Where Notre Dame stands in 2023 class rankings after Keon Keeley decommitment
Notre Dame suffered a major loss to its 2023 recruiting class on Wednesday night, as Tampa (Fla.) Berkeley Prep’s Keon Keeley, the No. 11 overall player and No. 1 EDGE nationally, announced his decommitment from the Irish.
Keeley was Notre Dame’s first commitment in the 2023 class, making his pledge to the Irish back in June of 2021. But he broke his pledge and is now considered a heavy lean to Alabama per the On3 Recruiting Prediction Machine (RPM).
Notre Dame entered the week with the No. 2 class according to the 2023 On3 Consensus Football Team Recruiting Rankings. And after Keeley’s decommitment, the rankings formula has dropped Notre Dame, as one would expect.
Alabama remains at the No. 1 spot, and Georgia, Ohio State and Texas (in that order) have passed up the Irish. Notre Dame sits with the No. 5 recruiting class in the country with its 22 verbal commitments.
Notre Dame has one On3 Consensus five-star commitment in Denton (Texas) Guyer safety Peyton Bowen, another prospect who other powerhouse programs are wanting to flip from the Irish. Head Marcus Freeman has a blue-chip ratio of 91 percent for his first full recruiting class leading the Irish. Notre Dame has 19 four-star prospects and just two three-stars committed.
Below is a look at the top seven schools according to the 2023 On3 Consensus Football Team Recruiting Rankings, as of Thursday morning.
Understanding On3’s team rankings system
The On3 Consensus Team Recruiting Ranking is the only ranking that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies: On3, 247Sports, Rivals and ESPN. It equally weighs the four media companies at 25 percent.
Instead of a total points system like at Rivals, the On3 Consensus ranking uses a score average of the player rankings, and it solves the problem of varying class sizes during the recruiting cycle. It compiles the highest-rated commits for each team up to a total based on a rolling average of current total commitments among Power Five schools.
The current average number of commits used in the rankings score is 16. This means that of Notre Dame’s 22 commitments, only the 16 highest-ranked players are used for the rankings score.
To further explain that point: Notre Dame’s 22 commits have an average rating of 91.99, but that is not the score used in the ranking. With Notre Dame’s top 16 commits only being used in the On3 Consensus Team Ranking, and the Irish’s score with that group is 93.283 — and this is the number used for the class ranking, as seen in the image above.
With this model, there are no bonus points for having more commitments than other teams and only small deductions occur when a team has fewer commitments than the rolling average. Unlike distribution (bell) curves, this model doesn’t disproportionately weigh a team’s top three or four highest rated commits and is a more accurate representation of an entire class.
