Elijah Hughes has two football cameos against Notre Dame on his USC résumé, totaling 20 snaps over the past couple of seasons — but with no statistics to show for it.
He did put up some numbers in the other 12 games during his two seasons with the Trojans. And now he’ll be looking for bigger, more significant ones as a member of the Irish football team. The 6-foot-3, 290-pound sophomore from Arlington, Va., announced his transfer to Notre Dame on Saturday.
He’s the first and only underclassman in the Irish transfer class to this point and a rare one in any class. And he was the second defensive tackle and third transfer to announce for Notre Dame on Saturday, joining Louisville grad transfer D-lineman Jared Dawson and North Carolina grad transfer kicker Noah Burnette.
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Hughes garnered six tackles in seven games, each of the past two seasons. He had a sack in 2024 and a shared sack in 2023. His snap count was 126 in 2024 and 88 as a true freshman in 2023, which is more than all of ND’s young interior defensive linemen amassed this season.
Hughes and the rest of the Irish start spring-semester classes on Monday. That includes 13 early enrolling freshmen. The 2024 ND team will also be prepping this upcoming week for the College Football Playoff National Championship Game in Atlanta on Jan. 20.
The 7-seeded Irish (14-1) meet 8 seed Ohio State (13-2) at Mercedes-Benz Stadium a week from Monday, with a 7:30 p.m. EST kickoff on ESPN.
The Irish lose their two two interior linemen, sixth-year standouts Howard Cross III and Rylie Mills, to expired eligibility. Mills suffered a season-ending knee injury Dec. 20 in a first-round CFP win over Indiana.
Senior Gabe Rubio has been starting in Mills’ place and has already indicated he plans to exercise his fifth-year option and return to the Irish in 2025.
Beyond him and junior Donovan Hinish, the Irish have lots of numbers returning but not much experience. There are two incoming freshmen, Davion Dixon and Gordy Sulfsted and five other players with sophomore or freshmen eligibility for 2025 due to redshirting, but only sophomore Armel Mukam has logged more than 40 snaps this season, and he has 60.
Both Cross and Mills, even with injuries, amassed more than 500 apiece.
Senior Jason Onye also has a fifth-year option, but his future at Notre Dame or anywhere else is unclear. He exited the roster at the end of September for personal reasons and hasn’t played or practiced since.
Head coach Marcus Freeman indicated Onye would be welcomed back if he wanted to return to ND. He was a valuable rotational player in the five games he did play in this season.
Notre Dame got commitments from four transfers in December — tight end Ty Washington (Arkansas), Alabama defensive back Devonta Smith and wide receivers Will Pauling (Wisconsin) and Malachi Fields (Virginia).
The Irish are expected to add more in the next day or so.
The transfer portal opened on Dec. 9 and closed on Dec. 28, but that deadline is just to enter the portal, not for finding a landing spot. Ohio State and Notre Dame players will have an additional five-day window after the national championship game to enter the transfer portal.
There’s also a 10-day spring period, from April 16-25.
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