Clemson wide receiver Beaux Collins schedules Notre Dame visit
Notre Dame needs wide receiver help. Someone with experience at a brand name in college football could be on the way to deliver it.
Clemson’s Beaux Collins is visiting South Bend this week according to Pete Thamel of ESPN. Thamel reported Collins’ announcement of an intention to enter the portal on Nov. 30. Monday, Thamel said Collins will be at Notre Dame on Dec. 6 and 7.
Collins arrived at Clemson out of powerhouse preps program St. John Bosco High School in Los Angeles as a four-star prospect in the class of 2021. He was the No. 19 wide receiver and No. 99 overall player in the class according to the On3 Consensus Recruiting Rankings.
In three years in head coach Dabo Swinney’s program, Collins caught 91 passes for 1,290 yards and 11 touchdowns. This season, Collins had 38 receptions for 510 yards and 3 scores in a struggling Tigers offense with redshirt freshman quarterback Cade Klubnik at the helm.
Collins and Clemson faced Notre Dame twice in the last two seasons. In that pair of games against the Fighting Irish, Collins caught a combined 5 passes for 55 yards and 0 touchdowns. Notre Dame’s dominant defense put the clamps on him.
Still, Notre Dame is in a position of need, and the 6-3, 210-pound Collins would help in that regard. The Irish have seen four wide receivers enter the transfer portal in the last week. Notre Dame also fired wide receivers coach Chansi Stuckey 24 hours after head coach Marcus Freeman said he wanted all of his coaches from 2023 back on the 2024 staff.
Chris Tyree, Tobias Merriweather, Braylon James and Rico Flores Jr. were the wideouts who entered the portal. Among them, they have 10 years of eligibility remaining. Collins only has one because he played in more than four games in each of his first three seasons. One season of contributions from Collins would offset what was lost from Tyree and Flores Jr., though — the only two of the aforementioned four who really seemed poised for consistent production next fall.
Collins is taller than either of those two as well, and length at the boundary spot is something Notre Dame did not have enough of in 2023.
Notre Dame only signed one wide receiver from the transfer portal in the previous cycle. That was Kaleb Smith from Virginia Tech, and he medically retired in the middle of spring practices. If Collins comes in and is able to give it everything he’s got in one year at Notre Dame, it will be a solid pickup for the Irish.
