Notre Dame picked up its 16th for the class of 2014 late Friday night when Florida linebacker Richard Yeargin III committed to the Irish over his home state Florida Gators giving Notre Dame its second straight commitment from the Sunshine State.
Yeargin announced his intentions to attend the University of Notre Dame via Twitter late Friday night.
“I am officially committed to the University of Notre Dame,” announced on Twitter Friday night.
Prior to committing to Notre Dame, Yeargin, a 4-star linebacker, picked up offers from the likes of Auburn, Boston College, Florida, Florida State, Michigan, Nebraska, UCLA, and USC among others.
For Notre Dame, the commitment from Yeargin is huge for a couple of reasons. First off, Notre Dame needed another linebacker in this class and there were not many recruits with Yeargin’s pedigree remaining on the board in this year’s class. Secondly, dipping into Florida for another commitment is a great sign for the health of Notre Dame’s recruiting engine and just another indication of the recruiting skills of Tony Alford.
Tony Alford has been assigned to Florida since he was originally hired by Charlie Weis and since then Notre Dame’s luck in the Sunshine State have turned around. With Yeargin on board, Notre Dame’s last two commitments hail from Florida with Yeargin joining wide receiver Corey Holmes.
Yeargin projects as a CAT linebacker in the Notre Dame defense. Despite projecting at the CAT position, though, Yeargin has shown the ability to drop into coverage as recently as last month at Nike’s The Opening at the headquarters in Oregon where he was teammates with his fellow Florida commitment Corey Holmes on the Alpha Pro team (see below).
Yeargin joins three other commitments in the Notre Dame linebacking corps for this year’s class along with Greer Martini, Jonathan Bonner, and Grant Blankenship although both Bonner and Blankenship could grow into defensive ends at some point in their careers.
Notre Dame’s 2014 recruiting class, already a consensus top 10 ranked class at this point, moved up to #6 in the Rivals team rankings and now has an average star rating of 3.69 – the highest average rating of any school in the country.
Hurls just a minor quibble. What is remarkable is that, more than any coach since Frank Leahy Kelly embraces Notre Dame’s values and emphases, and he recruits kids who are in tune with that and not just football.
So, just in this precinct, I prefer NDRKG. There’s another benefit to that. He is not running AGAINST the university, and not regarding the school and its culture as an evil (necessary) or obstacle to his agenda, but rather central to it. This makes a lot of people at various levels in the school WANT to help Kelly and his NDRKG, BKRKG student athletes.
If you want to feel good about the Florida kids, go listen to or read the interviews with Deeb and Corey Holmes.
This IS good news. But it’s (building team is) also about attitude. BKRKG. (Brian Kelly Right Kinda Guy) Landing these recruits from FL is a good thing – AS LONG AS THEY’RE BKRKG’s. It does open-up the door to FL, but I don’t want to open a door to a dark alley. (if ya know what I mean) Let’s guard our optimism.
Notre Dame adds Californian DE Matt Dickerson. He seems to have good size at 6’5 265 lbs. Nice weekend for ND. There are still some spots left. ND should focus on getting some good speed.
ND recruiting is currently at a peak level of quality.. It is hard not to predict success for ND if all remains constant.