Welcome back to the 18 Stripes Big Board for Fighting Irish football. And Happy Holidays, everybody! Today we are taking a look at Notre Dame’s targets in the secondary.
Cornerback
| Score | Name | State | Ht./Wt. | Temperature |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| .995 | Jeffrey Okudah | TX | 6-1/190 | Cold |
| .992 | Darnay Holmes | CA | 5-10/190 | Cold |
| .953 | Deommodore Lenoir | CA | 5-11/190 | Cold |
| .951 | Chevin Calloway | TX | 5-10/180 | Cold |
| .903 | Elijah Gates | CA | 5-10/170 | Cold |
| .896 | Latavious Brini | FL | 6-2/200 | Cool |
| .890 | Yusuf Corker | GA | 6-0/185 | Cold |
| .870 | Ameer Speed | FL | 6-3/195 | Cold |
In the Fold
The Irish currently have two corners committed in Paulson Adebo (.921) and Elijah Hicks (.890), and ND fans have been fretting about the status of both of these guys’ pledges for a while now.
I’m personally not too worried about Adebo at this point. He keeps his recruitment pretty quiet, but he hasn’t visited anywhere else or given any signs of looking around. I think people just like to worry about a kid from Texas who made a surprise commit early in the summer.
Hicks, on the other hand, has me a little concerned. He took a surprise official visit to Michigan a little over a month ago, then another one to Cal a couple of weeks ago. He seems to be genuinely torn at this point. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say he sticks with his ND commitment as I don’t expect Michigan would end up having room for him even if he decided he wanted to flip. But I wouldn’t be surprised either way. This is definitely a situation to keep an eye on.
The ND staff is likely looking to add one more corner commit to this class. With this board looking pretty cold at the moment, I suspect we’ll soon see Mike Elko target a couple of new names.
Top Target off the Board
This one stings a little bit. Notre Dame was the favorite to land Top 100 corner Thomas Graham for months. But instead of picking the Irish last Friday, he decided to commit to Oregon and new coach Willie Taggart, whom Graham had just met for the first time a week prior. Must have been one hell of a great conversation.
That’s not even the part that stings the most about this one, though. Graham had reportedly silently committed to the ND staff just a couple of weeks before he went public for Oregon. He even signed his grant-in-aid paperwork with Notre Dame, and they still weren’t able to hold on to him. Very disappointing, to say the least.
Safety
| Score | Name | State | Ht./Wt. | Temperature |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| .979 | Deangelo Gibbs | GA | 6-2/205 | Cold |
| .978 | Devon Hunter | VA | 6-1/205 | Cold |
| .963 | Xavier McKinney | GA | 6-1/190 | Cold |
| .961 | Todd Harris | LA | 6-0/180 | Cold |
| .948 | Isaiah Pola-Mao | AZ | 6-4/190 | Cool |
| .934 | Chaz Ah You | UT | 6-2/200 | Cold |
| .917 | Connor Wedington | WA | 6-0/190 | Mild |
| .892 | KJ Jarrell | AZ | 6-3/175 | Cold |
| .891 | RJ Potts | IN | 6-2/200 | Cold |
| .873 | Tank Robinson | SC | 5-11/190 | Cold |
| .856 | Evan Fields | OK | 6-2/195 | Warm |
In the Fold
The Irish have one safety commit in this class in Isaiah Robertson (.899). No worries about him sticking to his pledge, as he has signed his grant-in-aid paperwork and is all set to enroll in January. Isaiah has a nice blend of size and range that he will likely have to use right away. The Irish are still currently pretty thin at the position, and he’ll likely need to contribute to some degree immediately. Notre Dame is looking to sign at least one more safety in this class.
New Offers Out
Notre Dame’s most recent offer went out a few days ago to Connor Wedington out of the state of Washington. Connor is a one-time Washington Huskies pledge who de-committed about three weeks ago. Connor is a high-academic kid who has expressed legit interest in Notre Dame, and it is likely we see him take an official visit in January. Look out for Stanford, though. They’ve got the lead for him right now.
Another fairly recent addition to the board is Evan Fields out of Oklahoma City. Evan has been reeling in the offers lately adding Oregon, UCLA, and Baylor to his list over the past two weeks. Notre Dame seems to have made an impression on him, though. He quickly set up an official visit to Notre Dame for the weekend of January 20th and included the Irish in his Top 4 along with Oregon, Arizona State, and Kansas State. Evan is probably Notre Dame’s best bet right now, and Irish staff will be looking to knock this visit out of the park.
Thanks Tyler. Good, clear, informative… nice to be able to read something on this Reveillon de Noel (sorry, I cannot see how to work the accent marks on our 18 Stripes comment space, seems like some sort of subtle discrimination against the birthplace of Our Lady’s university).
Be interesting to see if the new DC can have any kind of impact at this late stage?
I think at the very least the addition of Elko will end up solidifying some of these guys’ commitments.
Some of the pay site mods are of the opinion that hiring Elko will end up greatly helping us keep Hicks in this class. They seem to think Elko is exactly the kind of coach Hicks would want to play for. Really hope that’s the case.
Are there any other corners that would be worth pursuing?
Well, Latavious Brini might take a visit to ND next month. He would be a long shot, though.
There’s also current Wake Forest commit Troy Simon, who already has an ND offer. Not sure if Elko would try to poach him from his former team, though.
As for guys who aren’t yet on the board, I’m sure there are plenty of late-bloomers out there and the staff is likely evaluating senior footage right now. If I’m right and ND is hoping to land one more corner, I’m thinking a couple of names will pop up within the next couple of weeks.
You could probably copy and past them in. But Imma laugh at the fact that you can’t type in French, but I can 日本語でタイプできます here. 🙂
Pretty damn impressive, KG. Et oui, c’est bien possible de taper, copier, et coller tous les marques d’accent comme é et è et bien d’autres comme hâte ou même androïde … but it’s a pain in the rear.
Anyway, KG, please allow me to wish you a très Joyeux Noël. It’s a pleasure to share time and comments on this board with you.
While I’m at it, Merry Christmas to all 18 Stripers, with deepest thanks to Eric and Brendan and the entire team who work so hard to put up all this super analysis… and to everyone for keeping our exchanges civilized, informative, and in the spirit of the greatest football tradition in the world!
I hope Graham gets coal in his stocking.
Hah! Even as much as I try not to think negatively about recruits I feel pretty okay getting behind you when you put it that way.
Merry Christmas, Bobby D. Here’s your pink slip from Santa.
http://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/18351800/connecticut-huskies-fire-football-coach-bob-diaco
Also, Lane Kiffin has hired Kendal Briles as his OC, because Lane Kiffin.
Would we take Diaco back if we hadn’t hired the guy from Wake? I miss D2aco and his vanilla looks.
I don’t think now is the time for BK to try and get the band back together.
My unpopular opinion is not holding Diaco in as much reverence as much as the consensus here does. I mean, I obviously see how he IS a good coach/DC, likeable guy and all but his scheme seems really specific (and when it worked best it had NFL caliber players like Tuitt, Nix, Te’o, Smith, Blanton, which we know won’t be on the 2017 ND team). After reading about Elko, I think he’s a better choice for ND for this next year. Agree with FTQ above as well that hopefully new blood and a fresh perspective will hopefully be beneficial.
There were a lot of people who weren’t sad to see Diaco go, for the reasons you mentioned. He was clearly better as a DC than the guy who replaced him. I think Diaco is still young (43) and I wouldn’t hold anything at UCONN against him in the long run as a “see, this guy will never be a successful head coach.” UCONN, now that the Big East is done, has absolutely no appeal to recruits and no natural talent base from which to draw. I’m not saying he did a great job, but he certainly didn’t take a sure thing and screw it up, and had some good moments (beating Houston last year) and some WTF ones (the whole silly one-sided made-up rivalry with UCF). He’ll get another shot in a few years.
I agree he wouldn’t have been a good choice because we’d have gotten nothing new, but he’d be light years better than BVG–that’s proven. Elko seems to fix the things some of us didn’t like with Diaco (can work with a wider range of talent, does attack and blitz, etc.) but not to the point of ridiculousness like BVG (mini-Tenuta). But I wish Bob success wherever he lands as DC, and hope he gets another HC job soon enough in a place better set up for success. The one thing this firing changes is that you won’t hear many people talking about him as a HC candidate for ND any time soon.
Today at Under Armour All- American camp, Adebo stated that Texas and Baylor have been contacting him but he told them he’s all Irish and nothing will change that. Hicks has been talked about as a possible flip candidate to Michigan. I’m a little worried as Denbrock was his area recruiter but Hicks is in constant contact with Lyght and his HS coach stated he’d be shocked if Hicks went anywhere but ND and that Hicks is extremely excited about playing there.