Linebacker Jack Lamb became the 15th Notre Dame commit of the 2018 cycle when he announced for the Irish today. Conventional wisdom held UCLA would win out for the 6’4″, 215-pound Californian due to concerns about distance; despite even further distance, many feared Penn State’s pull on the double Nittany Lion legacy. However, Notre Dame seems to have made a bigger impression than anyone realized when Lamb and his father visited for Irish Invasion; more recent reports have the Irish jumping into the lead at that point and never relinquishing it. No doubt Lamb’s time around Irish defensive commits Shayne Simon, Derrik Allen, Jayson Ademilola, and Ja’mion Franklin at the Opening didn’t hurt either.
We didn’t create the headline graphic, btw – that comes from his YouTube highlight video, which is the same as the Hudl video embedded below but with a cool intro graphic.
Recruiting Service Rankings
247 Composite — 4 star (.9365), #154 overall, #6 ILB, #20 in CA
247 Sports — 4 star (93 rating), #147 overall, #7 ILB, #17 in CA
Rivals — 4 star (5.9 rating), #97 overall, #4 ILB, #11 in CA
Scout — 4 star, #96 overall, #4 ILB, #15 in CA
ESPN — 3 star (78 rating), NR overall, #45 OLB, #65 in CA (uhh…)
Serious question – at what point will the Composite stop including ESPN’s rankings in the calculation? Their inclusion really bugs me given how obviously they dropped the ball in their recruiting coverage. They don’t belong alongside the other three services in any real discussion of recruiting.
Cohort
In addition to Notre Dame and UCLA, Jack Lamb holds offers from Arizona, Arizona State, Baylor, Duke, Oklahoma, Oregon, Penn State, TCU, Utah, Vanderbilt, and Washington, among others.
Highlights
Similar to the breakdown we did for Shayne Simon, there’s not a lot to complain about with Jack Lamb. He doesn’t have the ultra-elite athleticism that a guy like Jaylon Smith or Malik Jefferson has, but he has plus athleticism and combines it with physicality and a high football IQ to be just a really good football player. He moves so effortlessly around the middle of the field, which was evident at the Opening as well. Lamb takes excellent angles to the ball, he takes on blocks like a boss, he picks and/or fights his way through traffic very well, he’s very physical in the run game, he pursues well, he closes well…
Like I said, not much to complain about. With his smarts, length, and athleticism I can see him being an absolute nightmare in the intermediate passing game; he’ll clog passing lanes constantly. I like his aggressiveness when he rushes the passer also, which you know piques Mike Elko’s interest.
The whole tape is worth a look, but four plays in particular stood out to me:
- Opening play (two angles) – Shadows the slot receiver off the snap but reads the quarterback’s eyes all the way, drifts into the passing lane and makes a very athletic pick.
- 4:23 – Takes a step in on the read option fake, sees the quarterback trying to hit the slot receiver, fills the passing lane and nearly gets the pick.
- 4:59 – Left tackle gets a free run at him, fights the block to a stalemate and comes off to make the tackle.
- 7:25 – Takes on a double team with the right tackle and running back, holds his ground, sheds the block to pressure the quarterback.
Those plays sum up his on-field profile: He’s not an athletic guy who runs around blocks. He’s not a mauler who’s limited laterally. He does a little bit of everything and does it very well.
Impact
The middle linebacker situation for 2018 seems very cloudy right now. Nyles Morgan will be gone. Someone from the group of Te’von Coney, Jamir Jones, Jonathan Jones, or David Adams could step up, but some of those guys have fit concerns inside and only Coney has shown any real defensive production to this point. So I suppose it’s possible that Jack Lamb could make an immediate impact, but I still think it’s much more likely that someone from that group will take a step this year and be better prepared to start in 2018.
Lamb possesses a blend of athleticism and size that, aside from Morgan, just isn’t there on the roster right now; even if he doesn’t make an immediate impact I don’t think it’ll take him long to make his presence felt. UPDATE: I just saw Pete Sampson tweet that Lamb intends to enroll early, which substantially increases the odds he can contribute immediately.
Welcome to the Irish family, Jack!
Big-time pickup. The narrative on ND recruiting has completely changed over the past week.
This is great stuff. They beat out some good schools for this kid. I have no idea how they are selling this school so well after a 4 and 8 season. Wow, this staff is doing great.
Elko, Lea, and Polian deserve credit for this one. Really superb job getting the message across and getting Lamb and his father to feel comfortable.
BTW, there’s a scholarship/class projection post coming tomorrow, so stay tuned.
Well obviously he picked ND, he’s the Lamb of God.
Think he listens to metal?
I’ll see myself out.
Oof.
The one thing that immediately jumps out watching his tape is his hips. He flips his hips with ease and can turn and run. He has the potential to be really good down the road. Fantastic get by the staff. I thought he was UCLA bound for sure. This staff is simply recruiting their ass off. They are doing this coming off a 4 win season. I think we could possibly bring in 6 more recruits if my math is correct. Have to start getting picky while also focusing on adding a couple of corners.
This kid may come in like a Lamb, but I predict that in four years, he will go out like a Lion.
And that hair. Can we talk about that hair for a moment?
Lamb looks like Miles Teller from Whiplash.
Mike Vorel tweeted that yesterday too; it also came up separately in our writers’ chat room and I’ve seen it on a couple of message boards too.
In fact, has anyone ever seen Lamb and Teller in the same room? Hmm…
So happy to have been wrong about this, what 3 days ago?
I almost don’t want to post this, because I am sure it will jinx us, but our D recruiting is way better than our O right now. 5/7 four stars are on D, and we have 2 legit top 100 players, with Ademilola apparently having that potential, and Franklin having the potential to move into 4 star range.
Totally separate thought, but avoiding a third consecutive post:
I had looked up his rankings and almost came straight to the comments without reading the article to post “why doesn’t 247 composite drop ESPN.” ESPN is such garbage on all levels, but CFB recruiting is by far it’s most pathetic arm. Also, it looks like scout is now showing the 247 composite, some type of merger, or both bought by the same parent company?
Scout hit some pretty big financial troubles and was bought in bankruptcy by CBS, who already owned 247. The services haven’t merged – yet – but Scout moved onto 247’s technology platform. I’d imagine they’ll merge eventually, but nothing is public about it yet.
I think Ademilola is a top 100 player – 247 has him at #47 and Scout has him at #75. ISD writer and friend of 18S Jamie Uyeyama has him as a borderline five-star. The idiots at ESPN never had him in their top 300, which is meaningless, and Rivals did an impressive job of out-idioting ESPN by actually *dropping* him out of their top 250 in their last update. You can’t make this stuff up…
Allen is a top 100 on the Composite, Rivals, and ESPN, Ademilola is top 100 on two services, Lamb is top 100 on Rivals, and Simon is pushing for top 100 status (#115) on 247. Ademilola is the lowest ranked in the Composite at #155. It’s all very confusing for a dedicated Notre Dame fan…
Ahhh, that makes sense about the services. 247 has invested by far the most in the platform and user experience, good move my scout to move onto that. I hope they don’t fully merge, simply because having more opinions is statistically better, but 247 has really taken over as the one stop shop for recruiting info.
I generally only follow the composite other than when people commit, or at the end of the cycle, when I check every site, but I definitely heard rave reviews about Ademilola, which is why I figured top 100 potential. Didn’t realize he had already been ranked that highly though, awesome.
For years Rivals was the most accurate, but I have always felt they are the pettiest (completely ignoring ESPN) and basically don’t care about kids who don’t attend their camps. Although, I believe Ademilola did all their camps, so not sure why they would drop him after reports of him being the guy to put up the best fight with Salyer.
The last time Rivals updated Ademilola’s ranking was after the Opening regionals but before the finals. His performance at the regional was what had Jamie saying he looked like a borderline five-star, which was then validated at the finals when he went toe-to-toe with Salyer.
It’s weird. I don’t know how much Mike Farrell influences the rankings, but I’ve heard through channels I trust that he has a deep-seated partisan hatred of Notre Dame. He trolls the ND Rivals board on a fairly regular basis, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he pushed to ding guys in the ratings. I believe he had something to do with downgrading Derrik Allen after one of their camps too; that stood out because he gave a negative review while every other service said Allen looked great. So I think that could be part of it. They’re definitely big on performance in their own camps too.
All of that is a big reason why I lean on the 247 Composite. I know a lot of ND fans who have followed recruiting for a long time default to Rivals, but I don’t think that’s a good idea; even setting aside Farrell, they have regional biases (especially towards the West Coast) and they all evaluate kids differently. I like the Composite because it tends to offset the differences between the services.
I read today that ND has 6 commits from the Opening finals group on defense. Lofty company, all things considered.
If Elko/Lea can coach as well as they’ve recruited (in a short time period I must add), then 2017 might be a pleasant surprise.
If they can coach at all, it’ll be an improvement.