Most recruits will believe they have a shot at playing college football as freshmen.
Many will. Some will find meaningful roles and even become starters for their teams. Others may be limited to four games or less to earn a redshirt season.
The belief within Notre Dame’s incoming class of 25 recruits who signed Wednesday might be higher than most because of what they’ve seen during the 2024 season. Notre Dame has five freshmen who played in at least 11 games during the regular season: starting left tackle Anthonie Knapp, starting cornerback Leonard Moore, defensive end Bryce Young, linebacker Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa and running back Aneyas Williams. Knapp, Moore and Young played in all 12.
Notre Dame also had six freshmen play in at least 12 games in the 2023 season. The Irish aren’t looking to offer false promises to their recruits, but showing them what’s possible — and the success that can come without making an impact as a freshman — holds value.
“Yeah, I think anytime you see freshmen ahead of you — and it was just like that the year before that — anytime you see freshmen that are playing ahead of you, you see a path,” said Notre Dame football general manager Chad Bowden. “You can see it. I think it's important.
“Again, every path is different, so you don't know when that time is going to happen. You look at Xavier Watts, for example, you just don't know. You don't know when your time is going to be called.
“But I think for them to be able to visually see that there is a path for you to play, we're going to play the best player. That's our coaching staff, Coach [Marcus] Freeman, his philosophy is we're going to play the best. We're going to play the best player. It doesn't matter how old you are. That's what we're going to do.”
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Offensive line haul
One of Notre Dame’s best collections of talent in the 2025 class is on the offensive line. Offensive line coach Joe Rudolph signed a quartet of players: five-star offensive tackle Will Black, four-star offensive tackles Owen Strebig and Matty Augustine and three-star offensive guard Cameron Herron.
Notre Dame already had its trio of offensive tackles lined up this summer, but Herron continued to work to impress the Irish. He participated in the Irish Invasion camp in June and worked with Rudolph, but his offer didn’t come until the fall.
“Cam was a guy, he came to camp, we really liked him,” head coach Marcus Freeman said. “We said, man, can we take a center, can we take a center? He's a center, maybe a guard, and he just kept playing and getting better and better and better, and then Coach Rudolph saw him live, and it's like, he's in our state, man, I do not want to play against this guy one day. We need him to be a part of this team. Really like what he brings to our offensive line room.”
Notre Dame used live looks at each of the four offensive linemen to inform their decisions. Black, for instance, was just a three-star recruit when he committed to Notre Dame. He recently reached five-star status. As of Thursday night, Notre Dame is one of 12 schools to sign at least three offensive lineman with four or five-star ratings from Rivals.
“I think Coach Rudolph does the best job in the country recruiting offensive linemen,” Bowden said. “We have nothing but trust and respect for his evaluations and how he sees things and felt those were the best guys in the country, and we went out and got them.”
Depth at defensive back
Notre Dame didn’t hold back when recruiting defensive backs in the 2025 class. The Irish ended up with six signees among cornerbacks and safeties. A whopping five of them have four-star ratings from Rivals: cornerbacks Dallas Golden, Mark Zackery and Cree Thomas and safeties JaDon Blair and Ethan Long.
Only two other programs in the country signed at least five defensive backs, excluding those designated as athletes by Rivals, in the 2025 class as of Thursday night: Texas A&M and Oklahoma. No one signed a better defensive back class than Oregon, who landed four defensive backs in the Rivals100 and two of them are five-star recruits, but the Irish are in the conversation for next up behind the Ducks. Notre Dame’s lone three-star recruit in the secondary is safety Brandon Logan, who Rivals lists as an athlete.
“We've done a really good job with recruiting DBs,” Freeman said. “It's probably our biggest DB class. As you look, we took six total in JaDon,and Brandon Logan, who's a guy we had in camp. JaDon came here and competed. Ethan Long is another guy that came to camp.
“Dallas Golden is extremely fast, can play both sides of the ball, one of the best that I've seen in high school, man. Really, really special player. Cree Thomas is another guy that we have live evals on, runs track, decathlete.
"You look at that, and Mark Zackery, another multisport athlete. He's one of the few football players that can truly play basketball. Most of our guys that play basketball are football players just on the basketball court. He's a basketball player when he's on the basketball court. He is a unique talent.
“All those guys provide speed. All those guys provide a benefit to what we're looking for when we were looking to add to this recruiting class.”
Recruiting high school quarterbacks
Freeman reiterated his stance Wednesday that Notre Dame has no plans to take a quarterback out of the transfer portal in the upcoming offseason.
Barring a change, Notre Dame will continue to recruit a quarterback out of high school in every class. The Irish signed four-star recruit Blake Hebert in the 2025 class and have a verbal commitment from four-star recruit Noah Grubbs in the 2026 class.
Continuing to recruit quarterbacks out of high school will give the Irish an opportunity to keep a full quarterback room. One of Notre Dame’s quarterbacks could opt to transfer in the offseason, but the Irish are projected to have four quarterbacks next season who were recruited in consecutive classes: Steve Angeli (2022), Kenny Minchey (2023), CJ Carr (2024) and Hebert.
“We feel great about the quarterback room,” Bowden said. “We feel great about going into next season with what we have. I know that, and really believe in the guys that we have recruited, and that's really all I have to say about that.”
Notre Dame needed to pull a quarterback late in the cycle after four-star recruit Deuce Knight flipped his verbal commitment of more than a year to Auburn. The Irish circled back to Hebert, who Notre Dame previously pursued before he committed to Clemson. Hebert wound up being interested in Notre Dame and made the switch in October.
“Adding Blake, really a guy that presents almost a dual threat, a guy that can extend plays with his legs, has a really good arm,” Freeman said. “What I love most about Blake in really the short time in being able to get to know each other is his competitive shirt, his leadership. You don't have to be in a room long with him to understand the leadership values that I believe quarterbacks must have, and he definitely possesses that leadership and competitive spirit that we look for.”
Extra points
• Notre Dame puts a strong emphasis on in-person evaluations. Whether that’s getting out across the country or bringing recruits to camps at Notre Dame, the Irish trust their eyes.
“There's nothing more crucial than a live eval,” Freeman said. “That's something that I feel strongly in. We encourage any guy we take to see him play live, see him practice live, see him work out live, have a camp eval, something where you can see. You can get on a website and get times, but I think there's competitiveness that you can see in person.
"There's movement skills that you can see in person that tell you a lot about a prospect. So I think it's really important that we continue to get guys on campus and get live evals. We've had commits that come to camp. We want to see you compete. We want to coach you. I think that's so important when you're looking for bringing in recruits to your program.”
• Notre Dame’s happy with signing four-star tight end James Flanigan, the son of former Irish defensive lineman Jim Flanigan (1990-93). But Bowden hinted that the Irish will be keeping an eye on the Flanigan family in the future. James’ younger brother, Richie, is a sophomore at Green Bay (Wisc.) Notre Dame de la Baie Academy, where the brothers won a state title in football this fall.
Richie Flanigan is a 6-foot-3, 255-pound offensive guard and defensive tackle in the 2027 class. He's yet to report any scholarship offers.
“He's a guy that offensively and defensively, he's a phenomenal athlete,” Bowden said of James Flanigan. “He's very physical at the point of contact. He's a guy we are fired up about.
“I know early on obviously his dad Jim means a lot to this program, means a lot to all of us. We were on James early. Might not have appeared that way, but we've always had our eye on James. We've had our eye on the Flanigan family, and we'll continue to do so.”
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