Notre Dame Football: Irish Lands Four-Star Georgia Linebacker

Notre Dame football kept its recent recruiting momentum adding their 21st overall commit (and 12th on defense) to the class of 2019.

Notre Dame football landed its second recruit in the past week, this time landing 2019 Georgia linebacker JD Bertrand, who de-committed from Georgia a little over a month ago.

Bertrand was on campus visiting during the Pittsburgh and Florida State games, showing how much interest he had in joining the Irish. Bertrand is also good friends with current Irish safety commits KJ Wallace and Kyle Hamilton, who have known each other for years. It’s a huge positive that Notre Dame has been recruiting Georgia extremely well the past couple recruiting classes, with Bertrand now being the third in the 2019 class.

Bertrand currently has 17 offers from the likes of Florida, Wisconsin, LSU, and Florida State among others. One thing that might interest everyone is Bertrand supposedly doesn’t have an “official” offer yet from the Irish, at least from what the national media has been saying. Obviously we don’t know the details of the situation and, who knows, he could have an offer in his pocket and it was just never made public, but what matters is he’s going to be Irish and he’s a really good football player. Great get for defensive coordinator Clark Lea.

What will Bertrand bring to Notre Dame?

The 6’1, 220-pound linebacker is top notch when it comes to instincts and his football IQ. He’s not the tallest, but he makes it up with his knowledge of the game. If you’re looking for someone to compare him to, I’ll throw out former Notre Dame linebacker Joe Schmidt. Bertrand has more athleticism than Joe, but he’s pretty similar when it comes to the instincts of the game. Looking at his film, Bertrand seems to be a pretty hard-nose player who can also move with good speed and quickness getting to the ball. Putting that all together, you can’t really ask for more when describing what you want at linebacker.

Now that Bertrand has joined the class, the Irish have 21 commits with 12 being on the defense and 9 on the offensive side of the ball. Bertrand will be joining recent linebacker commit Marist Liufau, along with Osita Ekwonu and Jack Kiser at the linebacker position.