Inside Look: DE Howard Cross
In the span of less than a month, Montvale (N.J.) St. Joseph's 2019 defensive end Howard Cross went from a prospect without an Irish offer to a Notre Dame commit.
Cross picked up an offer from defensive line coach Mike Elston on April 3 and made his first trip to South Bend during the weekend of the program's annual Blue-Gold Game. That was all Cross needed to see.
After seeing everything up close, Cross felt Notre Dame had everything he was looking for in a school and there was no reason to prolong a decision announcing a commitment on the Sunday after the spring game (April 22).
The 6-foot-2, 240-pounder picked the Irish over the likes of Boston College, Duke, Georgia Tech, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, NC State, Northwestern, Tennessee and Virginia Tech, among others.
Cross was the first of two four-star defensive ends to eventually join Notre Dame's 2019 class with Texas product NaNa Osafo-Mensah following suit in the coming weeks. Assuming their rankings hold, Cross and Osafo-Mensah would be the first pair of four-star defensive linemen to ink with Notre Dame since Daelin Hayes and Khalid Kareem in 2016.
Even with how quickly things moved with Cross and the Irish, the senior has had no doubts about his pledge and remains 100 percent firm in his thinking.
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