Al Washington Leads The Way For Notre Dame's First-Year Coaches
Recruiting prowess can make or break a great coaching staff, especially in this ever evolving NIL world. Coaching is always the baseline and most important criteria for a great staff. Recruiting impact, however, can't be understated, and head coach Marcus Freeman made it a priority for his new staff.
So far his new hires have paid huge dividends in Notre Dame's quest to secure the top ranked class in the 2023 recruiting cycle.
There might not be an assistant on a hotter trajectory than defensive line coach Al Washington, who has secured three of the program's last four commitments from the staff, including the first commitment in the 2024 class with Brandon Davis-Swain. Washington, who was a proclaimed recruiter while a part of the Ohio State program, walked into the building with a couple of Top 100 recruits on the defensive line with five-star Keon Keeley and Brenan Vernon.
The biggest task was maintaining those commitments, especially with Keeley, who is being pursued by programs like Alabama, Ohio State and Florida among many others. That success has continued in 2023 with commitments from Boubacar Traore and Devan Houstan. With those four commitments, the 2023 defensive line class is on the verge of something special.
Traore landing with the Irish was something that had been speculated since even before he officially decommited. When he did make that decision, it seemed like it was Notre Dame's recruitment to lose. That shouldn't, however, undersell the job Coach Washington did to close the deal.
The Houstan recruitment had been an interesting recruitment as a whole. There was always obvious interest with the Notre Dame program but things seemed to go quiet for a couple months after Washington was hired. With Houstan having ties to the Michigan, somehow the Irish staff was able to close on the 6-5, 275-pound defender despite not making it back to campus since January.
Washington deserves a lot of credit for that.
No matter what defensive line recruit you talk to, Washington is quickly mentioned as a key factor to what makes Notre Dame special, which is a huge compliment despite a short stint with the program thus far. If you talk to Davis-Swain (who already liked the program), he went as far as to say that "Coach Wash solidified everything for him."
It is already a great class in 2023 but it has a chance to vault into the elite category if they can close on Hyattsville (Md.) DeMatha Catholic star Jason Moore. Closing on Moore would be a huge statement from Washington, who has already asserted himself as a dominant recruiter on the trail. If he can close the way people believe then he has a chance to pull in the top defensive line class in the 2023 cycle overall.
It is hard to argue that any new hire has had a bigger impact on the 2023 class than Washington. His recruiting prowess was well known before landing in South Bend but he has done nothing but solidified that.
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