruns *this year* just to make up for the lack of talent that we’ve recruited the last few years (esp. if this year there is going to be more options than in most years), then Freeman could settle in to a homerun every 3-4 years and a couple of triples (just to keep the metaphor going), and doubles most years.
Good article and think a really important part of where Nd football may be heading. I like that you didn’t shy away from the race piece of that or Nd affinity for recruiting guys they’re comfortable with.
Really curious to see the impact freeman hire has on recruiting, not just his acumen but the general direction of recruiting. They seem to be far more aggressive since he came on board in sending out offers and going after highly ranked guys. Not sure if there is truly a difference or just spun that way any time one coach leaves and another comes in
Interesting article, but is Kyle Hamilton not black?
o yea, i thought that was an odd comment too. I was confused for sure.
Yup, I meant to put non-black or mixed race as KH is half-Korean.
Does that mean we should be worried about our star safety getting obsessed with learning an Asian dialect to the detriment of his play on the field? We need his max focus not his Max focus.
Great piece! Based on history, ND should be able to land some quality d-backs — they have landed some 4-stars like Cole Luke, Griffith, Derrick Allen, Crawford, Pride and others — they might not have been 5 stars, but getting some good 4 star depth would be a great step in the right direction (rather than relying on 3 stars and hoping that one from the group will be good). If they put in the right effort and hire the right coaches things should improve. Freeman and Mickens are both great first steps, now they need a hot shot recruiter for safeties.
Bama’s entire starting defense in the CFP were black, as a point of reference.