Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM SEPT. 9, 2023 35 GAME PREVIEW: NORTH CAROLINA STATE BY JACK SOBLE N otre Dame needed quarterback help in the transfer portal. The Irish still liked sopho- more signal-caller Tyler Buch- ner, a top-100 recruit in the 2021 On3 Industry Ranking, but 5 interceptions in three 2022 starts showed he wasn't ready for the starting job. Junior Drew Pyne won eight of his 10 starts, but Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman decided he needed a quarterback he could win because of, not just with. Enter Wake Forest graduate transfer Sam Hartman, and the early returns look like Freeman hit the jackpot. Hart- man completed 19 of 23 passes for 251 yards, with 4 touchdowns and no inter- ceptions against Navy in his Irish debut Aug. 26. "You couldn't draw it up any better," Freeman said after the 42-3 win at Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Ireland. "What I thought he did a great job of was put- ting our offense in a really good position to execute the play." Roughly 754 miles southeast of Notre Dame Stadium, longtime North Caro- lina State starting quarterback Devin Leary entered the portal in early De- cember. Leary missed the second half of the 2022 season with a torn pectoral muscle, and in his absence the Wolfpack finished 8-5 despite a 5-1 start. NC State needed quarterback help in the transfer portal, too. And a perfect fit was available in Virginia graduate transfer Brennan Armstrong. Hartman and Armstrong were the No. 1 and No. 3 quarterbacks in the 2023 On3 transfer portal rankings (Leary, who went to Kentucky, was No. 2). They'll face off at 12 p.m. ET on Saturday at Carter-Finley Stadium in Raleigh, N.C. ARMSTRONG LOOKS FOR 2021 FORM A familiar face at offensive coordi- nator played a key role in Armstrong's decision to transfer to NC State for his sixth year and final season of college football. Wolfpack head coach Dave Do- eren hired Robert Anae, who held the same role at Virginia from 2016-21, to run his offense. Anae, who faced Notre Dame in 2022 as Syracuse's OC, coached Armstrong throughout the first four years of his ca- reer. They peaked together when Arm- strong was a redshirt junior in 2021. He completed 65 percent of his passes for 4,449 yards (8.9 yards per attempt) with 31 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. Armstrong's Cavaliers went 6-6, los- ing shootouts to North Carolina 59-39, Pitt 48-38 and BYU 66-49. In 2022, without Anae (who went to Syracuse), Armstrong was not the same player. His yards per attempt fell to 6.5, and he threw 12 picks to only 7 touch- downs. The hope for NC State is that Anae can unlock peak Armstrong, and if he does, he'll have the reigning No. 1 scoring defense in the ACC at his back. "Coach Anae just lets me be me," Armstrong told the Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer in late July. "I don't feel con- fined. I don't feel like I'm locked up at all. I am just allowed to go play how I want to play." This will be Notre Dame's first time facing the Armstrong-Anae duo. The Irish visited Charlottesville, Va. on Nov. 13, 2021, but Armstrong missed that game due to a rib injury. Without its QB1, Virginia's offense was over- matched, and Notre Dame ran away with a 28-3 victory. Since joining NC State, Armstrong has impressed the Wolfpack for a few reasons. First, despite losing the expe- rienced Leary, NC State hasn't seen a drop-off in its quarterback's veteran presence. "It's like having an extra coach," Do- eren said in early August, per WRAL Sports in Raleigh. "He can get guys in the right spot. He can talk to players from a coach's point of view, because he's had those conversations for years with Coach Anae. "He can get people lined up and an- swer questions sometimes, maybe off to the side. He might see a receiver con- fused and be able to help him on a play." The Wolfpack added another veteran to its offense in late July: graduate stu- dent wide receiver Bradley Rozner, who transferred from Rice for his eighth — yes, eighth — year of college football. Rozner missed the 2016, 2017, 2020 and 2021 seasons due to injuries, which gave him the necessary eligibility. Rozner has seen it all, albeit at a Group of Five school, and he led Rice with 876 receiving yards and 10 touch- downs last season. But he said Arm- strong has taught him a thing or two since he arrived in Raleigh. "Having a veteran quarterback who has played Power Five football in the ACC, he's got a lot of experience," Ro- zner said. "Being able to learn from him at this level has been huge." Armstrong also gives the Wolfpack something Leary did not. Leary was not a threat to run, but Armstrong, ac- cording to Doeren in an interview on ACC Network, once ran for an 80-yard touchdown in spring practice. NC State clocked him at 20 miles per hour on its GPS. Doeren, in his 11th sea- son in Raleigh, said he has not had a quarterback in his time with the Wolf- pack who could do that. He believes an offense led by Armstrong, if he's at his best, can be incredibly dangerous. "I think the ceiling is being the best in the league," Doeren said at ACC Kick- off in late July. "That's our goal. We can't RENTING HOPE Graduate transfer quarterbacks Sam Hartman and Brennan Armstrong will face off in Week 2 Armstrong is looking to recapture the form he showed the last time he worked with offensive coor- dinator Robert Anae, when he threw for 4,449 yards and 31 touchdowns at Virginia in 2021. PHOTO COURTESY NC STATE ATHLETICS