Notre Dame Moves Up To No. 3 In Recruiting Rankings After Landing Anthonie Knapp Commitment
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I guess driskell has to write this stuff in March but it means little until December. If last year wasn’t a lesson in pumping the brakes and preparing for some disappointments , good luck to you.
The $ flows in Oct-Nov. Then the flipping starts. It happens to all the teams.
Freeman was hired to land top 5 classes, not for his coaching experience. The narrative was he will move the needle with talent. His first class was ranked similarly to Kelly’s last few. That is concerning. Hopefully 2024 finishes inside the top 5 so he accomplishes what he was hired to do.
Freemans first 2 classes were better than all but 1 Kelly class. So far so good.
But need another jump. Scott and Reddell will help with that
I was very skeptical about another first time HC at Notre Dame; the record was NOT goodf.
But Freeman has grown quickly as a coach; and his recruiting has been excellent overall.
Let's face it: Notre Dame will never get the talent level of Alabama and others because its South Bend and the educational requirements. However, Freeman appears to be able to get enough to be competitive which then means it is going to be coaching that is the difference. I think in the next few years we will see if Freeman can become a good enough coach to get Notre Dame to the promised land.
But Freeman has grown quickly as a coach; and his recruiting has been excellent overall.
Let's face it: Notre Dame will never get the talent level of Alabama and others because its South Bend and the educational requirements. However, Freeman appears to be able to get enough to be competitive which then means it is going to be coaching that is the difference. I think in the next few years we will see if Freeman can become a good enough coach to get Notre Dame to the promised land.
Really too early to start comparing and evaluating classes. The thing I mostly look at this early in the process is the average rating per recruit.
For as lousy a recruiter as you claim Brian Kelly to be, he must have been a damn good head coach to finish 44-6.
Never said he was a lousy recruiter. Where did you get that from?
Kelly was a really good recruiter when he wanted to be. He just needed to put more work into it to get us to the next level. He had the ability to get us there. A little too much golf though
We had some recruiting disasters back in the early mid-2010s where we were chasing a lot of elite talent down to the wire and we got zero of it and then our best commit never showed up and then flipped to Houston. Since then Notre Dame has gone ultra conservative. They pressure the hell out of their top targets/prospects to commit as soon as possible; if the prospect doesn't commit they ditch him (stupid) if the recruit says he's going to take all five visits and make his decision on signing Day Notre Dame doesn't even try anymore (stupid).
Notre Dame likes to finish the majority of their class before the start of the season and then just focus on football but it's stupid there's a reason why all the best programs recruit all the best talent all the way down to the wire (because that's how you land impact commitments)
Anytime Notre Dame is obviously getting beat bad at something the fan base immediately points out how morally superior Notre Dame is to everybody else and it's just a false narrative that excuses incompetence
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Out of context. The talent inside Freeman’s first class was very good, slightly better than Kelly’s last class, but Kelly’s lat class was significantly helped by Freeman’s recruiting
It is what it is. Every good head coach hires good recruiters. For whatever reason people don’t want to give BK credit for recruiting the 2022 class even though it was a pretty standard BK class and instead hand it to Freeman as the world beater and reason for “amazing class”. Nobody says similar about Day, Saban, Dabo, Smart. They all have great recruiters on staff. It’s silly to take away a head coaches recruiting class and give it to an assistant simply because one head coach is likable to them and the other head coach is unlikable to them. We could argue that Carr is only committed because of Rees. We could say Greathouse, Flores, James are all Stuckey. But that’s just not true, it’s Freemans class. He hired Stuckey. Deland is a good recruiter too. Should we take J Love away from Freeman? Give Williams to Stuckey? Should we give Rees all the credit for recruiting Buchner and making him the Gator Bowl MVP? Or, was that Freemans win since he kept Rees on staff?
The fact remains that 2022 was Kellys class. 2023 and 2024 is all freeman can and should be judged by with regards to recruiting. That’s why I don’t count the Ok St game as Freemans either. The same people that want to give 2022 recruiting to freeman also do not want to give the bowl game loss to him. It’s just a narrative. The fact remains, 2022 was better than 2023 according to 247. Like j said, hopefully Freeman shows his chops in 2024 and it beats the Kelly status quo because he wasn’t hired to remain status quo as a recruiter. But I think the Freeman fan boys (I am neutral on him) are a bit scared that 2024 might not be that great and they feel backed into a corner.
Ps. Don’t just go with whatever Driskell says. I like some of his info., but he’s often wrong on a number of opinions. He is good at egotistically telling everyone else how wrong and stupid they are though. A sign of a true and utter pompous, ass. I’m excited for Freeman and hope he crushes it. But I am cautiously optimistic in regards to what he’s capable of with regards to recruiting. Yes, the above is all my opinion. Doesn’t make me right. But in will swoop Golson to tell us all how stupid we are.
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Kelly is not a bad recruiter in any way, shape or form. He's doing just fine with his classes at LSU finishing 5th last cycle whereas ND ended at #10 with the defections of Keeley, Bowen and Edwards. Golson hit the nail on the head when he said, "Kelly was a really good recruiter when he wanted to be". This is just my guess from a thousand miles away but Kelly left ND because he knew he could never get the athletes to compete against "Bama, UGA and tOSU. Even the elite players that can get into ND don't want to go there. I think Kelly also saw ND's unwillingness to change to the new landscape. Kelly wants a Natty on the highest level of college football. He thought he could do it at ND and even got us to the 2012 championship game and two play-off appearances in 2018 and 2020. Unfortunately, we found that we weren't even in the same ballpark as the other teams with an 0-3 record and combined score of 103 - 31. ND's future success or demise isn't on Freeman or any other coach, it's with the University leadership.
I agree that Freeman is probably a more hip, fun, cool guy. I disagree that he’s better at recruiting than BK at ND. If Freeman was at LSU, I think he’d finish about 5th, same as Kelly. He might be slightly better, but it’s not a fact on paper. Kelly doesn’t need to recruit hard. He coached and built/rebuilt programs. He hired guys like Freeman to do the bulk of the dirty work and I’m sure that’s his schtick now. Same as Saban.
Recruiting to LSU and recruiting to Notre Dame is apples and oranges. You could out recruit Marcus Freeman at LSU.
IMO Marcus Freeman is better than Brian Kelly recruiting to Notre Dame. And I am a huge Brian Kelly fan as a Head Coach.
Don’t disagree with your point. Mine was meant somewhat sarcastically, there are not nearly enough datapoints to compare the two in my opinion. Freeman has 1 full year on his resume and it will take a few to figure out how good the 23 class is. 6 or 7 years we’ll know but those that want to anoint cmf as the recruiter of the century may be jumping the gun. I certainly hope he’s better then bk because that was the sole reason behind his hiring.
He recruited at Cincy and now going on 3 years at ND. He a better recruiter than Kelly
oh boy Golson being Golson. He recruited at Cinncy, no kidding!? And who specifically was he recruiting at Cinncy? signed? flipped? And based on your prior posts Fickell should get the credit because he was the HC. Wasn’t that your argument in giving cmf full credit for the 22 class—he was the HC at time of signing? so I dont know what the comparisons are that lead to your emphatic conclusion. Like I said, not enough data points.
And you think recruiting is easy with ALA, Ga, Fla, TX, A&M, going after every one of your top prospects. You completely discredit yourself with your lack of objectivity
No. You just can't comprehend
I said Kelly can be a very good recruiter. He just didnt do it enough at ND. When he wanted to be, he was very good. Too much golf and too much letting his coaches recruit.
MF is 100% invested in recruited. He lives for it. He's a better recruiter than Kelly. It's easy to see
All those schools go after our top prospects too. The difference is LSU has a much more fertile state for recruiting and they accept anyone. It's much easier to recruit at LSU
Be serious
Sneed wasn't a consensus 5 star. He was on 247 and ON3. ESPN and Rivals had him as a high ranked 4 star
Sneed was as much Freemans as the Oklahoma State loss was Freemans. Golson just cherry picks his stats to defend his opinions, which to him are hard facts. He’s a legend in his own mind.
Sneed wouldnt be on the team if it wasnt for Freeman
Didnt have an offer prior to MF coming here. Wasnt on our radar at all. Freeman had a friendship with his HS coach. He committed to MF. Then signed for head coach MF.
You can try to spin any way you like lol
Freeman has 1 class, and even that class the two top ranked commits verbaled with Kelly as coach.
I do think freeman is better but our end to 23 class and 24 trending to be 10ish again isn’t good enough. Need to have a great season!
No. He has 2 classes. He was responsible for the defense. Then He was the HC for signing days and the commits of Schrauth and Payne
So 2 classes in, so far so good. Need to take another step.
Doesn’t matter. If they fire Freeman and hire some schmuck a week before signing day it’s still Freemans class.
