Notre Dame 2025 wide receiver recruiting enters disastrous territory, quickly running out of options
2025 wide receiver recruiting for Notre Dame has been an absolute disaster, and it got more bad news on Monday when Cibolo (Texas) Steele star Jalen Cooper announced that he was sticking with his commitment to SMU. Cooper had previously visited South Bend for the team’s matchup against Stanford a couple of weekends ago, and […]
2025 wide receiver recruiting for Notre Dame has been an absolute disaster, and it got more bad news on Monday when Cibolo (Texas) Steele star Jalen Cooper announced that he was sticking with his commitment to SMU. Cooper had previously visited South Bend for the team’s matchup against Stanford a couple of weekends ago, and things had seemingly been trending in a great direction. Unfortunately, their efforts weren’t enough in the end.
This is just the latest wide receiver recruiting blunder in the 2025 class for wide receivers coach Mike Brown. In the preseason, the team had gone 0-3 in recruiting battles, losing Dylan Robinson to Washington, Tanook Hines to USC, and Derek Meadows to LSU. After those losses, the Notre Dame staff was forced to reevaluate, and expand the board.
Things looked like they were off to a strong start this season, gaining a commitment from Greenville (Ga.) High School athlete Antavious Richardson, who was previously committed to South Florida. Alabama was also a prominent school who was attempting to flip Richardson, who is now considered a four-star player on the 247Sports Composite ranking.
While Richardson was a nice start to the new board, Notre Dame still needs another wide receiver, maybe two depending how things finish up. There were two big names on the board that people knew about. One was Cooper, and the other is Orlando (Fla.) Boone standout Isaiah Mizell, who is currently committed to Arizona.
Things are still in a good spot with Mizell, but the staff missing out on Cooper now makes their margin for error really small. The other big area of concern with that miss is that the Irish don’t have a wide receiver in the 2025 class that you can depend on coming in and earning playing time early on. Mizell brings big time speed to the table if you can flip him, but he needs some serious physical development before you can expect him to contribute.
Richardson, although a talented athlete, is also more of a long term investment. He currently plays quarterback and defensive back for Greenville, so his impact as a wide receiver is a pure guess at this point. It’s pretty unreasonable to expect him to come in on day one and contribute as well.
Notre Dame also holds commitments from Elijah Burress and Jerome Bettis Jr., neither of which look like early contributors right now. Burress is having a productive senior season but betting on a 175-pound pass catcher who runs in the 4.6s is a choice, but one I wouldn’t make very often. Bettis is also having his best year, but is still averaging less than 50 yards per game for Woodward Academy.
While it’s too early to fully sound the panic button for Coach Brown and his recruiting, antennas should absolutely start to be raised. With the recent miss of Cooper, that makes him now 1-5 on wide receivers he was trying to close on. Until the wide receivers take a drastic step forward on the field, those questions surrounding talent acquisition are going to be asked, and they should be.
Even if Notre Dame closes on Mizell, I’d argue they still need to find one more wide receiver in the class. Common sense says they will probably stop at four, but that does feel like it would be a mistake. How this team closes will tell the full story, but as of now, it hasn’t been great at wide receiver.
