SOUTH BEND — Start with quarterback CJ Carr. He’s the one already on campus, the one who offered his future teammates a sneak peek of this high-quality, drama-free 2024 Notre Dame football recruiting class.
“He seems pretty chill,” freshman running back Jeremiyah Love said this week after practice. “Every so often I’ll look at him and he looks like he’s really calm. You would think that most freshmen would come in and you could see that they’re really nervous, but when I look at him, he seems like he knows what’s going to happen, what he’s going to do.”
Marcus Freeman recalls the moment CJ Carr showed he was a building block
Notre Dame football coach Marcus Freeman on the leadership traits of QB CJ Carr and how a Michigan football legacy embraced the Irish
That last part applied to the rest of Carr’s fellow signees, who must have taken their cue from his unwavering pledge.
By 10:22 Eastern time on Wednesday morning, all 23 members of Marcus Freeman’s second full recruiting cycle had signed all the proper paperwork and faxed it – Remember fax machines? – into the football offices at the Guglielmino Athletics Complex.
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Carr, of course, went first, fitting for a four-star quarterback who announced his nonbinding commitment way back on June 10, 2022. Three minutes before the early signing period officially opened at 7 a.m., Notre Dame’s social media machine had already posted its “24K” hype video with Carr unlocking the vault.
From there it was a steady stream of high school talent, including a pair of Top 50 prospects, as rated by 247Sports Composite: Chicago-area wide receiver Cam Williams (No. 29 overall) and Boston-area offensive tackle Guerby Lambert (No. 42).
Over the past decade, the bulk of it on Brian Kelly’s watch, Notre Dame had signed multiple Top 50 prospects just one other time: the 2020 class that featured future All-America tight end Michael Mayer (No. 32 overall) and wideout Jordan Johnson (No. 37), who transferred to Central Florida after one season.
Notre Dame football coach Marcus Freeman on Duke transfer QB Riley Leonard
Notre Dame football coach Marcus Freeman cites the competitiveness and dual-threat ability of new quarterback Riley Leonard, a Duke transfer
Johnson, a product of the same St. Louis ground that has proved so fertile for Notre Dame over the years, has since bounced to Iowa Western Community College.
That 2020 class ranked 18th in the country. As of midafternoon Wednesday, the 2024 class ranked 10th, two spots ahead of where the Irish settled one year earlier amid the 11th-hour drama that saw safety Peyton Bowen and running back Jayden Limar flip to Oregon. Bowen landed a day later at Oklahoma.
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The last signature to arrive this time around belonged to linebacker Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa, the Butkus Award finalist who ranked No. 66 in the 247Sports Composite but was rated as high as No. 22 nationally for Rivals.com.
Truth to tell, the only reason KVA waited that long was the fact he lives in southern California, where the signing period didn’t open until 10 a.m. Eastern. KVA will join Carr among 15 midyear enrollees when the spring semester opens Jan. 16.
What Marcus Freeman sells on the recruiting trail
Drama free? The third and final de-commitment for Notre Dame this year was Georgia high school receiver Isiah Canion on July 1.
The other two U-turns were New Jersey defensive end Owen Wafle (May 24) and Michigan defensive lineman Brandon Davis-Swain more than 53 weeks ago.
“It starts with the relationship,” Freeman said Wednesday. “You can’t relax when a kid’s committed. You have to continue to pour time into building that relationship of trust. But it’s also the ability to continue to sell Notre Dame and remind them up front: This is what you’re choosing.”
That’s no guarantee of a successful recruitment or even career, as shown by the transfer portal exits of freshman receivers Rico Flores Jr. and Braylon James in recent weeks. But in the long run, straight talk has the best chance to produce stress-free signing days, especially in the NIL era.
“I always tell them: Don’t make the decision based off things that can change,” Freeman said. “Coaches can change, uniforms can change, a lot of things can change.”
On this day, for Notre Dame’s signing class of 2024, nothing changed at all.
Mike Berardino covers Notre Dame football for NDInsider.com and is on social media @MikeBerardino.
2023-12-21 02:26:06
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