Kicker Brandon Aubrey, who played soccer at Notre Dame but not football, also made the roster.
When was the last time ND had this many pro bowlers???
required to do it at a very high level at a place like ND where the recruiting footprint is national and the HC job comes with a lot of other commitments to spend time on as well. But talented as a coach and recruiter.
I think he would have done well to take the tact Freeman does in saying that if you are not willing to recruit your ass off for me then don’t bother applying to be an assistant coach.
Kelly recruited guys from all over the country. Holtz for the most part closed. That's it. And that came from the horses mouth. This years class is top heavy just like Kelly's. After you get past #8 it's a by a bunch of 3 or low 4 Stars which isn't all bad when you factor in transfers. Freeman has done a really good job filling in holes except at QB. I don't think any of the current quarterbacks are close to Golson in talent but that doesn't mean he should have gone outside of the program again. Letting Angeli & Minchey fight it out with Carr learning the offense would have been the smart move long term.
They always seemed to be unanimous in that assessment. Holtz's recruiting time was when I was a kid and so I can't really speak to what he did.
The overall blue chip ratio is a bit lower than last year. That is correct. But the average rating per recruit this year is 91.41 per 247. In the entire time BK was here, he had an average rating per recruit that high only once (2013). It is balanced by position and they recruited the body types and athletic traits they've been recruiting specific to each position. This class stacks on top of the other classes he has which were also complete by position and with the body types and athletic traits he wants. So, I wouldn't say this is exactly a BK type class or recruiting operation.
I hear you about letting Angeli and Minchey battle it out. A big part of me feels that way as well. I think this is a crucial year for the program. This team is primed to make a run at it and if it does the whole program is going to elevate to another level. The talent is there at every position and the coaching staff from the OC and DC down are in place now. Both Denbrock and Golden are going to have really good units. The O should be every bit as good as the D was this year and the D should be at that level again. The whole world of CFB is being shuffled and there is a window of opportunity to position ourselves as high up in the CFB world before the dust settles. This year is important and he feels like Riley Leonard gives them the x-factor they need to do that and he has maybe the best OC in the country to get that out of Leonard. So I think Freeman is going for it.
He tends to set a low bar in terms of the kind of guys he thought ND could recruit and didn't really chase the 4/5* types as much as Freeman and staff seem to do. Not a "lazy" recruiter in the vein of Ty W., but he was not really an active recruiter. He would accept less than stellar results and then essentially blame other factors for the meh classes. Keep in mind that Kelly never worked at a place(or worked for a high-level recruiting person) where recruiting was done at a high level. Central Michigan to Cincy to ND.
One of the criticisms of Kelly is that he didn't know what to do with stud players even when he had them and there is plenty of evidence of that. He had no experience with coaching high-level kids so the ones that he got he didn't know how to elevate their games to make them better than when they came to ND.
been more active earlier with recruits." Also, said by others, "he can't recruit elite quarterbacks."
Postings like this have been pretty common talking about Kelly recruiting (of course only after he left, almost never while here).
Link: https://forum.uhnd.com/forum/index.php?action=search3&keywords=kelly%2C+recruiting&andor=and&searchin=titles&forumid=6&dayrange=13490&username=&matchtype=exact
BK recruited several elite QB prospects. Golson, Kiel, Zaire, Kizer, Wimbush, Jurkovic, Buchner. All of them, with the exception of Golson and Kizer, were high 4* or 5* recruits. The problem was that BK and his staff were terrible at developing these prospects into elite college QBs. Most of them showed great promise early on, and then would regress the longer they were under Kelly's and his QB coach's tutelage.
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For what, lacrosse?
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Obviously