6 Thoughts on a Thursday
So much of everything today is about instant gratification and that just doesn’t work for college football.
The four 5-star quarterbacks who were freshmen last season combined for six starts. If someone dropped a massive bag to sign one of them, hopefully they understand that the ROI isn’t going to pay off right away.
Out of the 22 consensus All-Americans last season, Marvis Harrison Jr. and Caleb Williams were the only sophomores to make the cut. Everyone else was in year three, four, or five in college and all but one (Michigan running back Blake Corum) is going to be playing on Sundays this fall.
That’s pretty typical for college football. The majority of difference-makers are players who have had time to develop. There are exceptions (more on them later), but good college football teams are built with players who are in year three, four, or five at a program. 79.4% of the starters in the most recent College Football Playoff were upperclassmen.
Notre Dame’s two CFP teams were built that way as well (84.1% of the starters were upperclassmen). In general, the guys who became dominant players ripened and then eventually became studs. That’s how it was for every good defensive linemen they’ve had in the last six years. That’s how it was for Cole Kmet, Chase Claypool, Jeremiah-Owusu Koramoah, Tommy Tremble, Te’von Coney, Drue Tranquill, and Alohi Gilman.
This season, Notre Dame has a lot of things set up on offense to have some difference-makers with upperclassmen who are ready to be that if they aren’t that already. They have a veteran quarterback in Sam Hartman. They have the returning All-American left tackle in Joe Alt. They have a running back who is ready to be a beast as RB1 in Audric Estime. They have Blake Fisher at the other tackle, who could join Alt as another All-American caliber player. We’ll see with Jayden Thomas and whether or not he can make the jump to be a true WR1, but it’s a real possibility.
It’s different on defense where the projected best player is a sophomore in Benjamin Morrison. That's why they need a Cam Hart, an Xavier Watts, a Jordan Botelho, and a Rylie Mills to be game-wrecker types this fall if they want to be a CFP contender. There isn’t Isaiah Foskey or Kyle Hamilton returning. They don’t have a situation like they did in 2018 where it was clear that Julian Love, Coney, Tranquill, and Jerry Tillery were going to be great players and when others like Gilman, Julian Okwara, and Khalid Kareem took that next step, it took the defense to another level.
They don’t have any composite top-50 recruits on the roster from the 2019, 2020, and 2021 recruiting classes right now. They only had two on their 2018 team, though. They had so many great upperclassmen because of development.
Development will determine how good the team will be this year. If that’s not a big story in 2023, then they are going to have a difficult time beating teams like Ohio State, USC, and Clemson.
2. Based on the number of blue-chips (4 and 5-stars signed), Notre Dame is pretty much right there with those three programs this year when comparing upperclassmen.
Notre Dame has 21 on their roster, tied with USC. Clemson has 24, one less than Ohio State.
The difference is that those teams have a lot of top-50 prospects who are entering year three in college. Clemson has four who are going to be draft-eligible after this season. USC also has four. Ohio State has six.
Notre Dame has zero (in the composite, Fisher was in the ISD Fab 50 and was 55th in the composite).
Looking at those six for Ohio State shows exactly why they were capable of going toe to toe with Georgia. Kyle McCord, Emeka Egbuka, JT Tuimoloau, Jack Sawyer, Donovan Jackson, and TreVeyon Henderson might all be elite players in college football this year and they are probably producing at least three first round picks from that group.
Clemson’s four are Barrett Carter, Jeremiah Trotter, Will Shipley, and Tristan Leigh. Shipley is an already established big play back and Carter and Trotter might be the best linebacker duo in the country.
USC has Caleb Williams, Mario Williams, Korey Foreman, and Raesjon Davis. Caleb Williams is basically in his own tier in college football and Mario Williams could be in line for a breakout year, but Foreman and Davis are backups that could be heading to the transfer portal if things don’t go well. But...Caleb Williams. He pretty much counts as two game-wreckers all by himself.
That’s this week’s reminder that recruiting matters because Ohio State actually signed eight top-50 recruits that year and it doesn’t even have any impact because they still have six and have studs like Marvin Harrison Jr., Michael Hall, and Denzel Burke who they signed in that same class.
When you sign a bunch of them, it’s not as big of a deal if someone doesn’t hit. When someone like Jordan Johnson misses for Notre Dame, it feels devastating because they didn’t sign two more Jordan Johnsons.
3. Yep, it’s going to be very difficult for Notre Dame to beat Ohio State this season. On the other hand, it looked that way with Clemson last year too.
ND had Michael Mayer as a year three top-50 prospect on their roster.
Clemson had Myles Murphy, Bryan Bresee, DJ Uiagalelei, Trenton Simpson, and Demonte Capeheart. Murphy and Bresee ended up as first round picks as well.
None of that mattered one bit when Notre Dame whooped them. Games aren’t played on paper and Ohio State knows that because Michigan would have lost their last two match ups if the more talented team on paper won.
My opinion could change once these teams start playing games, but I think the talent level of Notre Dame is very comparable to Clemson and USC right now. Ohio State is a notch above, but that didn’t stop them from losing games they shouldn’t the last couple of seasons.
Notre Dame going 3-0 in those will be very tough to pull off. It’s also something that could happen.
4. When looking at the underclassmen who started in the CFP last season, the most predictable result was seeing TCU having only one starter who was a freshman or sophomore.
From that perspective, they were built very similarly to Notre Dame’s 2018 team. They had two, Robert Hainsey and Aaron Banks. It would have been one if Alex Bars had not been lost for the season with an injury.
Georgia’s 2022 team had seven. Ohio State had six. Michigan had five.
Four of five for Michigan were ranked in the top-100 as recruits. Four of seven were in the top-100 for Georgia. Four of six were in the top-100 for Ohio State.
Georgia having less is another example of why tiers rather than rankings is a much better way to look at it because someone like Brock Bowers (105) is not included in that and neither is Butkus Award finalist Jamon Dumas-Johnson (198).
I think the bigger piece to take away from this is that those three programs each had exceptional young players. Michigan isn’t doing anything without JJ McCarthy, Donovan Edwards, and Will Johnson. Ohio State was a juggernaut on offense because they had Harrison Jr., Egbuka, and Jackson. Georgia isn’t going back to back without Bowers, Dumas-Johnson, Malaki Starks, Smael Mondon, and Amarius Mims.
No one was predicting Notre Dame was going to be a playoff team in 2020 because they had no idea Kyren Williams was going to be a second year sensation or that Mayer was going to be more than just a contributor at tight end as a freshman. Add them to year two of Kyle Hamilton and that elevated the ceiling of that team.
No one is predicting Notre Dame is going to be a playoff team in 2023 (outside of some overly optimistic fans). Proving people wrong will require a few freshmen or sophomores to join the Benjamin Morrison party that only exceptions earn invites to.
5. Oh, the ebbs and flows of summer recruiting.
A week ago Notre Dame was rolling into the second official visit weekend with a couple of important commitments during the week. This week they haven’t closed on anyone and after a tiny bit of hope they’d be in the mix to land Elijah Rushing, that idea didn’t live longer than Sunday.
I’d say many people are a bit antsy about this weekend, the final one with a big visit list that Notre Dame has scheduled this summer. Come out of it looking good for Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa and then the mood changes a bit. If that doesn’t happen, then…I’m sure we’ll get sunshine and rainbows in the YouTube comments during Hit & Hustle.
Most will predict doom for where Notre Dame ends up in the final recruiting rankings. It doesn’t matter at all where they are ranked right now or even a few months from now. It matters where they finish (and even more how they develop them after recruiting classes are finished, but that goes without saying).
That’s why people get upset when they see Notre Dame lose out on a top talent. If Notre Dame has an underwhelming rest of June and July with 2024 recruiting, every fan will be disappointed. I don’t think that fans should be upset about this current group of commitments, though.
They might not have enough top-100 talent or blue-chips to satisfy everyone at the moment, but I believe there’s a good chance that’s going to change by the time the class is completed. I’m not even talking about new names. With the ones they have in the boat right now, there are several who have the potential to make big moves with their ranking.
Notre Dame has had players rise significantly in recent years like Kyle Hamilton, Joe Alt, Blake Fisher, Eli Rardion, as well as Armel Mukam, Ben Minich, and Joe Otting in the most recent class they signed. I don’t know how many are ultimately going to make a big move, but there’s about 10 candidates who it wouldn’t surprise if they did.
The most likely in my eyes are Bryce Young, Leonard Moore, Loghan Thomas, Isiah Canion, Teddy Rezac, and Cole Mullins. I think Young, Moore, Thomas, and Canion might even have a shot to end up in the top-100 when all is said and done.
6. Five players that ended up committing to Notre Dame in the 2023 class didn’t have offers on this day last year. I don’t know the direction the staff will go if they don’t end up with the expected results over the next few weeks, but they definitely had a plan last year and it involved several good prospects (Minich, Mukam, Brandyn Hillman, Kaleb Smith, Kenny Minchey, Dylan Edwards) that weren’t exactly on the radar for most people in June.
I was really impressed with what the staff did in the last cycle even if a couple of those commitments didn’t stick. I don’t know if we can expect that kind of thing every year, but it left a heck of a first impression in the first class where Marcus Freeman had complete control.
They probably need a repeat of that this year a little more than they did last year. I’m excited to see what they can do for an encore.
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