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Eli Lederman, ESPN Staff Writer
Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman considered his roster following a recent fall practice ahead of a season that could see the Irish back in the College Football Playoff. Perhaps for the first time in the 38-year-old’s tenure, Freeman is overseeing a team recruited by his design and built in his vision. With two full recruiting cycles under his belt, Freeman has overhauled Notre Dame’s recruiting infrastructure, boosted its NIL offerings and embraced the transfer portal, all part of a push to take the singular qualities that have kept Notre Dame continually among college football’s elite and bolster the Irish for deep runs in the expanded, 12-team CFP.
“I think you embrace the distinctions the University of Notre Dame presents,” Freeman told ESPN. “That’s something that you have to embrace. It is a great selling point …
“But you have to be yourself in recruiting — you got to,” he continued. “I don’t want to be somebody I’m not as a recruiter…I think we’ve done a great job of being able to convince the right people or show the right guys that this is the right place for them.”
Freeman has Notre Dame recruiting differently, and results indicate the strategy is working. In the midst of Freeman’s third full cycle, the Irish are recruiting at a better clip than in any moment since Brian Kelly closed the nation’s fourth-ranked class in 2013.
From Notre Dame’s 2023 class — signed at the end of Freeman’s first cycle as head coach — linebacker Drayk Bowen, running back Jeremiyah Love, wide receiver Jaden Greathouse and safety Adon Shuler represent four signees projected to start this fall. A fifth member of that class, offensive tackle Charles Jagusah, was also expected to start in 2024 before suffering a season-ending pectoral injury in preseason camp.
In the 2024 cycle, the Irish landed five of the nation’s top 100 prospects, per ESPN rankings, headlined by No. 2 pocket passer C.J. Carr and wide receiver Cam Williams, losing only three commitments along the way. In 2025, quarterback Deuce Knight and offensive tackle Will Black highlight 10 ESPN 300 prospects currently pledged to Notre Dame, leaving the Irish in range to chase their third top-10 signing class since Freeman took charge on Dec. 3, 2021, more than Kelly turned in across his final eight full recruiting cycles.
With only two CFP appearances since 2014 and a recent history of coming up short against the nation’s top programs, could the recruiting boost Freeman has delivered Notre Dame be the nudge that propels the Irish from frequent challengers to perennial national title contenders?
“You’ve got the right guy at the right time for an incredible institution,” Notre Dame defensive coordinator Al Golden said of Freeman. “It’s the way he leads the program every day. The care that he has for the kids. The way he lays out the plan. From a recruiting standpoint, he is who he is. You can’t fake that.”
Energy, urgency and demeanor
Four-star safety Dallas Golden had a sense of what he wanted when his college recruitment began. The No. 138 prospect in the 2025 ESPN 300 also knew what he didn’t want as offers started rolling in from the likes of Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State and Oregon.
Golden felt several programs missed the mark in his recruitment. The staff at Notre Dame, however, seemed to understand him from the moment the Irish began recruiting Golden out of Berkeley Preparatory School in Tampa, Florida.
“They kept it real with me,” Golden said. “Some other schools will tell you that you’ll come in and start, this and that. But I wasn’t looking for that. I was trying to find where I could feel most comfortable.”
The Irish got in early, offering Golden during his freshman year with defensive backs coach Mike Mickens and then-Notre Dame director of recruiting Chad Bowden leading his recruitment. Then Golden started hearing from Freeman as the Irish kept in almost daily contact over the next two years. If Golden or his family needed to get in touch, Freeman was always available.
Golden announced his commitment to the Irish over Georgia, Clemson and Florida State on April 28, nixing scheduled official visits to the latter three schools. He enters the fall as the third-highest rated prospect in Notre Dame’s 2025 class, filling a critical position of need on the depth chart.
“They were genuine in who they are,” Golden said. “They’re real with you more than some of these other college coaches. They built that relationship over time.”
Golden’s recruitment offers a window into how Notre Dame is approaching its top high school targets.
Equipped with ample resources, on- and off-field prestige, and one of the strongest brands in college football, Notre Dame is consistently competitive in recruiting the nation’s most promising prospects in spite of a high academic standard and other university factors that narrow the Irish’s potential talent pool. But over the past three years, Notre Dame’s new edge has come from Freeman.
Sources inside the program describe Freeman as an authentic, dynamic recruiter. He keeps in constant communication with prospects during contact periods — reachable at all times — and maintains ongoing recruiting dialogue with his assistants, peppering them with questions and digging for updates.
If Kelly represented an old-school personality who fit Notre Dame’s past like a glove, Freeman has stepped in as a catalyst capable of taking the program’s recruiting into the future. Over Kelly’s final eight classes from 2014 to ’21, Notre Dame averaged 9.4 signees from the ESPN 300 and 12.7 four-star prospects, per cycle. Across the three classes Freeman has signed, Notre Dame’s averages have climbed to 11.7 top-300 prospects and 14.7 four-star additions each year.
“I remember interviewing Marcus when we hired him from Cincinnati,” said Brian Polian, who spent 10 seasons at Notre Dame, including five under Kelly from 2017 to ’21. “I was immediately struck by how aggressive he was in recruiting and how involved he was in recruiting. I have no doubt that that energy, that urgency, that demeanor, has permeated throughout the entire organization.”
Relationships at the high school level
High school coaches across the country are noticing Freeman’s style, too.
Jason Jewel is in his sixth year as head coach at Brophy College Preparatory, a private Jesuit high school in Phoenix. When Kelly’s staff recruited cornerback Benjamin Morrison out of Brophy in the 2022 class, Jewel says he had minimal contact with the coaching staff.
It’s not uncommon now for programs to work outside of a prospect’s high school coach. But when Notre Dame began recruiting 2025 Brophy cornerback commit Cree Thomas, Freeman showed up often and rolled deep, visiting with multiple assistant coaches each time. On one visit, Freeman made a point to seek out the school’s president, Bob Ryan, a Notre Dame alumni.
“I don’t know how much homework the previous staff had done,” Jewel said. “But you can tell Marcus and his staff pay attention to detail. They’re a little bit different.”
That Freeman and his staff are making meaningful impressions around the high school scene is no accident. Freeman honed his relationships at the high school level while rising in jobs at Ohio State, Kent State, Purdue and Cincinnati before landing at Notre Dame, and they remain at the core of everything he and the Irish are about on the recruiting trail in 2024.
“I think the better relationships we have with high school coaches, the more honest conversations we can have,” Freeman said. “Will this person fit at Notre Dame? Not Notre Dame just the university, but also the football program and what we want. And I think the relationships with high school coaches are so valuable.”
Hawaii’s Punahou High School has become a football pipeline to Notre Dame, with Manti Te’o and Marist Liufau among the schools’ most prominent shared alums. Sophomore Irish linebacker Kahanu Kia is a more recent Punahou-to-Notre Dame story. Next fall, his brother Ko’o will join the program as a three-star linebacker in the 2025 class.
Their father, Nate Kia, is the head coach at Punahou. He knew Freeman first as his older son’s position coach. Now he sees the recruiting environment Freeman is fostering in South Bend, Indiana, from the perspective of both a coach and a parent.
“They really honed in on terms of what the value proposition of what Notre Dame brings to the table,” Kia said. “They’ve modernized things. The need to do the other stuff that topflight, prestigious football programs do. But underlying all of that, the staff do a great job of making sure you understand that this place has a heart and that it is different from other places.”
Recruiting infrastructure
Upon replacing Kelly in 2021, Freeman took immediate steps to expand the program’s recruiting infrastructure, increasing the size of his recruiting staff from six to 10 people, according to a source.
That group includes Bowden, now the program’s general manager. A reshuffling of the program’s recruiting staff earlier this summer saw promotions for Zaire Turner (director of player personnel) and Carter Auman (assistant general manager), while Caleb Davis has returned to Notre Dame in a director of recruiting role.
Freeman has also assembled a coaching staff of skilled recruiters communicating a common vision. Sources within the program and across the high school ranks note Mickens and offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock among the program’s top recruiters, with quarterbacks coach Gino Guidugli, defensive line coach Al Washington and linebackers coach Max Bullough also leaving strong impressions in recruiting.
ESPN has also confirmed that Notre Dame is set to add Pro Football Focus analyst Anthony Treash to its staff, another move toward modernizing the program’s approach to talent evaluation.
“Marcus, and how much he believes in digging in, he makes sure he’s the voice of our whole recruiting effort,” said Denbrock, who returned to Notre Dame this offseason after two seasons with Kelly at LSU.
Shifting attitudes around NIL proved to be one of Freeman’s early challenges in his role at Notre Dame.
With Freeman pushing from within the program, that environment has changed, particularly over the past year-plus. The Friends of the University of Notre Dame, a third-party collective led by former Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn, has been critical across the past two recruiting cycles. Former football director of player personnel Dave Peloquin now carries a “strategic initiatives” title, guiding the school’s overall NIL efforts from within the athletic department.
“I can tell you there was a time that people on campus weren’t sure of what that model was going to be and whether that was in line with the mission of the university,” Polian said. “That’s changing.”
Closing the gap
While the operation around Notre Dame recruiting has evolved under Freeman, the base of the program’s recruiting foundation has remained the same.
Among the nation’s elite prospects, the Irish have historically targeted recruits from private and Catholic schools, many with regional ties to the program. Recent NFL draft picks Kyle Hamilton and Joe Alt, for instance, fit the profile of player Notre Dame often identifies and commits heavily to recruiting. Across the 2023 and 2024 classes, the Irish inked 22 players from Catholic or private school programs. In 2025, the program holds commitments from 13 more.
“We’ve got to win maybe a higher percentage of battles for the ones that actually are a really good fit here and make sure that those guys are a part of what we’re doing,” Denbrock said.
Under Kelly, the Irish leaned on their traditional recruiting hotbeds, but at the heart of Notre Dame’s 2012 national runner-up team were defensive linemen Stephon Tuitt and Louis Nix. Tuitt arrived in South Bend from a public high school in Monroe, Georgia; the Irish recruited Nix from William M. Raines, a historically Black high school in Jacksonville, Florida.
Freeman, over the course of his tenure in charge at Notre Dame, has pledged to diversify the program’s recruiting base, pulling from the perennial hot spots while branching out to find talent in other parts of the country. In a podcast appearance earlier this year, Freeman emphasized the importance of appealing to “young people that don’t realize they are Notre Dame kids, but they are.”
Shuler, the sophomore safety who will feature prominently in Notre Dame’s secondary this fall, is one example of a player Freeman pulled in from outside the program’s traditional base.
Shuler emerged in the 2023 class as a four-star prospect at Irvington High School, situated outside Newark, New Jersey. He held offers from major SEC and Big Ten programs, and while Shuler fielded calls from Alabama, Georgia and Penn State, his high school coach, Ashley Pierre, turned to a relationship born years earlier while Freeman was an assistant at Cincinnati.
Soon, Notre Dame was recruiting Shuler, and Freeman was boarding a flight to New Jersey.
“I think he can relate to people from all walks of life,” Pierre said of Freeman. “I think that’s what makes him special. It’s what makes him different from a lot of head coaches across the country.”
In the 2024 cycle, Freeman ventured into less familiar territory to land running backs Kedren Young (Lufkin, Texas) and Aneyas Williams (Hannibal, Missouri). Among the players committed to Notre Dame’s 2025 class, Knight, the quarterback from Lucedale, Mississippi, and running back Bryan Anderson (Bryant, Arkansas) represent two more examples of Freeman’s willingness to expand Notre Dame’s recruiting footprint.
The Irish’s 2025 class ranks 10th in ESPN’s latest rankings for the 2025 cycle with pledges from five ESPN 300 defenders and a pair of the nation’s top-25 offensive lineman. Freeman’s latest class took a hit earlier this summer when four-star cornerback Ivan Taylor flipped his pledge to Michigan. Knight, the No. 2 dual-threat quarterback in the 2025 class, has been linked heavily with a flip to Auburn. But reinforcements could arrive after a slow summer with the Irish in the mix for top-100 linebackers Madden Faraimo and Nathaniel Owusu-Boateng and Notre Dame still chasing depth at wide receiver and on the defensive line.
Late flips and NIL-related recruiting losses will remain among the challenges Freeman and the Irish face. As it has at times on the field over the past decade and a half, Notre Dame remains a step behind the nation’s mightiest powers in the SEC and Big Ten. Per ESPN rankings, Notre Dame has signed just one top-five class since 2010.
In Freeman, however, the Irish have a leader working ferociously and diligently to close the gap.
“You search coast to coast,” Freeman said. “All 50 states … For us, I’ve said it: Let’s go anywhere.”