There’s always a risk in taking on the unknown. Sticking with what you know is always the safer, more comfortable choice.
It was obvious that Notre Dame needed to get out of their comfort zone at quarterback. Feeling confident in the room is one thing, but no one wants to put a ceiling on how good a team can be if they are limited at the most important position in football.
In order to raise that ceiling, the staff has made the choice to recruit a quarterback out of the portal. They did the same thing in 2021 and if they didn’t go out and get Jack Coan, they wouldn’t have won 11 games that season.
Coan didn’t rise up to make them a true championship contender, but he helped the program when things could have taken a turn in the wrong direction.
Notre Dame is looking for more than a Coan during this transfer portal window. They’d love to get a difference-maker to help elevate the offense from where they stood this past season. The question is, is that player out there right now?
Maybe or maybe not. There’s still time for players to enter the portal and the quarterback who ends up transferring in might not have declared his intentions yet. There certainly isn’t a Caleb Williams level talent out there at the moment.
He might have been the only Heisman finalist out of the group, but in addition to Williams, there were several transfer quarterbacks who were great this season. Nine of them ended up being ranked in the top-25 of ESPN’s QBR (which I prefer over pass efficiency rankings because it takes into account total actions including running ability, EPA (expected points added), and doesn’t give all the credit to the quarterback if a player catches a slant and breaks five tackles to score a touchdown).
The most interesting of that group to me are Tennessee quarterback Hendon Hooker (2nd in QBR), Oregon quarterback Bo Nix (4th), and Michael Penix Jr. (12th).
Hooker was someone who had shown several flashes at Virginia Tech and was 38th in QBR in 2020, but he was truly unlocked at Tennessee and if not for being injured at the end of the season, he’d probably be going to New York as a Heisman finalist.
Nix was a highly rated recruit who was seen as wild and inconsistent at Auburn. With some stability at Oregon, he was a different player.
Penix Jr. had some moments in 2020 as Indiana’s quarterback (43rd in QBR), but fell back down to Earth the next season. He reunited with his former coordinator Kalen DeBoer at Washington and became one of the most prolific passers in the country.
Most of the quarterbacks who are in the portal now are players that fit into the same category as those three.
Hudson Card is the former elite recruit who showed flashes at Texas, but lost the starting job to another transfer. Devin Leary is the player who put up big numbers in ‘21 at NC State, but an injury ended his season this year. Brennan Armstrong put up monster numbers at Virginia under a different offense and with better offensive linemen, but then had a miserable season with a new staff and worse blocking. DJ Uiagalelei already had the bounce back from the terrible season in ‘21, but could never win back the confidence of the staff or the fans. He needs a fresh start and a new system to see if he can be the next Nix.
Most of the players who are in the portal are there for a reason. They are looking for a better situation and Notre Dame can provide that. So can some of these other programs and there could be other blue-bloods looking as Alabama, Georgia, and Ohio State could all potentially be in the market to add a transfer quarterback. It all depends on how they feel about their current quarterbacks returning and they likely won’t have the same need to add someone like Notre Dame does.
It’s too early to say who they will bring in. We aren’t even sure who the competition will be to land them or if they’ll end up with someone not in the portal yet. What we do know is that there are very few quarterbacks in college football, either in or out of the portal, who can elevate an offense on their own. There’s less than a handful of them.
The players and the coaching staff will have to help lift up this new quarterback just as much as this new quarterback can help lift up the offense to another level.
2. With the avalanche of players entering the portal early this week, it might seem like this is going to be mostly it for transfers with a few names popping in here and there. I think there’s going to be a lot more going in after final exams this semester and when bowl games are finished.
That includes Notre Dame players. They didn’t have many jump in so far, but I’d be surprised if that doesn’t change in the next few weeks. There will be more.
Some players will make a call on where they are headed next before Christmas. There will be plenty of others, some of whom might end up at Notre Dame, who aren’t in the portal until after the holidays.
3. I know no one likes the idea of bidding wars for players who are already on college football teams. That’s why many people dislike the transfer portal and don’t want players to have the freedom to transfer.
It’s not because they want to stifle the players from making a choice. They hate the influence that collectives and agents have with the players with money used as a carrot to get them to leave their school.
Let’s push that aside for a moment and look at what just happened with former North Carolina offensive coordinator Phil Longo and him leaving for Wisconsin. I don’t know if he left for more money (probably). I don’t know if he left because he thinks it’s a better opportunity (could be that too). I just know that he made that choice because he could and that leaves the players he coached at UNC in a less than ideal situation.
Are the players at UNC supposed to stay loyal and ignore money or opportunities at a better program when their offensive coordinator made his decision based on those things? Should Drake Maye, who has a chance to be the number one pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, be forced stick around and wait to see if a 71 year old Mack Brown is going to make the right hire to help him achieve his dreams? He is choosing to stay at UNC, but if he all of a sudden jumped in the portal, no one could blame him.
Maybe it doesn’t matter and Longo has a Chip Long effect where the players are happy to see him leave, but he’s just the latest example of why everyone should be careful who they are criticizing when it comes to the transfer portal.
4. I’ve been honing in on recruiting and the transfer portal for much of the week so I haven’t watched a lot of South Carolina yet, but that run defense (123rd in EPA per rush, 114th in opportunity rate, 129th in stuff rate, 5.18 YPC vs Power 5 competition) really popped out when looking at how they match up to Notre Dame.
The Irish have played quite a few below average run defenses this season and unsurprisingly have had success in most of those games.
They rushed for 287 vs North Carolina (89th in EPA per rush), 223 vs UNLV (104th), 246 vs Syracuse (106th), 234 vs BYU (108th), and 281 vs Boston College (110th).
The other side of is that they didn’t have as much success as one would expect against Cal (98th), USC (125th), and (Stanford (131st).
It would be easy to point to the Cal game and brush it off as it being Drew Pyne’s first (very rough) start and the offensive line not hitting their stride yet. It was a conservative gameplan to say the least.
Stanford and USC are different, though. I don’t think there is any excuse to not have a lot of success running against Stanford. USC definitely sold out to stop the run and it exposed their pass defense because of it (12.2 yards per attempt), but the Irish simply didn’t block well. They lost too many individual battles up front and if they blocked the way they did against Clemson, they would have piled up the yards.
Like most games this season, how Notre Dame’s offensive line and tight ends block up front is going to have a huge impact on the outcome of the game. If they do their job, they should run all over a shaky South Carolina run defense.
5. I’m going to do a deeper dive into the Notre Dame running game after the season is over and one thing I want to do is compare the 2022 running game to the 2020 season. Obviously the personnel is very different, but what they did with multiple tight ends (12, 13 personnel) is similar.
That rushing attack in ‘20 was so much more explosive (nine runs of 30-yards or more, 22nd) than the current one (three, 108th). They also got a lot more from the quarterback (23 runs of 10-yards or more for Ian Book, a combined nine for Drew Pyne and Tyler Buchner this season).
One player that both of those teams had in common was Chris Tyree. As a true freshman he had 15 runs of 10-yards or more in only 72 carries (20.8% average). I think he’s a better back now than he was then, yet he had only 10 runs of 10-yards or more on 95 carries this fall (10.5%).
Sure, Tyree can play better, particularly with his balance after contact. He might have broken a few more big runs if that was improved. That’s just a few, though. I think Notre Dame needs to look at why they aren’t more explosive in the running game, especially with someone like him in the backfield who has legitimate breakaway speed.
They are adding plenty of speed in this recruiting cycle and if Jadarian Price is fully healthy, that’s one more big play threat to add to the mix. If running the ball is going to be your primary identity on offense, they need to be a lot more explosive doing that. Those players will help, but there’s a lot more to it than the personnel they have in the backfield.
6. I think it’s fun that Colorado hired Deion Sanders as their head coach.
It could go horribly wrong. He might be one and done there like Lane Kiffin was at Tennessee. Whatever happens, it will be memorable.
He happens to be taking over the least talented team in the Pac-12. I’m sure they will get an upgrade in that department, but I imagine it will be difficult for him to bring in a good recruiting class at this time. Maybe they end up stealing a couple of blue-chip recruits who buy into the hype. I think it’s more likely that it’s too little too late with most of those players.
For Coach Prime, it's going to be all about the transfer portal. Even with that, is he going to be able to attract the top guys to play there right away? Most of these players want to transfer and help their chances at an NFL career.
If they aren’t sure they are going to play with great players at Colorado, at least not in the short term, it’s difficult to envision many choosing to play there this year. I think we’ll see him take on a lot of highly ranked recruits who didn’t work out at their previous programs. Some of those guys will hit. Many of those guys won’t. That’s how it typically goes and if that’s the case, then they probably aren’t winning a ton of games in year one.
How is the Deion Sanders experience going to be if they are getting blown out by Washington, Oregon, Utah, USC, and UCLA? If they got 2-10, I think those press conferences are going to sound a lot different than they do now.
He went 27-5 at Jackson State so I’m not saying that he didn’t earn this opportunity or that Colorado didn’t make a smart gamble in making this hire, but how many times has Deion Sanders started something and not found early success? I doubt it happened much with his athletic career and it didn’t happen so far with his coaching career.
Early success is far but guaranteed at Colorado and even with the transfer portal and what Sanders and a good staff can do as recruiters, they won’t rise to the top of the Pac-12 overnight and maybe not at all.
I’m fascinated to see what will happen there. I have no idea if it will work out or not, but things will be a lot more interesting with him coaching at the Power 5 level.
Notre Dame Fighting Irish 20'' x 24'' Merry Christmas Ornament Sign
