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Notre Dame Football Recruiting

Notre Dame Recruiting Focus Shifts Towards the South

April 8, 2022
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The work is never done in recruiting until the LOIs are in, but the majority of the evaluation work has been done in regards to the 2023 class.

Notre Dame has sent out 145 offers this cycle. They sent out 175 in the previous one. They may end up sending out close to that number when all is said and done after the May evaluation period, on-campus camps in the summer, and after evaluating game film of emerging senior prospects, but we’ll see a lot more 2024 and 2025 offers than ones for this current class.

This is technically the first full class for Marcus Freeman. I say technically because a good portion of these offers went out before he was the head of the program. There are several new staff members who are recruiting players who were already offered before they were employed by Notre Dame so we might see things go in a slightly different direction with their voices added to the mix of evaluators like Dave Peloquin and Bill Rees.

Even with that, I think it’s safe to say that we’ve got a pretty good snapshot of areas of the country that Notre Dame has and will target most frequently in recruiting. Unsurprisingly, they’ve continued to drift away from the midwest.

The Irish have offered only 23 players from midwestern states. Almost half of them are from Missouri (6) and Ohio (5). To put that into perspective, they’ve offered more 2023 recruits from Texas than they have the entire midwest.

There have been 63 offers sent out to players from the southeast. 24 of those are to players from Florida, 12 from Georgia, and 8 from Alabama. I’m not sure anyone would have predicted that Notre Dame would offer almost as many prospects from Alabama as they have from California (9), but that’s where the talent has taken them.

For players who project to play defense, only 8 out of the 80 offers are from the midwest. 52 are from the southeast and Texas. Two of those eight are key pieces to the class in defensive lineman Brenan Vernon‍ and linebacker Drayk Bowen‍. If anything the lack of offers to local players show just how important it is to land national recruits like them.

61% of the players they have offered overall are from the southeast or Texas. Out of the 82 recruits they have offered in the 2024 cycle, it’s also 61% (50 players). That number is up from 54% in 2018.

The college football world in general has shifted towards the southeast. That’s not something everyone already isn’t aware of. You’d have to be blind to ignore the numbers of blue-chip recruits from those states and then subsequently seeing the number of players from SEC schools who are drafted annually by NFL teams in recent years.

The SEC footprint has expanded into Texas as well. A state that has always been loaded with top-level talent has been raided by SEC powers in recent years.

Notre Dame, which has always recruited nationally, seems to have acknowledged that it can only help them to have a greater presence on their roster from those southern states. It’s not just about more numbers either. They have to be able to go and do what they have done so far in this cycle by gaining commitments from elite talents like Keon Keeley‍ (Florida) and Peyton Bowen‍ (Texas) and also keep them in the fold. Going into Georgia and landing a great fit and top-50 prospect in Kyle Hamilton has to become the norm.

There’s always going to be representation from all over the country in a Notre Dame recruiting class, but considering how aggressive they’ve been in the southeast and Texas, it’s obvious that they want to have more representation from those areas. Sending out offers is the easy part. Getting those players up for visits and then ultimately signing them is a much tougher challenge.

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