What should Notre Dame football fans be most excited to see against Ohio State?
It’s the first game of Notre Dame’s 2022 season. ESPN’s College GameDay will be there. So will over 100,000 college football fans, most of them rooting on the home team. The Fighting Irish’s Marcus Freeman will coach in the first regular season game of his career, too.
There is plenty to get excited about. But none of those things should peak Irish fans’ attention.
The most interesting aspect of Saturday night’s showdown in Columbus, Ohio, between No. 5 Notre Dame and No. 2 Ohio State from a blue and gold perspective is the first career start of sophomore quarterback Tyler Buchner. It’s been long anticipated, it’s finally here, and the enigma that is Buchner’s future will get at least a little less murky by midnight.
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“Games are why you play the sport, and games are the most fun thing about it,” Buchner said this week. “Obviously, if I could have the opportunity to play a game every week, I would.”
The Notre Dame coaching staff has afforded Buchner the opportunity to not just play in a game every week but start in one every week except for one between now and Thanksgiving. The Fighting Irish offense is his, and he’ll get to debut what that entails against the second best team in the country with the world watching.
It could go a multitude of ways.
Maybe Buchner struggles out of the gates. Maybe he succumbs to deafening crowd noise. It’s possible he plays like a 19-year-old kid who let the moment get the best of him. But maybe he doesn’t. Maybe the athleticism that allowed him to rather quickly win the fall camp quarterback competition shows up from the start. Maybe the combination of his arm and legs is too much for the Ohio State defense to handle. What if he keeps Notre Dame in a shootout with what was the No. 1 offense in the land a year ago?
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That’s why there is nothing more compelling in a game that’s as engrossing as any Week 1 matchup there has been in the sport for quite some time than Buchner’s performance.
It’s important to note his quality of play should not be the determinant for how he will fare all season or throughout his career. One game should never dictate that. But with his collegiate sample size being what it currently is, 10 games of experience in a reserve role as a gimmicky “package” QB option, Saturday night is certainly the most crucial data point Buchner will have put forth.
“My personal confidence, I like to think that it doesn’t waver,” Buchner said. “I like to have the idea that my confidence will stay the same no matter the external factors. I try to keep it level at all times. Try not to get too high, too low. But I’d say, honestly, since spring ball through camp til now my confidence has just gone up and up. I feel like I’m in a good spot.”
Saturday will show how confident he truly is.
