Notre Dame will inevitably insist that the quarterback competition will open this spring and pre-season. Irish coach Brian Kelly will spend at least a few weeks insisting that Jack Coan, Drew Pyne and Tyler Buchner received equal repetitions in practice, including young Brendon Clark on the rise if his knee is healthy enough. Offensive coordinator Tommy Rees offered the “open” distinction last week.
But Notre Dame would not have brought Coan as a graduate transferred from Wisconsin if he wasn’t going to be immediately put in pole position.
“We are always in the business of creating competition and making this team better,” said Rees on Wednesday. “We had the opportunity here with the numbers to add a defender to our squad. We felt that there was a need for a veteran presence in the room. “
Coan started 18 games for a viable Power Five program, completing 69.6 percent of his passes and playing 18 touchdowns against just five interceptions. He started a Rose Bowl after winning 10 games in 2019. He has the curriculum to start with the Irishman on his own, and not just because of the situation.
“We definitely added the right thing to Jack,” said Rees. “He is an extremely mature boy. He worked hard to put you in a great position here at Notre Dame. He’s someone I’m looking forward to working with and choosing his brain, while helping him understand what it means to play as a defender at Notre Dame and deal with this crime. ”
Pyne did little to impress and still less to disturb. Clark is a separate issue of injury in the future. And Buchner hasn’t played official football since 2019. Coan’s arrival was necessary, and not just as a veteran, as Rees praised.
Buchner’s chance will come, and if he completes all the passes this spring, then maybe that chance really will be in 2021, but that would be a meteoric rise, even if Rees feels he’s been recruiting Buchner “for 10 years”.
This recruitment gained momentum after Buchner impressed at a camp on campus, a moment that included some of the best defenders in his class, intentionally in the Notre Dame setting.
“When we were at that camp, it was very clear to everyone that there was a competition,” said Irish recruitment coordinator Brian Polian in December. “There were some defenders in that class who knew, ‘I’m here with three or four other guys and I’m trying to be the one they offer in the class.’
“This is intentional. We need to find out who will get up when they know they are being evaluated and who is going to compete. [Buchner] competed and he looked great. We never look back. “
Notre Dame didn’t look back when much of the recruiting industry looked after watching Buchner at Elite 11 camp last summer, his only public display since the 2019 season. The echo chamber heightened concerns about his pitch mechanics, a concern that could have been enough to scare the Irish, considering his most recent experience with a highly recruited quarterback.
Rees did not want to know about it, at this point the offensive coordinator and, therefore, with more influence on how to deal with the quarterback launch movement.
“For me, it’s basically from the base, through the nucleus and then making sure that the target line, the eyes and the body position are defined,” said Rees. “It has less to do with the release point and more with the certainty that we are able to obtain the correct base, to obtain the right destination line, to work in the nucleus and then to make sure that we really arrive at the shoulder and this is for me where I usually cut. “
After all, Buchner’s pitch movement served him well enough to receive scholarship offers from Notre Dame, Alabama, Georgia, USC and Oregon.
“You don’t want to go into an area, unless it’s something really extreme, where you’re messing with how a kid throws a ball his whole life,” said Rees. “He played football the right way for 18 years to get to Notre Dame. I’m not talking about Tyler here, I’m talking about generalities here.
“If we think there is something that needs to be changed, we probably did not do our job in the evaluation period.”
If Buchner’s pitch movement proves to be nothing more than a narrative, not even a concern, then perhaps the Irish will have a quarterback competition in the next 208 days. While this serves a lot for the content machine, don’t hold your breath.
This is a nod to Coan, not a criticism of Buchner.
MISCELLANEOUS OFFENSIVE QUOTE
At some point in the move to the initial subscription period, Notre Dame’s technical team stopped offering excerpts about each signatory. The exercise was always filled with repetitive buzzwords, but it provided content when it came time to discuss the tight end Cane Berrong or receiver Jayden Thomas.
If that is the biggest loss, then so be it. Less drama in February, the beginning of the off-season, adds value.
Between the December signing period and last week’s nominal day, Polian offered information about three offensive non-defensive players:
No tackle Joe Alt: “In our own data, which we were going to release to the media today (in December), at one point we listed (Joe Alt) at 240 and we were playing the tight end as a junior. Now you see that he is 18 kilos, 280 and he moves very well ”.
No tackle Blake Fisher: “It is worth mentioning Blake Fisher, the mayor, who commands the chat between all the commits. For example, the work they did with (four-star linebacker consensus) Prince Kollie – was a little confusing there due to coach (Clark) Lea leaving for Vanderbilt. The way they were, the way they revolved around him for a few days and helped to calm him down and be there for him and provide support while he was working on a change there. …
“We cannot direct them to speak to anyone. This is not within the rules. … I had several guys telling us, since they arrived later in the process, maybe a guy who committed in the fall, maybe a guy who committed six to eight weeks ago, they talked about how welcoming that commitment group was . “
No kicker Joshua Bryan, signed despite Jonathan Doerer returning for a fifth season gift: “I don’t want to have a freshman. It’s not great. It is difficult to do. … Ideally, you would like to have a guy on your campus for a year in the hopes of getting them ready and prepared and helping them to develop physically and become stronger. This allowed us to do that.
“Now, this is one of those places where the NCAA’s relief with regard to the players in his program who ran out of eligibility by returning to the original program, that guy doesn’t count against his 85, so we were lucky in this case. When we entered the summer, I assumed that we would have to identify a kicker who could enter here and do it like a real freshman. This is perhaps one of the few cases where the circumstances of everything that was happening around us in the world may have helped us a little. “
Micah Jones TRANSFERS
In the slightest shock of the off-season, receiver Micah Jones entered the transfer portal on Monday morning. Jones’ only appearance in 2020 was on Senior Day, a day when the junior’s name was called among seniors leaving the Irish program.
In three seasons, he appeared in five games and never caught on. Although his announced class of recipient recruits has yet to function as a whole (Kevin Austin, Braden Lenzy and Lawrence Keys), Jones has fought even more than his colleagues. Recruited to be the next Miles Boykin, and enrolled just a few weeks after Citrus Bowl winner Boykin’s memorable touchdown, Jones never climbed the Notre Dame depth chart. He spent his second season entirely with the Irish scouting team, for example.
Jones will graduate this spring with the remaining three years of eligibility. Although the transfer portal is already overflowing, a four-star ex-prospect still with physical size should attract the attention of some midmajors across the country.
Thank you, Notre Dame. I put my name on the portal. pic.twitter.com/UFGojEptCB
– Micah Jones (@ mej2018) February 8, 2021
Using Polian’s description of NCAA relief from the 2021 scholarship count, and with only the Doerer and defensive tackle Kurt Hinish qualifying as returning players despite apparently running out of eligibility, Notre Dame will need to reduce it to 87 until September and Jones’ departure reduces that count to 89.