Welcome to the Irish Illustrated Insider podcast. I'm your host Eric Thomas from Irish

Illustrated. And joining me today is Tom Loy, our esteemed recruiting insider, our esteemed

recruiting expert from 247 sports. Tom, how you doing today, brother? Doing great. Eric,

always a pleasure, man. Always good to catch up with you and obviously talk Notre Dame football, man. It's always fun. Absolutely, man. Well, hey, it's great. Eric, always a pleasure, man. Always good to catch up with you and obviously talk Notre Dame football, man. It's always fun.

Absolutely, man. Well, hey, it's great to have you on. And we're going to do something a little bit different than the usual insider stuff today. We're going to be focusing entirely on recruiting. And we thought it would be a great opportunity with signing day just passed. We're kind of getting into the flow of the 2027 off season. We thought it would be a good time to kind of put the final touches on that

hall of talent that just signed and many of cases enrolled at Notre Dame. So we'll kind of kick

it off with the guys who just got on campus here and some of those names. I want to start with

the defense, Tom. When I look at this Notre Dame 2026 class, the very first thing that

catches my eye is that elite talent at the top of the class on the defensive side of the ball.

Obviously, you got guys at five-star Rodney Dunham, you got three top 100 defensive backs.

When you're kind of looking at, you know, that top end talent, that top shelf in this class,

what jumps to mind about the bona fide playmakers that are coming to South Bend?

I mean, Rodney Dunham is one of my, was one of my favorite prospects in the entire 26th recruiting class.

I mean, he was, we obviously did his commitment with 24-7 sports and CBS sports. I got to go down to Myers Park High School,

Charlotte, North Carolina, and just kind of get around him and his family and the coaching

staff down there. It's just fun to see how much love everybody had for Roddy Dunham. I mean,

we were for a while an outlier,

an outlier when it came to his recruitment. We named him a five star. We named him one of the

top players in the entire country. And you get around him and you just knew like this is a Notre Dame

kid all the way. He just checks every box for the type of prospect that Marks Freeman, Mike Martin, and the rest of the

guys at Notre Dame are looking for in recruiting. So the kid is incredibly talented, a special,

special prospect. He looks the part. Would have loved to see him in like a postseason all-star game,

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