We deserved this. After a decommitment from Donovan Jeter this morning and in the midst of a horrible stretch of football, we finally received a little bit of good news. On Tuesday night, Elijah Hicks committed to Notre Dame, which happened to be his birthday, as well. The 6-0, 185 lb CB from La Mirada, CA becomes the 18th commitment in the 2017 ND recruiting class.
🚨🚨I HAVE MADE MY COLLEGE DECISION !!!🚨 🚨
Shoutout to @TomLoy247 for putting this video together for me https://t.co/rbp5gw26sR GLORY2GOD
— ELIJAH HICKS (@ELITHEMAN1) October 19, 2016
Recruiting Service Rankings
247 – 3 star (87 rating), #495 overall, #51 CB, #43 in CA
Rivals – 4 star (5.8 rating), #27 CB, #36 in CA
Scout – 4 star, #259 overall, #25 CB
ESPN – 3 star (79 rating), #38 CB, #39 in CA
247 Composite – 3 star (.8878 overall), #340 overall, #37 CB, #40 in CA
Hicks has seen a significant jump in rankings within the last two weeks. Because of his senior season thus far, he has recently gone from a .845 composite to a .888 composite via 247’s composite rankings.
Cohort
Hicks holds offers from UCLA, USC, Michigan, Arizona, Arizona State, Oregon, Oregon State, Washington, Washington State, South Carolina, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, and others.
Highlights
The first thing that jumps out about Hicks as a defender is his instincts. In his film, he shows an impressive ability to jump routes and attack the football while it’s in the air. Hicks also shows great stop-and-go ability as a cornerback. He has loose hips and accelerates quickly out of breaks. At the 1:28 mark of his film, Hicks puts this on display. On the break, he sticks his foot in the ground, flips his hips around, and accelerates through the ball for a PBU.
The one thing lacking from Hicks’ game is top-end speed. He makes up for it with great instincts and sound technique, but improving his speed and strength will be important when he gets to college.
Impact
Elijah Hicks should enter fall camp next year with hopes of making an impact his first year on campus. The secondary will be cluttered with freshmen and sophomores with little experience, and doors will be open for anyone who can compete. Notre Dame will also hope to add Nick Watkins, Shaun Crawford, and Devin Butler back to their depth chart in 2017 to go along with the current group getting playing time. Ideally, Hicks will be able to redshirt in 2017 with the quantity of young secondary members that are already on the roster.
Welcome to the Irish family, Mr. Hicks!
I really like Hicks. I think he can play either corner or safety.
Jeter IMO was our best player in this current recruiting cycle. Losing him CANT happen. Kelly and his staff need to stay on him. Kelly needs to take over his recruitment completely. He says he still has ND as his top choice but wants to look around. I don’t know how much weight that carries with the terrible product Notre Dame has put on the field this year.
Notre Dame is in a really bad place right now.
He tweeted this today: “I don’t want Notre Dame fans to think I’m not coming back. I wanna see other schools and I didn’t wanna take other officials as a ND commit.”
Maybe he comes back, maybe he doesn’t. But it’s not quite as dire as it seemed at first.
I agree, Jeter is a big, big loss. KK, when you say ND is in a really bad place right now, I’m not sure if that was in reference to the WDE position or just recruiting in general. At WDE, I agree with you. On an overall recruiting level, though, I actually think we are sitting in a decent place. I don’t see many, if any, more 2017 commits decommitting. It seems to be a very solid class. The 2016 class, along with the 2017 and 2018 classes have addressed position needs, and we are finally shoring up the secondary. If can get Graham now, that’s a great 2016 & 2017 secondary haul.
I guess overall, I think many people are overreacting to how many future decommits we’re going to have as a result of the season or a future coaching change. All the message boards reacted to the Jeter recommit saying, “He’s the first of many” or “And so it begins…” Chill out people. Let things play out. I could be wrong, but these kids seem firm in their commitments and are committed to the school itself.
I took the “horrible place” to mean the health of the program overall. I would agree that the 2016 season is in a horrible place, but I don’t think the program is. Also, Jaden, to your point on decommits, I completely agree, everyone else seems really solid. Hainsey, Adebo, Young, Pouncey, and Robertson were all on campus this past weekend and all solidified their commitments. CJ Holmes and Ovie Oghoufo were tweeting yesterday about being loyal to the family, complete with shamrock emojis. I think everyone else is solid right now.
Shamrock or 4-leaf clover emojis?
But it wasn’t just Jeter, you can’t forget about Beal either. His lost was bigger than Jeter. You land those two verbals and this class has a much better outlook moving forward. You have to close them 10/10 times. I think Beal is a 5 star and Jeter has all the upside of a Tuitt. We badly need that type of talented injected into this program. I am just not happy where we sit right now in recruiting. When I say the program is not in a good place I am talking on the field, coaching as well as recruiting. I have said many times on here that recruiting is fine on the offensive side. No complaints from me on that end. Defense is completely different. If you have a great d line, it allows you to cover up other holes you may have at other positions. When your d line is as bad as ours, you get a product like we have saw these past three seasons. If recruiting is decent like you say, there is no way this program should be sitting at 2-5 in year 7 of the Kelly era.
I am a BK fan. I like the guy. He is a very good coach. With all that said he has not put his team in the best position to win. He should have fired BVG and the strength coach at the end of the season las year. Had Kelly fired BVG, I honestly think we are sitting 6-1 right now.
I don’t know if any of you listen to Mike Frank’s weekly podcast but he had a brutal but honest take on where this program is recruiting wise and culture wise.
I think we agree on most points. Like I said, WDE is still a glaring hole in recruiting. However, we did get a couple good prospects last year in Okwara and Daelin Hayes. Hayes would’ve likely pushed for 5-star status if it weren’t for injuries. But still, we have struck out thus far at the position for this cycle. Jeter still considers us his top choice, so it’s important that the staff keeps on him.
Other than WDE, we have done a pretty good job at filling in other positions defensively. The DB group will look really good if we can close with Graham. Robertson, Graham, Hicks, and Adebo is very good. We also have a great group of LB’s coming in the next two years. On the interior, Ewell and Hinisch are a good duo.
On the field, the main issue defensively was development. BVG didn’t recruit or develop. And I think you’re already seeing a lot of improvement since his departure. Although we aren’t as talented as your Ohio State or Alabama, the defense is capable of being good, especially with how young they are. But we’re starting to see fairly good linebacker and interior line play.
Obviously the team is at a major crossroads. I just think our recruiting isn’t the main culprit. The coaching and development is. BK has been horrible this season, but like you, I think he’s been good coach over the years. There is young talent defensively, it just needs to be coached and developed better now. And WDE recruiting needs to get fixed fast.
Beal committed to Georgia because they gave his sister a track scholarship. She couldn’t get into ND. There’s nothing Kelly could’ve done to close Beal. And, poor Georgia, he just took an official to Florida State. In hindsight, I think his loss was an inevitability.
Defensive recruiting has not been great but has been good enough to field an average defense, and an average defense would have us 7-0 right now. The offense has faltered as Kelly has shifted his focus to fix the disaster on defense, which is a result of hiring and retaining VanGorder more than of substandard talent.
Could talent be better? No question. But it’s not the main reason we’re 2-5. I’m hopeful that a strong DC hire will have this looking like a completely different team next year.
KK,
Longo will NEVER be fired. He is Kelly’s best friend. The line in the sand will be drawn there.
“You have to close them 10/10 times.” Who does that? How do you make kids come to your school. What you have to do is overcome it, if you aren’t able to sign ELITE players at the position. Other schools are able to.
I don’t know if we lost our strength and conditioning coaches/medical folks from the old board in the move, but I’d like to see some analysis on the program from people who know what they are talking about. They (Young Curmudgeon?) did a great job explaining how 95% of our injury woes had nothing to do with and could not be prevented by S&C work. But now the issues are simply not being strong enough, especially on the lines–and that IS a valid S&C criticism. Is it that? Or is it failure in techniques, or scheme, or simply that this year’s guys aren’t motivated, or what? An S&C-savvy perspective would be helpful, because I hate to knee-jerk “fire the S&C, we’re not good enough” when I know nothing about that realm.
YC is still part of the Powers That Be(tm) here, he’s just a bit busy these days. He’ll no doubt chime in at some point with an injury post.
I don’t think any of our failures relate to physical inability. McGlinchey, Nelson, and Bars didn’t suddenly lose muscle in their fourth, third, and third years in the program. Guys like Cage and Mokwuah have reshaped themselves. And we’ve praised the strength and conditioning increases in past years.
There are guys who don’t agree with Longo’s methods, like St. Brown’s father. Shocking. Go to any gym and you’ll find experienced, well-built, healthy guys who can get into passionate arguments about different methods. I’m pretty much clueless on this stuff and not dialed in enough to know specifics on Longo anyway, so maybe what he does is in fact wacky, but it doesn’t surprise me that there are people who disagree with what he does. I’m sure there are people who disagree with what St. Brown’s father does too, and he’s a former Mr. Universe.
I think it’s mostly technique and scheme, and then you get guys pressing on top of that as things go downhill.
As a movement and mobility specialist, my thoughts basically echo Brendan. Perhaps a few injuries could have been prevented but that might have happened only with the top few percent of strength and conditioning staffs (best practices for certain things often take time to filter down to the “masses” even among the top programs in the country). Without re-listing all the injuries, my impression has more been – we could be a little better – but it wouldn’t be a huge shift; sort of along the lines like perhaps (in terms of preventing injuries) we don’t have the top staff, but we top 15 (or something like that).
As far as strength I have no idea how anyone would assess that outside the program without knowing the details of the players. My guess is that it is not really a problem, and that technique or skill is the bigger issue. You don’t have to have the same bench press or squat as the guy you are going against. Plus or minus 10-15% strength differential from your opponent is good enough to beat your opponent if you have the proper technique/skill.
I don’t know that much is even public with what Longo does, and like Brendan said some might argue a better way of getting stronger (and may be right) but in the end a) I’m sure how we could judge it and b) it’s hard to believe that they are too weak to play football well.
Does anyone know an article on the specifics behind Longo’s philosophy?
Also, to get back to the guy who jumped IN the boat – Elijah Hicks shares a connection with the current Irish roster in Tyler Luatua, who also went to La Mirada. Small world.
I believe you guys, Brendan and Jaden, are much more knowledgeable and insightful about recruiting than I will ever be. I can’t help but think though, that a 7-0 ND team is much harder to decommitbfrom than 2-5 ND team. I can accept that the horrible record is not the sole reason Jeter has decided to look around, but it has to factor in there somewhere.
I don’t disagree that it was likely a factor with Jeter, but I think it is easy to look at it on a general level and say “hey, we’re 2-5 so I bet a lot of our commits are looking around elsewhere.” But if you look at it on an individual basis and go player by player almost all of these kids seem genuinely committed to Notre Dame the school and Notre Dame the football program. They have been pretty active in confirming their allegiance, retweeting loyal things to ND, and saying all the things that someone 100% committed would say.
2-5 certainly is not good for recruiting, but we seem very fortunate to have strong commits who are bought into the program as a whole and are not coming here just for certain coaches. RKG’s I might say.
The obvious bigger struggle will be selling ND to uncommitted guys and finishing this class. It kind of sounds like Oliver Martin, for instance, has been shying away from us because of the on-field performance.
I gotcha now Jaden. That makes sense.
Hudson, Hicks…we’re only a Ripley and Bishop away from making this team literally the stuff of my nightmares as a kid.
Nicely done, is Newt available as a DC? We have had some success with that name before.
“Well, why don’t you just put her in charge?”