Welcome to Irish Illustrated's tracking the trail.

I'm Drew Mentock, joined by our Notre Dame recruiting

officiator Eric Thomas.

We're bringing back our recruiting podcast for the early signing period,

which has effectively become the new signing day for the Fighting Irish.

According to 24-7 sports composite rankings,

Notre Dame owns the nation's fourth best class of 2026.

If it holds, it would be the program's highest-rated crop of recruits

since they finished second in 2008, oddly enough the year I graduated high school.

Of course, the 2020-26 class is headlined by a trio of 24-7 sports

five stars, Ed Rushor Ronnie Dunham, tight-end Ian Premier, and safety Joe, Joey O'Brien.

Overall, there are 14 top two, four-seven prospects, and the Irish are the only powerful team

without a decommitment this cycle. Eric, I know a lot of blood, sweat, and tears irish are the only powerful team without a decommitment this cycle eric i know a lot of

blood sweat and tears went into putting this together this needle moving class what's your big

picture take of this class in neuradiam's recruiting operation that put it together yeah it's uh

this is pretty much without question the best best signing class Notre Dame has had in the

internet era. When you look at this class top to bottom, what really stands out to me is one,

you obviously have like the top end, high end, five star, top 100 talent and everything, but

two, kind of related to a point that I think it was Mike

Martin said in the press conference, Notre Dame didn't settle for any of the prospects on their

board. They didn't find themselves having to go down to, you know, the bottom of their board

with guys that they know have warts and they're kind of looking at it as like, okay, what's the

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