Tag: Will Shipley

The Ship(ley) has Sailed, Who Does Notre Dame Turn to Next in ’21 RB Recruiting

Missing out on Will Shipley hurts now, but the Irish do have plenty of other potential running backs they’ve continued to recruit.

At one point in time during North Carolina star Will Shipley’s recruitment Notre Dame was the perceived leader, but then the country shut down amidst the COVID-19 epidemic and the NCAA mandated dead period occurred. With many recruits including Shipley not being able to visit schools they were scheduled to during the summer has made this recruiting cycle one of the oddest ever. This enabled Clemson to really put the full court press on Shipley and gain a commitment from him today.

This is a tough blow for Brian Kelly as Shipley was seen as a Christian McCaffrey clone, a prospect any program would be happy to see don their colors. Kelly knew he couldn’t put all his eggs in one basket, as they have offered six other true running backs aside from Shipley in this class. Three of them have committed, so let’s eliminate TreVeyon Henderson and Lovasea Carroll along with Shipley from the big board. Texas’ Camar Wheaton hold’s an offer from Notre Dame and is viewed as one of the best in the country, but this one will be an uphill battle. Wheaton has local powers Texas and Oklahoma after him along with LSU, Alabama and SMU. If Notre Dame wants to really get involved in Wheaton’s recruitment, the staff needs to step up immediately.

Michigan’s Donovan Edwards is the highest rated local remaining running back with an offer and although he hasn’t released a top list yet, it’s perceived that instate schools Michigan and Michigan State along with Georgia are his top schools. Yes, Edwards seems to have made a connection with Irish commit Blake Fisher, but so did Shipley and look how that turned out.

Ohio back Corey Kiner has pushed his recruitment forward, but it doesn’t seem like the Irish have much of a shot in his recruitment at the moment. Although the Irish have offered him, Kiner isn’t high on the program, as it seems like Cincinnati, Louisville and Michigan have the leg up in his recruitment. He is set to commit on Independence Day, so if Kelly wants a commit from the Ohio back, they’ll have to really up their effort in recruiting Kiner.

The Sunshine State’s Prophet Brown is perhaps the most likely future Notre Dame player on this list. The only problem with that is Brown is being recruited by Notre Dame as a corner and not running back. Could that change after missing out on Shipley?  Either way, look for Brian Polian and Mike Mickens to ramp up their pursuit of Brown, as the clear need for running back and corner in the 2021 recruiting class is obvious for Notre Dame.

The Irish are in need of talent in the backfield and losing out on a commitment from Shipley hurts in the short term. Who the staff turns to now is the biggest question mark, but plenty of talented backs are still in play for the Irish. Notre Dame will bounce back, the pain of losing Shipley will linger, but if Kelly can reel in another big fish, it might not matter in the long run.

College Football Morning Announcements: April 5, 2020

What are the headlines around college football and Notre Dame today? Find out here by reading and/or listening!

Remember when you used to get to school and the kid who had a speech impediment would read the morning announcements and say 87% of students names incorrectly?  That’s kind of what we’re going to be doing here in quick podcast form.

We’ll release the morning announcements with reaction to anything that happens the day or two previous and share them with you here. We’ll also highlight a few of the most interesting things that happened pertaining to Notre Dame or college sports the day before.

PODCAST – Pilot Episode:
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Mentioned Links:

Will Shipley to Commit on Tuesday – Clemson vs Notre Dame

ESPN 300 – Notre Dame’s Six Listed Players and Five Takeaways

NFL Cancels Games Abroad for 2020 – Is the NCAA next?

Don Shula Passes – His Dream Job Once was Notre Dame Head Coach

Top 10 College Football Helmets – My Rankings

 

Clemson vs. Notre Dame? Five-Star Shipley Set to Announce Commitment

Five-star running back Will Shipley is set to announce his commitment to likely either Clemson or Notre Dame on Tuesday. Details here.

Early Monday evening we received news from the young man himself, Will Shipley, that the prized all-purpose-back will be announcing his college decision on Tuesday afternoon.

If you’ve followed here for any significant amount of time you’re probably aware that this almost certainly means bad news for Notre Dame since Shipley was really hoping to make another visit to South Bend before announcing any decision.  What was supposed to happen in mid-March got canceled due to the coronavirus outbreak when the NCAA suspended all in-person visits between college coaches and prospects.

Shipley is regarded as the best all-purpose-back in the country and has been Notre Dame’s number one priority this recruiting cycle.

I’m not going to sit and make a bunch of predictions because whenever you do with a 17 year old you often end up looking really dumb but I’m with the masses here that it doesn’t appear to be good news for Notre Dame’s chances.

If nothing else, unpaid recruiting coordinator/2021 offensive tackle commitment/very close friend of Will Shipley, Blake Fisher didn’t tweet out anything to indicate good news is coming, something he hasn’t been able to stay quiet about in the past.

We’ll have coverage for you on Tuesday in regards to everything Will Shipley.  If he chooses Notre Dame we’ll be thrilled and celebrate that and if he chooses Clemson then we’ll take a deep look at where Brian Kelly, Lance Taylor, Tommy Rees and company go for a running back in 2021.

College Football Recruiting: Five Takeaways From ESPN 300

Notre Dame landed six players on the updated ESPN 300 list for 2021. What schools are impressing and who is disappointing in ’21 recruiting?

ESPN released their “ESPN 300”, their ranking of the 300 best prospects nationally in the 2021 college football recruiting class.  Here’s what we’ll do:

Here we’ll give you where the six Notre Dame commitments that checked in rank and then we’ll share a handful of observations about national recruiting beyond that.

Deal?

Cool.

Where Notre Dame players ranked:

QB Tyler Buchner – 39
TE Cane Berrong – 51
OT Blake Fisher – 103
DT Gabriel Rubio – 163
WR Lorenzo Styles, Jr. – 243
DE David Abiara – 280

Safety Justin Walters and offensive guard Pat Coogan, both of Illinois didn’t make the ESPN 300 but are also commitments to Notre Dame’s 2021 class.

Next:  Oh my, Ohio State…

Pages: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5, Page 6

Notre Dame: April’s Top Ten Stories on FIW

April has come and gone. Which Notre Dame stories were the biggest the last month? Count down the top ten right here.

And just like that April has come and come.  Amazing how fast (or slow) a month goes by when you’re stuck inside the confides of your home unless you’ve got an essential job you have to punch into still.

What all happened during the month of April at Fighting Irish Wire?  Well it was an interesting month that saw the retirement of a legendary coach at Notre Dame, six players get drafted in the NFL Draft and a 2021 football recruit give a verbal to Notre Dame.

If you missed anything this month or are just curious to look back, here are your ten most popular stories from Fighting Irish Wire during the month of April.

10.  Niele Ivey wasn’t even on the job a week when she saw two prime-time recruits commit to the Notre Dame Women’s basketball program.

9.  Deion Colzie, prized wide reciever in the 2021 recruiting class de-commited from Notre Dame in March.  Could he still re-commit though?

8.  Brian Kelly gave an early-April update on the latest on Notre Dame/Navy in Ireland, something we’re still left wondering about as we say goodbye to the month.

7.  Christian McCaffrey never played for Notre Dame but the Fighting Irish coaching staff continues to promote the highest paid running back in the NFL as one of their own.

6.  We found out more information on Will Shipley’s recruitment in the early parts of the month.  We’re still without any absolutes but Notre Dame clearly has a spot at the table with Clemson and North Carolina.

5.  We don’t have an answer yet on if Notre Dame and Navy will play in Ireland but a recent mandate by Ireland’s government has me scratching my head trying to figure out how this game gets played overseas.

4.  Notre Dame quarterback commit Tyler Buchner, the prized jewel so far of the 2021 cycle, received a fifth star by 247Sports. 

3.  Brian Kelly had strong words he offered up for Kirk Herbstreit’s prediction that college football wouldn’t be played in 2020. That was this month?  Seriously it feels like eight weeks ago at least.

2.  The latest news of Notre Dame being a finalist to land former Stanford running back Trevor Speights got a lot of attention the last few days.  Stay tuned as we could get an announcement there before much longer.

April’s Most Viewed Story:  Notre Dame made a scholarship offer to one of the nation’s top defensive recruits in the 2022 class, Denver Harris as they’re trying to hit one out of the park with the prized defensive back.

Thank you everyone for making April great and can’t wait for an even better May.  Hopefully we’ll all be able to get back to a little more normalcy this month compared to in the last but I hope you’re saying safe, sane and healthy.

 

A look at some of Georgia’s top recruiting targets for 2021 class

We list our top-10 Georgia Football targets for the 2021 recruiting class.

Georgia currently holds the No. 12 ranked recruiting class overall and the 3rd best class in the SEC behind Florida and Tennessee. (link to sec class story here)

The Bulldogs hold seven commitments for their 2021 class which is led by 5-star QB Brock Vandagriff, 4-star OT Micah Morris and 4-star ATH David Daniel.

With much of the recruiting cycle still remaining, there are still plenty of great young prospects the Bulldogs will be pursuing over the next year or so.

Here is our list of some of Georgia’s top recruiting targets for the class of 2021. Just because a player is not listed does not mean Georgia is not targeting him.

All rankings via 247Sports:

  1. 5-star OT Amarius Mims (Cochran, GA)
  2. 5-star DB Tony Grimes (Virginia Beach, VA)
  3. 5-star S James Williams (Fort Lauderdale, FL)
  4. 5-star DT Leonard Taylor (Miami, FL)
  5. 5-star DT Mason Smith (Houma, LA)
  6. 5-star OLB Smael Mondon (Dallas, GA)
  7. 4-star DB Isaiah Johnson (Bluefield, WV)
  8. 4-star RB Donovan Edwards (West Bloomfield, MI)
  9. 4-star LB Barrett Carter (Suwanee, GA)
  10. 4-star DE Quintin Somerville (Scottsdale, AZ)
  11. 4-star WR Mario Williams (Plant City, FL)
  12. 4-star OLB Xavien Sorey (Graceville, FL)
  13. 4-star WR Chris Hilton (Zachary, LA)
  14. 4-star CB Nyland Green (Covington, GA)
  15. 4-star TE Brock Bowers (Napa, CA)

Notre Dame Football: 2021 Commitment List

Bookmark this page as we’ll keep it updated and linked to everything on all of Notre Dame’s 2021 football commitments!

Notre Dame sits in a bit of an interesting spot in terms of recruiting with Brian Kelly having already been on the record about wanting to take a step in the caliber of talent the Fighting Irish bring in annually.  Kelly and his staff would probably be best described as having done a good but not great job in terms of recruiting in his decade at Notre Dame.

In Kelly’s now 11 classes he’s signed to Notre Dame, only once has a class finished in the top five of recruiting rankings (per 247Sports), that being the 2013 class that featured five-star talents Jaylon Smith and Max Redfield.  Other than that only three of the ten remaining class finished in the top ten, those coming in 2011 (ninth), 2017 (10th) and 2018 (10th).  The last two seasons have seen Notre Dame rank 16th (2019) and 17th (2020) by 247’s rankings.

So where does Notre Dame currently sit in terms of their commitments?  We’ll keep a running list for you to be able to easily use in the future.  As of posting, 247Sports ranks Notre Dame the 10th best class in 2021.  Obviously that can change relatively quickly with just one commitment or de-commitment from the class.

Here is who has committed to Notre Dame for the class of 2021 with a link to every post we’ve done that’s mentioned them in some capacity.  Bookmark it, refer back to it, do whatever it is you do because we’ll keep it updated until the class of 2021 becomes official months from now.

2021 Notre Dame Commitments:

It’s far from a complete class but clearly a lot of work remains over the next seven months or so.  Right now all eyes are on Will Shipley as Notre Dame, Clemson and perhaps North Carolina remain the front runners to land the star all-purpose back.

 

Notre Dame Continues Showing Their Christian McCaffrey Love

Does it come off a bit weird hyping up a guy that not only didn’t play at Notre Dame but also a guy who starred at an annual rival?  No doubt, and I’m sure Tommy Rees himself even thinks that a bit.

Earlier this week Christian McCaffrey signed a record deal to remain a Carolina Panther and is set to make more money than any running back in NFL history as a result.  We went over at the time how some of the congratulatory tweets being sent McCaffrey’s way weren’t all meant for just McCaffrey to see.

Well, a few days later and more of the same, this time coming from the new Notre Dame offensive coordinator, Tommy Rees.

Listen, I don’t blame them at all.  If I had that card in my hand I’d being playing it as much as I could in order to try and land top talent.  Notre Dame has had some good running backs lately, but how many are truly great?  It’s been since Ryan Grant, Julius Jones and Jerome Bettis and that’s many moons ago that Notre Dame put anything into the league at running back that you’d consider anywhere near special (obviously Bettis is in a league of his own in that group of three).

I think Pete Sampson of The Athletic put it well in his tweet on Thursday in regards to Notre Dame’s new-found love for an old rival:

Does it come off a bit weird hyping up a guy that not only didn’t play at Notre Dame but also a guy who starred at an annual rival?  No doubt, and I’m sure Tommy Rees himself even thinks that a bit.

But in the world of recruiting when you’re trying to win the commitments of star prospects it’s clearly worth that awkward feeling that comes with it.  It may be uncomfortable but they’d be foolish not to be hyping up their rising star of a coach having a mega-star connection twice over.

Notre Dame Side to Christian McCaffrey’s Mega-Deal?

Christian McCaffrey signed an extension today with the Carolina Panthers for that amount and it makes him the highest paid running back in the history of the NFL. You might be wondering what that has to do with Notre Dame, but it’s as simple as following the bloodline of college football:
Recruiting.

An average of $16 million dollars over four years. Is it even possible to spend that amount of money? It would require great effort to do so, I know that.

Christian McCaffrey signed an extension today with the Carolina Panthers for that amount and it makes him the highest paid running back in the history of the NFL. You might be wondering what that has to do with Notre Dame, but it’s as simple as following the bloodline of college football:

Recruiting.

Christian McCaffrey is the favorite player of North Carolina high school senior-to-be Will Shipley. Shipley is a big-time recruit and has been heavily pursued by Lance Taylor, the Notre Dame run game coordinator.

Taylor was also the college running backs coach of one Christian McCaffrey back during both their days at Stanford. Taylor left Stanford following the 2016 season to take a job with the Carolina Panthers as their wide receivers coach and was rejoined by McCaffrey who the Panthers selected in the first round of the 2017 NFL Draft.

Taylor took to Twitter to congratulate his former player for signing the monstrous deal on Monday.

I don’t think I’m crazy in thinking the congratulatory tweet by Taylor has a double meaning. Obviously he’s excited for his old running back that agreed to a historic deal. That’s not it though, at least I don’t believe it is.

I’m not saying Christian McCaffrey signing a record deal is the reason Will Shipley will one day sign at Notre Dame because first off, right now nobody knows where Shipley ends up. What I will say is that when you’re recruiting a player of that talent level, the connection from Shipley to Taylor to McCaffrey certainly only helps things.  Mix in the timing of this all going down as recruiting visits aren’t allowed and it may not be the deciding factor in Shipley’s ultimate decision, but it certainly is more than a nothing, too.

At least I’d guess that’s the way Lance Taylor sees it.

Stay tuned. Once the dead-period lifts it’s going to be all systems go to land one of the biggest prizes in the 2021 recruiting class.

Where Notre Dame Stands in Will Shipley’s Latest Outlook

Notre Dame is going head-to-head with Clemson for the services of running back Will Shipley. What do the Irish have going for them and where do they have to make up ground against powerhouse Clemson?

Notre Dame was supposed to have their biggest recruiting weekend of the off-season in the middle of March but corona-virus changed those plans as the NCAA suspended all recruiting visits.  Now Notre Dame appears headed to trying to make that weekend up in June, dependent on recruiting visits being OK’d by then.

Will Shipley is the biggest remaining target for not just Notre Dame but a few other teams who would love to get his commitment.  We’ve told you about the relationship Shipley shares with Notre Dame commitment Blake Fisher, who also plans to be in attendance in June.

Where does Notre Dame currently stand in the running for Shipley? According to Rivals the Fighting Irish are in a very good but not great spot.

They rank Clemson first as Shipley’s likely landing spot as of now with Notre Dame second.  They say of Notre Dame’s chances:

The Fighting Irish seemed to have some momentum with Shipley prior to the recruiting dead period, and expectations going into his previously planned visit were high. That visit obviously hasn’t happened, but that won’t stop Notre Dame from leaning on Shipley.

The Irish’s biggest weapon in the pursuit of Shipley is running backs coach Lance Taylor and his track record of developing outstanding running backs such as Christian McCaffrey and Bryce Love. Shipley looks up to McCaffrey, and the two talk fairly often. Turning out to be a back like McCaffrey is a dream of Shipley’s.

It seems like Notre Dame remains in really good shape here, assuming they can get Shipley on campus.  He clearly has a strong relationship with Taylor as evidenced by Taylor’s regular visits to North Carolina over the winter.  It’s just hard to imagine him making a commitment to Notre Dame if he can’t get back to campus for one of these massive visit weekends.

Following Clemson and Notre Dame in the Rivals projections for Shipley were North Carolina and North Carolina State.  Check out the entire piece for a deeper look at what each program has going both for and against them in the running for this star running back.