What Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said about taking a transfer portal quarterback in 2024
The quarterback carousel won’t stop spinning in South Bend. Thursday, one month before the end of the 2023 regular season, Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman was asked if the Fighting Irish would go to the transfer portal yet again, for a third time in four years, to find a starting QB.
His answer definitely was not “no.”
“All options right now are in consideration,” he said.
Notre Dame brought in Jack Coan from Wisconsin in 2021. He started all 13 games in a season in which the Irish went 11-2. This season, Wake Forest transfer Sam Hartman has started every game for the No. 14 Irish (6-2).
Hartman, a sixth-year graduate student, is out of eligibility at the end of the year. He’s been grooming sophomore Steve Angeli and freshman Kenny Minchey for the next phases of their respective careers. If Notre Dame does not look to the portal, one of those two QBs is next year’s likely starter when the Irish open the season in College Station at Texas A&M.
“The most important thing they benefit from is the preparation,” Freeman said of Hartman taking the younger duo under his wing. “How they prepare throughout the week outside of the time that’s permitted through the NCAA rules, the four hours we get with them a day and then on Saturday. The preparations of watching film, a routine, pre-practice routine, post-practice routine, that’s the biggest addition they’ve received from Sam Hartman.”
If Hartman pulls a Coan and starts Notre Dame’s final five games of the season, though, Angeli won’t have a single start to his name at the college level. Obviously, neither will Minchey. Drew Pyne started 10 games for Notre Dame last season, and Tyler Buchner started three. The Irish still went to the portal to pluck Hartman out of Winston-Salem after half a decade there.
It would come as no surprise to see Freeman do the same thing because he has an even less experienced quarterback room entering 2024 than he did going into 2023. Freeman said he’s going to gather his coaching staff during Notre Dame’s second bye week (Nov. 11) to assess the team’s quarterback situation for next season.
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“I feel really good about the future of our program at the quarterback position with the guys we have coming in, with the guys we have here,” Freeman said. “But you look at numbers, too, right? Most rosters have four quarterbacks on scholarship, which we lost when Tyler left. So we’ve been in discussions on what we want to do. Do you want to take another quarterback, or do you not? We have three quarterbacks on scholarship right now.”
Those three in 2024 will be Angeli, Minchey and incoming four-star freshman CJ Carr, the No. 6 quarterback in his class according to the On3 Industry Ranking. The No. 4 QB in the class of 2025, Deuce Knight, committed to the Fighting Irish in September.
Carr and/or Knight could be the future of Notre Dame football, but every season is its own story. Freeman isn’t looking to skip ahead in the book. The pages detailing the events of 2024 are just as important as the ones describing 2025 and beyond. As it stands, the chapters delineating Notre Dame’s quarterback circumstances for next year are left largely unwritten.
“But again, I’m really pleased with the growth and confident with the growth and performance of Kenny and Steve Angeli,” Freeman said.
