Los Angeles Chargers select former Notre Dame CB Cam Hart in fifth round of 2024 NFL Draft
After injuries derailed or prematurely ended multiple seasons for Notre Dame cornerback Cam Hart, he finally put it together with a career year in 2023. The NFL took notice.
The Los Angeles Chargers selected Hart with the No. 140 pick in fifth round of the 2024 NFL Draft, making him the fourth former Fighting Irish player selected. Hart will rejoin Joe Alt in Southern California.
Hart was a key piece of Notre Dame’s dominant pass defense this past season, allowing 15 receptions for 137 yards on 28 targets all year. He broke up 2 passes and forced 3 fumbles, in addition to making 21 tackles.
Playing opposite projected 2025 first-round pick Benjamin Morrison, Hart anchored the No. 1 pass efficiency defense in the nation. He finished the season with an 84.2 Pro Football Focus coverage grade and an 83.3 overall defense grade, both of which represented career highs.
The ball production numbers were below Morrison’s, but make no mistake: quarterbacks just did not throw Hart’s way.
“I feel like if I’m guarding somebody, [I can] just put hands on him,” Hart said March 29 at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis. “Just knowing who you’re going against. Film study. Knowing tendencies, knowing route recognition, things like that.”
The Baltimore native was also a standout player in late January at the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Ala., playing on the National team.
At the Combine, Hart posted relative athletic score (RAS) of 9.00, which ranked No. 249 out of 2,473 cornerbacks since 1987. His elite height at 6-foot-3 and length with 33-inch arms appealed to teams, along with his top-tier explosiveness with a 90th-percentile broad jump.
Hart came to Notre Dame as a three-star wide receiver, but he switched to cornerback before his freshman year began. That season ended after three games with the first of two season-ending shoulder surgeries Hart would suffer with the Irish.
After establishing himself as a starter with a breakout season in 2021 (9 pass deflections, 2 interceptions), Hart was firmly in the draft conversation in 2022. After suffering a torn labrum that cost him his final two games and would have prevented him from participating in most of the pre-draft process, Hart returned to school.
That decision paid off.
Not only did Hart finally put it together on the field, he was also named a captain. That, he said at the Combine, is the accomplishment he was most proud of at Notre Dame. He took pride in taking Morrison and several other young players in the cornerback room under his wing.
“Notre Dame is a hard place,” Hart said. “It’s hard to fit in and get your footing at a place like Notre Dame. I made sure the young guys had an idea of what that feels like. I come from a place where it wasn’t as hard [to adjust]. The high school I went to prepared me well, but there’s some guys who didn’t get that advantage.
“I was big on relationships and making sure the young guys had an understanding of where they can go and what they can do at Notre Dame.”
Hart is the first Notre Dame cornerback drafted since Tory Pride Jr. in 2020.
