Notre Dame Football: Ranking 2020’s most impactful players 25-21
By Jack Leniart
The Slap the Sign staff has ranked the Notre Dame football players on the current roster based on who we think will have the greatest impact on the upcoming season. Here are the players that are ranked 25-21 on our list.
As we prepare for a new (and weird) Notre Dame football season, it is time to do what us bloggers love to do the most: make predictions.
The ranking of the top 25 most impactful players was started by Douglas Farmer when he was writing for NBC’s Inside the Irish blog. It involved a number of Notre Dame media outlets and blogs, each one submitting a ballot with their rankings. All of those ballots were then totaled to determine the final top 25.
Douglas has since moved on from Inside the Irish, but our writers at Slap the Sign wanted to continue the tradition and pay homage to him. For this year’s rankings, five of our writers submitted ballots that counted towards the final rankings.
We are not ranking the players based on their talent or skill. We are ranking them based on who we think will have the greatest impact during the 2020 season. In other words: who will help Notre Dame win games this season.
Our countdown started with the seven Notre Dame football players who earned honorable mention on our list. To earn honorable mention, players had to appear in the top 25 on at least one ballot.
Those seven players were: Isaiah Foskey, Chris Tyree, Jordan Genmark-Heath, Jayson Ademilola, Jack Lamb, Javon McKinley, and Isaiah Pryor.
Now, we enter the top 25. The first five players on this year’s list represent five different positions. They include a senior with three years of playing experience, a key special teams’ player, and three players from the 2018 recruiting class who will all face stiff competition for playing time this season.