Recruiting Comparison: Notre Dame Fighting Irish vs Stanford Cardinal
In a lot of ways, Stanford and Notre Dame pull from the same pool of players, or at least similar quality of student-athletes. With such high academic standards for each, recruiting has its inherent challenges, although it can be drastically overstated at times.
Breaking down past recruiting rankings can be a valuable way to evaluate talent, and develop a much deeper understanding of a roster. It has proven to be a pretty sound indicator of quality of an on field product. It isn’t the gospel but more often than not, the better you recruit, the more talented the team is with more upside.
Stanford has its sporadic moments of high quality recruiting in recent years. While the development may not be as great as it had been early on in the David Shaw tenure, the acquisition of talent has still been there. It has been up and down compared to the standard that was set several years ago, but the program is still usually ranked among the top 25 classes in the country annually.
From a physical perspective, there are several Stanford players who stack up favorably against the Irish. Some spots are just much thinner than others. This is a very intriguing matchup from a recruiting standpoint.
Here are the 247Sports composite rankings for the starters and top rotation players for the Notre Dame offense and the Stanford defense.
Ten of Notre Dame’s 11 starters on offense were a four (9) or five-star (1) recruits coming out of high school. Even looking at the depth chart it is loaded with former four-star recruits. The lone three-star in the starting lineup is Joe Alt, who has already exceeded early expectations and has developed into one of the best left tackles in all of college football.
Stanford counters with a starting defense that is primarily made up of almost exclusively three-star level players, with a grand total of eight overall, at least based on its most recent released depth chart. There are three four-star players in the lineup, including star freshman Edge defender David Bailey, who was ranked as the No. 66 overall player in the 2022 recruiting class.
The other four stars are fellow Edge defender Stephen Herron, who also ranked among the top 200 recruits nationally (No. 141) when he came out of the 2019 class, and cornerback Salim Turner-Muhammad, who ranked No. 248 overall. Aaron Armitage is another four-star Edge defender who comes off the bench for Stanford.
Their secondary is littered with corner three-star recruits, including star cornerback Kyu Blu Kelly, and safeties Kendall Williamson and Jonathan McGill. That’s where the team has had arguably its best example of development. Turner-Muhammad is actually listed as a starter this week in place of Kyu Blu Kelly, who missed last week's game against Oregon State with an injury, and he's not listed on this week's depth chart.
Now let's look at the Notre Dame defense and the Stanford offense.
The strength of the Notre Dame defense, at least from a recruiting standpoint, is the defensive line. All four of Notre Dame's starters up front were four-star recruits coming out of high school, and there are plenty of four-stars coming off the bench, including sophomore Gabriel Rubio.
The lone exception there is key defensive end reserve Justin Ademilola. It is a deep and talented unit up front.
The offense for Stanford is much more star studded than the defensive side of the football, at least from a recruiting rankings perspective. In total, the team has five starters who were ranked as four-star recruits coming out of high school. Most notably, quarterback Tanner McKee (No. 46 overall), who is one of the more talented passers in college football.
McKee has a lot of talent to throw the football to, including Michael Wilson, Elijah Higgins and key reserve John Humphreys. All three pass catchers were ranked as four-star recruits. Higgins ranked highest of the trio, sitting as the No. 85 player in the 2019 class.
Up front, the right side is composed of two former four-stars with Myles Hinton and Levi Rogers. Hinton was their top rated player up front, coming in as the No. 74 overall player in the 2020 class out of the Atlanta area.
CLASS RANKINGS
Here are the class rankings of the two programs from the last five seasons. (247Sports composite)
NOTRE DAME
2022 - 7
2021 - 9
2020 - 18
2019 - 15
2018 - 10
STANFORD
2022 - 19
2021 - 43
2020 - 21
2019 - 19
2018 - 40
Advantage: Notre Dame
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Notre Dame 2023 Commits Board - Defense
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Ranking The 2022 Signees - Offense
Ranking The 2022 Signees - Defense
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