In case you missed it, I recently reviewed my way-too-early guess at Notre Dame’s recruiting class of 2022. As is tradition, next year’s way-too-early guess is next, and I think it’s one that most of you would be very pleased with.
The Fighting Irish have gotten off to their best recruiting start since, well… Ever? They’re currently sitting at #1 nationally in 247Sports team recruiting rankings and have an average recruit grade of .9477 (which is a top 150 level player in any recruiting cycle). All nine commits in Notre Dame’s recruiting class of 2023 currently hold composite 4-star status, with 4 of them sitting within the national top 100 (and a 5th sitting just outside the top 100 at #106).
Will Notre Dame continue to build off of this fast start, or will things start to fizzle out as we get through spring official visits? Here’s my guess:
(Commits are listed in bold.)
OFFENSE
Quarterback
Dante Moore — MI — 6’2″/195 — .9970
The #6 overall player in the country and undoubtedly the top target on Notre Dame’s board. Marcus Freeman and Tommy Rees currently have the Irish in great position with the 5-star prospect out of Detroit, even after recent visits to Miami, Michigan State, Michigan, and LSU. He’s expected to visit South Bend again the final weekend of March. I’m not saying he’s a sure thing, but it wouldn’t shock me to see him make a decision shortly after that visit.
Other names to watch: Chris Vizzina (.9773), Avery Johnson (.9352)
Running Back
Sedrick Irvin Jr — FL — 5’10″/190 — .9062
The son of the former Michigan State star and Detroit Lion committed to Notre Dame way back in September. The departure of Lance Taylor for Louisville seems to have had no effect on his commitment to the Irish. An excellent all-around back that should prove a valuable addition to the already-impressive RB room.
Jayden Limar — WA — 5’11″/190 — .9108
Limar is one of the top priorities for new RB coach Deland McCullough, and he’s made a good impact so far. Marcus Freeman is also putting in some work here, and that’s really improved Notre Dame’s chances. He has really good speed and could prove a threat in the passing game as well.
Other names to watch: Kaden Feagin (.9115), Jeremiyah Love (.8778)
Wide Receiver
Braylon James — TX — 6’2″/175 — .9652
The hiring of Chansi Stuckey has been huge for Notre Dame’s recruitment of Braylon James. The two already had a relationship from Stuckey’s time with Baylor, and his arrival in South Bend has greatly improved Notre Dame’s chances. Braylon’s a high-academic kid with some big-time offers. This would be a big-time pickup.
Rodney Gallagher — PA — 5’10″/160 — .9620
This one is a bit of a projection. Rodney reportedly holds the Irish in high regard, but he has other schools he’s shown a lot of interest in as well. The reason I’m including him in this best guess is the amount of effort the entire Notre Dame staff is putting into recruiting him. Marcus Freeman, Tommy Rees, Chansi Stuckey, and Gerad Parker are all heavily involved. Parker in particular might prove to be low-key big here, as he was Rodney’s primary recruiter for West Virginia and the two have a good relationship.
Malik Elzy — IL — 6’3″/195 — .9052
One of the more local guys on the board. Tommy Rees was doing really well here with the blue-chip Chicagoan before the arrival of Chansi Stuckey. Although I don’t believe they had a prior relationship, I’m assuming the hiring of Stuckey will help more than the previous receivers coach probably did.
Ronan Hanafin — MA — 6’3″/200 — .8850
I think this one will just come down to whether or not he gets the green light to commit to Notre Dame. At this time, the Irish are recruiting Ronan as an athlete — primarily a receiver, but he could potentially play defense depending on how he fills out.
Other names to watch: Carnell Tate (.9901), Jalen Brown (.9862), Jaden Greathouse (.9528), Rico Flores (.9300), Tyler Williams (.9110)
Tight End
Cooper Flanagan — CA — 6’5″/230 — .9238
Cooper’s added offers from Alabama and LSU since his commitment to Notre Dame back in September, but he doesn’t appear to be wavering at all. The Irish might try to add a second tight end if the right athlete comes along, but I think it’s likely they just sign Cooper.
Other names to watch: Jaxon Howard (.9641)
Offensive Line
Chase Bisontis — NJ — 6’5″/290 — .9752
I would not have included Chase in this projection if Jeff Quinn were still the offensive line coach, but it sounds like the (re)hiring of Harry Hiestand will greatly improve Notre Dame’s chances here.
Charles Jagusah — IL — 6’6″/305 — .9681
All signs are currently pointing to the Irish having a significant lead in this recruitment. Charles is one of Harry’s top targets this cycle, and he appears to be hitting the right buttons. This is one of the higher-upside offensive linemen in the country.
Sullivan Absher — NC — 6’7″/290 — .9113
This big-framed prospect took an unofficial visit to Notre Dame at the end of January and it made a big impact on his recruitment. The Irish appear to be in the driver’s seat, but they’re battling home-state North Carolina and Clemson.
Other names to watch: Samson Okunlola (.9844), Monroe Freeling (.9619), Austin Siereveld (.8910), Elijah Paige (.8739)
DEFENSE
Defensive Line
Keon Keeley — FL — 6’5″/240 — .9936
This is an absolute massive early get for Marcus Freeman, but his recruitment is far from over. Multiple teams are coming after the elite edge rusher extremely hard here, with Alabama and Florida both hosting Keon for recent unofficial visits. I have a feeling Keon sticks with the Irish, but he’ll likely keep us sweating here for a couple more months before either shutting things down or reopening his recruitment. He’s supposed to be visiting South Bend twice this spring, so hopefully the Irish can get him to shut things down afterwards.
Brenan Vernon — OH — 6’5″/275 — .9655
This was another big early get for Marcus Freeman. Most had Brenan pegged to Ohio State, but Notre Dame proved to have everything he was looking for. Of course there are other schools sniffing around, but he seems locked in with the Irish at this point in time. He bulked up from about 240 pounds to 275 over the last year, so he may end up in a MTA or Rylie Mills role of strong-side end/defensive tackle combo.
Boubacar Traore — MA — 6’4″/250 — .9374
In a previous draft I wrote about how Traore was currently committed to Boston College, but still very open to other schools and Notre Dame in particular was a school he had a great deal of interest in. On Saturday, he forced me to go back and edit this paragraph after officially backing off his commitment to the Eagles and opening up his recruitment. Notre Dame is in good position with him, but he’s likely going to take all of his officials before making another decision. If the Irish were to land him, he’d be the strong-side end to pair with Keon Keeley at Vyper.
Devan Houstan — MD — 6’4″/270 — .9153
Visited Notre Dame a few weeks back and loved it. The Irish are firmly in his top group and might even be his outright leader. He’d be the pure defensive tackle in this haul.
Other names to watch: Chandavian Bradley (.9834), Jason Moore (.9780), Tamere Robinson (.9448), Kendrick Gilbert (.9030), Colton Vasek (.8950), Kennedy McDowell (NR)
Linebacker
Drayk Bowen — IN — 6’2″/215 — .9814
Huge pickup for the Irish, both on the football field and the baseball diamond. He’s locked in and doing some heavy recruiting as a committed prospect. The Notre Dame LB room will be absolutely stacked in 2023.
Preston Zinter — MA — 6’3″/215 — .8958
Preston has some positional flexibility as he could also play tight end. Primarily recruited to play linebacker, however. He’s an athletic kid who should prove an asset whichever side of the ball he ends up at.
Other names to watch: Samuel M’Pemba (.9924), Jaiden Ausberry (.9787), Phil Piccioti (.8920)
Defensive Back
Peyton Bowen — TX — 6’0″/185 — .9742
Another huge get for the Irish at a position where they desperately need elite talent — safety. Much like Keon Keeley, the Irish have to stay on him. Oklahoma is pushing really hard here, and they do have his friend and high school teammate in the fold — one-time ND quarterback target Jackson Arnold. Like Keeley, I think he sticks, but he’s probably more of a toss-up than Keeley is. Holding onto him isn’t going to be easy.
Justyn Rhett — NV — 6’1″/195 — .9534
Justyn has ideal size and length to play boundary CB for Notre Dame. The Irish haven’t landed too many guys like this Bishop Gorman prospect in recent years.
Adon Shuler — NJ — 6’0″/190 — .9350
Adon continues to reel in offers despite being firm in his commitment to the Irish. Alabama was the latest just a few days ago. Chris O’Leary has really done a great job of landing two stud safeties early. This would be an elite pairing if Bowen sticks with his commitment.
Christian Gray — MO — 6’0″/175 — .9501
Brian Kelly hiring his former high school coach Robert Steeples as CB coach has made this one closer than it was two months ago, but the Irish are still in the best position at this point in time. While Rhett is more suited to boundary, Gray is more suited to play field. Together, they’ll make the best CB duo Notre Dame has landed since before I started following recruiting 8 years ago.
Daeh McCullough — IN — 6’2″/200 — .9293
Now this one here is a big projection on my part. Notre Dame hasn’t actually offered McCullough yet at this point. However, you probably recognize his last name — that’s because he’s the son of new RB coach Deland McCullough. Daeh has been committed to IU for quite a while now, and he went on twitter to reaffirm his commitment right after the news broke that his dad would be accepting the Notre Dame job. (Channeling my inner Stephen A. here) HOWEVER, there’s still a long time for him to think about his commitment between now and signing day, and the word is he’s likely transferring to local Penn High School for his senior season. There’s a big opportunity here for Notre Dame if they decide to play poacher.
Other names to watch: Caleb Downs (.9925), Javien Toviano (.9887), Caleb Presley (.9599), Micah Tease (.9315), Amare Snowden (.8910)
FINAL THOUGHTS
Looking back at the group, this projection seems both highly optimistic and mildly conservative.
One the one hand, a 22- man class with just one three-star signee seems impossible. On the other hand, Notre Dame just isn’t targeting very many three-stars at this early stage.
I was honestly thinking of expanding this projection to a 25-man class just to add some more three-stars, but I couldn’t even point to an additional three-star on my radar that seems likely to end up at ND right now. Just take a look at the “other names to watch” section for each position group and you’ll see very few composite scores below .8900.
Marcus Freeman is going big-game hunting, y’all. The Irish are finally legitimately trying to compete with the elites on the recruiting trail. I’m really excited to see how it shakes out.
Great job Tyler. Despite trying to be as pessimistic as Eric on Dante Moore, I am starting to get my hopes up. (No way that ends poorly). But everything is looking good, would be such a huge get and maybe help out with the recruiting of some of the WR’s if he does commit early enough.
As your conclusion says, no matter how the chips fall, it should be a really good haul for Notre Dame. Not sure if it will be a top-5 class nationally, but no doubt Freeman will be raising the average player rating at ND, which along with improving the offensive skill is what the program really needs to take the next step.
It seems like if this was 2-3 years ago, Kelly would go all in on Tate, fight a losing battle and come in second place and then be like “aww shucks we tried” and not really have much established with other top prospects. The amount of top 50 and top 100 and top 150 players that ND has made in-roads with in this cycle and is at least a somewhat serious contender or making the kids consider ND is very encouraging. The net for talent is finally been cast wide enough to bring in a very exciting haul.
And coupled with Moore, I thought I just read that Tate is coming this week or next week for a couple of day visit. I know OSU is the favorite but we are definitely in it and if we pulled Moore it would be hard not to think we may end up the favorite for Tate too (easing any concerns about a QB). The next two weeks (whenever Tate visits) could go a long way to making this a top 5 class. Tate and James at WR and Moore at QB are things we could normally only dream of. But there seems to be a real shot now.
I mean actually a class of almost all 4 stars or better with the quality that would be in it (in this article) even without Tate might be a top 5 class.
I think so too. Working off Tyler’s outlook there’s room to out-peform. Tamere Robinson out of Pittsburgh could be in play and M’Pemba could be too. ND is in the top 2 or 3 choices right now for an enormous amount of talent, some of which they won’t land but probably a lot of which they will.
As much as we’ve been waiting for that “next step” in recruiting to come and it never has…I think I’m brave enough to say in 2023 it actually will happen. Maybe not a giant leap to totally get on the level with the SEC powerhouses, but there’s room for an incremental but visible improvement off the past few ND classes that seemingly will take place. This could be an elite QB, OL, DL, DB take for ND, which would move the needle.
Exactly. And I think it’s the kind of thing that might build on itself. You start getting a few more of those elite guys and some of the other elite guys in this class want to come join them.
I think the difference is that we are legit in it for way more top guys than I can ever remember so that even if we got like 20% (this number is more symbolic than real) of all the elite guys we are in on then we’ll have the best class we’ve had in a long time. Whereas in the past it was like look we are in with like 1 or 2 elite talents and finish 2nd with both of them and then we were left with “nothing.” We had to finish with like 90-100% of the elite guys we were in on to have an elite class because we were always in on so few. What do you think though? Is it just the eternal hope of better next year or does this help explain why 2023 really will be the year?
Freeman effect. Probably also trickling down to better recruiters as position coaches too. 2022 LB class speaks for itself as Freeman’s main focus to repair the problems there that were under his control and the elements in 2022 that weren’t in his charge (QB, WR) continued to struggle.
Now he has to really increase QB and WR and that’s in well in progress, and no coincidence that we’re talking about being in a very good spot for the best QB recruit since the Weis era.
But that’s the simple reason for the improvement,/change: when the head coach is the head coach of recruiting, it’s going to take off if he’s good at it.
I totally agree with the Freeman effect being part of it.
I think that it could also be that there is a bit of a long term effect at play here that took a while to come to fruition. These recruits in the ’23 and ’24 classes can’t even remember a time when Notre Dame wasn’t a constant top 10 team. All they know is ND as a playoff team and at the least a playoff contender every year since they were in like 6th grade.
Perhaps we are not the “elite” program but we are now in the conversation as being a top 6 program over the past 5 to 6 years and that is starting to make a difference in the perception that recruits have of ND. When it was just a good year or 2 that was easy to dismiss but now other than Alabama, Georgia, Clemson, and Ohio St. we could make the argument for #5 program over the past 6 years (obviously others could argue that as well, but we have a reasonable argument).
Fans of course remember more than the past 5 or 6 years, but to 16 or 17 year old recruits its got to be tough to really remember much of the college football landscape from when you were 7 or 8 years old.
Just to point out, Tom Loy put in a crystal ball prediction for Tate to tOSU yesterday. 🙁
Tom Loy just put in a Crystal Ball pick for Tate to go to OSU. Kind of weird to me knowing Tate is coming to visit ND Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of this week. I get that OSU would be the leader, but this is Tate’s first visit since Freeman took over and a 3 day visit certainly shows he is very serious.
Loy was also a ND lean on Tate up until like yesterday, so it’s been a weird outlook for him to move off that as Tate actually is taking a look at ND. I would be surprised if Tate doesn’t end up at tOSU, but at this point it’s not finalized.
I totally agree. I can see why Tate would be picked to go to OSU but just seemed like a really strange time to put in a crystal ball pick. Wouldn’t you want to wait until after the ND visit and any other visits he takes during his spring break? Hopefully it’s a bad pick and it’s not a case of Loy knowing something we don’t know.
Tate visited today. I think OSU leads but who knows what a Dante Moore commitment could do – they’re good friends. The game is afoot.
Thought I saw somewhere that he is visiting ND yesterday, today, and then sticking around for the first day of spring practice tomorrow. Have you heard that?
To me, that is a huge positive and shows that perhaps we really aren’t far behind OSU at all.
I believe he was only at ND on Tuesday.
I didn’t decide to include Dante in this projection until about a week ago.
Up until about 3 weeks ago I actually had Avery Johnson in his place, and briefly replaced him with Chris Vizzina.
^Your heel turn is almost complete. I’m just waiting for the next Rambler when you declare that Cardinal and Gold are actually a really good combo and USC is a program to be envious of.
I did nothing wrong here!
Maybe not here here, but definitely here.
The headway Stuckey has already made with a recruit like Braylon James tells you just how shitless Del was at his job. The kid’s heavy early leader was Stanford, for chrissakes. How were we not all over him?
Where would this exact class end up ranked, relative to years past? And I agree with the sentiment that there are opportunities to outkick this projection.
Sampson had ralph russo on his podcast last week and russo seemed to really have a cap on nd ability to recruit, saying that kelly got them pretty close to their ceiling which I think will be shattered pretty quickly (not to mention weis before him recruited better). Having said that given the last 10 years a part of me is prepared for like the top two guys to decommit, a guy to get Injured and a high ranked guy to fall in the rankings. Thanks BK
I input all of Tyler’s picks in the 247 class calculator and added to what was on hand it ended up as a 304.36 (assuming I didn’t miss anyone). That would be 4th best out of the 2022 (Texas A&M first at 330, Bama 322, Georgia 316 still ahead, slotting above tOSU’s 300).
Notre Dame was at 272.89 last year.
Get greedy and add Tate + M’Pemba to Tyler’s list and the class goes to 315, to show you what it would take to really run with the big dogs.
That is a frightening number. I think it will be interesting to watch, and wait. The class today could end up looking very different.
We could win a NC with a 4th or 5th best class every year for 4 years. Getting around 300 every year would put us in the 3-5 range consistently; 315 could sometimes be the top class in a year.
Yes, with the assumption that Moore truly is a top-6 player in the country (which makes him a 1st, 2nd or 3rd overall pick in the draft since he’s a QB). Then ND is definitely in winning playoff game contention. No pressure, kid or program to help him live up to that!
That’s pretty much the Clemson plan down to a tee. Good enough to be a fringe “true playoff team” everywhere and then a transcendent Watson/Lawrence talent at QB that raises all boats with a high tide.
Actually I think it’d be more like Bama-lite or a mix between Bama and Clemson.
From 2012 to 2019 Clemson out-recruited us only like 2-3 times (and 1 or 2 of them we actually had a better average per recruit). And they were never in the top 5 during that period. Now in 2020 and 2021 they pulled in top 5 classes. But actually Clemson was often more like top 8-15 classes with elite QB play.
Having consecutive top 5 classes would be more like Bama, etc.
We also supposedly lead for Top 50 (per the composite) DE Jason Moore.
I did not include him in my projection.
Listened to that episode and couldn’t help but laugh. To your point he mentioned that ND can’t compete with UGA/Bama/OSU and then in the very next breath said if they get an elite QB then all bets are off and they can compete with anyone.
To quote donald Sutherland in Kelley’s heroes:
“So many positive waves, like maybe we cant lose, okay you’re on baby”
What is this weird feeling of optimism I feel about the Irish’s future? Big dawg talent coming in, high energy coach saying and doing the right stuff…
“Almost makes me feel like riverdancing”
I think this is a very reasonable, perhaps even cautious projection for the class. Great job by Tyler putting this together, and I share his caution in firmly projecting something bigger because it seems insane.
But it’s out there. M’Pemba, Toviano, Okunlola, Ausberry, Jason Moore, Greathouse, Freeling are all very much in play, at least for now. It’s going to be a wild ride in this class.
Every year we start out strong. Maybe not quite this strong. But top 5 gets thrown around a lot over the winter.
Normally, I would read this and be like oh sure here we go again. But, we just looked at last years way too early, and while it wasn’t a great prediction in terms of specific commits, it was pretty accurate for overall talent level.
That gives me hope. But I’m still waiting for that OMB moment.
I think part of the difference in this campaign is that the backup offers we’re seeing made by the staff are mostly for prospects who are ranked in the top 250, some of them even top 100. The dropoff from our preferred targets to “plan B” is nil in some instances. This was very rarely the case under Kelly.
These are always among the best posts of the year. Great work!
Have to be encouraged with all the positive Dante Moore vibes right now. Things weren’t feeling so great a couple months ago, especially right after Jackson Arnold committed to Oklahoma, but it seems like we’re (back?) in front with Moore. His commitment would be so massive, not just because of his talent but because of the general positivity and momentum it would generate.