Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1170354
16 SEPT. 30, 2019 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED BY ANDREW MENTOCK R ecruiting rankings can place an undue burden of expec- tations on an 18-year-old that they aren't necessarily equipped to handle. That may not be the case with the seemingly well adjusted Tommy Kraemer, Notre Dame's starting right guard, but there's no doubt that a lauded national perception in high school has clouded how Notre Dame fans see him today. There is a significant amount of variance in how different recruiting services saw Kraemer coming out of high school in 2016. ESPN rated him as the 10th-best of- fensive tackle and 99th-best player in his entire class. Rivals had him much higher, listing him No. 4 at his posi- tion and No. 41 overall. However, Kraemer's highest rank- ing was given to him by 247Sports. The recruiting service had him as a five-star recruit, and the No. 2 offen- sive tackle and No. 8 overall player in the land. And this wasn't without reason. He was also the first offen- sive lineman to be named the Ohio State Gatorade Player of the Year in almost a decade, beating out fellow Notre Dame player Liam Eichenberg and a handful of Ohio State recruits. Luckily for Kraemer, as soon as he set foot on campus he was around guys with no-nonsense work ethics like Mike McGlinchey and Quenton Nelson, which quickly helped him put all the recruiting hype behind him. "I don't really think about that stuff at all," Kraemer said. "When we got here, the older guys, Mike and Q, and everyone, they just set a standard of how to work and really block out everything else. "I think that's what we've done, and we've done a good job with that." Kraemer split time at right tackle as a sophomore with Robert Hainsey on the 2017 team that finished 10-3. Last season he was moved to right guard and started the first three games of the season before suffering an ankle injury and missing game four against Wake Forest. After being reinserted in the lineup, Kraemer was subsequently pulled after the Pittsburgh game be- cause he wasn't moving well enough. For the next two games against Navy and Northwestern, Trevor Ruhland started in his stead. "We have a lot of outside perimeter pulls, and there were times where the running back was running into me," Kraemer said. He resumed his starting role at the home finale against Florida State, but realized he was going to need to re- shape his body in the offseason. "That was the best thing for me," Kraemer said in the spring, regard- ing his two-game demotion. "Coach [Chip] Long talked to me about it, used it to fire me up, and it did … I'm happy that it happened. Last year there were definitely ups and downs and I want to make sure that never happens again." In order to accomplish this, he reshaped his body in the offseason. That didn't come from dropping weight per se, but it meant turning bad weight into muscle so that he could move like Long needs him to. "I really focused on being explo- sive on the pulls and getting on the edge," Kraemer said. But despite Kraemer 's on-the- field struggles in 2018, the publicity he garnered as a prep player never slowed down nationally. In late spring and over the summer, Kraemer began to see high praise from the media and NFL Draft ana- lysts. A 2020 NFL Mock Draft from Bleacher Report released in April had Kraemer going to the New Orleans Saints as the No. 31 overall pick. Another mock draft from Walter- Football.com at one point also listed Kraemer as a mid-first-round pick. UNFINISHED PRODUCT No matter the hype, Tommy Kraemer is committed to improving his game Kraemer was named a preseason first-team All- American by Street & Smith's, and was a second- team pick by Sporting News and the Associated Press. PHOTO BY MIKE MILLER