Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1526412
BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM SEPT. 14, 2024 7 UNDER THE DOME Riley did a really good job of doing that." Two of Leonard's best throws of the night were his final two. He hit sopho- more slot receiver Jaden Greathouse in stride for a gain of 9 yards on third- and-5, then promptly put the ball in a perfect place for graduate student boundary target Beaux Collins to go up and make a play. He did, gaining 20 yards. The attempt to Collins was a depar- ture from the game plan. Throwing the ball 10 yards past the sticks invited the very second-and-10 scenario Freeman wanted to avoid, especially with just five minutes left. But it was winning time, and that was a winning play — the kind of play the 2022 Notre Dame of- fense was incapable of making. This isn't exactly apples to apples. The 2022 Buckeyes made the College Football Playoff with an 11-1 record and nearly beat eventual national champion Georgia in the semifinals. It came down to a missed field goal as time expired. As for the 2024 Aggies, who knows where they'll end up with a first-year head coach? Their schedule isn't overly difficult on paper, but it's still the SEC. If they lost to the teams on their slate that are currently ranked they'd finish 8-4, and those ranked games do not in- clude road trips to Florida, Mississippi State, South Carolina and Auburn. Point being, beating Ohio State would have meant more than what Notre Dame accomplished against the Aggies. But that was then and this is now, and the Irish did exactly what they needed to do to get the 2024 season off to the best start possible. It could get better from here in a way it didn't two years ago, too. Anything equivalent to the Marshall meltdown or Cardinal calamity does not seem possible for this Notre Dame team, one that has a defense led by the same coordinator, Al Golden, for the third consecutive season and an offense orchestrated by the commander of the nation's No. 1 unit on that side of the ball in 2023, Mike Denbrock. Notre Dame players picked in the NFL Draft immediately following the 2022 season could be counted on one hand: tight end Michael Mayer, defensive end Isaiah Foskey and offensive lineman Jar- rett Patterson. This coming April's draft will be far more fruitful with Fighting Irish representatives. Cornerback Benja- min Morrison is a possible first-rounder. Defensive linemen Howard Cross III, Ry- lie Mills, RJ Oben and Jordan Botelho all have a shot. Linebacker Jack Kiser might finally be next-level ready. Nickel corner Jordan Clark could join Morrison out of the Notre Dame secondary, and safety Xavier Watts is a shoo-in to do just that. Those are eight players from the Notre Dame defense alone considered 2025 NFL Draft picks. From the Irish of- fense, it's Leonard, Collins and tight end Mitchell Evans who have the most realis- tic chances of being selected. If all 11 are picked, it'll be Notre Dame's first dou- ble-digit selection year since 1994. The Irish had one of their best seasons ever in 1993, going 11-1 and finishing No. 2 in the final Associated Press poll of the year. The results of that season and the talent that poured into the NFL the subsequent spring are absolutely correlated. And we might see the same exact thing take place just more than 30 years later. Whether or not we do is largely in the hands of Leonard. Notre Dame will not play another game this season in front of 107,000 people unless it draws a road playoff game against any of the eight programs whose stadium capacities are six-digit figures, but even at that point, in December, the Irish will be much more willing to open up Denbrock's playbook and push the ball downfield. The conser- vative scheme that got the Irish a much- needed season-opening victory at Texas A&M would be a distant memory. If Notre Dame is playoff-worthy in December, it will mean the Irish were successful in developing their young offensive line to a point of allowing Leonard to sit in the pocket and throw the long ball more than he did in his first game in a blue-and-gold uniform. It was quick throw after quick throw in College Station, and rightfully so. The Aggies have NFL-caliber defensive linemen of their own, and the Irish had a true freshman, a sophomore and three juniors with six combined college starts trying to stay in front of them. They didn't always do so. Leonard took some big hits. If long-developing plays were on the docket, he'd have taken some even bigger ones. Denbrock and Free- man were smarter than that. Now it's time to figure out just how dependable these young offensive line- men can be, though. Now it's time to get to a point where if Notre Dame is fortu- nate enough to face a powerhouse pro- gram or household name like Ohio State or Texas A&M in the playoff it can be a bit more assertive offensively. That's the type of team the Irish want to be. "We want to be aggressive," Freeman said. "We want to be attacking." He believes he's got the quarterback who will enable the Irish to be that way, too. Freeman pushed back at a reporter who insinuated the Monday following the Texas A&M game that it was not in Leonard's nature to let the long ball rip. "I think a strength of Riley Leonard is pushing the ball down the field," Free- man said. "That's just my opinion as his coach. I'm no quarterback guru, but I do feel strongly about being able to say, 'Let's take some shots and throw it down the field.'" Would he have done the same for Bu- chner? We'll never know. He was too busy addressing a season-opening loss to the Buckeyes in Buchner's first career start and another defeat to the Thun- dering Herd in Buchner's second in a game in which he threw 2 interceptions, including a pick six that put Marshall up 26-15 at a hushed Notre Dame Stadium with 4:35 remaining. Buchner didn't play again until the Gator Bowl in late December. He threw two pick sixes that afternoon and has started only one game at Notre Dame as a quarterback since. He's back in a Notre Dame uniform as a walk-on wide receiver after spending a season in Crimson Tide threads, though, further proving that the more things stay the same, the more they change. Yes, we typed it that way on purpose … again. It only feels right in this case. ✦ UNDER THE DOME "I think a strength of Riley Leonard is pushing the ball down the field." MARCUS FREEMAN