Ryan Day discusses his initial thoughts on Sam Hartman, Notre Dame

There will be no shortage of excitement when No. 6 Ohio State heads to South Bend this weekend for a date with No. 9 Notre Dame to headline Week 4’s college football slate.

The Irish have been enjoying great success this season via the arm of transfer quarterback Sam Hartman. He poses the biggest threat to the Buckeyes’ efforts of returning to Columbus with a key top-10 victory and head coach Ryan Day was complementary of the sixth-year QB, pointing out the fact that this Notre Dame team feels different with Hartman under center.

“You can tell Hartman is a veteran,” Day said on Tuesday. “He’s been around. He’s played a lot of football. Accurate. Intelligent. A lot of good attributes for a quarterback. He’s very good. He won a lot of games at Wake Forest and obviously he’s 4-0 now. Efficient. And I think they are doing a really good job with him.

“They’re running the ball. Running the ball out of various personnel groupings. Efficient. I think just a different style of quarterback than when they has [Tyler] Buchner last year. That was more of a quarterback run, spread run game. This is more pro style.”

Notre Dame is running a pro offense with, essentially, a pro quarterback calling the shots — and it shows. After four games, Hartman ranks fifth in the nation in passing yards with 1,061 to go with a nation-leading 13 touchdowns — not to mention zero interceptions over 97 passing attempts entering Saturday’s matchup.

A home environment will play in the Fighting Irish’s favor, but Day has a feeling his guys can rise to the occasion if they set themselves up for it throughout game week. Still, he’s giving credit to an Irish team that have solidified themselves as one of the best in the country through four games.

“They have a really good team. Marcus [Freeman] does a great job. They have a great staff. We got to go win a top 10 game on the road. Our guys are really excited for this game. You could see it Sunday. You could see it yesterday. Guys buzzing around. So now we have to have a great week of practice, and it’s going to come down to who wants to compete more.”

The battle between the two top-10 programs is set to kick off on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. ET live on NBC. The Buckeyes will enter the back half of game week as a three-point betting favorite, per Vegas Insider, despite playing on the road.