National Signing Day 2019: Brian Kelly’s Notre Dame recruiting class rankings over the last decade

Now that National Signing Day is over with, we can get to the real numbers that fans of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish concern themselves the most when it comes to recruiting... that class ranking.

Notre Dame has been remarkably steady in this regard with an average class ranking of 13 over the last decade under Brian Kelly. While this won’t sit well with those that think the Irish should finish in the top 3 each year (lol to that) it does show the Irish still get plenty of talent to work with every year,

If you’re into comparing the Irish to the Alabama Crimson Tide or Georgia Bulldogs or Ohio State Buckeyes in this regard, you’re wasting your time. It’s a different era, and although can crack the Top 5 occasionally, the days of hitting that mark year in and year out are over. If you need some cheering up after reading that, the Clemson Tigers, rarely hit that Top 5 mark either.

Notre Dame’s best recruiting year in terms of class rank was in 2013 when they finished #5. It could have been even higher, but we had the Eddie Vanderdoes situation. Within the table below, I have Kelly’s 2012 class ranked #2 even though it had the lowest ranking under his reign at #17. The class only had 17 commitments, but they had an average ranking of .9121.

2012 was also the class that had Tee Shepard, Gunner Kiel, Davonte Neal, and Will Mahone. So... recruiting is just weird. The numbers never tell the real story of each class, but for right now it’s all we have to go with.

Here are Brian Kelly’s recruiting classes at Notre Dame using the 247 Composite Team Rankings.