Having Taylor flip to UM hurts, to be sure, but we all probably need to back away from the ledge a little bit. We have recently been through this same drill with some other notable top 100 recruits--Keon Keely, Peyton Bowen and CJ Williams--but these kinds of decommitments happen to all the major programs. And keep in mind the vagaries of the recruiting process itself: Keely has basically done nothing at Bama and Williams is a rotational player at Wisky. So those have not panned out as real losses. Bowen has played well and the story will be told soon enough on Taylor.
Here are the number of top-100 decommitments (according to the 247Sports Composite) at the other CFB recruiting powerhouses from 2022-25:
- LSU: 8
- Alabama: 7
- Georgia: 8
- Florida State: 7
- USC: 7
- Ohio State: 6
- Georgia: 6
- Notre Dame: 4
- Oregon: 4
- Clemson: 3
- Texas: 3
- Michigan: 1
So what is the answer? Here is Pete Sampson's take on it:
"The solution is to recruit
more top-100 players, potentially suffer
more top-100 decommitments and hopefully end up signing
more top-100 talent. There’s an argument inside Notre Dame that the football program doesn’t need to sign more five-star prospects — it needs to do a better job identifying “fits” among the five-stars it does get. Basically, what’s the point of signing Aaron Lynch and Ishaq Williams if they don’t mesh with your program? That argument doesn’t hold. Recruiting is a volume play at the top and a fit play at the bottom. In other words, you take the five-star talent you can get and try to make it fit, then you only take the three-star talent that you believe you can develop."
But we need to be real about the prospects of ND landing more 5* recruits. It will be a slow process, and at ND there are many institutional and structural challenges. There are roughly 30 5* players each cycle. In the past 4 recruiting cycles, Bama, UGA and OSU signed 55 of those 5* players. That is almost 38% of them. Many of them would never have academically qualified at ND, and most of them were probably looking at playing 3 years and then jumping into the NFL draft. Taking on the academic challenges that ND presents probably doesn't appeal to many of them. And many choose to stay close to home. That significantly lessens the pool of 5* talent available to ND.
Aside from Bama, UGA and OSU, there are a group of schools that are focused on using NIL to lure recruits. Think TAMU, Miami, Oregon, Tennessee, Colorado and Ole MIss. When we are looking at a kid interested in those schools, the recruiting battle has little to do with academics or player development. It is all about $. That is not a kid we are likely to land, nor one that we should really be wasting our energy on.
When 5* kids are looking at where to go to school, they are making "business", i.e., football decisions. How many first-round NFL draft picks has the school had? What has the school's record been in the CFB playoffs? Let's be honest, ND is lagging there in comparison to the NFL factory schools.
And of course, NIL and the portal have created drastic changes in the recruting process. ND is still finding its way there, as are other schools, but I like the way that Freeman has used the portal.
I believe it will be a slow and deliberate process to start landing more high end talent, but not an insurmountable one. If Freeman can get ND in a place where it has more success on the field, we will get a deeper look from 5* recruits. The first (and most important) part of that equation is getting elite play at the QB position. That can make up for some deficiencies in other position groups. We have been sorely lacking in elite play at the QB position for a couple of decades. For all that Brian Kelly did for ND, he did not recruit well at the QB position, or develop the talent we had. I am encouraged by what MF has been doing with QB recruiting, and am hopeful it will snowball into more positive results on the recruiting end. We have a proven track record of success recruiting the OL and TE positions, and while there has not been a similar record of recruiting success with the DL and defensive secondary, it is encouraging to see what has recently been happening with recruiting those position groups. Have patience, my friends.
