Iowa Football Recruiting: Illinois DL Noah Shannon Commits to Hawkeyes

The good news continues for the Iowa Hawkeyes on Independence Day. After adding a thousand yard rusher in graduate transfer James Butler from Nevada earlier in the afternoon, Iowa got a big time addition to the class of 2018 in defensive tackle Noah Shannon.

Shannon’s name may sound familiar as he’s a name that’s been on the Hawkeye radar for some time as a top target on the defensive line. However, Shannon made an unofficial to Minnesota and PJ Fleck back in early May. As he’s known to do, Fleck put on the high pressure pitch and Shannon made his verbal commitment to Minnesota before leaving Minneapolis.

It seems as though those tactics were a bit of a short term gain, long term loss for the Golden Gophers as Shannon decommitted less than three weeks later on May 28th. At that time, he re-opened his commitment, but had a top two of Iowa and Minnesota. After not attending the Hawkeyes’ recent recruiting tailgater, the conventional wisdom was he may be leaning back to Minnesota. Today, he proved the conventional wisdom wrong.

Shannon is a consensus 3-star prospect from Oswego, Illinois (the same home town, but different school as class of 2017 commit Ivory Kelly-Martin). He’s 6’2” and 300 lbs and rated as the 10th best prospect in the state of Illinois and the 43rd best defensive tackle in the country according to 247 Sports.

As for the type of player he is, think Jaleel Johnson but a little on the shorter side. Johnson is listed at 6’4” while Shannon is a full two inches shorter. But Shannon is every bit of the 300 pounds he’s listed at as a high school senior to-be. He’s big and he’s powerful at the point of attack. He’ll fit in perfectly as a defensive tackle on Iowa’s front four.

Here’s what our, uh, friends up at The Daily Gopher had to say about Shannon when he committed to them:

In Two Words - if you have to remember just two things about this player...

Quick - gets off ball quick and seems to move more like a linebacker

Strong - gets low and pushes guys around a little bit

Watching his film you see Shannon staying low, using his strength and being a quick big man. Nothing plodding about this kid who’s approaching 300 lbs.

With the addition of Shannon, Iowa’s class of 2018 is up to 10 commitments. He joins Tyler Linderbaum as defensive tackle commitments in the class. They still have offers out to Nebraska DT Bryson Williams and a few defensive ends. Given the current depth chart, I think it’s safe to assume they would take commitments from all the guys they’ve offered.

Welcome to the Hawkeye family Noah Shannon!