Fighting Irish football received its 15th verbal from the class of 2017 tonight, as offensive lineman Robert Hainsey committed to Notre Dame at The Opening. The 247 Composite ranks the 6’5″/275-pounder out of IMG Academy (originally from Western Pennsylvania) as the #70 overall player and the #4 offensive guard in the country.
COMMITTED❗️🍀#IRISHEL17E #GoIrish pic.twitter.com/TzvZ1UgmOT
— Robert Hainsey (@RH56__) July 11, 2016
This marks the second verbal commitment Notre Dame has received from this year’s Opening, as 4-star running back CJ Holmes committed to the Irish on Friday.
Recruiting Service Rankings
247 — 4 star (94 rating), #108 overall, #6 OG, #22 in FL
Rivals — 4 star (5.9 rating), #64 overall, #11 OT, NR in FL
Scout — 4 star, #111 overall, #16 OT, #17 in FL
ESPN — 4 star (84 rating), #80 overall, #2 OG, #18 in FL
247 Composite — 4 star (.9640), #70 overall, #4 OG, #17 in FL
Cohort
Robert chose the Irish over other offers from Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State, Ohio State, Georgia, Florida, and many others. He’s been a highly recruited prospect, particularly by schools east of the Mississippi River.
Highlights
Hainsey’s highlights show strong, physical player. His highlights consist of pancake after pancake after pancake. He plays nasty and mean, and he’s very clearly searching for someone to de-cleat on every play.
With that in mind, he clearly excels as a run-blocker at this stage. He keeps a low pad level, fires off the ball, and has a pretty good initial punch. However, like many high school offensive linemen, he will need work on pass protection. He can get anxious at times, and gets so caught up in trying to put guys on their backs that he ends up reaching for them. That’s definitely something that he can work on, though. With more experience, he should grow more patient in pass protection and keep from reaching.
Impact
Robert Hainsey’s commitment is just further evidence of Harry Hiestand’s dominance as an OL recruiter. Hainsey is Notre Dame’s third OL commit this cycle, along with 3-star guard Dillan Gibbons and 4-star tackle Josh Lugg (whose upside is as high as anybody else in the country). And while they may have missed out on 5-star guard Wyatt Davis (he committed to Ohio State a few weeks ago), Hainsey is as good of a consolation prize as any.
Despite having three talented commits already in the fold, Notre Dame is not yet finished recruiting offensive linemen. The Irish are hoping to land at least one more, but possibly two more elite linemen. The staff is likely to go all in on 5-star Foster Sarell and 4-stars Jedrick Wills and Trey Smith from here on out. Wills is probably Notre Dame’s best chance at this point in time, with Sarell and Smith being real possibilities as well.
As for Robert’s impact as a Notre Dame football player, he will almost certainly redshirt as a Freshman. He just won’t see the field at only 275 pounds. Look for him to take some time in the weight room to bulk up and sculpt his body while being coached by Harry Hiestand. Of course it will be difficult to see the field early with the embarrassment of riches on Notre Dame’s OL depth chart, but Robert has all the tools necessary to contribute to one of the country’s best OL units a few years from now.
Welcome to the Irish family, Robert!
Just a question about the new site: OFD always showed pics of current players when someone committed. I always assumed it was an NCAA requirement to not show the player…but if that were the case then why can 18S do it?
Also, I am ecstatic that you all didn’t hang it up. I have become sick of the new OFD very quickly.
Hey man, welcome back! Good to see you. At OFD, because it’s part of SBN, we had access to the USA Today and Getty image archives, so it was easy to pull pictures of current players. Wide receiver commit, pic of Will Fuller, linebacker commit, pic of Jaylon Smith, etc. Here, we’re on our own and that kind of image access is prohibitively expensive, so we have to get a bit more creative.
In the case of Nike camps, they actually have a public Flickr account and let you use any pictures from it as long as you attribute them appropriately. That’s why there’s a picture of Hainsey here, or why we’ve used some Opening Regional headshots in the past.
Good to hear. Thanks!
For what it’s worth, I prefer the way you are doing it now.
Nice write up, Tyler! Really psyched about this kid; he’s a great prospect, and he keeps the western PA and IMG pipelines open. You mentioned him getting so caught up in trying to pancake guys that he gets anxious in pass protection. That’s exactly what I thought when I watched Parker Boudreaux’s film last year – Harry definitely likes them mean! You can teach technique, but you can’t teach attitude.
Hainsey, Gibbons, and Lugg are a really strong group. It’ll be fun to see who fills the last two OL spots in this class.
Re “getting so caught up in trying to pancake guys that you get anxious in pass protection”–shall we refer to this as a crepe block?
I endorse the crepe block.
Poutine blocks all around.
What an embarrassment of riches. Weis (and Clausen) would have killed for 1 of these guys every year let alone 3-4. What could have been with Clausen with some of these kind of guys.
Depends on whether they would’ve liked him enough to try not to let him get killed.
Mmm…pancakes
Thinking about the riches of recruiting. I’ve realized that next year will be the year where we are at the point that our 5th year seniors will be loaded. What has been going on with the OL will be true for the most of the team at large, i.e. where freshmen really have to earn their way on to the field. It makes for a deeper and older team. It would be great to see a recruiting analysis done at large to see this more clearly, namely, that instead of having a few 5th years, many of which were role players/leader, to (starting next year anyway) having multiple 4 star starters (e.g. Biven, Montelus, McGlinchey, Hunter, JR, Smythe – which doesn’t take into account someone like McGovern perhaps not coming back, and Zaire or Folston also bypassing 5th years either for another team to start or the NFL as the case may be). Then seeing the next class having 13 out of 19 remaining players all being eligible for 5th years, and so on. wow, what a difference these last 4-6 years of recruiting have made on the program.
Great points. The cupboard wasn’t exactly bare when Kelly came in, but it didn’t have much past the front of the shelf. Charlie was good at nabbing the occasional high-profile player, especially on offense, but he never got a handle on roster management and as a result we had no depth. Now, Kelly and Co. seem to have a much more organized approach and – gasp! – a multi-year plan to ensure depth across the board. The difference really shows.
I like that idea for a post – could be something we look into here. Stay tuned…
Remember starting Sam Young as a true freshman? How times have changed.
Poor Sam Young. Harry would’ve made him a first-round pick.
Funny thing about Sam Young. He never really lived up to the hype in many Irish fans’ eyes, and I don’t doubt that Harry might have made him a first round pick. But few realize he’s entering his eighth season in the NFL. He’s not an elite tackle, nor even a regular starter, but that’s not a bad way to earn a paycheck. A sizable paycheck, at that.
Is it possible that the team may have to pull a Harbaugh and have some already-committed recruits find greener pastures? I think it’d be hard to tell Sarell and/or Trey Smith (ESPN’s #1 recruit) that there’s no room.
I don’t think it will happen. There’s always attrition and the number of 5th year guys asked back can be tweaked. And it’s not ND’s thing.
I think (even hope) that’s generally right, but I’m starting to worry about taking guys early who maybe wouldn’t be the best options available after all (not at o-line necessarily, given the high rankings there). That may just be an inevitable function of shifting the recruiting calendar earlier and earlier, though.
There aren’t any early commits who aren’t either at a position where they really need capable bodies or they don’t have some high-level physical potential. If anything, this staff has shown the ability to find guys with “meh” ratings but high potential. Look at the early reports on Studstill, for example. And aren’t we glad they took Josh Adams rather than keep pushing for higher-rated guys then pushing him out? If the recruiting calendar is shifting earlier as you mentioned, you need a staff that can identify the right guys – ratings be damned.
Not to mention, that’s just not a Notre Dame thing to do. That’s an angle that’s hard to define, but it kind of is what it is. It’s just not the Notre Dame way, nor should it be.
Agree completely. [cue complaints of overly-pious fandom] The ND staff is much more cautions than most about handing out offers, first of all, and second will not accept a commitment that they don’t want to keep regardless. We’ve lost a few kids that way, but I don’t think it has burned us and I do think it has built a reputation with high school coaches.
Also, good to see you again, Artist Formerly Known as Tony Alford’s Swag!
Thank you, sir. I’m glad I spotted the rescue beacon out there on the twittershpere.
We wouldn’t tell someone like Sarell, or Smith, or Kaindoh, that there’s no room. You figure it out with those guys. With that out of the way… We have 15 commits right now and none of them, in my humble opinion, is a reach – and more importantly, they all combine to form an excellent floor for this class both in quality and in positional distribution so the staff can try to push the ceiling as high as possible.
To wit:
Recapping, that’s 15 commits. I’d expect us to add 3 WR, 2 OL, 1 DT, 1-2 DE, 2 DB. That would put us at 24, which is about 3 more than expected after signing day this year. As we all know, though, stuff happens, and that surplus of 3 doesn’t seem insurmountable.
We’ll have 8 players eligible for a fifth year in 2017 – Malik Zaire, Torii Hunter, Durham Smythe, Jacob Matuska, Colin McGovern, Hunter Bivin, Mike McGlinchey, and John Montelus. I think Kizer and Zaire are an either/or for 2017 (Kizer will go pro or Zaire will transfer), so there’s one spot. If Hunter and especially McGlinchey have good years, they’ll probably jump. And we’re already there without transfers or injuries, which will happen.
TL,DR: Don’t worry about it.
I’m glad I’m not the only one hoping to plug Robertson in at safety. And this has nothing to do with making room for other WRs, but rather loving the combination of size and athleticism he can bring to safety.
That’s a great breakdown of where things stand and where they could go from here. One piece that can’t be predicted is what additional players might pop onto the radar screen, especially if they get off to a fast start on the field. Having two prime time home games to use as recruiting showcases just like last year can help again, as well.
I’ll perhaps reassure you further on Robertson – I’m not just plugging him in at safety, that’s actually the position we recruited him for and where he’ll at least start his ND career. He’s on board with it.
Agreed with the potential in-season surge; in fact I think the staff is going to be extremely picky with those last 6-10 spots counting on generating some momentum with a big campaign. That’s the benefit of building such a great foundation for this class – with the exception of WDE, there’s absolutely no risk of us scrambling anywhere like we did for safeties in 2014. They can really pick their spots now for the next seven months.
That’s fantastic analysis and has lowered my “hold me I’m Irish” level back down to “2 months til the season” levels, which means in about 6 weeks I’ll be back at DEFCON 2
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