Friday night news broke that is never good news. Incoming freshman 2020 corner prospect Landen Bartleson was arrested and charged with first-degree burglary, first-degree criminal mischief, and receiving stolen property valued at $10,000 or more after breaking into a store to steal guns. After an initial comment about waiting to gather facts, less than 24 hours later Notre Dame released a statement that Bartleson will no longer be welcome at Notre Dame.
One fewer corner now populates a thin depth chart.
Bartleson’s memory will surely fade now for Irish fans, especially if he never establishes himself on the college football scene after his legal troubles are sorted. For what it’s worth, while he was a middle-of-the-pack rated defensive player for our writers in our 2020 review, Bartleson was my second-best defender in the class, my “favorite” on that side of the ball, and someone who I was sure would be one of the top dark horse candidates as a 3-star recruit. Here were my comments, now no longer needed:
Based off his running back highlights alone I’m completely sold on Bartleson’s athleticism. There isn’t much to go off at corner which raises some questions about making an impact on defense early in his career. Still, his quick-twitch is fantastic and he’s such a smooth player. I wouldn’t be shocked if he took a redshirt and ultimately ended up at running back. If he can pick things up at corner his ceiling may be higher on defense anyway.
So, now the roster is down to 7 cornerbacks: 6th-year senior Shaun Crawford, junior Tariq Bracy, 3 redshirt freshmen, and 2 true freshmen. That number isn’t a big problem–as we like to mention often the usable depth at corner is typically extremely limited–and it’s highly doubtful Bartleson would’ve been so impressive this summer as to make an impact in 2020 anyway.
This upcoming year could be sticky (pray for Crawford’s health) but we knew that before this weekend.
Thinking more long-term the staff has its hands full building a solid future and that will be a huge part of the new defensive backs coach that will be hired soon. There’s an immediate concern to prevent corner from being the main weakness of the 2020 defense and a pressing need to figure out the future.
Does this mean a roster move or two becomes more likely?
We could look to safety but even that position contains just 6 players, including transfer Isaiah Pryor. Would they yet again try Houston Griffith at corner or nickel? Maybe move D.J. Brown back to corner? Neither of these decisions seem likely.
A popular choice for some would be to start out incoming freshman Xavier Watts at corner even though so many people love his potential at receiver. Watts is already on campus and we should find out soon if he is moving. I’d lean heavily toward keeping him at wideout unless there’s a real belief he’s capable of making an impact at corner really early in his career. I think many expect him to make that impact on offense.
Someone else to think about would be Kendall Abdur-Rahman. He’s fast, fits the profile from a size perspective (5’11” 1/2 and 189 pounds) but I don’t think he had much of a defensive background before coming to Notre Dame. In fact, he was a run-first quarterback in high school who was rumored to be a potential running back for the Irish before settling into his recruited role at receiver.
Abdur-Rahman was mine and Jaden’s “favorite” offensive player from the 2019 class (kind of echoing similarities to Bartleson) and it’s possible he’s athletic enough to make a transition to defense.
I did find it interesting that he was only 1 of 3 freshmen players this past season to not play in a single game, along with tackle Quinn Caroll (out for the year with a knee injury) and guard John Olmstead. There was a practice report about KAR suffering a shoulder injury during August camp and I’m not sure if that was more serious than believed or if he wasn’t 100% healthy during the fall.
At any rate, fixing things at corner both with a new assistant hire and securing a brighter future at the position have to be among the biggest priorities for Brian Kelly and Clark Lea. If they want to push forward as a program they can’t afford to be in a position of such weakness when the Irish match up against some of the top quarterbacks in the country.
For the love of all that’s holy, please let’s just agree to leave Griffith alone at safety. Anything but that nonsense again.
Big time C’MON MAN for Bartleson. Hopefully this can be a positive turning point for him to not go down a scary path.
I doubt they had him in plans much for 2020 since he wasn’t an EE, maybe the take at CB for 2021 goes up one?
CB does look scary, but it looked scary this past year after losing Love and they were like, what the 5th best pass defense in the country? In Lea we trust. I figure he’ll camouflage the weaknesses there with Hamilton lurking and what should be a good pass rush to hurry it along. Probably telling that Notre Dame doesn’t have NFL talent at this position (and places like Clemson, Ohio State, do) but so it goes.
I think I may have posted something similar before, but I’m in favor of giving Xavier Watts a shot at CB. He played defense in high school and was excellent on that side of the ball. I don’t know what was said during his recruitment so that could be playing a role in the decision, but based on roster and skill it seems like an easy choice.
He has already played defense and so the learning curve might not be a steep one and from what I’ve read it seems possible he could even see some playing time there by his sophomore year. I get the excitement for him on the offensive side of the ball, but if Jordan Johnson is really a legit #1 and Jay Brunelle provides decent depth then this class is fine at WR. Especially when in 2021 we have Colzie and Styles, who by all accounts are both impact players all we would need is another WR for depth (which seems likely given we have a couple other WR interested) to be good in terms of filling out the WR depth chart.
It’s not the worst idea.
Stealing guns… the only worse ND transgression would be having a girl in his room after 2am.
I feel bad for the young man. I did stupid things as a young man and I’m glad they haven’t haunted me into adulthood (though thankfully, I never burglarized anything and didn’t have any gun offenses). But there are limits to what you can accept from someone to whom you’re giving a valuable scholarship. It is the more difficult part of what makes Notre Dame what it is.
I should say that Bartleson hasn’t pled guilty or been convicted, so we don’t know for sure what happened. But, ND must have been told something to make them take the actions they took.
Well said, and good point about him not having pled guilty, Cubsfan, I wondered a bit about that myself. Like you, I assume fair play by ND.
o switch to corner?
Otherwise, given the above suggestions, who else might be a possible candidate to jump to corner?
This, along with ratings adjustments on some of our commits, has dropped us all the way down to the 16th class in 247 Composite. Just between Washington and Miami. Yuck!
The thing that makes me particularly sanguine about the recruiting ranking drops is that they appear to have been mostly correct about high-ranked guys who dropped over the course of their senior years (most recently, NaNa, Jurkovec, and Ajavon). I don’t think there are really memorable counterexamples where guys dropped and it turned out their original ranking was more accurate.
In any case, this basically makes it such that the 2020 class is not significantly better than the post-2013 recruiting, despite (as is always the case) things looking good in early 2019. Of course, things look good for the 2021 class at these early stages, but at this point it’s starting to feel like false hope after 5+ years of the same routine.