Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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18 SUMMER 2025 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED BY JACK SOBLE W h e n N o t re D a m e enters Miami Gar- dens, Fla. — a his- torical buzz saw for the Irish, filled with Hurricanes fans who haven't seen their team lose a home game in this series since 1977 — it will start a quarterback with, at most, three passes thrown in his col- lege career. Head coach Marcus Freeman is OK with that. Junior Kenny Minchey and sophomore CJ Carr have shown him enough. "Are you making the right decisions is probably the most i m p o r ta n t t h i n g ," Fre e m a n said. "Delivering the ball, the ability to create plays, maybe when things are breaking down, and taking care of the football. Those are things that we really, really evaluate and they've done a tremendous job at doing that." It will be Carr or Minchey for Notre Dame at Miami, and Free- man will not name a starter before fall c a m p . W h i l e h e was open to nam- ing a starter dur- ing spring practice if the opportunity presented itself, he was never close to actually doing so. Carr and Minchey were, and are, neck a n d n e c k . W h e n Freeman was asked if Carr or Minchey has the advantage over the other, he shook his head. Senior Steve Angeli had kept pace, too (Freeman said Notre Dame had "three guys who were performing really, really well for 14 practices"), but he was the odd man out. "If one person clearly showed that he was going to be the only answer to mak- ing sure we had the most opportunity to have success, we would have named one," Freeman said. "It was never put into a situation where I felt we needed to do that." A three-man competition, Freeman said after the Blue-Gold Game and re- iterated April 23, would not have been in the program's best interest. On cer- tain days in spring ball, each signal- caller would only get 12 reps. That's not enough, and Freeman knew it. A two-man competition, on the other hand, is almost necessary. "You talk about two guys that don't have much, if any, real-game experi- ence," Freeman said. "The thing you can create when you have a competition — a true competition, where it's 50-50, you have to battle it out — is you try to put some of that pressure that a real game presents. "You have to perform in practice, be- cause you understand, if you don't per- form consistently, that other guy's pretty good, and he might take off with this race." Freeman was also asked if he could see a scenario in which Notre Dame uses two quarter- backs, the only plausible one being Carr as the starter and Minchey as a change-of-pace signal-caller with a greater QB run threat. That's on the table, Freeman explained, but the Irish will not employ a two- quarterback system. "Both, we believe, have the ability to be the starting quar- terback," Freeman said. "Both have done a tremendous job im- proving through spring prac- tice. Every single quarterback has improved. It was awesome to see." No t re Da m e w i l l n a m e a starter by Week 1 at Miami. There is still no exact time- table for when that decision will be made, but either Carr or Minchey will be the unques- tioned leader when the Irish e n te r H a rd Ro c k Stadium. "I'm pleased that we're going to have a true competition that we bring into fall camp and try to create some pres- sure situations for those guys that they have to perform, so that the first time they feel that pres- sure isn't going to be when we play Miami, Florida," Free- man said. MINCHEY PROVED MANY WRONG, CRASHED THE PARTY Nothing was given to Minchey since he committed to the Irish a month be- fore National Signing Day in 2022. He wasn't the quarterback of the future when he made his pledge; that was Carr, who despite being a year younger joined his respective class five months earlier. He had never played meaningful snaps in a college football game; that was An- geli, who started and won the Sun Bowl and helped Notre Dame score crucial THE FUTURE IS NOW Pushing all chips in on young talent, Notre Dame moves forward with CJ Carr and Kenny Minchey During spring practice, word started to trickle out that Minchey was impressing and was a real factor in Notre Dame's quarterback battle. PHOTO BY MICHAEL MILLER