New Notre Dame Offer Notes | 2022 O-linemen
Now that we have a couple of years of Jeff Quinn compared to Harry Hiestand as a recruiters, it’s quite obvious that they have very different philosophies.
Hiestand was very picky when it came to offering offensive linemen. Many would say too picky. He waited a long time and often only offered if he had a chance to watch a player in person. While that was good for evaluation purposes, it wasn’t great when it came to having a big enough board in some cycles.
Quinn has been much more aggressive and that’s been evident yet again with some early offers out to the 2022 class. They have offered nine on the offensive line and three more in the last week.
OL Zach Rice (Virginia)
Rice didn’t jump out to me as an early offer candidate on film compared to others they’ve targeted. He clearly has good potential and an impressive offer list already, though.
He flashes a solid punch in pass protection and above average feet. He does a nice job scraping off the double team to get to the second level. He has decent movement as a puller and can lock up and finish in the run game.
He can hop at times out of his stance rather than firing out and plays a bit high with his leverage. To me, he looks like he’d be better in a phone booth than when asked to deal with twitch on the edge. He’s a good guard prospect, but his film didn’t scream elite to me.
Grade: 88 (3-star)
OL Jacob Allen (New Jersey)
Allen is a good athlete that moves really well. He demonstrates good functional power with a strong punch. He can locks rushers out with good hand placement.
While he needs a lot of refinement with his footwork, he does have light feet. He has left tackle physical and athletic traits. He’s only scratching the surface with his potential.
Grade: 92 (4-star)
OL Grant Bingham (Kentucky)
Bingham is already a massive young man and sometimes that takes a player down a notch when he’s only a sophomore, but he’s agile enough as a puller and can find defenders in space. Not every 300 pound kid can do that at that stage of development.
He looks like he’s got shorter arms for being 6’6”, but shows good power at point of attack and solid balance in pass pro. The one big knock on him from me is that he gets his hands outside of the frame of the defender a lot. He’s just so big and dominating that he gets away with it against his competition.
I think he’s definitely a guard in college, but can develop into a very good one.
Grade: 90 (4-star)