This weekend’s Junior Day event for Notre Dame football has already started paying dividends, as Georgia defensive back KJ Wallace has decided to verbally commit to the Fighting Irish after his visit this weekend. The 5-10/175 pound athlete out of Atlanta is the 3rd commit (and 3rd composite 4-star) for the Irish in the Class of 2019, joining DT Jacob Lacey and QB Cade McNamara. His commitment pushes the Irish up to #17 in the 247Sports Composite Team Rankings. It’s been a bit of a slow start for the Irish so far this cycle, but expect things to start heating up soon. By all accounts, this Junior Day was a huge success with many of the first-time visitors, and the Irish have established themselves as serious contenders with a handful of big-name guys.
Recruiting Service Rankings
247 Sports — 4 star (90 rating), #273 overall, #19 CB, #25 in GA
Rivals — 3 star (5.6 rating), NR overall, #48 ATH, #53 in GA
ESPN — 4 star (83 rating), #122 overall, #9 CB, #17 in GA
247 Composite — 4 star (.905), #275 overall, #27 CB, #32 in GA
Cohort
In addition to Notre Dame, KJ held offers from Auburn, Stanford, Wisconsin, Penn State, Georgia Tech, Tennessee, South Carolina, Nebraska, and others.
Highlights
KJ’s highlights show a fluid athlete with good quickness and lateral agility. There aren’t a ton of clips showing his straight-line speed, but it appears to be adequate. He plays smart. He recognizes that his size doesn’t do him any favors when he’s tackling, so he knows to hit low and wrap up. He’s not afraid to help out in the run game — in fact, a pretty large portion of his defensive highlights are him flying up to help out with the run. He’s also pretty shifty with the ball in his hands.
Impact
This is an important pickup at a big area of need, without question. Landing a blue-chip cornerback this early in the process is huge for Notre Dame — especially when you consider how things went from looking extremely good at the position in 2018, to now requiring luck to maybe land one more guy to close out the class. Tariq Bracy and Joe Wilkins are a decent haul, and things start to look better once you factor in Houston Griffith (who will likely play FS but could play CB as well). But the Irish have taken a few shots to the gonads with CB recruiting since late December, which has led to some hand-wringing and somewhat unfair questioning of Todd Lyght’s recruiting ability.
KJ will have a big opportunity to see the field early, for sure. He should take this next year and a half to bulk up before his first season with ND starts, and then he may be ready to see the field in some capacity as a true freshman.
Welcome to the Irish family, KJ!
Great write up Tyler. This is a really nice pickup. Also worth noting that Wallace has known Derrik Allen since they were both little, and the families are friendly. I think there’s a pretty good chance this one will stick.
Nothing like immediate dividends from your junior day!
Yep, that works for me.
This is a nice pickup. Hopefully we hold on to him.
Relatedly, I’m not sure why you think the criticism of Todd Lyght is unfair. Notwithstanding this pickup, and assuming Griffith is a safety, our CB recruiting seems to be very subpar, and we appear to be trending for yet another 3 star (DJ Brown) after whiffing on a couple four stars. In particular, it seemed like about a month ago Boykin was the backup option, and now we’re going even further down the board past him.
Not to mention the Adebo/Graham/Hicks/Gervin/Irvin misses. All of those guys are probably more desirable than what we’ve pulled in the last couple years other than Griffith, each were close and/or committed, and ultimately he couldn’t close. While each of those probably can be individually explained away, perhaps it’s also fair to say he’s a poor recruiter in part because he couldn’t overcome those obstacles?
The stuff going on behind the scenes for CB recruiting the past couple of cycles has been a mixture of extremely whacky and downright unfortunate. I think the odds are maybe 5:1 that a different DB coach would have made any difference with any of the guys you mentioned.
Not sure why we’d automatically assume Griffith is a safety. One of the ND analysts I respect most (Jamie Uyeyama) thinks he could play either spot, but he has noted there’s a lot of improvement Griffith would still need to play as a safety.
I don’t know enough about the other CBs in the current class, but I guess this is where someone interjects that Julian Love was a three star.
Sure, I don’t mean to give up on these guys. I hope the 3-stars turn out. But, just based on ND’s own actions, it’s obvious that the coaching staff would have preferred the guys we missed out on, because, at least in the last two years and with the exception of Griffith, everyone we’ve taken has basically been a result of increased focus after whiffing on a preferred candidate (of the above, that even describes Hicks as well… and we whiffed on him too). And, at least with regard to Graham, we definitely missed out on at least one player – he would have probably been our second-best DB as a true freshman. The rest of them are obviously TBD.
W/r/t Griffith, perhaps you’re/Jamie U’s right – I think that has just been the general vibe of the Irish Illustrated guys, particularly on their podcast.
It’s fair to say ND has moved onto second (and sometimes third) choices but isn’t that recruiting in general? Does the position coach automatically deserve criticism for not being able to seal the deal on the top targets, or enough in this situation?
Just my perspective but I don’t see Lyght getting overly praised (wouldn’t deserve that) but he doesn’t deserve too much criticism either. It’s not like he’s turning off or souring top-100 prospects who have their hearts set on coming to ND until he messes it all up, or anything. Unless I’m missing part of the point or you are just getting to that the secondary has had too many swings and misses on top guys. They certainly have had a lot of drama, but that seems like a pretty dramatic position group to begin with.
I suppose it could just be a function of the position, but it seems like there have been more swings and misses at this position than others. I suppose one could question this year’s recruiting at RB and o-line in particular (assuming we don’t get Petit-Frere), but it hasn’t been two straight years of that even despite 4-8 (i.e., last year we landed CJ Holmes and Hainsey/Lugg/Banks, with Banks even committing after that miserable season). DE recruiting is also questionable over the last couple years, particularly with regard to pass rushers, but that’s almost always questionable for ND, so I’m willing to grade on a curve there (plus there was a position coach change).
Point is, (1) for the last two years CB recruiting has been lowest relative to reasonable expectation based on historical performance for any given position and (2) Lyght has been the position coach at CB. Perhaps he’s not to blame – it could just be bad luck, or it could be that he got us in a better position with some of those guys than we otherwise should have (though that doesn’t explain the relative underperformance in result), or maybe BK or the recruiting staff were doing things holding him back etc. – but I don’t think it’s automatically unfair to link (1) and (2) either – it’s at least a reasonable working hypothesis that is more likely than any of the alternative explanations other than maybe just bad luck.
Like Tyler said… Graham was a silent commit, but his family was supposedly seriously put off by the fact that Lyght needed a gluten-free meal on the in-home visit and things went south from there. That sounds super-fishy to me, so what I really think happened is he just reconsidered leaving the West Coast, and instead went to Oregon along with his HS secondary teammate Jaylon Redd.
Adebo swore up down and sideways that he was done, shut down, etc., and even so we kept recruiting him. Stanford literally didn’t recruit him AT ALL for a year, which supposedly upset him, but he forgot about it when they offered after he looked great at the UA game practices. What is Lyght going to do about that? How much more could he have done than recruit the kid who said he didn’t have to be recruited, while Stanford ignored him?
Hicks was weird. He asked ND about enrolling early, they said he wouldn’t be able to do it, and then he showed up at Cal to enroll early without ever saying anything to ND, despite Lyght being in regular contact with him. Again, what is he supposed to do? Slap a GPS device on the kid’s car when he’s not looking and say “GOTCHA”?
You know who Lyght did get? Julian Love, Troy Pride, Donte Vaughn, Houston Griffith, Derrik Allen, Tariq Bracy, Joe Wilkins, and now possibly DJ Brown, who incidentally despite the three-star status you point out just picked up a committable offer from Ohio State.
He also got a commitment from Boykin, who then got cold feet when he called the Maryland staff to tell them. FWIW, before his OV for the NC State game a Maryland 247 mod told their board not to worry because he thought Boykin would hate the campus environment at ND, which is now precisely why other mods are saying he’s leaning to Florida. Not Lyght’s fault. Lyght closed Irvin and then his mother got sick, and USC turned up the heat in the interim. Gordon’s a loss, but there’s no doubt he made it close. Lyght got Gervin to look at us again, but then he didn’t get the test score he needed and that was that.
I certainly don’t think he’s an elite recruiter, but he’s not dog poo either; he’s improving and has also been the victim of some really, really bad luck. He also looks to be a pretty decent CB coach, judging from the fact that Julian Love is a sophomore All-American and doubled up ND’s PBU record, and Troy Pride emerged as a legit man cover guy by the end of the season.
I think he’s a developing product as a coach and recruiter who catches more crap than he deserves on message boards, which is not to say he deserves zero crap. Just not the metric poop ton that he gets.