Notre Dame Football: Michael Mayer will be next great Irish tight end

Michael Mayer is entering his sophomore season with Notre Dame football and he’s about to be the program’s next great tight end.

If there’s one thing Notre Dame is known for, it would have to be producing elite tight ends.

Not only has Brian Kelly produced some elite tight ends, but it goes back even before him. Right now in the NFL, though, are guys like Cole Kmet, Alize Mack, Tyler Eifert, Durham Smythe and Kyle Rudolph. That’s five tight ends and a few of them have had serious impacts in the league while a couple of others have only been in the NFL for a couple of seasons and could be stars.

And now there’s another star coming through the program and he could even end up as the best of the bunch listed above: Michael Mayer.

The 6-foot-4, 232-pound tight end from Kentucky was a five-star prospect in the 2020 recruiting class and he was ranked No. 32 according to the composite. He was the second-best tight end in his class and showed why he was so highly-regarded as a recruit with a 450-receiving yard freshman year. He also had 42 catches and two touchdowns.

It’s pretty clear that he’s the next elite tight end to come through the program and Notre Dame still gets to squeeze two more years out of him.

Mayer looks the part and has even earned the nickname “Baby Gronk” from those inside the program and it’s hard to argue that he doesn’t deserve it. He is built like a truck, runs great routes, has soft, strong hands and it seems like the only way to bring him down is by taking out his legs.

This dude is the real deal and he’s still relatively unknown around the country.

I wouldn’t be shocked if he was a top-three tight end in college football by the end of the 2021 season and I would be less shocked if he was talked about as the 2023 NFL Draft’s top tight end prospect.

Notre Dame is an absolute tight end factory.