Is a real quarterback “competition” developing? I wouldn’t go that far…
Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman revealed that Duke transfer quarterback Riley Leonard will miss the next few weeks due to a stress fracture requiring surgery. Freeman said that the plate in Leonard’s ankle — presumably the one injured by Irish defensive tackle Howard Cross III as he strip-sacked Leonard last season — needed changing, although the prognosis was “excellent.”
Leonard transferred to South Bend following three seasons in Durham, N.C. He only played seven games due to injury last season, completing just 57.6% of his passes for 1102 yards and three touchdowns to go with 58 rushing attempts for 352 yards and four scores. Leonard’s best campaign came in 2022 when he played 13 games and completed 63.8% of his passes for 2967 yards and 20 touchdowns against six interceptions, plus 699 yards and 13 scores on the ground.
Freeman suggested that Leonard might be able to return and participate in some activities before spring ended, but that feels like a pipe dream, especially considering how important it is that Leonard makes a full recovery for the upcoming season. And on the subject of pipe dreams, let’s talk about what this means for the quarterback room moving forward.
I’ve lamented about how there was no actual quarterback competition this spring because Notre Dame isn’t dumb enough to alienate NIL donors and future potential transfers by starting any quarterback besides Leonard (injury notwithstanding, of course). But I’ll admit that this spring injury to Leonard changes the calculus for the position group… a little bit.
Rising redshirt sophomore Steve Angeli was already running with the first string this spring , much like then-incumbent Irish quarterback Tyler Buchner did last season ahead of Wake Forest transfer Sam Hartman. Of course, Angeli projects as a better QB than Buchner (based on an admittedly limited sample size), but familiarity with the offense can only keep you atop the leaderboard for so long when Leonard’s physical abilities are clearly superior. More time to impress the staff and have offensive personnel acclimate to Angeli as starter is noteworthy, but I still only see this as delaying the inevitable naming of Leonard as starter.
More important is that an injury to Leonard reinforces the message the offensive staff should be selling to Angeli: he is just one play away from becoming Notre Dame’s starting quarterback if Leonard suffers an injury during the season. So maybe this convinces Angeli to not enter the transfer portal and stay on the 2024 roster.
Beyond that, it still seems like a pipe dream that all four scholarship signal callers are on the roster when the Irish kickoff at Texas A&M. But chances have gone from none to at least slim that rising redshirt freshman Kenny Minchey — the other QB at risk of transferring, because I can’t foresee early enrollee freshman CJ Carr jumping ship — might stay on the roster even if Angeli also decides to stay. It’s still improbable, but Minchey will get more of a chance to develop with second-string reps in practice and that could be the positive reinforcement he needs to stick it out until he gets a shot at starting in 2025.
At the very least, we shouldn’t have a situation like the 2022 spring game where Buchner sat out with an ankle injury and former Notre Dame quarterback Drew Pyne was all-time QB for the first half of play. All reports out of spring practice so far have been very (some might say, knee-jerkingly) optimistic about the capability of all the scholarship quarterbacks currently on Notre Dame’s roster. That’s all well and good, but we won’t know for sure until they’re under live fire in College Station.