The transfer portal flows both ways, though it always features the outgoing players first. Notre Dame landed its first incoming transfer on Monday evening with the commitment of Arizona State graduate transfer defensive back Jordan Clark.
Next season will be Clark’s sixth, a luxury granted by the universal pandemic eligibility waiver. The 2024-25 offseason will be the final year any players still linger in college football with that added eligibility.
Clark has appeared in 40 games in his career, including 11 last season with 50 tackles and nine passes broken up. He has 139 career tackles and 17 passes broken up with three interceptions, including one returned for a touchdown in 2022.
The Sun Devils’ passing defense struggled mightily in 2023, through little fault of Clark’s. The entire program is struggling after Herm Edwards left only turmoil in his wake, a five-year tenure that amounted to a 28-27 record and ongoing sanctions.
For context, Arizona State ranked No. 113 in the country in pass rating against, while Notre Dame ranked No. 1.
“I’m going to play in an NFL defense surrounded by some of the best players in the country,” Clark said to On3Sports.com. “Being coached by guys whose attention-to-detail is second-to-none in a building where everybody is dead set on not just getting to the Playoff, but winning.”
An underrated piece of the Irish pass defense under coordinator Al Golden this season was nickel back Thomas Harper, a graduate transfer from Oklahoma State.
Harper had 41 games of playing experience across the previous four seasons when he arrived in South Bend last winter with 132 career tackles and two interceptions. He is listed at 5-foot-10 ⅝ and 195 pounds last winter.
To repeat some earlier numbers in order to put them in direct comparison to Harper, Clark has appeared in 38 games in his last four seasons with 134 tackles and three interceptions. He is listed at 5-foot-10 and 185 pounds.
In other words, expect Clark to step right into Harper’s place at nickel back, the latter out of eligibility after the Sun Bowl against No. 19 Oregon State on Dec. 29.
And the Irish increasingly look like they will need that veteran presence in the defensive backfield. Thus far, the transfer portal has taken three reserves from Notre Dame’s secondary — junior cornerback Ryan Barnes, Rhode Island transfer safety Antonio Carter and senior safety Ramon Henderson.
Fifth-year cornerback Cam Hart is widely expected to head to the NFL with a year of eligibility remaining, as he should given his past shoulder injury history. And current senior safety Xavier Watts has an NFL decision to weigh, one perhaps influenced by winning the Bronko Nagurski Trophy on Monday night given annually to the best defensive player in college football as voted on by the Football Writers Association of America.
Marcus Freeman says he knows who will opt out of the Sun Bowl for Notre Dame, but he wants to give those players a chance to make those announcements on their own.
— Douglas Farmer (@D_Farmer) December 4, 2023
As far as competition for Clark at nickel back, that likely leaves current freshmen cornerback Christian Gray and Micah Bell, both of whom Clark has an experience edge on as well as a physicality one, the nickel back often needed to defend the run as much as the pass.