The Notre Dame Fighting Irish made it to the College Football Playoff in 2018-19, but where do they go from here with their 2019 recruiting class?
After an undefeated regular season, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish still had plenty of doubters throughout the college football landscape. Their perfect record, however, was too good to ignore and landed them a spot in the College Football Playoff. Unfortunately for Brian Kelly’s team, they did nothing in their CFP game against Clemson to silence any of the detractors of where they are as a program overall as they were trounced.
The hope for Notre Dame, though, is that they can maintain and build on this level of success moving forward. A big step in the right direction would be to continue landing solid recruiting classes and developing those players into quality contributors, something they’ve actually done quite well of late.
As for their 2019 recruiting class, the Irish sadly have no 5-star recruits that’ll be coming to South Bend to play their college football, which hurts their overall ranking, landing them outside of the top 10 classes in the country. Having said that, they do have two top-100 recruits coming in with safety Kyle Hamilton and center Zeke Correll.
Beyond just Correll, Notre Dame also has another top-150 recruit in the form of offensive tackle Quinn Carroll. Given the strength and prowess of the Irish offensive line in recent years, it’s not shocking to see them simply reloading up front. It’s clearly one of their strengths and they’re playing to it.
With this in mind, let’s take a look at the 2019 Fighting Irish recruiting class and then hand out a grade for their efforts.
There’s no denying the fact that Notre Dame is bringing in some very good players and, moreover, that Kelly and his staff have done a great job with player development in recent years. Having said that, this is a team that’s trying to get “back” all the way still, and having a recruiting class outside of the top 10 nationally isn’t the best way to make that happen.
Grade: B-