Where Notre Dame’s 2025 class ranks after JaDon Blair commitment, Ivan Taylor flip
Notre Dame is in a key stretch of its 2025 class as it looks to put the finishing touches on another potential top-10 recruiting class for head coach Marcus Freeman and Co.
From a class rankings standpoint, it’s still early in the cycle with five months to go until prospects put pen to paper and a few more prospect rankings updates to take place. But the way On3 computes its team rankings (more on that shortly) is meant to provide a more accurate picture of how good classes are regardless of the point of the cycle and despite varying sizes of commit lists.
Notre Dame has 21 commitments in the 2025 cycle, a group that currently ranks No. 6 in the country according to the Industry Ranking Football Team Recruiting Rankings. For the 2024 class, the Irish finished No. 11 in the land.
Ohio State, Alabama, Georgia, Oregon and LSU make up the current top five classes, respectively. Trailing behind the Irish to round out the top 10 are Clemson, Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Florida State.
Notre Dame gained a pledge this past Friday from Winston-Salem (N.C.) Mount Tabor’s JaDon Blair, the No. 126 overall prospect and No. 14 safety in America per the 2025 On3 Industry Ranking. A few days later, Winter Garden (Fla.) West Orange’s Ivan Taylor, the No. 59 recruit and No. 6 safety in the land, flipped his commitment from Notre Dame to Michigan.
Twelve of Notre Dame’s 21 commits rank as a four-star recruit On3 Industry Ranking, and the other nine are currently three-star prospects.
We’re less than seven months until signing day for the 2025 class, and the Irish’s class only has about four or five spots left.
The Irish’s highest-ranked commit of the class is Lucedale (Miss.) George County’s Deuce Knight, the No. 38 overall prospect and No. 7 quarterback in America per the 2025 On3 Industry Ranking. The Irish have seven top-150 overall recruits committed per the Industry Ranking.
Below is a look at the top 10 schools according to the 2025 Industry Team Recruiting Rankings, as of Thursday morning.
Understanding On3’s team rankings system
The On3 Industry Team Recruiting Ranking utilizes all four major recruiting media companies: On3, 247Sports, Rivals and ESPN.
Instead of a total points system like at Rivals, the On3 Industry Team Ranking uses a score average of the player rankings, which solves the problem of varying class sizes during the recruiting cycle. It compiles the highest-rated commits for each team up to a total based on a rolling average of current total commitments among Power Five schools.
The current average number of commits in the 2025 class used in the rankings score is 15. This means that of Notre Dame’s 21 commitments, only the 15 highest-ranked players are used for the rankings score.
To further explain that point: Notre Dame’s 21 commits have an average recruit rating of 90.11, but that is not the score used in the team ranking. Only Notre Dame’s top 15 commits are being used in the Industry Team Ranking, and the Irish’s score with that group is 91.218 — this is the number used for the class ranking, as seen in the image above.
With this model, there are no bonus points for having more commitments than other teams, and only small deductions occur when a team has fewer commitments than the rolling average. Unlike distribution (bell) curves, this model doesn’t disproportionately weight a team’s top three or four highest-rated commits and is a more accurate representation of an entire class.
