Notre Dame added their second commitment for the class of 2021 since the COVID-19 pandemic brought about an early and prolonged dead period on Wednesday when OL Pat Coogan committed to the Irish.
Notre Dame was a little late to offer Pat Coogan, but his recruitment blew up over the last few weeks since the Irish extended an offer. Since then, Ohio State, LSU, Texas A&M, and Oklahoma have all offered as well. Michigan and Stanford were already heavily involved before Notre Dame officially got into the mix on March 26 with their offer.
Coogan set up a tentative official visit to Notre Dame for the weekend of June 12 but decided that he didn’t have to wait for the visit (assuming it happens) to commit to Notre Dame.
David Abiara was the first commitment that Notre Dame picked up since recruiting moved entirely offline in March. The Irish class of 2021 had previously lost wide receiver Deion Colzie and offensive lineman Greg Crippen. Notre Dame now has eight commitments total for 2021.
Notre Dame had always been Coogan’s dream offer, but he held off on committing for a few weeks to let it all sink in. It would have been understandable for him to hold off on committing until after taking visits to Notre Dame or any of the other programs that have recently been offered. Still, it looks like playing for the team he grew up rooting for made the visits unnecessary to commit.
Coogan is a three-star recruit on all of the services, but with his string of offers from programs like LSU and Ohio State in addition to his offer from Notre Dame, he has the kind of offer list that suggests he could end up with a fourth star before all is said and done in the final rankings.
Most recruiting services rank Coogan as a tackle, but Notre Dame has recruited him to play guard on the Irish offensive line. He also has some position flexibility with the ability to play center.
Notre Dame now has two offensive linemen in the class of 2012 with Coogan joining Notre Dame ace recruiter Blake Fisher who took to Twitter to welcome his new classmate.
Extremely proud of you man!! Can’t wait to play alongside you!☘️? https://t.co/by8wviKLDL
— Blake Fisher (@bfisher54_) April 16, 2020
With Fisher and Coogan, Notre Dame has a rock-solid foundation along the offensive line with more elite targets left on the board, such as top-100 lineman Rocco Spindler and four-star Caleb Johnson who is also tentatively scheduled to visit Notre Dame in June if visits can take place by then.
You must get the difference makers at the skill positions to be able to beat Clemson, Ohio State, Alabama,LSU etc. They need to land Shipley, Spiller, Thornton etc. These are the talent level players the above schools are landing. Look at Notredame last year. What would their offense have produced if they would of had Jerry Jeudy and KJ Dobbins to go along with Claypool Lenzy Kmet ,Finke, Keys. They would have averaged over 40 points a game and been in the playoffs. Course maybe not with Long. Hopefully Reese is really good.