As soon as the NFL Draft is complete it’s common to look forward and think about who could be selected the following year and in which round. Instead of an article looking at only the handful of Fighting Irish hoping to be picked in 2023 I thought why not create an annual that we’ll update every spring featuring the players that would be on the scouting radars by the NFL?
Today, we’ll look at the Notre Dame offense.
In addition to player name, position, and years of eligibility remaining we’ll rank players using “Now” and “Future.” Think of the former as where we’d rate someone today if they suddenly held the 2023 NFL Draft right now. Think of the future ranking as how we determine, today, the player’s ceiling in the draft they will eventually be selected.
A few notes:
*Some players, especially upperclassmen, won’t be featured in the scouting if we’re pretty confident they won’t be drafted. Anything can happen of course but we don’t need to waste time predicting a player improves tremendously in one year after not showing enough through 3 seasons, for example.
*In that same vein, there is a bias in favor of young players. Mainly the highly touted ones who haven’t proven they are unlikely to be drafted yet.
*If there are really young players who are showing a high draft spot even before they are draft eligible we’re looking at it more in the sense of a baseball prospect rights situation. In other words, a team would take them that high knowing they wouldn’t be eligible to play for a year or 2 just because they are that good already.
*Including more young players, especially those who haven’t even strapped up a Notre Dame helmet yet, makes this yearly exercise more fun as we’ll track their status if they improve or fall down in their rankings once we get more exposure and data on them.
*We are working under the constraints of the NFL value system. For example, CBS Sports has tight end Michael Mayer going 10th overall in their 2023 mock draft. Using history and the value of tight ends, it’s very unlikely Mayer goes that high.
*Your typical NFL Draft has around 260 picks, which fluctuates depending on how many compensatory selections there may be in any given year.
Notre Dame Offense Scouting Annual 2022
| NAME | POS | ELG | NOW | FUTURE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blake Fisher | RT | 4 | 64 | 4 |
| Joe Alt | LT | 3 | 76 | 7 |
| Michael Mayer | TE | 2 | 39 | 24 |
| Jarrett Patterson | C | 2 | 73 | 43 |
| Aamil Wagner | OT | 4 | UDFA | 57 |
| Tyler Buchner | QB | 3 | UDFA | 84 |
| Tobias Merriweather | WR | 4 | UDFA | 93 |
| Eli Raridon | TE | 4 | UDFA | 114 |
| Lorenzo Styles | WR | 3 | 228 | 121 |
| Billy Schrauth | OG | 4 | UDFA | 139 |
| Chris Tyree | RB | 3 | UDFA | 144 |
| Rocco Spindler | OG | 4 | UDFA | 151 |
| Jadarian Price | RB | 4 | UDFA | 157 |
| Mitchell Evans | TE | 3 | UDFA | 172 |
| Steve Angeli | QB | 4 | UDFA | 188 |
| Logan Diggs | RB | 3 | UDFA | 209 |
| Braden Lenzy | WR | 1 | UDFA | 235 |
| Andrew Kristofic | OG | 3 | UDFA | 243 |
| Avery Davis | WR | 1 | UDFA | 253 |
Scouting Highlights:
*The future is blazingly bright for Notre Dame at the tackle position. It’s not so much a question of if Alt and Fisher will be 1st round picks, it’s more of a debate over which year they’ll be declaring and if they are going to be both in the 2024 entry. For a program that has quite the recent history of developing top-tier NFL lineman it’s still pretty wild that the Irish appear to have hit on a pair of freshman tackles who are already this good with all of the NFL size and attributes scouts will droll over, too.
*We just witnessed Kyle Hamilton barely stay in the first half of the 1st round. You’ll see Michael Mayer in a lot of 1st round mock drafts but the more cynical view would be this is unlikely to happen more than hit. There has been a lot of stuff floating out there that scouts really love Mayer, and who wouldn’t? Still, very few tight ends in history go in the top half of the 1st round.
*It’s also really hard for a center to go extremely high. Jarrett Patterson also is carrying some injury concerns and has been beat up quite a bit in college. He’d also be turning 24 during his NFL rookie season and is no spring chicken. If he ends up switching to guard that maybe helps his draft stock a bit, but not by much. It’s possible he’ll play center in the NFL no matter what position he plays at Notre Dame in 2022.
*A total of 6 true freshman (Wagner, Merriweather, Raridon, Schrauth, Price, and Angeli) make the scouting annual for 2022. Only 3 of them were on campus for spring football and Schrauth was injured.
*Buchner possibly a future early 3rd round pick may raise some eyebrows. Despite a lack of ideal height for the NFL there are enough tools for him to reach that ceiling one day. He’ll surely be a fun ranking to re-visit next year.
*We discussed putting Styles’ ceiling a little higher (I think we need more time to see him as a sophomore) although going late in a current draft is a sign of respect for his talent.
*Schrauth over Spindler is a nice discussion and one of those instances where not playing yet allows more benefit of the the doubt. It seemed like Spindler had been improving this spring but not starting into his 2nd year means we can’t see him moving into the 4th round ceiling any time soon.
*If we can see Tyree truly unleash his speed he’ll be on his way to realizing his draft potential.
*Price ahead of Diggs would’ve seemed nuts just a few short weeks ago. Now, Diggs is recovering from a shoulder surgery that could affect his availability to start 2022 and Price flashed enough speed and athleticism at a younger age to think his future is a step or 2 above his teammate right now.
Looks interesting, especially as an exercise that will get sharper as years go on. I hope that much fun follows as all named guys move up.
Instead of Future, maybe just put the first year they are eligible for the draft, or did I completely misunderstand the explanation? That way you can keep track of movement up to the day they declare. It would be nice to see continual upward movement.
Basically, yeah. I just went with a cleaner approach especially as most aren’t going to be declaring after year 3 anyway.
Still mind-blowing that Alt could be a 2024 top pick, it seems so close!
RT/LT both going early and both drafted in 1st round.
Yes you can get an amen.
Very cool segment!
Gosh, I sure hope some of the skill players listed can push their projections into to second or first round. The Saturday point production would be lovely if there were multiple day 1 talents doing high octane stuff.
Like if styles, Mayer, tyree, colzie all were playing at a top 60 overall draft level, that would be EXPLOSIVE!
Agree with subway that this is a cool segment. It kind of gives an insight into who the real difference makers are on your team, and how much talent, since NFL draft picks is a way to measure how talented a team is. (I shudder to think what this would look like compared to Bama, Georgia, OSU, etc.).
I think you are right about Mayer. 24 is his absolute ceiling. It seems likely he’d go near the top of the 2nd round. I just don’t quite see the elite athleticism/speed that the elite NFL TE’s have that he would need to force himself into the first round.
Only projecting 3 first round picks (with 0 first or second rounders at QB/WR/RB) shows just how far the offensive recruiting has to go before we can truly compete with the big boys. Freeman is doing a remarkable job with the defensive recruiting, but we still only have one top 100 commit at an offensive skill position in the 2022/2023/2024 classes. Until the guys that have us in their final groups actually commit to us, I’m going to continue to be nervous about the long-term and short-term upside of our offense in big games.
It’s wild to look at teams like OSU and Alabama and see them continuously churn out offensive stars year after year. Then again, maybe Freeman will just build a defense on par with 2021 Georgia and it won’t even matter who is catching passes for us!
I’d take a UGA ’21 defense in south bend! How cathartic would that be to smother everyone
The basketball knee injury is keeping things temporarily sane on the Eli Raridon hype-train, but if you willingly hop on now then you can already have two top 100 offensive skill recruits in 2022 forward.
Buy low now, folks!
My prediction on the younger TEs is that Evans and Raridon both get drafted in 2025.
Raridon on Day 2, Evans early-mid Day 3.
While I love how great we have been at producing quality TEs, I wouldn’t really group them in with the true skill position guys. Or at least, almost no TE is going to be a gamebreaker. I need some explosiveness to get me excited!
Yea not too many actual gamebreakers at the TE position.
Who have been that kind of athlete in the last 20 years at the college level?
Pitts
Eifert
Winslow, Jr.
Shockey?
Even in the NFL
Gronkowski
Kelce
Tony Gonzalez
Gates
How many am I really missing? That seems to be few and far between when it comes to legit gamebreaker (explosiveness) at the TE position.
Just want to echo the others and say that this is a fantastic offseason idea. Looking forward to future installments.
This is a fun series!
I am going to go out on a limb relative to basically every ND commentator and say I don’t think both Alt and Fisher are going to be first round picks. Perhaps it’s mostly a function of probability – it’s too good to be true otherwise.
Also Tyree is not going to get drafted at this rate. Has he broken a tackle in two years? I’d be inclined to put Spindler, Price, and Evans (at least) ahead of him