How close are the Irish to SEC and Ohio St. talent?
Wide receiver is the biggest gap. Whoever wins the QB job will be the starter for the next three years. Even in a run first offense Denbrock will air it out more than he has because he'll play to Minchey or Carr's strengths. Hartman was a one year rental and didn't have anyone to throw to. To win it all it might come down to a shoot out. If the WR 26' class stays together Freeman is right there. DT has decent but not great talent. Who doesn't need a monster nose tackle.
Replies to: How close are the Irish to SEC and Ohio St. talent?
Based on recruiting ratings and NFL draft picks. we lag. On the field, we can be a better TEAM.
And our players can have "decent" pro careers and set themselves up nicely for the last 3/4ths of their lives.
Most "pro" careers are over by the time these guys hit 25... and then what?
Ran a script to get this info. Money talks, and ND is 10th from 2015-2025 on NFL earnings
Rank College Estimated Avg. Annual NFL Salary
1 Alabama $450M+ across all players
2 Ohio State $400M+
3 LSU $375M+
4 Georgia $350M+
5 Clemson $325M+
6 Oklahoma $300M+
7 Florida $275M+
8 Michigan $250M+
9 Texas A&M $225M+
10 Notre Dame $200M+
Apologies, but not sure how to format tables in this forum. Includes all positions.
Column 1 - Rank, 2 - School, 3 - Avg. Annual Salary per school
Most of the money is from the cream of the crop
The above numbers are mostly about who has the most players who are paid premium contracts.
It's no secret that most of the above put out more 1st round draft picks than we did in the last decade or so, and that those rookie salaries are going to occupy a good chunk of the above.
Trevor Lawrence, for example, already accounts for $70+ million of the above Clemson number, and he hasn't even been in the league that long.
Tua Tagovailoa and Jalen Hurts have a similar number, having earned over $70 million each as well (accounting for a large chunk of Alabama's money, and Oklahoma's money, respectively).
The ones playing their second contracts are contributing a lot as well, but here again, with a lot of those schools having more success at putting out early round draft picks, even before 2015 (those guys became the second contract guys at the early part of that last decade), they're going to have the lion's share of such premium contributors.
Right now, if you look at the contracts of Quenton Nelson, Mike McGlinchey, Ronnie Stanley, Zack Martin, Joe Alt, Stephon Tuitt, Golden Tate, Harrison Smith, and the nice signing bonus paid to Jaylon Smith, that's the vast majority of the above figure.
The other significant contributors would be Romeo Okwara (had a nice final contract), Jerry Tillery, Nick Martin, Kyle Rudolph, Cole Kmet, and maybe Tyler Eifert.
I know that I didn't include everyone, and that I missed some significant contributors, but those 15 players mentioned above take up 90%+ (my best guess) of the money pool mentioned above. They've all have / had good careers.
In the next couple of years, we'll definitely climb that ladder, since Kyren Williams is rumored to signing a new contract that pays him 10+ million / year, and Kyle Hamilton is in a similar boat.
Most of our salaries come from non-skilled positions and those are generally lower. But the lineplay
creates stronger teams in the long run so we are solid. Now we might see a run of more skilled players with our running backs being NFL level talent and maybe Carr will develop into in NFL QB. Wouldn't it be nice if Leonard did too.
15 of our players accounted for almost all of the money
See my post above.
It would interesting to see the net worths of these players ten years after their careers are over.
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Cause after all
You can only get a good education at Notre Dame.
Sometimes stereotypes and myths have a solid basis in reality.
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Depth is there. Not sure we'll ever get 5* WR/DTs annually but other positions solid. #2 QB signed
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We beat the last SEC champion we played. So, pretty close. And ahead of USC.
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Instead of just top end talent, we have closed the gap on the depth of talent
I don’t think that gets enough attention. We have extremely talented guys 2 and 3 deep at most positions. That is a massive improvement and puts us in par with the top teams. Last years run was possible due to our team depth. So many injuries
What do you mean "the SEC"? There are only a few SEC teams with our talent level. Considering our
player retention, we are presently at the same talent level as the top tier SEC teams, and at or slightly below OSU's talent level (their WR talent superiority makes up for several other areas where we are slightly better - DB, OL, LB, RB).
We looked pretty good against A&M and UGA last year from an overall talent perspective.
We're starting to stack recruiting classes starting with the '23 class, this year's juniors.
Stars: Love, Gray, Bowen, Ausberry, Greathouse, Shuler
Projected Stars: Jagusah, Traore, Absher, perhaps Mukam and Minchey with a number of other high value contributors
'24 Class
Stars: Young, KVA, Moore, Knapp,
Projected Stars: CJ Carr, Lambert, Ked Young, Aney Williams, Gilbert and/or Cam, Hobbs, etc.
Stack the '25 and '26 classes on top of that with key transfers and we are as in good shape talent-wise as we've been since Holtz, IMO.
When is the last time you could say what we had arguably the #1 RB and #1CB in the country going into the season?
Bro... we beat them in the playoffs and played with OSU. That's all you need to know.
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