SOUTH BEND, Ind. — With the college football season less than 100 days out, the Notre Dame mailbag returns to assess road venues, Riley Leonard statistics and if the sport’s changes have dented enthusiasm for it.
Let’s get started.
(Note: Submitted questions have been lightly edited for clarity and length.)
The last time Notre Dame played an SEC team on the road, Brian Kelly underestimated the task and the team racked up six false-start penalties. What are Marcus Freeman and company doing to prepare for the atmosphere in College Station on Aug. 31? I’ll go out on a limb and predict it will be loud and unfriendly to quarterback clap cadences. — Lamine H.
As raucous as Texas A&M’s Kyle Field might be, Freeman took Notre Dame to Ohio Stadium two years ago and managed the environment just fine. The offense didn’t produce much, but it wasn’t because Tyler Buchner couldn’t get snaps off because of crowd noise. The Irish committed just two offensive penalties all game, both on wide receivers. Lorenzo Styles had a 1-yard false start close to Notre Dame’s goal line and Matt Salerno got flagged for pass interference, hauling down a defensive back on an overthrown pass. That’s it.
Buchner had little issue running the offense pre-snap, and the staff praised him publicly and privately afterward for handling the moment. As much as his career took detours from there, how Buchner managed Ohio State in his first career start looked just fine. The Buckeyes were just miles better.
Spin that forward to Leonard, who will make his 22nd career start when Notre Dame heads to Texas A&M. Notre Dame may have issues at tackle, although it’s not like Joe Alt and Blake Fisher were ultra-experienced in Columbus two years ago. Regardless, the Irish should have no reason to repeat the screwup against Georgia in Athens five years earlier. That was an operational failure, something Freeman has already avoided in a huge spot. The Irish will swallow a couple of false starts versus the Aggies. It shouldn’t be go beyond that.
Ditch the clap, stick with the leg lift for the quarterback, don’t make this more complicated than it needs to be. And that’s on top of the addition of helmet communication for Leonard with offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock, another layer that should help road teams in big environments.
Over/under for Riley Leonard’s stats this season:
Completion rate: 63.5 percent
Yards per attempt: 8.9
Passing yardage: 2,689
Passing touchdowns: 24
Interceptions: 8
Those just happen to be Sam Hartman’s stats last year. — James R.
New quarterback, new playbook, new offensive coordinator … it all makes it hard to compare Leonard this year to Hartman last year. But Notre Dame should hit over on completion percentage, passing yardage and passing touchdowns* at a minimum. Yards per attempt might be hard to beat. Throwing fewer interceptions shouldn’t be too high a hurdle.
Maybe the more applicable comparison for Leonard’s first year in Denbrock’s offense is to Jayden Daniels’ first year in Denbrock’s offense at LSU. Yes, the personnel is much different at wide receiver. But it’s not like Daniels flashed a ton of Heisman Trophy potential in 2022. In these same categories, Daniels completed 68.6 percent of his passes for 7.5 yards/attempt, 2,913 yards, 17 passing touchdowns and three interceptions.
The category that misses the bigger picture is passing touchdowns, hence the asterisk above, because it doesn’t include Leonard’s threat on the ground, something Hartman didn’t have. Leonard rushed for 13 touchdowns in his full season as a starter. Hartman put up three last season. And Daniels had 11 rushing touchdowns in his first season with Denbrock before becoming Audric Estime with an arm last fall.
Put it another way, Leonard doesn’t need to throw for 30 touchdowns this season, but Notre Dame needs him to post at least that many total touchdowns. In the past 10 years, Notre Dame’s starting quarterback (or its combination of starting quarterbacks) has hit 30 total touchdowns six times, topped by Everett Golson’s 37 total touchdowns in 2014.
Notre Dame’s offensive coordinator that season?
Mike Denbrock.
It’s the offseason, so when Notre Dame has a road game, what is your process in preparing for that trip? Do you stay in or near the team hotel? How far ahead of time do you scout the restaurant/bars that you may hit? I would assume your free time is pretty limited, but do you have go-to places to visit for the cities Notre Dame travels to on the regular? — Kenny G.
This is a very important question!
I’ve already booked Texas A&M and will be staying in College Station. First time there, two nights, all recommendations welcome. Everything else will get booked later.
In terms of staying at the team hotel or close by, I almost never do. The football program sees enough of me as is without wandering around the lobby of a nondescript Marriott outside Greenville or Syracuse, which were the last two road trips where I overlapped with Notre Dame in location. You get a few “what are you doing here?” looks when that happens.
As for scouting restaurants for the night before games, this is serious business among a few beat reporters. It requires intense summer research. Sometimes you end up at 610 Magnolia in Louisville for an all-time dinner out. Sometimes you find an old standby at the Angus Barn before NC State or Duke. Staying in the Westdrift hotel in Manhattan Beach has been a standard during the past five trips to USC. It should be six this November.
You’re correct that time is limited while covering Notre Dame road games, unless it’s a primetime kickoff. So those Friday nights are meticulously planned to make sure the other great part about covering road games (the best part is still the game, obviously) goes well. No false starts.
Will Notre Dame land Derek Meadows? — Tim B.
Yes. The Irish have the five-star receiver’s attention in spite of the passing game the past few seasons. This year Notre Dame should be able to close on Meadows because of it
A lot of changes to the sport and to Notre Dame. I have heard older generations say things like it’s ruining the game and they’re less interested. On the other hand, I hear college kids finally getting a small sliver of the overall financial value they bring to a university/TV network.
I’m wondering from the 20-year seat you sit in … do you think college football and Notre Dame are more or less likable now or before? Likely different answers for both, but I’m curious if the overall connection and endearment to the sport and Notre Dame is better or worse. — Jonathan G.
Less likable but more interesting is probably a good way to put it for now.
The combination of unfettered player movement and unfettered school movement among conferences has been a disaster for a sport that does best leaning into nostalgia. The reason Notre Dame and plenty of other programs hold prestige today has nothing to do with what happened last season and everything to do with what happened 20, 30 and 40 years ago. That history is a collective memory. And the sport’s upheaval severs so much of connective tissue. Even if the changes are good for the individuals, they’re bad for a sport built on tradition. No one wins when the Pac-12 dies, other than television networks.
Side note, none of this has anything to do with name, image and likeness (NIL). Players being compensated shouldn’t impact the enjoyment in watching them on Saturdays. Kyle Hamilton’s second interception at Florida State, Benjamin Morrison’s pick six against Clemson, Xavier Watts’ humbling of Caleb Williams — did you really enjoy those any less because the players were getting paid? Hope not, even if you’re not in love with NIL. Same will soon apply to revenue sharing after news this week of the House settlement that may allow Notre Dame (and other schools) to share roughly $20 million per year with athletes.
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I’m interested to see how the 12-team College Football Playoff ages as it likely expands to 14 teams. How long does the novelty last? Does college football get lost in the NFL’s postseason calendar? Do more teams simply judge their seasons as successes by making the CFP or as failures when they don’t? And how quickly does just making the CFP become not enough for schools outside Georgia, Ohio State and Alabama?
In my 24 years on the beat, college football has never been more interesting than it is right now. And I’m not sure I’ve ever liked it less during that same timeframe. These are strange times for a sport that could have mitigated so many of these problems. Instead, it’s living with them. And paying for them.
There is a good-old-days-aren’t-coming-back vibe about college football, which makes you long for the sport you grew up watching. There’s no cognitive dissonance required to be excited for Ohio State at Oregon being a Big Ten game and Alabama at Oklahoma being an SEC game, never mind NBC potentially picking up Notre Dame at USC because it’s in the Big Ten package. You can enjoy those games, even if you wish they weren’t played under these circumstances.
Do you think Notre Dame’s current NIL operation and team chemistry under Freeman makes it effectively transfer-proof for top-line starters?
Beyond losing some depth pieces, Notre Dame retained all key players. I had some concern that teams with a lot of turnover this offseason (Alabama, Michigan, Washington) might make a run at some key starters, but that never panned out. — Jonathan T.
For starters, I wouldn’t assume one of the teams you mentioned didn’t make a run at one of Notre Dame’s frontline players. Just because the Irish didn’t lose anybody doesn’t mean another program wasn’t interested.
But to your point, you’re mostly correct. Notre Dame’s NIL operation has been focused primarily on retention, i.e. not only keeping the roster together among the players who could transfer out, but also almost keeping the roster together among the players who could have declared for the draft. Losing Alt and Fisher hurt, but retaining mid- or late-round picks like Howard Cross III, Jack Kiser, Rylie Mills and Watts is NIL in action. If you’re going to get paid to play football, Notre Dame should invest in players who want to play at Notre Dame and can help Notre Dame win now. If Notre Dame (let’s consider “Notre Dame” as the school, athletic department, football program and collective together) can offer a package that’s in line with what a mid-round or late-round pick (or a practice squad player) would make in the NFL, it should do it. And based on the return from last year’s roster, that’s what Notre Dame is doing.
Culture has a say here too, because NIL money takes you only so far. Ultimately, the players have to want to play in college for this roster maneuver to make sense. A player returning to school with one foot out the door won’t yield the ROI a team thinks it’s getting. To put a face on it, if Fisher was convinced to come back to Notre Dame purely by NIL but wanted to be in the NFL, the Irish wouldn’t get a full return on that. Fisher probably wouldn’t either.
There’s a lot of talk about “what NIL was supposed to be” or “true NIL” in the media spaces. It’s usually coded language for the idealistic idea of NIL as players running summer camps or putting out a merch line. But your true NIL is simply what the market will bear. And Notre Dame is paying market value to keep its roster together.
(Photo of Marcus Freeman: Sam Wasson / Getty Images)