Notre Dame Football: What will 2021 tight end Mitchell Evans bring to South Bend?

On Friday afternoon, the Notre Dame football program did what it has done so many times before — added a talented tight end.

Notre Dame football has landed 2021 tight end from Ohio, Mitchell Evans. Evans was able to get to campus a few weekends ago and walk around with his family to take in what Notre Dame has to offer. He did that and really didn’t want to wait much longer to announce his decision.

Pittsburgh seemed to pique his interest for a bit the past week or so, but in the end I don’t think they would have ever overtaken the Irish for his pledge here. Evans comes from an athletic family and also a high academic one. He’s extremely smart and truly fits what the Irish are all about, both on the field and off.

Getting a nice head start on his relationships with the staff and also keeping in communication with the current commits really helped here. The circumstances right now aren’t ideal, but at the end of the day he wanted to pull the trigger and saw himself in South Bend for his college career. At the moment, Evans holds 24 offers from Michigan State, Florida State and Harvard among other big schools.

What will Mitchell Evans bring to South Bend?

The 6’7,” 240-pound tight end is going to bring size, there is no question about it. Evans is a pretty unique prospect headed to South Bend because he has the frame and skill set to eventually make a position change to offensive line, which the staff is also intrigued about. I think if you see a noticeable weight gain in the coming months, they are obviously leaning toward the position move, but Evans is a very athletic kid and if he continues to work at tight end and gets a little quicker, he could be an unbelievable matchup nightmare for every single team Notre Dame will have on their schedule.

It’s not only in the passing game where Evans will be an asset. Evans is very physical and has a willingness to block, which a lot of tight ends aren’t as fond of. He really has all the tools and is someone who I personally would go all in at tight end with. At the end of the day, though, he has endless possibilities with his size and athletic combination so he’s absolutely someone that should be really fun to follow over the next several months and really throughout his college career.

With Evans making it public, the Irish now have 15 commitments in 2021 — eight on offense and seven on defense. Evans will be joining Cane Berrong in the tight end room this class, which should definitely finish up the tight end recruiting. They will continue evaluating guys in 2022 of course but in all honesty, they could be done with tight end recruiting for quite a while because they just got their 2022 guy in Jack Nickel earlier this week. We will just have to wait and see how the season plays out.

Tight ends coach John McNulty has done a really good job here getting ahead of the game, locking in his guys and now will likely have a lot more focus on the guys that are on the current roster at the moment, which is a big benefit seeing he’s new to the staff this year. “Tight End U” continues it’s strong run and don’t plan on that stopping anytime soon.