Despite missing out on Will Shipley to Clemson last week the good news for Notre Dame recruiting continued in the form of graduate transfer cornerback Nick McCloud from NC State. He will come to South Bend with one year of eligibility remaining.
McCloud was a 2016 commit for the Wolfpack out of South Pointe High School (alums include Jadeveon Clowney and Stephon Gilmore) in Rock Hill, South Carolina. He waited until right before National Signing Day to join NC State and was the No. 80 corner and No. 17 ranked player in South Carolina that year.
Despite his low 3-star status, McCloud far outperformed expectations. He played in 10 games as a true freshman and then moved into a starting role as a sophomore. He heads to Notre Dame with 20 pass break-ups in 21 starts in addition to 106 tackles and 3 interceptions over his career.
McCloud came into 2019 as a team captain poised for a big senior season but injured his knee after 2 games and ultimately took a redshirt. I haven’t been able to grab specifics on the injury but there were reports of McCloud returning back in November before deciding against it. So, I’m assuming he’s incredibly healthy at this point.
Big news? Big news!
McCloud was a very good corner for NC State and there’s isn’t much on the roster right now that would make me think he’ll struggle to make a big impact. If all goes well, he’s likely a starter in 2020.
If he can come in and be a quality starter I’m not sure that bumps up the corner position to a strength but it potentially moves things away from it being a major weakness. Not only would it buy some time for the younger players to develop, it could provide some major flexibility.
You have to think that the staff did not want to make Shaun Crawford start the entire year at one of the outside corner spots. If McCloud grabs one of those it makes it a lot more likely they can deploy Crawford in his more preferred hybrid role at nickel and elsewhere.
Corner was one of the positions the team desperately needed spring practice to take stock of the talent on hand. Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible so we have a ton of question marks heading into summer. Thankfully, the arrival of McCloud shores up a position desperately in need of proven talent.
Could this be notre dame’s niche in recruiting? Maybe they can’t go toe to toe on the front end with all the elite high school athletes, but what about a destination graduate transfer location to land experienced older players? Anyways, great to see a corner for the Irish!!!
Taking a page out of Brey’s book. Dennis Latimore, Scott Martin, Ben Hansbrough, Juwan Durham etc… Plenty of proven quality from that path.
It’s the academic’s version of juco transfers. Hopefully they can all mesh well in the locker room.
It’s definitely a useful patchwork to save a “yikes” position, but I’m not sure how great it would be to specialize in the niche. Sure, Joe Burrow and Jalen Hurts were grad transfers, but generally those types of really high-end players aren’t looking for 5th years. So any grad transfer is probably just going to be “a guy on the team” rather than a star. And even if they are a star, it’s a very limited time.
Long way of saying, still need to improve the regular recruiting. But if this guy can come in and be more of a Cody Riggs type than a Freddie Canteen type (and I think he can!), that’s a great add so late. However, guys like McCloud aren’t going to make up the talent gap Notre Dame has with the big 5 programs. But, hey, if they can step in and plug in a hole in the program, at least it helps not lose too much ground.
(And, thinking further and as an aside, it probably says something not good that a guy like Pryor who left tOSU for not seeing the field enough is going to stroll in and probably start at ND. That’s not a great sign when the castoffs of other teams are needed to fill huge roles at ND…It’s not the elite starters who are looking to grad transfer, it’s usually players with question marks through injury or inexperience.)
Not sure that relying on transfers is a good idea. Previous transfers had minimal impact — my guess is that the transfer portal is a great way to fill a hole, but not a way to find top level players. One thing that scares me a little with this pick up is the injury history
2 years from now, the potential grad transfer market is set to explode with folks who took advantage of the 4-game redshirt rule. ND should be well-positioned to take advantage.
That’s an interesting consideration. Hope it works that there is a relationship between the 4-game redshirt and more transfers. (Will it though? Like Daelin Hayes has an extra year of eligibility thanks to that rule, I doubt he ever considered a transfer. I’m guessing any elite starting level players do that. But maybe there are more of the Northwestern kid who want an upgrade in their last year.) The portal is around too and the landscape is slowly shifting to being more player-friendly as far as the whole process goes.
Eric, thanks for the updates! Any chance that there will be an article (or articles) with updates on scholarship numbers? Both the quest to reach 85 before the season starts (e.g., Are we over that right now? If so, who might leave?) as well as filling up the new recruiting class.
The latest scholarship post was on April 20th:
https://18stripes.com/scholarship-update-a-time-without-spring-football/
I usually do those once every 3 months, so probably another one coming in the summer. Notre Dame is at 89 scholarships for 2020 if you’re counting Assaf and Grunhard who were awarded scholarships last year.
Aww man, watching his highlights of the game against ND, and now I’m just sad all over again about Kevin Stepherson. He was poised to be an absolute star. Almost 19 yards per catch and 15 yards per carry during his time at ND. 10 TDs in just 17 games. I’m convinced he would have been a top 5-10 WR in the country by his senior season if he had been able to stay out of trouble and healthy.