Eight Notre Dame summer wildcards who could raise the ceiling in the fall

Antonio Carter II didn’t receive as much as a single star from Rivals or a scholarship offer from an FBS school coming out of Oak Ridge High in Orlando, Fla., as a 5-10, 146-pound defensive back who eventually landed at FCS school Rhode Island.

Four years, three inches of height and 54 pounds of muscling up later, Carter’s appearance in the transfer portal has generated nearly 20 offers since April 16, with more than a dozen of those from Power 5 schools — including Notre Dame.

The grad transfer with two years of eligibility told Inside ND Sports on Friday night, after receiving his offer, that a recruiting visit to South Bend was in the works, with just a few details needing to be worked out.

Notre Dame can take up to three transfers during its May/early June shopping period to join 71 scholarship returnees and 11 June-enrolling freshmen when summer school starts on June 12.

The add-ons — the 11 late-arriving freshmen and whatever the Irish fish out of the transfer portal — have a chance to positively affect ND’s bottom line in the fall.

Likely more impactful will be summer transformations of some of the 71 holdovers from the spring roster, not all of whom got a chance to show off their spring progress, for varying reasons, in the April 22 Blue-Gold Game.

Here then are the eight wildcards who could raise Notre Dame’s ceiling with summer surges:

His quiet Blue-Gold Game contradicted how far he’s come since an extended time in concussion protocol and former offensive coordinator Tommy Rees keeping the training wheels on too long limited the 6-foot-4, 205-pounder with track speed to one catch as a freshman.

Junior Jayden Thomas likely will be ND’s leader in consistency and receptions from the wide receiver position group, but Merriweather is more dangerous and likely a bigger headache to opposing defensive coordinators. And a big part of that is his relentless drive to be great.

These two were coupled as a single entry, because they constitute Notre Dame’s Plan B at the moment should something happen to sixth-year grad senior Sam Hartman, short or long term.

With Tyler Buchner off to Alabama, the Irish will enter the 2023 season without a backup who has thrown a pass in a college game. They actually pulled that off in 2015 after Malik Zaire was lost for the season in game 2, and sophomore DeShone Kizer and freshman Brandon Wimbush comprised the QB depth chart for a team that was good enough to play in a New Year’s Six bowl.

They also had the audacity to run Kizer 134 times that season, only 22 fewer than 1,000-yard rusher C.J. Prosise, with Wimbush as the only safety net.

Angeli looks like a functional college QB in Notre Dame’s practices. Minchey looks like someone with a higher ceiling, so the behind-the-scenes battle for No. 2 may help both of them emerge the better for it when training camp kicks off in late July.

After spending his early enrolled freshman spring running with the 1s two years ago, the former Rivals top 100 prospect has struggled to get back to the top of the depth chart.

Grad senior Andrew Kristofic probably heads into summer as the favorite to open the season Aug. 26 in Ireland as the starting right guard, but Spindler surged the second half of spring practice and put himself in position to either earn a timeshare or maybe even overtake Kristofic.

Having an All-American tackle and another one on that kind of trajectory can only take the Irish so far if opposing teams can attack the interior of the O-Line. That Spindler didn’t plop himself into the transfer portal last month is a sign he’s betting that he can be part of that solution.

Transferring junior Logan Diggs’ dependability on the field will be missed. Price, in the long run, may turn out to be the better running back. But how soon?

The 5-10, 203-pound sophomore and cult hero of 2022 spring practice remains on track to resume all football activity in June roughly a year after he suffered a ruptured Achilles tendon doing some extra work after summer team workouts.

How will the long layoff affect him? He’ll find out this summer. But the fact that Notre Dame has other depth options — Gi’Bran Payne and Jeremiyah Love — means coach Marcus Freeman has some flexibility when it comes to Price’s usage in the fall.

Should Carter commit to the Irish and look as good in a Notre Dame uniform as he did on his Rhode Island highlight reel, the urgency in Minich’s summer progress becomes less of an issue for 2023 and more for 2024 and beyond.

His speed and learning curve were impressive until a thumb injury truncated his spring early. ND’s only other non-senior safety, Adon Shuler, missed all of spring due to shoulder surgery, but a strong summer would be welcome from him too, even without a head start,

All three of ND’s rotational safeties — DJ Brown, Ramon Henderson and Xavier Watts — as well as nickel safety Thomas Harper could be gone after this season. Brown and Harper for sure will be.

Adding Carter would change the equation quite a bit here for 2023 and 2024, but either way the Irish need Minich to be a contributor sooner than later.

The Ohio State transfer warmed up for the Blue-Gold Game but didn’t play. In the two previous spring practices open to the media the 6-5, 255-pounder looked more like an option to start than someone who was a foregone conclusion to.

The Irish need him to be more than even the latter. They need a difference-maker at that position. Grad senior Nana Osafo-Mensah gives the Irish a strong rotational option, and perhaps sophomore Aidan Gobaira and/or freshman Brenan Vernon — both former Rivals top 100 prospects — can do the same.

The defensive line as a whole produced some pleasant spring surprises. The Irish need Jean-Baptiste to be a summer surprise.

Junior Mitchell Evans, who missed the Blue-Gold Game with an injury, showed enough earlier in the spring that he’s capable of being the new TE1. But strength in numbers is the best way for offensive coordinator/tight ends coach Gerad Parker to replace All-American Michael Mayer. And even with a twice-torn ACL just seven months in the rearview mirror, the 6-7, 249-pound Raridon still feels like the highest-ceiling tight end prospect among them.

Notre Dame’s wide receiving corps is good enough to command more targets this season and more occasions of having three or more of them on the field, but multiple-tight end formations and excellence in do so are in Notre Dame’s DNA, even if it’s more situational this season.

Freshman Jaden Greathouse with his 11-catch Blue-Gold Game performance, strongly hinted that if Tyree doesn’t take to his new position in the slot right away, all is not lost.

But Tyree has elite speed that hasn’t always translated onto the field for him when he was at running back, and it has a chance to now. Tyree and Greathouse are complements. They present potentially different challenges for opposing defensive coordinators.

Receivers coach Chansi Stuckey said the coaching staff was pleasantly surprised at how far Tyree came during 15 spring practices. If he can make that kind of progress this summer, it may be the strongest depth chart of slot receivers Notre Dame has had in more than a decade.

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