Recruiting: How Notre Dame Football moves on from Jalen McMillan

After Notre Dame football lost out on one of its bigger wide receiver targets Tuesday, where does the program go from here in the search for another wideout?

If you haven’t already heard the news, Notre Dame football lost out on 4-star wideout Jalen McMillan to the in-state Washington Huskies.

McMillan is a special talent in the 2020 class and losing him to a now recruiting rival hurts for the Irish. The recruiting curse in the state of Washington continues for Notre Dame.

Moving on from McMillan, the Irish need to land two receiver minimum to complement the newly-rated 5-star Jordan Johnson. Johnson himself provides the Irish with the ‘stud’ it needed in the receiver corps, but now it needs other guys to fill in next to him.

Here are the top targets.

Xavier Watts

Widely regarded as the player most likely to commit next to Notre Dame is the highly-touted Xavier Watts.

Hailing from Omaha, Nebraska, Watts has been a guy that the staff has been sold on since the start. His speed and athleticism made him a top-of-the-list option for the Notre Dame staff, and he has been treated as such.

Underrated as a 3-star on 247sports.com, the teams recruiting Watts know that he is much more of a 4-stat type of wide receiver.

Notre Dame’s seemingly lone competition at the moment is coming from — you guessed it — Nebraska. As the only big-time university in the state, Nebraska has done a pretty good job of keeping its athletes in-state under Scott Frost. However, Watts has been pegged by many top analysts to be coming to Notre Dame shortly, and some see it as a matter of when — not if.

If it all comes to fruition and Watts commits to play his collegiate football in South Bend, Notre Dame fans are getting a good one.

Jay Brunelle

A guy that has always had an eye for Notre Dame is Jay Brunelle.

Brunelle has been a player that the Notre Dame staff has liked since he flashed on campus, but the staff seems to be slow-playing his recruitment.

Rated as a 3-star recruit, Brunelle has made it very clear that he really likes it at Notre Dame, but the Irish are forced to play catch-up now. The Massachusetts product looked to be behind both AJ Henning and Jalen McMillan in Notre Dame’s pecking order, however now they needs to recruit him hard and fast.

The lengthy wideout took a visit to Michigan over the weekend, which is never a good sign for Notre Dame fans. Michigan already took away a target in AJ Henning this past week, and losing Brunelle as well would especially hurt.

Brunelle is the kind of underrated, high-floor guy that tends to succeed at Notre Dame and the staff is hoping to see him get the chance to do so.