Notre Dame football: 10 best players to play in the NFL this past decade

Notre Dame football has put elite talent into the NFL over the past decade after a hiatus from doing so, we examine the top 10 players to do so this decade.

Notre Dame football has long been a blue-chip program in college football, churning out elite NFL talent throughout the years. With 13 former NFL players elected to the NFL Hall of Fame, Notre Dame has the most of any other college football program in history.

Names like Jerome Bettis, Tim Brown, Paul Hornung, and Joe Montana will long be remembered for their accolades both as part of the Notre Dame football team, as well as for their greatness on the NFL playing field.

Even though they have the most Hall of Fame players in the NFL, Notre Dame football went through a bit of a dry spell in terms of graduating elite caliber players to the NFL. From 1999-2009, the Irish only saw three players get selected in the first round of the NFL Draft. Those players were Luke Petitgout (1999), Jeff Faine (2003), and Brady Quinn (2007).

However, in 2010 there was a massive spike in Notre Dame football players being selected in the top rounds of the NFL Draft. From 2010-2019 nine former Irish players were selected in the first round of the draft. That is three times the amount that was selected in the previous decade.

It should come as no surprise that the spike coincides with the beginning of Brian Kelly’s tenure as the Notre Dame head coach. The number of Notre Dame football players that were selected in the first or second rounds of the draft since Kelly took over as head coach increased by eight over the previous decade, which is a testament to the recruiting abilities of Kelly.

With the Irish football program returning to its prior glory and becoming perennial top-25 contenders, it is easy for Notre Dame football fans to become complacent and forget how devoid of elite talent the program was prior to the arrival of Kelly. If the team isn’t in the college football playoff, many fans are calling for the dismissal of the man who resurrected the program from the ashes.

There are currently nine Notre Dame football players who are expected to receive strong consideration in the 2020 NFL Draft in April. Julian Okwara, Chase Claypool, and Cole Kmet are being mentioned as potential first-round picks this year, while Khalid Kareem, Troy Pride Jr., Alohi Gilman, Jalen Elliott, Chris Finke, and Tony Jones Jr. are expected to be drafted or selected as undrafted free agents.

With so many options to choose from, selecting the top ten former Notre Dame football players in the NFL over the past decade was a daunting task. Given their lack of sample size, last year’s draft picks Jerry Tillery, Julian Love, Miles Boykin, Drue Tranquill, Dexter Williams, and Alize Mack were excluded from this list. However, some of them appear to be well on track to becoming stars in the league.

This list was constructed of players selected from 2010 to 2018 and takes into account what they have done in the National Football League and not what they did during their time at South Bend. With that in mind, here are the top ten Notre Dame football players to play in the NFL in the past decade: