We are heading into day five of the transfer portal, and Notre Dame still does not have a single commitment. We keep refreshing the twitter machine and snooping around, and it’s not just that there have been no commitments for Notre Dame — it’s that the players they have targeted keep cancelling visits to South Bend. It’s their loss as South bend in January is glorious.
All it does is make mne continually think of PANDA WATCH as I yell at the screen to C’MON — DO SOMETHING!
I’m not here to try and
tell you to calm down. If you’re overly worked up over this, there’s nothing I can say that will change your mind. I do, however, want to express my thoughts on what might be happening, and yes… I might even have a dash of sunshine and a sprinkle of rainbows to sell you.
I’m not as upset as some of you (and it’s okay to be upset) but I’m looking at this slightly differently.
WHO’S OFF THE LIST?
Of the targets that were still on the list Monday morning, these guys are out:
Wake Forest DT Mateen Igirogba — Not visiting
Rutgers WR Ian Strong — Committed to Cal
Central Florida DT Horace Lockett — Staying at UCF
Tulsa TE Brody Foley — Not visiting (ND decision)
WHO’S ON THE LIST?
This leaves a handful of players:
Iowa State WR/KR Xavier Townsend
Penn State DT Xavier Gilliam
Michigan State DE Jalen Thompson
Mercer QB Braden Atkinson
Utah DE John Henry Daley
Notre Dame’s biggest portal needs were 2 DT, Boundary WR, and Kicker. Of the 4 needs, only one player left fits the mold.
THE WR THING
With Marsh and Strong headed elsewhere, there are no names that jump out as targets for the Irish. To be honest… Notre Dame might be fine. Of course I would have took Nick Marsh and/or Ian Strong, but I’m not scared for CJ Carr to throw to a 2 deep that looks like:
Boundary: Micah Gilbert / Cam Williams
Field: Jaden Greathouse / Logan Saldate
Slot: Jordan Faison / Elijah Burress
TE: Ty Washington / Cooper Flanagan
Throw in a little help (maybe) from freshmen WR Devin Fitzgerald and TE Ian Premer, and I’m thinking this can work. In 2025 Malachi Fields caught 36 balls for 630 yards and 5 touchdowns, and that can be replicated with bodies on hand.
THE DT THING
This isn’t as neat as the issue at wide receiver. Notre Dame was really looking for two starters at DT in the portal — or at least we think they were. The lack of targets say something else. Igirogba for sure, but Gilliam was just a freshman last season and it’s hard to really say what impact he will have despite him being ranked as the 3rd overall DT in the portal.
Only one of the top four on Notre Dame’s depth chart can possibly return and that’s Jason Onye. With Onye, we have to wait for the NCAA’s decision on a waiver, and that seems like a coin flip. Is the staff higher on the rest of the roster than we are? Maybe. Is there optimism with the Charlie Partridge hire in which we should expect better play across the defensive line? Maybe.
Honestly, I don’t know what Notre Dame is doing here, but I will say that the portal isn’t really offering a long list of guys to get excited about either.
THE KICKER THING
Notre Dame is going to get a kicker, and I have no idea who it will be — but it will be a kicker.
WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?
Why has this transfer portal season been so rough for Notre Dame? There are plenty of theories out there, but I think it’s a combination of several different things.
Retention is important. This is a team, after all, that should have been in the college football playoff. For all of Notre Dame fans’s moaning about the last few days, it’s not like Notre Dame LOST much to the portal. Retention is also expensive. Whereas some of the teams making big splashes in the portal have room and extra cash, Notre Dame is in a different place.
The Irish signed the #2 recruiting class in the country with a total of 29 players. That’s not cheap either. So what we’re really seeing is a portal market that is likely insanely over the top (like paying Sorsby 5 million) coupled with players that are, essentially, overvalued. Teams that aren’t as highly leveraged as Notre Dame is right now are swooping in with big numbers, and the Irish refuse to overpay.
Maybe they should — but they aren’t. Maybe they should have been opoen for visits right away — but they didn’t.
While the portal is really important some years, other years it doesn’t have to be. Maybe, for the Irish, it’s more of the latter. I think we all convinced ourselves Notre Dame would go all out in the portal like they did with the 2026 recruiting class, and now that we have seen it to maybe not be the case… it is now a philosophical debate.
After the way the end of the season went down, Notre Dame fans were looking to flex hard during the portal window for 2026’s run, and that isn’t happening. Maybe something changes over the next week, and we all look silly. Maybe the 2026 season turns out to be a failure, and we can circle right back to this portal window as a reason why.
I still choose to believe this roster is still one of the best in the country (if we have a kicker). While the portal window has been tough to understand, and deal with, I don’t think this is as much of a disaster (so far) as what it may look like. Someone is going to be right and someone is going to be wrong, but that still doesn’t change math or economic realities.
