Ahead of Schedule: Irish Quarterbacks Enter Fall Camp with a Year of Denbrock’s Playbook

Summer workouts have officially started in South Bend.

The upperclassmen returned at the beginning of June and the freshmen class moved in just over a week ago. 

While Notre Dame is currently in the thick of a three-week recruiting push, attention will soon shift back to quarterbacks CJ Carr and Kenny Minchey once fall camp opens at the end of July.

Neither quarterback brings the experience that Sam Hartman or Riley Leonard had, but both possess something Notre Dame’s last two starters lacked. Time in Mike Denbrock’s offense.

Hartman and Leonard were tasked with learning a new system and building chemistry with teammates in a six-month window. Carr and Minchey, on the other hand, have now spent a full year under Denbrock’s guidance, with close to 30 spring practices under their belts.

“They've learned it,” stated Denbrock. “They didn't have a lot of opportunities to play last year, but they had a lot of opportunities to study the details of what their responsibilities were and how to keep themselves out of harm's way and to kind of orchestrate the entire offense.”

Denbrock didn’t hesitate to say the quarterback room and the offense is ahead of where it was this time last year, even with a veteran like Leonard in the fold back then.

“I've seen that progression carry to what we're doing now in our football school things,” explained Denbrock. “Like everybody else, I just think we're farther ahead at that position than we were even with a veteran starter coming in who wasn't able to physically participate in a lot of things that we did.”

With two quarterbacks who know the expectation and have rapport with the entire offense, Denbrock was also able to push the offense more in the spring. Notre Dame’s offense was learning installs or basic principles of the offense leading up to fall camp last summer. This June, it’s a much different feeling. 

“We're so much farther down the road at this point in our preparation for the season than we were at this time a year ago,” Denbrock said. “Even when we were doing our football school and things like that, it was more last year at this time of just introducing how to do it the right way, what the expectations were, what the standard was, so that everybody had a clear understanding.”

When it comes to the quarterback competition, Marcus Freeman admitted the last time there was a competition, it was slanted in favor of Tyler Buchner. 

Freeman knows that can’t happen this year, but he also has the experience of Denbrock and Gino Guidugli to lean on. 

Denbrock has navigated numerous quarterback competitions in his career and understands that it’s the staff’s responsibility to build a structure that allows for a true battle while elevating the entire offense.

”I think you've really just got to do a good job of having a plan even before practices start about how you're going to structure even situational football things so that there's a real good cross section of everybody getting a similar amount of work in different critical situational play as they possibly can so that you can ultimately make what decision is best for the football team,” Denbrock stated. 

Simulating critical, pressure-filled moments will be a central part of the evaluation process. The staff can’t replicate 80,000 fans in Miami, but they can engineer uncomfortable scenarios on the practice field.

“You've got to try to simulate as many of those critical thinking scenarios for the quarterback as you can on the practice field and by just really planning in the practice areas where you can kind of hit those different critical moments, whether that's third down, whether that's red zone, whatever that happens to be, whatever situational football you want to kind of throw into it,” explained Denbrock. 

“Then see how they respond, right? And then understand, OK, is this guy who we feel like is best for our football team as the starter, is he able to handle these situations? Or do we have to protect him from a scheme standpoint and a coaching standpoint? Can we let him rip it? Can we cut him loose? Do we have to kind of be a little bit more cautious early on as he grows into this system? All those decisions we're going to have to make as we go.” 

The encouraging sign for Notre Dame? Both quarterbacks have left strong impressions across the program thanks to their work ethic and drive.

“I think what I've learned about them the most is that football and being really good at it, it's really important to them,” said Denbrock. “They study the game. They're up in our offices all the time watching tape, going back and watching the plays they did get from last year, watching their practice tape, watching this year's practice tape, watching last year's practice tape. They're students of the game who just seem to love the process.

“You got somebody like that and you got two guys like that, you're in a pretty good position because those guys give themselves an opportunity to continue to grow and get better.” 

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