Notre Dame Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Lujack dies at 98
One of the best quarterbacks in Notre Dame history has died at the age of 98. Johnny Lujack passed away in Naples, Florida, after a brief bout with an illness according to a report from the Associated Press.
Lujack, a College Football Hall of Fame inductee and a two-time NFL Pro Bowl selection, won the Heisman Trophy in 1947. He was the second Notre Dame player to ever win the coveted award. Five Fighting Irish players have followed in his footsteps over the years.
For a while, Lujack, the third ever monogram winner in four sports in school history, was everything any Notre Dame student-athlete in any era could hope to be. He led the program to national championships in 1943, 1946 and 1947. He held a 20-1-1 as head coach Frank Leahy‘s starting quarterback. Both Lujack and Leahy left South Bend in the middle of their respective careers to enlist in the Navy. The 1946 and 1947 titles came after their service in World War II.
In Lujack’s Heisman campaign, he completed 61-of-109 passes for 777 yards and nine touchdowns. He also ran for 139 yards and a touchdown on 12 carries. His proudest play might have occurred a year prior when he made a game-saving tackle to save Notre Dame’s undefeated 1946 season.
Lujack was teammates with fellow Notre Dame greats Creighton Miller, Terry Brennan, Emil Sitko, George Connor, Bill Fischer and 1949 Heisman Trophy winner Leon Hart during his time with the program. It was a golden era of Notre Dame football that set the stage for teams led by head coaches Ara Parseghian, Dan Devine and Lou Holtz to have similar success.
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“We always felt that a game was kind of an easy scrimmage because the scrimmages we had against each other were mean and rough,” Lujack said according to the AP.
Lujack was the fourth overall pick in the 1946 NFL Draft. In a four-year career with the Chicago Bears, Lujack threw for 6,295 yards and 41 touchdowns with 54 interceptions. He also ran for 742 yards and 21 more scores. He had eight interceptions as a defensive back in 1948 and 12 in his short career. He had 11 rushing touchdowns in 1950, which was an all-time record for a quarterback at the time. He also kicked three field goals and made 34 extra points that season.
Lujack’s lore as a Notre Dame great has not been lost on the most recent generations of Irish football players. Linebacker Jaylon Smith named Lujack the quarterback of his all-time Notre Dame team on the NFL Network earlier this month.
