Imagine you are a young Notre Dame fan with your eyes locked in on the Irish’s elusive dream of a natty. It’s the 2024 season, and the curse finally seems to be breaking. Game after game, the team, led by quarterback Riley Leonard, inches toward breaking four decades of desperate wait. After a memorable 11-1 regular season record, the Fighting Irish reach the first round of the playoffs vs the Indiana Hoosiers. It’s a 27-17 win! Over the next few weeks, the team drops opponents like house of cards—Georgia for 23-10 in the quarterfinals, and Penn State for 27-24 in the semi-finals. However, as the championship game unfolds, Marcus Freeman and Leonard’s wizardry falters. The dream fails, falls, and runs to the corner like a crying toddler. Leonard exits the field, his hung head low. Fans steady themselves through shaky breaths. Now imagine this:

What if that was the highest Notre Dame could reach or will ever reach in the future? Well, it’s not imagination anymore. As per a college football insider, with Leonard’s move to the big league, things aren’t looking too good for Freeman’s roster. For starters, when we talk about Leonard—who produced 2,861 passing yards at a 66.7% completion rate for 21 touchdowns last season—he ran like his life depended on it and gave fans a season to remember. His ability to penetrate that red zone like a persistent badger hell-bent on finding water made a problem for defenses. Leonard rushed for 906 yards and scored 17 touchdowns. That, too, was when he had to face top 5 teams back-to-back in the playoffs despite coming off of a massive injury earlier in the season. In retrospect, the player hardly deserved the disrespect he had to endure from the fandom. This begs the question: Can CJ Carr, Kenny Minchey, or Steve Angeli even come close to him?

David Pollack, a college football insider, was asked the same question on the ‘See Ball Get Ball with David Pollack’ podcast on March 27.

Without even blinking, he said, “No, not getting better, absolutely.” He also added, talking about Leonard’s pleasant personality, “Just like what’s inside of here [pointing to his own heart] and again, we talked about on this broadcast over and over again…I don’t think people understood how athletic that freak was. He just took off and ran consistently, and consistently made plays. People [were like]…, ‘Oh! That’s crazy. How did he do that? ‘He did it because he’s a freak. He’s an athlete. Look at his high school basketball tape, like, dunking all over the place. [With] the experience [as a] multi-year starter…I thought his throwing got better and better as the year went on.”

“I’m more confident in this one than we’ve had it yet. Like, that’s how confident I am that [Notre Dame is] not going to take a step forward because…I thought he wore an S on his chest a lot of weeks,” Pollack concluded. Well, this reminds me of the sheer irony of Notre Dame’s September 2024 game against Northern Illinois—a 16-14 loss, and a stadium full of boos hurled at the 22-year-old signal caller…

Sports Illustrated‘s John Kennedy described it best: “Riley Leonard is at Notre Dame on a 1-year mega-money NIL deal for 2 reasons. To be a great quarterback and win games. Irish fans have no built-in loyalty for Leonard. He’s not a long-term ‘Notre Dame’ guy the way Steve Angeli might be. He’s here for one year to get paid to play great. So when he doesn’t play great, easy passes are not completed, and the team loses a game that is considered the worst loss ever by many, I can understand why fans are quick to complain. Money changes relationships. And it feels to me like Notre Dame fans view their relationship with their quarterback this year to be one of more of a business nature than personal which complicates things.” But those sentiments have since changed within the fandom. In just a year, Leonard’s shown he was not to be taken lightly.

Having said that, what Pollack essentially means is that the Duke transfer played multiple sports, giving him the athleticism and running ability to provide those third and fourth-down red-zone runs. However, the players who are available right now might not provide the same abilities and potential that Riley Leonard had. Take, for example, CJ Carr, who joined in the 2024 class as a four-star QB ranked sixth in his position. The player hasn’t seen a single snap yet and has only offered glimpses in practices. His high school starts and tape do provide some perspective as he notched up 8,135 yards for 79 touchdowns, but is it enough? As per FOX’s RJ Young, YES!

During ‘The Number One College Football Show’ last week, he confidently stated, “The offensive line is going to run the football well [with Carr]. [Offensive coordinator] Mike Denbrock is going to make the most of what he’s got at quarterback. He can be fun. He can be damn near lethal…It feels like Notre Dame is going to be right there where they were at the end of last year. It’s ‘Can he lead them to a national championship?’ He has the tools. He’s got the talent to do this in a way that I’m not sure many others do, frankly.”

And then there is another player who is widely touted to be Leonard’s successor. That being Steve Angeli, who has some amount of experience under his belt. He passed for 268 yards last season for a completion rate of 66.7%, and three touchdowns. His rushing prowess isn’t that pronounced, as he has just 36 rushing yards registered in the CFB. The red-shirt junior quarterback still has his 2023 season as his highlight, where he threw for 504 yards at a 77.3% completion rate, scoring 7 touchdowns.

Still, in a dual-threat scenario, Angeli is far behind Leonard, and one other quarterback…

Steve Angeli’s QB1 spot in jeopardy?

Now comes the third quarterback, who resembles Riley Leonard in a dual-threat scenario with incredible arm talent and running speed. A former top-175 national recruit picked from Hendersonville. Kenny Minchey, on paper, has everything that Marcus Freeman would need. He even claimed earlier that he would beat Leonard in the running game. Gino Guidugli, the quarterbacks coach of the Irish, also seemed to be leaning on the opinion. Now, Tyler Horka, an Irish Insider, also talked about the same thing.

“Kenny Minchey thinks he’s faster than Riley Leonard, and maybe he can do a little more with his legs than Riley Leonard. Freeman wasn’t going to go as far as to say that. But Guli [Gino Guidugli] went as far as to say, ‘Yeah, I think he is the most athletic quarterback’. The quarterbacks who have been really impressive over the last 10-15-20 years in college football are the guys who…they can make all the throws, but they can also do some things with their legs that put them in the category of a magician. Maybe that is what Kenny Minchey is. We’ll see if that manifests.”

The QB1 spot right now at Notre Dame is up for grabs, and there is still no clear winner decided. Minchey, who joined in the 2023 class, has also waited enough for two seasons for his break. So far, his involvement under the center for the Irish has been very sporadic.

That essentially means he will be looking to grab the elusive QB1 spot after two years on the sidelines. A player standing at 6’2” and weighing around 206 lbs, he has a good high school career to back him too. In that, he had produced 5,212 yards at an average of 15 yards per throw, and 53 touchdowns. But can he translate the same success to his QB1 battle and deliver the heroics like Riley Leonard? Also, if Minchey will be the QB1, does that mean Angeli’s spot is doomed? Let us know what you think.