Notre Dame Football Recruiting: The Irish and their 5-Star quarterback situation

Notre Dame’s recruitment of 5-Star quarterback Dante Moore has taken on a life of its own. It’s not just that the best route to becoming an elite team is by recruiting 5-Star skill talent, but because this is Marcus Freeman’s first cycle as the head coach of the Fighting Irish. It’s kind of like a referendum on the hire itself — can he do what Brian Seemingly could not?

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For the past 4 months, there has been an extremely high level of optimism about Moore, with some even speculating that Moore has already given a silent commitment. During this time, however, Moore has done very little to publicly reinforce this speculation about a silent commitment — or even that Notre Dame is the leader. It’s been a paradox of sorts as the Irish basically stopped recruiting ANY 2023 QB while Moore racked up visits to see the Miami Hurricanes, Michigan Wolverines, Oregon Ducks, LSU Tigers, and a scheduled trip to see what the Texas A&M Aggies have to offer. To be confident in the Irish eventually landing Moore meant that you considered him a silent commitment — because all of the other signs said anywhere but Notre Dame (but also not Ann Arbor lol).

A week ago I published a piece that questioned Notre Dame’s need for Dante Moore. Some thought it to be absolutely absurd to pose such a question, but the real possibility of success for Tyler Buchner made it necessary to ask — and it wasn’t all about Buchner either. Buchner success plus an elite QB commitment for the 2024 class meant a diminished need for Moore — especially if Buchner is both successful and returning for his senior year in 2024.

The question, it seems, is also taking on a life of its own.

A huge piece of that discussion was about 2024 5-Star quarterback C.J. Carr. At the time the story was published, Carr was predicted to be a Notre Dame commit by the 247 Crystal Ball and national expert, Steve Wiltfong. On Sunday, another Crystal Ball prediction was cast, and this time it was from Tom Loy.

This, of course, created a lot of excitement by fans of the Irish, and disappointment by fans of the Skunkbears. It also really started to make certain things a reality — with the major point being that Dante Moore is slipping away.

While all of that is certainly cause for concern (with Moore), there was more news on Tuesday that still created a lot of positive vibes. Shortly after Carr’s time at the Irish Invasion event at Notre Dame, it was announced that he will make his public commitment on Thursday this week.

It doesn’t take Madame Blavatsky like powers to read the tea leaves here... we should probably expect C.J. Carr — the grandson of Lloyd Carr — to commit to Notre Dame this week.

This doesn’t HAVE to mean the Irish are out for Dante Moore, but it does mean that Notre Dame probably isn’t going to sign Moore in the 2023 cycle (if that makes sense).

We can debate about what a Carr commitment may or may not mean for both the 2023 and 2024 class later this week if things go our way — but for now I think many of you can take solace in a few things:

• Marcus Freeman and Tommy Rees are dead serious about signing 5-Star quarterbacks and will continue to recruit their asses off.
• The up and down saga of Dante Moore’s recruitment doesn’t need to be analyzed at every turn or half-turn.
• Your Emperor’s article about needing Moore is aging beautifully (Greg Flammang’s words — not mine).

Of course... there’s also a conversation to be had about the possibility of re-classifying and all of that noise, but let’s not get too ahead of ourselves. Notre Dame has a situation involving two 5-Star Quarterbacks across two classes — which is something we haven’t seen in quite a while.