Ryan Roberts talks about the state of Notre Dame wide receiver recruiting, as the Irish had another blunder recently.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00Notre Dame wide receiver recruiting has another blunder in the 2026 class. Let's talk about
00:06the state of wide receiver recruiting Mike Brown and what needs to change in a conversation
00:11that needs to be had next.
00:17Ryan Roberts from A to Z sports, breaking down everything. Notre Dame football folks.
00:20We are just a few days now, a couple of weeks until spring football, but as we know, recruiting
00:26never stops for the Notre Dame football team coming off a 14 win season. We were hoping
00:30for a lot of recruiting momentum. And while there has been a lot of positive conversations
00:36and remarks on that side, we are still fighting the uphill battle of wide receiver recruiting
00:42under Mike Brown. Now we've talked about this a lot in the past about how Mike Brown was
00:48not set up for success immediately from a recruiting perspective at Notre Dame, former
00:54wide receiver coach, Chansey Stuckey left the 2025 board in a very bad position and
00:59a lot of disarray. So Mike Brown had an uphill battle immediately. And we saw the results
01:06of that. We saw three pretty rough losses in a couple of weeks span last off season
01:12when they missed out on Dylan Robinson, who eventually committed to Washington. They lost
01:17out on Derek Meadows, who of course eventually ended up committing to LSU, but eventually
01:22flipping to Alabama before national signing day. And then they lost out on two new kinds
01:26who chose USC. So you were over three on your top wide receiver recruits in that class.
01:33You also passed in John Anthony Hall and you had to kind of reshuffle the board. Eventually
01:37you get Antavious Richardson into the fall, but it was a very tough process to have confidence
01:43in wide receiver recruiting moving forward. But what do we do as Notre Dame fans? We gave
01:47it a mulligan, right? 2025, there was a lot going against coach Brown. You had to pick
01:52up that board where it was. 2026 is where we're actually going to get a full scope understanding
01:59of what he can be as a recruiter at Notre Dame. Cool. Let's take a step back. Let's
02:04give him some time. Well, folks, there was a lot of positive conversations and remarks
02:09and feedback early in 2026, but I am sitting here now in March and a long way from natural
02:15signing day, of course, but we know that Notre Dame typically likes to get recruits
02:19in early and kind of hold on for dear life. They don't typically flip a lot of guys late.
02:23That's just not in the Notre Dame nature, but we are sitting here now. And so far this
02:29off season, there's been more negativity and more missteps in Notre Dame recruiting. The
02:37most recent obviously was Maryland wide receiver, 2026 class Connor Salmon, 10, 400 meter guy,
02:44a four one nine GPA as well. So high academic kid who spoke glowingly about Notre Dame
02:49in the past, Notre Dame had been his perceived leader for a bit of a time. At this point,
02:54high academic kid who talked about how the educational aspect is very important to him
02:59has been in Notre Dame several times. So it all looked like it was lining up. Unfortunately,
03:04Notre Dame missed out on Connor Salmon. Salmon ended up picking Clemson this weekend, this
03:10past weekend. And it was a tough blow, especially because it was only a couple of days removed
03:14from Naeem Burrows, Florida wide receiver in the 2026 class, also picking Clemson. Now
03:20Burrows was a player that Notre Dame had high on their board, but wasn't a guy that was
03:23necessarily a realistic target. It was just a guy that they really liked, but kind of
03:28had some feelings that Notre Dame wasn't going to be the pick in the end. But either way,
03:32you miss out on two of your top of the board targets guys that you really liked. And then
03:37also the recent prediction was put in from Steve Wolfong for Trent Moseley, who obviously
03:42his dad was Emmett Moseley played, uh, played at Notre Dame during the golden era of football.
03:50And they have now lost out on back to back and Emmett Moseley, the, the son and Trent
03:57Moseley, his younger brother, most likely Trent Moseley was put in a future cast prescription
04:02or on three prediction to end up with USC. So barring anything last minute, it appears
04:08that you are now going to go Oh, for three early on in your wide receiver recruiting
04:12when Trent Moseley ends up picking most likely not Notre Dame. Now that all being said, Notre
04:18Dame does have some pretty good targets on the board and they have momentum with guys
04:22like Caden Finley out of Texas, Brayden Robinson out of Texas. There's a couple of glimmering
04:27hopes there. And if honestly, if you get Finley and Robinson, this is kind of a moot point,
04:31but guys, we said that last year in the summer, right? You missed out on the, on this one
04:37guy, but Hey, you still got these targets on the board. And then Notre Dame wasn't able
04:40to close. And then you had to completely flip your board and reconfigure it and try to make
04:45it a good class in the end. And honestly, the 2025 class ended up being an underrate
04:50under whelming under, I would say below average class overall wide receivers. And you also
04:57had a really questionable process to get to that final group of receivers. So far in 2026,
05:03you heard decent things early on, but we're feeling the same things here. Starting to
05:07feel a little bit anxious about what 2026 wide receiver recruiting is. And at some points,
05:12and I want this to be clear, I put this in an article at agency sports. This is not a
05:16call to action of termination or anything. I am not sitting here saying Mike Brown stinks.
05:22He's not the guy, get him out of town. But what I am saying here is that something needs
05:26to change with wide receiver recruiting. I don't know if it's something with Mike Brown
05:30specifically. I don't know if it's something behind the scenes. I don't know if it's people
05:33helping in the recruiting a little bit more of coach Freeman has to step in. I don't know
05:37the answer that is well above my pay grade, but all I know is the process seems inconsistent
05:43and the results obviously have not been great. So something needs to change there because
05:48my biggest worry here is that you have a similar trudging to the end of 2026 and wide receiver
05:55development is about the same. We are hoping that Jaden Greathouse takes the next step.
06:01I think he can. We're hoping that Malachi Fields is a seamless transition. I think he
06:05can be, but we don't know. There's more unknowns about wide receiver developments. Hopefully
06:10it's good. But right now, wide receiver recruiting has been one of the Achilles heel of this
06:14team. It's defense tackle recruiting. It's wide receiver recruiting. This has to get
06:19better. Has to get better. I hope Mike Brown figures it out. I hope he goes down the stretch
06:24and he gets guys like Caden Finley and Brayden Robinson and maybe adds another guy to the
06:29board and they close and we look back on this conversation and say, wow, Ryan overreacted,
06:35right? But I have had nothing and no track record here so far of Mike Brown recruiting
06:41wide receivers at Notre Dame that tells me that I am overreacting. No action has led
06:47me to believe that. If it does, then we'll retract this conversation. Belief will be
06:51added. But until then, I'm a little bit troubled and unsettled about wide receiver recruiting.
06:57Folks, put it in the chat. Tell me I'm overreacting. Tell me I'm over, I'm off my rocker. Put in
07:03your confidence level. Who do you think Notre Dame has a good chance in in 2026? Can they
07:08turn around wide receiver recruiting? And regardless of that conversation, that discord,
07:14you know, the final result here, folks, go Irish.