Notre Dame offers two more legacy recruits on Pot of Gold Day

On3 imageby:Patrick Engel03/18/23

PatrickEngel_

Two of the nearly 70 offers Notre Dame sent out Friday on Pot of Gold Day went to legacy recruits. One of them has a widely recognized last name. Both have fathers who starred for the Irish as teammates before playing in the NFL.

Notre Dame offered 2025 Atlanta Woodward Academy wide receiver Jerome Bettis Jr., the son of Pro Football Hall of Famer Jerome Bettis. It also sent an offer to 2025 Green Bay (Wisc.) Notre Dame De La Baie tight end James Flanigan, the son of ex-Irish defensive tackle Jim Flanigan.

Those offers doubled the list of legacies Notre Dame is pursuing in the 2024 and 2025 cycles. The Irish offered 2024 Charlotte Christian four-star EDGE Bryce Young, whose father, Bryant, played defensive tackle for Notre Dame from 1990-93 and for the San Francisco 49ers from 1994-2007. He is also in the Hall of Fame. Notre Dame also previously offered 2024 Rancho Santa Margarita (Calif.) Santa Margarita Catholic four-star athlete Emmett Mosley V, the son of 1993-96 wide receiver Emmett Mosley IV.

Notre Dame is considered the leader to land Young and Mosley, according to the On3 Recruiting Prediction Machine. Young is the No. 331 player in the 2024 On3 Industry Ranking, and Mosley No. 260.

Bettis Jr. also has offers from Arkansas, Missouri, Boston College, Marshall and UAB. He is currently unranked. He has visited Notre Dame multiple times as a recruit.

“One of the first things they wanted me to know is that they wanted to build a genuine connection with me and not necessarily build off my father,” Bettis told On3 in February. “It was really just about the importance of building my own legacy. That’s important to me. They made sure that I could do that there and not be in my father’s shadow and take my own path.”

Flanigan, also unranked, hold offers from Penn State, Missouri and Wisconsin. He also plays forward for his school’s hockey team.

The elder Bettis played running back for the Irish from 1990-92, was a first-round pick in the NFL Draft and ran for 13,662 yards in his pro career. He ended his 13-year NFL tenure fifth on the league’s all-time rushing list. He’s now eighth. He played for the Los Angeles Rams and the Pittsburgh Steelers, winning Super Bowl XL. He had 1,912 rushing yards and 33 total touchdowns in his Notre Dame career.

Jim Flanigan played defensive tackle for Notre Dame from 1990-93, overlapping with Bettis for three seasons. He was a third-round pick of the Chicago Bears in 1994, played 10 NFL seasons and totaled 46 sacks. He won the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award in 2000.

Notre Dame has two sons of former Irish players on its 2023 roster: junior quarterback Ron Powlus III and sophomore tight end Eli Raridon. Ron Powlus was a four-year starting quarterback at Notre Dame from 1994-97, and Scott Raridon Jr. was a long snapper from 2002-05. Sophomore linebacker Nolan Ziegler is the grandson of former Irish linebacker and 1973 national champion Tim Sullivan.

You may also like