Archive for the ‘Notre Dame Recruiting’ Category

Is this a joke, Bobby?

On Friday, February 8, Florida State released its 2008 football schedule. The mighty Noles will be opening their season with back-to-back home games versus–drum roll, please–Western Carolina and Tennessee-Chattanooga.

Both I-AA teams, the WCU Catamounts are 3-19 in the last two seasons while the UT-Chattanooga Moccasins have torn through the I-AA ranks with a two-year mark of 5-17.

Reeling from multiple suspensions related to academic fraud (now there’s a shocker) that will leave FSU without several starters for the first three games of 2008, FSU Coach Bobby Bowden shamelessly acknowledged:

“There’s no way we would be ready to play a ranked team at that time…the first three ballgames we’re going to have around, what, 12 scholarship guys out?”

For those not paying attention at home, Bowden just said, “Yep, I’m a pussy.” Even worse, he was almost glib about failing to keep his kids in good academic standing. Seeing as Bobby’s integrity is already a non-starter, I guess he might as well piss on basic accountability while he’s at it.

Thank God this scheduling isn’t endemic to the rest of Division I-A. At least we can count on, say, the defending national champion LSU Tigers to schedule aggressively. Les Miles is a man among boys! He’ll take on anyone…anytime…anywhere! Can I get an Amen from SEC country? I mean, it’s not like LSU’s 2008 schedule has eight home games, including a four-game non-conference gauntlet of Appalachian State, Troy, North Texas and Tulane.

Oh please, spare me the lame-ass one-liners about Notre Dame scheduling the Coast Guard and Merchant Marines. I’m not a big fan of scheduling the service academies, if only because it gives all the intellectually lazy ND haters of the world an excuse to spin total bullshit as fact. The real facts are these: the Naval Academy has one of the top Div I-A winning percentages since 2003, while the Air Force Academy has been been a legitimate mid-major bowl team for a quarter century. If you think scheduling the likes of Navy or Air Force is the same as scheduling not one, but two Div I-AA opponents in the same season, you’re incapable of having an honest discussion–about anything–so shut the hell up.

———————

 [Note: only days after this article was written, Florida State put all of its athletic programs on two-year probation. According to an AP report issued on February 14, 2008, 60 student-athletes spread out across all FSU sports programs have lost or will lose some eligibility. Bottom line: any parent who willingly watches his or her child sign a Letter of Intent for Florida State should be charged with negligence. That "school" is a joke. And beyond that scoreboard they don't care what happens to your kids. ]

Sean Cwynar - DL

He’s really a versatile player who I see who can play as an inside player, and I also — because he’s big enough, an outside player, because he’s strong enough and athletic enough. He’s a guy, as we were showing a couple of clips on each person, he’s a guy who we’re very happy to have, is a very good candidate for a mid year admit because he’s a very, very good student, and I think he’s a welcome addition to our team. We’re kind of glad he’s in here, enrolled in school and getting indoctrinated into our way of doing things.

Ethan Johnson - DE

But as a junior you could see where this guy was heading. As a junior he had 83 tackles and he had 10 sacks and he’s been considered as one of the best defensive linemen in the country. Certainly he’s been touted by a lot of the recruiting gurus as the top player coming out of the Pacific Northwest.

Ethan came here and came and went to camp, and he fell in love with the place, and we fell in love with him. We really, really hit it off. He was our type of guy, and we’re really happy to have him on board.

Kapron Lewis-Moore - DE

We’ve been on Kapron for a long time. He’s one of those guys who some people see as an outside linebacker. I don’t know how big he’s going to end up because you look at him and he’s 6′4″, 230, now, and who knows how big he’s going to end up at the end of the day.

He played predominantly a defensive end position, which is where I see him coming in here. He’s one of the top players in the state of Texas. You watch this guy, he’s a versatile guy. He can play with his hand down, he can play with his hand up. You know, he’s playing hoops right now. He’s a good basketball player. He’s on the track team. He does a lot of things right there.

Brandon Newman - DT 

You watch him — in his career he’s got 126 tackles, and 31 and a half of them are tackles for a loss. This is a big, powerful inside player, and as most of you know who do research on our program, you know that it was important for us to get a couple of wide bodies in there as well as the athletic guys who can play on the edge.

Hafis Williams - DT

Here’s another 295 type body, another wide body that’s explosive, an explosive inside player. They played him both on the defensive line and the offensive line. He’s going to be an interior defensive lineman for us, and I think of that chemistry of the different types of players we recruited, this one was a very, very important get for us.

Anthony McDonald - MLB

It’s interesting, I wouldn’t want to be him on game day when we play against one of our rivals, USC. Obviously he went to Notre Dame High School there in Sherman Oaks, Kevin Rooney. Coach Rooney we got to know here in the last several years. We’ve been spending a lot of due diligence out there at Notre Dame High School, and their program seems to be a great system for us, and their mentality and their methodology at the school is very similar, and we really needed to get that big, physical inside linebacker. And Anthony certainly fit the bill as far as that went.

Steve Filer - LB

With Steven, he’s got size and athleticism to play inside or outside. He was the Gatorade Player of the Year in Illinois. You saw him down in the All American game. He was a Parade Prep All American. He was a finalist for Mr. Football that Cwynar won, so he was mad at that.

He had 107 tackles and had an interception for a touchdown this year. He’s an excellent hoop player, as well. He’s been down at our camp. He went to Mount Carmel High School, and Frank Lenti, who I both like and respect, we’ve been telling Frank since the day I got the job, we’d like to get some guys out of Chicago. This was one of the guys we earmarked back when he was a sophomore, and we’ve been working on this for quite some time, and we’re happy to have him.

Darius Fleming - LB

And his partner in crime now is Darius Fleming. He went to St. Rita, Coach Kuska. It’ll be interesting. He’s another athletic guy. He’s an outside pass rusher. I mean, he’s going to bring a lot of edge pressure for us. He also played in the All American game. He led his team to a state title as a junior, and as a senior they went to the Prep Bowl City Championship there in Chicago. Obviously he was a First Team All State by the Tribune.

David Posluszny - WILB

We see him as a weak side inside linebacker. A lot of people want to stereotype him as Paul’s little brother, you know, but recently I was in the home and visiting and Paul had come down for the visit, and I’m sitting there and I’m looking at the two of them, and David has gotten himself up to over 220 pounds, and he’s just one rocked up unit with good football instincts, and you just see there’s something about the kid that when you’re around the kid.

Robert Blanton - CB

Here’s an athletic and physical defensive back that can play corner or safety. That is a rare combination now because especially with the big wide receivers that you have out there today, if you don’t have guys that have hitting ability like safeties they’re often stereotyped as, you can’t match up, and this is what Robert likes to do.

Dan McCarthy - S

He’s a versatile athlete and a physical player with a nose for the ball. He obviously played safety and quarterback for them. We’re going to play him at safety. He has great leadership skills, and they also use him as a returner, both punt return and kickoff return. He told me although he’s a quarterback, the ball was not in his hands throwing it very often because we had a lot of fun with that. Just visited him Saturday this past week. I was in his home.

Jamoris Slaughter - CB

Jamoris is another guy just like Robert where you watch these guys play and say they give you some versatility because you can play them at safety, you can play them at corner, you’ve got corner cover skills with safety ability, but then you can put them at safety and not limit yourself to just having limited range and just bringing everyone in here that played strong safety. And going into this recruiting class we wanted to make sure we brought some versatility on that side of the ball.

Notre Dame’s class this year is the highest ranked class from either Scout or Rivals - #2 in both rankings - in the last 7 years. Here’s a look at how this year’s class with an average star rating of 3.96/recruit stacks up with the previous six years.

• This year’s class has continued the upward trend that began with Charlie Weis’s first full recruiting class.
• The four 5-star recruits according to Scout.com and the three 5-star guys according to Rivals.com are as many as Weis and staff had reeled in the previous two classes combined.
• This year’s crop of 5-star talent also surpasses the total number of five star recruits that the previous coaching staff had brought in during their entire tenure at Notre Dame.
• ND’s 3.96 rating was the highest of any school this year on either Scout or Rivals.  USC and Ohio State both had an average of 3.84 in Scout for second best while USC held second place alone in Rivals at 3.89. (Florida was third in Rivals at 3.82).

When considering that Weis and staff produced a 3-9 season in 2007, this improvement in the overall quality of the recruiting class is a very encouraging sign.  It shows that despite the decline in on the field performance, recruits have not lost any confidence in Weis and his abilities as a head coach.

USC is as good as there because they simply reload every year and that is the point that we are getting to as well.  In 2006, our class was big on numbers, but the overall average rating per recruit was the lowest of the last three classes.   Last year, numbers were down but the average rating per recruit went up.  This year both the overall numbers and quality increased.

With Weis finally getting the Irish back towards the 85 scholarship limit after inheriting an absurdly thin roster in December 2004, it’s likely that our recruiting quality will continue to be the same as it was in 2008 as the staff will need to focus less on numbers and more on quality.  If you look at USC this year, their overall class rating falls somewhere between 5-10 depending where you look, but they had the second best averag rating/recruit in both services because they didn’t need the numbers this year (they signed just 18 recruits).  Moving forward, we could see more of that here as long as Weis improves the on the field product to the level he had previously achieved in 2005 and 2006.

Here’s some of the highlights from Weis’s presser on Wednesday talking about the offensive recruits in this class.

Dayne Crist - QB

But this guy showed during recruiting — always when you’re looking for quarterbacks, you’re looking for the intangibles, and one of the biggest things is that special leadership that they can show on or off the field. Well, watching him with his high school team, you could see that it was on the field. But what he’s done for us off the field rivals only Braxston in the grand scheme of things in the recruiting process.

He was obviously down at the All American game and was Parade Prep All American. He’s one of the six finalists in the Army All American Player of the Year. But one thing that I really like to look at when you have a quarterback is the touchdown to interception ratio, and this year he completed just under 60 percent of his passes for over 2,100 yards, but he threw 16 touchdown passes and one interception. I told him that would be okay if he kept that ratio. I told him that would be okay.

Trevor Robinson - OL

He’s a physically tough player. He’s a big man when you see him. He doesn’t look like a freshmen when you see him walking around. He enjoys contact, plays hard on every down. He’s a very, very intelligent student, but he’s also a very intelligent football player. He’s one of those students of the game.

Braxston Cave - OL

The thing about Braxston that really, really has been wonderful is he has been one of the key people in this recruiting class as far as recruiting this class. A lot of times your own players are the guys that help recruit the class, and between Braxston and Dayne Crist — I mean, Braxston Cave, his mom, I don’t know how many pasta dinners she’s made, but it seems like every time everyone comes in town, they’re all hanging at Braxston’s house. His parents have been great. They’ve opened their doors.

Lane Clelland - OL

Even though he right now is only at about 270 because he’s wrestling, he’s a heavyweight wrestler, he’s about 6′5″, 270, and the reason his weight stayed down is he has to stay under 275 pounds because over 275 they don’t let you wrestle, so it’s kind of kept his weight down.

I don’t think he’ll have — if you take a look at his brother Lance who played at Northwestern, I don’t think you have to worry about him being a big man because he will be. He’s athletic, he’s got great footwork. I think he’s one of the top tackles athletically that I’ve seen in not only the northeast but around this year. He was at the Army All American game, and don’t be misconstrued when you see him at 270 right now because a lot of that is by design as he’s deep into the wrestling season.

Mike Golic Jr. - OL

This kid is true center who plays with great leverage and great effort. He’s also a long snapper, which Lane has some long snapping ability, as well. He’s a long snapper that I could see competing right away. He was down at the All American game and was All State in Connecticut as a junior and senior.

Joseph Fauria - TE

I’m looking at this kid. At the time he’s about 6′7″, about 230. I said, he’s not going to be playing for me; I’m not going to be coaching in the NFL anymore. He said, he’s a freshman. I said, nice to know you. Then it turned out he was a freshman in high school. This is one big muchacho now. He’s every bit of 6′7″, might be taller, 6′7″, 250. He’s got a great combination of size and athletic ability. He can block, he can catch. He had 35 receptions for 516 yards and eight touchdowns this year.

Kyle Rudolph - TE

But this is a guy who’s a dynamic type of athlete who’s a First Team All American by USA Today. He had 37 catches for 673 and 11 touchdowns. He was one of the 11 finalists for the Maxwell Award. Like I said, he’s an accomplished basketball player, second leading scorer in Elder history, and he holds the school record for career rebounds with 568 last we checked. But I’m telling you what, these two tight ends are two tight ends that are going to press to get involved in the mix pretty quickly in their career because they’re both big and athletic.

Michael Floyd - WR

He plays basketball, he runs track, he’s active at the school and the community for that matter. He’s one of those special guys. Obviously if you watched the All American game, all those quarterbacks were looking to throw it to him as much as they possibly could.

We’re really excited to have Michael on board, and we think, like we are with all three of these receivers, think that they’re guys who can go ahead and press the issue early on in their careers.

John Goodman - WR

He played in the All American game, attended summer camp since he was a freshman. We know a lot about him. He played the majority of this year at quarterback. By the way, he thinks he can start there here, too. He leads his team — he led his team to an undefeated regular season. They lost in the state semis. He was named All State in Indiana by the Associated Press as a senior. He’s one of the 12 finalists for Mr. Football. He plays basketball. He’s another guy who’s a very, very good basketball player, as you hear a common theme.

Deion Walker - WR

He was at the Under Armour All American game and committed at that time. As a junior he had 50 receptions and seven touchdowns. He plays basketball, and their team right now is 15 and 5. So here’s another one of these guys that between basketball team and wrestling team, the only one I have to worry about is Fleming because he’d be bowling.

Jonas Gray - RB

I mean, he’s calling our coaches up last night, making sure everything is going good in recruiting. He’s making the phone calls, he’s waking coaches up. Are we okay here, are we okay there. It was really, really interesting to watch this group of players. We can’t text the players, but they were wearing each other out now, and Jonas was one of the ring leaders and we’re really happy to have him.

Milton Knox visited Notre Dame this past weekend and for a while it looked like he could end up with the Irish.  Tonight, however, Inside UCLA reported that Knox would be sticking with his original commitment to UCLA.

Milton Knox Sr. said his son “was leaning’’ toward Notre Dame, but after talking about it as a family stuck with UCLA. Knox originally committed to UCLA in June, but was contemplating a switch to Notre Dame after making an official visit over the weekend.

“He is,’’ Knox Sr. said when asked if Milton was attending UCLA. “It was a pretty tough decision for him. I think the thing that played a big role is family, and being close to home.

“The family is here, and his grandmother, who he is close with, is up in age, and it would have been tough to go to his games (at Notre Dame). I’ve been watching him play since Pop Warner. I coached him in Pop Warner.’’

Odd that all of the quotes from from Sr.  Rumors were floating around that Jr was indeed leaning towards Notre Dame, but the family wanted UCLA.  Unfortunately, the family won out and he won’t be attending ND.  Too bad too, he looks like a dynamite back.

According to IrishEyes.com, Milton Knox received an offer from Notre Dame recently and will be visiting Notre Dame this weekend.  Knox, a talented running back out of California has some impressive offers - Florida, Florida State, and UCLA - and would be a nice addition to this class.  Knox committed to UCLA a while back, but the coaching change in Westwood got Knox to open his recruiting back up and the Bruins are now battling it out for Knox with Notre Dame and Florida.

He’s listed on Scout.com with 4.6 speed, but in watching the clips I included below, he certainly looks like he has good football speed.  Rivals gives him a little more credit for his speed with a listed time of 4.52.  Rivals also ranks Knox as their #12 running back.  He also looks like a hard runner with some elusiveness.  He can make sharp cuts without losing much speed at all and doesn’t go down on first contact very often.

After watching some of the video on him, its easy to see why Weis has extended the offer to him.  That offer would have likely come a lot sooner for Knox, but he had to raise his test score up before Weis could officially offer it.

This past season Knox ran for  2,210 yards and 39 touchdowns and for his career has amassed 6,995 yards and 103 touchdowns.

Earlier this year, Knox’s Birmingham HS team upset Dayne Crist and Anthony McDonald’s Sherman Oaks Notre Dame team in front of a national audience on ESPN with Knox running 32 times for 136 yards and 3 touchdowns.

Dayne Crist has been one of the best recruiters for Notre Dame this year among the committed players and he should be able to help the staff out again with Knox since the two were on the same Pop Warner team.

Oh, and apparently, Knox has also had aspirations of boxing in his past.

Looks like he can catch the ball too

Here is a look at how we currently stack up with our major yearly rivals (Michigan, Michigan State, Purdue, and USC) in terms of top 100 prospects according to both Scout and Rivals.

• There is still a lot of time left in recruiting, but it is very nice to see us ranked even with USC and ahead of Michigan in terms of top 100 players.
• It is very unlikely we’ll add anymore Top 100 prospects from either rankings as most of our remaining prospects are not ranked in either top 100 list.

And here’s a breakdown of which commits are in the top 100 from each service for each school.

• In looking at USC’s commits in each, Horton is ranked 40th overall in Rivals, but is not in Scout’s Top 300. Armstead is also barely in the top 300 in Scout at #287. Matt Meyer is just outside Rivals’ top 100 at 151.
• For Michigan, Dan O’Neil is ranked 147 in Scout while McGuffie isn’t ranked in Rivals in their top 250.
• All of Notre Dame’s commits in the top 100 on Rivals are all at least in the top 300 on Scout and all of the Scout top 100 are at least on the Rivals top 250.

(Photo from Marin Media)

Both Rivals.com and Scout.com released their new Top 100’s on Tuesday with changes based on observations at the Army and Under Armour All American games. Here’s a look at how Notre Dame commitments have moved up and down in the rankings with some comments after each. Rivals hasn’t released their new individual position rankings yet so I did not include them here.

• Walker dropping as far as he did is really a shame because all he did to hurt his stock at the Under Armour game was get injured in practice. What really hurt him, however, was how well some of the other wide receivers in the country like our own Mike Floyd performed in the two All Americans. While Walker was limited in what he could do, the other top notch wide receivers in the country showcased their wares to the country and his rankings fell because of it.
• Speaking of Floyd, his stellar performance in the Army All American game skyrocketed his stock and he is now a five star prospect on Rivals. He moved up 45 spots after his two touchdown outing in San Antonio.
• Robinson’s week of practice in San Antonio shot his stock up as well. He was a standout all week and the result is a 62 spot increase to #37 overall.
• Not surprised Filer fell out of the top 100. Filer played in a 3-4 defense in high school and had to learn the 4-3 in a week of practice at the Army game.
• Like Walker, all Gray really did to hurt his cause was get injured at the Army game and then saw other backs standout. Gray reportedly looked very impressive early on in San Antonio before his ankle injury.
• I’m actually a little surprised that Ethan Johnson stayed as high as he is considering he was hurt for this past season.
• What did Dayne Crist exactly to drop at all in the rankings? I don’t know either.

• Brandon Newman added a 4th star after a pretty impressive week in San Antonio. Not much was expected of him at the Army game, but he surprised a lot of people and showed he might have quite a bit more potential than most of us originally thought.
• Braxston Cave put Omar Hunter on his behind a couple of times at the Under Armour game and capped off his impressive performance by getting a 4th star from Scout and getting moved up to the #2 ranking amongst centers.
• Not surprised to see Clelland drop after the Army game. He got overpowered at times while playing at his wrestling weight and nursing an injury. I wouldn’t put too much stock into his drop.
• Surprised to see Filer rise in the rankings after a rough week at the Army game. Rivals dropped him out of the top 100 all together, but Scout moved him up 15 spots.
• Floyd was already a 5 star give, but his performance in San Antonio pushed all the way up to 16th overall and he is now the highest rated Notre Dame commitment.
• Fleming had a great at the Army game and he shot up to 56th overall after previously being unranked.
• John Goodman moved up to 21st among wide receivers, but he is still probably a little under rated. In a normal year, Goodman would be ranked much higher, but the overall talent at wide receiver this year is crazy.
• Surprised to see Trevor Robinson drop out of the Top 100 after moving up so much in the Rivals rankings. Robinson didn’t have a great game performance in San Antonio, but he was one of the most impressive OL down there all week.
• Just like in Rivals, Walker dropped to a four star prospect. That still makes absolutely NO sense to me, but at least Scout kept him in their top 100 albeit 18 spots lower than his previous ranking.
• I find it a little interesting that Gray is only the 21st ranked RB on Scout, but is in the top 100 overall on Rivals.

The South Bend Tribune has a nice piece on this year’s early enrollment recruits Sean Cwynar and Trevor Robinsontoday.

When Jimmy Clausen, Armando Allen and Gary Gray followed last year, it gave rise to Clausen-mania, Elbow-gate and certainly was a contributing, if not dominating, factor in Notre Dame setting an attendance record at its spring football game last April.

And now the 6-foot-5, 300-pound Robinson and 6-4, 283-pound defensive end Sean Cwynar of McHenry, Ill., are Nos. 7-8 in a lineage that resumed after four decades of resistance. There was never a written rule banning or even discouraging January enrollment, but the idea was never embraced, even for non-athletes.

“I really don’t look at it as that big of a deal,” Robinson said. “I think maybe it’s going to be an easier transition playing spring football than it would have been coming in the summer or fall. I don’t know, I was just ready for something different.”

Considering our depth along the defensive line, Cwynar could benefit greatly from the head start which may result in early playing time for the All American defensive tackle. As for Robinson, given our performance along the offensive line last year, it is safe to say that he too could earn some playing time this fall thanks in part to starting his Notre Dame career early.Dan Saracino did his best to make early enrollment seem like a horrible, terrible thing in the article

Saracino’s own son transferred from Cal Poly into the regular-student population at ND in January of his freshman year, shortly after his father had taken his current job roughly a decade ago.

“He came very close to transferring back to Cal Poly,” Saracino said. “Now, he has gone on to graduate, but he would tell you exactly why admitting students in January at Notre Dame isn’t a good idea. It’s gray, it’s dismal here. The winters are brutal, especially if you’re not from this part of the country.

“They had a hard time finding a roommate for him, and when they did, it was someone he was completely different from. He had a hard time meeting other freshmen. His courses were a little out of sequence. He didn’t get exactly what he wanted as far as course selection. For all those reasons and more, that’s why we’re reluctant to do it — especially with kids graduating from high school, not to mention kids transferring in.”

Gee, thanks for painting such a wonderful picture of Notre Dame Dan.

Omar who?  Just kidding of course, but watch this highlight reel of Mike Martin and imagine him in the middle of ND’s 3-4 defense.  He looks like he’s got some ready good technique for a high school DT - especially his swim move - and would be the perfect way to cap off our defensive recruiting this year.  He’s is supposed to visit this month, but I think Corwin and Charlie will have to work to do between now and then for us to have a decent chance at landing him.

Note: The music on this video is Eminem and has some colorful lyrics (Sorry, I didn’t make it, just posting it)