Phil Steele's annual preseason magazine, the self-proclaimed "most accurate magazine over the last 36 years," released its preseason All-American teams earlier this week. Four Notre Dame football players made the team, with Leonard Moore and Jeremiyah Love on the first team and Drayk Bowen and Malachi Fields on the fourth team.
Steele is one of the few people who even bothers with a fourth team All-American list, but perhaps that's why he manages to be so accurate. He looks deeply at every school and every position and doesn't take anything for granted.
Love and Moore being on the first team is hardly a surprise. The Notre Dame football running back broke out during his sophomore campaign last fall, finishing the season as the only Football Bowl Subdivision player to score a rushing touchdown in every regular-season game. He then had eyeballs popping out of their heads all over the country when he logged one incredible feat after another in the playoffs.
Notre Dame football lands Leonard Moore and Jeremiyah Love on Phil Steele’s first-team All-America
4️⃣ Phil Steele Preseason All-American Selections 🇺🇸☘️#GoIrish☘️ pic.twitter.com/f9W1G6TpfA
— Notre Dame Football (@NDFootball) July 10, 2025
Moore is also coming off his own breakout 2024 season, during which he became the FWAA Freshman Defensive Player of the Year and received numerous Freshman All-America team designations.
Last fall, the 6-foot-4, 220-pound Fields snagged 55 catches for 808 yards and five touchdowns. Following the regular season, he was named the Cavaliers' Offensive Player of the Year and third-team All-ACC. He transferred to Notre Dame over the winter and has become a name that oddly gets forgotten too often, and simultaneously has landed on several lists of players to watch in 2025.
Finally, Bowen, like Love and Moore, broke out in the Fighting Irish's march to the National Championship game. This spring and summer, new defensive coordinator Chris Ash repeatedly sung Bowen's praises. The linebacker is expected to be a leader of the Golden Domers' revamped defense.
Should all four Notre Dame football stars put up the kind of season Phil Steele expects of them, 2025 could be another outstanding season under the watchful eye of head coach Marcus Freeman.