6 Thoughts on a Thursday

Now more than ever, college football is all about “what have you done for me lately”.

Lose to a team on the road one week and you better come home and win the next. The season might not have gone as well as expected, so a strong recruiting class better make up for it.

It’s always about the narrative. Get a big win in what Nick Saban has called the most difficult place to play in the SEC and none of that matters if you follow it up if you lose to NIU the following week.

After that game, so many Notre Dame fans kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Talking to people before the Louisville game and everyone was asking whether or not Marcus Freeman was going to make it at Notre Dame. He answered that question pretty definitively from that point on.

The program just kept on winning. They made it 10 straight and have clinched a home playoff game in the process. By winning out the rest of the season and going 22-4 in his last 26 games, Freeman flipped the narrative based on what his team has done on the field and now more fans are worried about locking him up long term than anything else.

And yet, the vibes can only last so long because the calendar turns quickly in college football. The Irish finish the season with a big win at USC and signing day is only a few days after. Notre Dame was set to bring in a good class, but the consensus amongst most was that it was like, not love with this 2025 group they had committed. There were no signing day surprises expected either.

That all changed when ISD’s Christian McCollum reported rumblings that linebacker Madden Faraimo‍ wasn’t a done deal to USC. When Freeman showed up at his signing day press conference and announced that Faraimo had signed with Notre Dame, it flipped another narrative that has been hovering around: this staff couldn’t finish with their top uncommitted targets late in the process.

With what had happened in the previous two classes, it couldn’t really be disputed. Then Faraimo signed with the Irish. He’s a versatile game wrecker who could provide plenty of short and long term impact in Notre Dame’s defense.

I was originally planning on writing today that that type of player was what was missing from this class. Then they landed him. It’s not to say that closing on one player like him on signing day fills all the gaps that are in the class or that this means Freeman and his staff are going to keep it rolling in these situations in future classes, but it has to start somewhere. It really started last year with Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa.

If they don’t land KVA, they aren’t landing Faraimo.

I think Notre Dame’s staff did another good job of evaluating talent with the class as a whole and there’s plenty of good pieces that have now been added to the roster. Now we get to see if winning another recruitment like this can lead to more dominos falling in the future.

2. If you’re someone who only cares about recruiting rankings as a measure of talent, then you’re lying if you say that Freeman hasn’t upgraded Notre Dame’s talent. With this class now signed, the Irish will have a blue-chip ratio of 71% next season.

That means that out of the last four recruiting classes, 71% of the recruits have been ranked as 4 or 5-stars. That’s up four percent from this season and up 16% from the Brian Kelly’s final season.

I think everyone can just see with their eyes that the overall talent and depth of the program has been upgraded, though. It should be evident because we’ve seen Notre Dame’s season not fall apart despite numerous season-ending injuries to key players. For the most part, young players have stepped in to replace them.

I can’t remember a Notre Dame team that had this many freshmen and sophomores that were this important to a season like this one. The majority of the most talented players on the team aren’t yet draft-eligible, which means they are players who have been identified, recruited, and evaluated by Freeman, Chad Bowden, and the rest of the staff.

It’s become obvious that many of these players were underrated by most recruiting rankings. I’ve seen enough of that to realize that we’re very likely going to see some of these recruits hit big, similar to Ben Morrison, Jadarian Price, Anthonie Knapp, Boubacar Traore, and Leonard Moore.

That’s something to keep in mind with this and every class that is put together by Bowden. I have recruits like Vyper Dom Hulak‍, linebacker Ko'o Kia‍, wide receiver Elijah Burress‍, defensive back Cree Thomas‍, and running back Nolan James‍ ranked as 4-stars (some other sites have them as 4-stars as well). They aren’t ranked that way in the composite, though.

These players and freaky athletes like safety Brandon Logan‍ and wide receiver Antavious Richardson‍ could end up being the next guys who end up surpassing wherever they were ranked.

3. I think the biggest change in how I viewed one position for Notre Dame in this class in the summer compared to how I see it now is edge rusher. I went in questioning what they had there and really wanted to see some senior film on Hulak and Chris Burgess‍.

After seeing their progress, I think it became one of the strongest parts of the class.

Hulak had not rushed the passer much because he was asked to play so many other roles for IC Catholic’s defense. This year it was more of his primary role on defense and his traits really stood out.

I had liked what I had seen from Burgess when watching him in person at camp, but was underwhelmed by his junior film. I just didn’t see the tools translate the way I wanted to. That flipped this fall and I’m a lot higher on him now than I was a few months ago.

When adding in Kia and Faraimo as potential sub-package rushers, the picture looks even rosier. I like stacking this group behind the freshman class of Bryce Young, Loghan Thomas, and KVA.

I still have questions about defensive tackle that I don’t see being answered for at least a couple of years because there needs to be a lot of physical development for Gordy Sulfsted‍ and Joseph Reiff‍. I think the upside for both is high, but it’s also complicated by the fact that Sulfsted suffered a knee injury and missed his senior season.

We’ll see how things look at 3-tech with this defensive line group later on, but I really like the potential of the edge rushers in this class.

4. It’s going to be a good thing to have this signing day happen in early December rather than later on. Just imagine what this would have been like if Notre Dame’s staff had to deal with finishing this class while also preparing for their first playoff game. That would have been brutal.

It is brutal that they’ll have to deal with the transfer portal opening up on Monday. Obviously a lot of the heavy lifting will be and has already been done by the scouting staff and those guys are going to be the most important people when it comes to who Notre Dame will add as transfers during this winter transfer portal window.

This answer from Bowden to a question about the evolution of recruiting wasn’t about the transfer portal specifically, but it applies to it as well.

”I couldn't tell you what the next evolution is, but I know we're going to always be on top of it because college football changes every day. You never know what's going to go through, what's not going to go through with the NCAA, and we just continue to push, push and try to develop and get better. The signing days change, a lot of dates have changed, contact days, when you go on the road. There's so much that has changed. But we always have a plan. We have multiple plans to make sure that we're on top of everything.”

We probably won’t see the same amount of news about portal targets that we’d see if Notre Dame wasn’t in the CFP this year, but no one should mistake that for them not being actively pursuing (or closing on) targets.

5. Now that Notre Dame’s regular season is over, it feels like a good time for a check in with how the boxes are being checked with championship criteria in the CFP era. I mentioned last week that Notre Dame was where they needed to be in terms of net points per drive and that remains the case after the USC game. They’re second in the country.

Maybe the biggest development is that for the first time ever, Notre Dame is in the top-8 in OF+ (combined FEI and SP+ ranking for offense) and top-3 in DF+. Every CFP champion has been in the top-15 in DF+ and nine of the 10 CFP champions were in the top-8 in OF+.

They were a Joe Moore Award semi-finalist and considering the offensive line played their two best games of the season in the final two games, I think it’s fair to say they are in a better than anticipated spot up front with the offensive line. Nine of 10 CFP champions had O-lines that were semi-finalists for the Joe Moore Award.

Notre Dame’s havoc rate on defense is interesting because it’s skewed by playing the two service academies and their unconventional offenses that allow very little havoc against. With those games Notre Dame’s havoc rate is 18.2%. Only one CFP champion had a havoc rate of less than 18.6%.

But if we only take the havoc rate from the games against the 10 modern offenses, the rate is 19.6%. That matters quite a bit because 19.5% or higher was the magic numbers for 8 of 10 CFP champions.

I’ll dive into more of how the field stacks up in all of these categories and more when the field is officially set, but this is a reminder that Notre Dame should be included in the category for legitimate contenders based on how they’ve played this season.

6. Notre Dame should be ranked higher than Penn State, but there is no controlling that. Warde Manuel used top-25 records and records versus teams above .500, which favored Alabama over Miami for a CFP spot. It seems like that was more about finding stats to help make their case, though.

Notre Dame is 1-0 versus the committee’s top-25. Penn State is 1-1. Notre Dame is 6-1 versus teams with a winning record. Penn State is 3-1. Not that I think this is a good way to actually compare teams, but Manuel mentioned it as part of why Alabama is ahead of Miami, so technically the same rules should apply to Notre Dame and Penn State.

That could be used or it could be the head to head results against the same opponent (USC), but it might not matter at all. If Oregon beats Penn State by a wide margin, then Notre Dame is probably moving ahead of Penn State. Any other result and they are probably not.

Getting the 5 seed does matter because it would mean playing the lowest ranked conference champion and then playing the second lowest ranked conference champion after the 5 seed won the first game. In terms of high-end talent, those teams aren’t going to have the same level of raw talent that would match Alabama in the 11 spot that could end up playing Notre Dame as the 6th seed.

I get why more people would prefer the former rather than the latter, but we’re now at a point where every team is good. Even the teams who aren’t scary in terms of top end talent are good and can beat pretty much anyone on a given day.

There’s also not any teams that anyone should fear, at least not from what I have seen this season. No one should be scared of Alabama, that’s for sure. They aren’t who they were in 2020 just like Notre Dame isn’t the same team they were back then.

This version of Alabama lost on the road to 6-6 Vanderbilt and lost by 21 on the road to 6-6 Oklahoma. I’m sure Saban was rolling over in his luxury suite watching those games.

Alabama could beat anyone who will be in the CFP this year. Notre Dame could as well and whoever they might play in the first round, they’ll have the advantage of playing at home. However things end up, no game will be easy no matter who the Irish are matched up with. No one has ever had to experience this gauntlet before and it’s going to be difficult for everyone to navigate.

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