Quick hitters: What Notre Dame offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock said before Week 1 at Texas A&M

Notre Dame offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock spoke to local reporters Tuesday evening about Texas A&M’s defense, the offensive line and, of course, Fighting Irish senior quarterback Riley Leonard.

Here’s what Denbrock had to say ahead of Notre Dame’s Week 1 matchup against the Aggies.

On who stands out on Texas A&M’s defense

“Yeah. I mean, I think the linebacker [Taurean York] is a really good player. They like to play him in the box. He’s their run stopper, if you will. They use those big defensive linemen to kind of eat up as many blocks as they can, and he makes a lot of plays because of that. But those guys up front are good using their hands. They’re good at getting off blocks. Just really impressed with their defensive front overall, their front seven in particular.” 

On what Notre Dame OL Sam Pendleton and Anthonie Knapp do well

“So, start off with Sam. The type of toughness and lead by example, physicality, kind of that aura that you want surrounding your offensive line, I think he embodies that very well. And [he] kind of helps bring that to the other guys on the line, if you will, along with those other two guys that are out playing on the inside.

“Knapper is a guy who’s kind of been incredible. Since he’s walked on campus, he’s been such a quick study that I’ve never viewed him as a freshman, just because of how quick he picks things up, how fundamentally sound he is with what he does, and the consistency that he plays with. So, those things have led to us making the decisions that we have.”

On how confident he is that Knapp and Pendleton to stay assignment-correct at Texas A&M

“I feel good about assignment stuff. This is a good group of defensive linemen they’re matched up against. Are they going to win every battle? No. Are they going to lose every battle? No. We want them sticking their face on people and battling all night long. And we’ll take the result.”

On Notre Dame QB Riley Leonard’s learning curve, and if having him for one year (as opposed to having Jayden Daniels for two at LSU) changes his development plan

“I don’t know if it changes it. I know there’s a learning curve with anybody, right? And that’s all the players on the offensive unit. And I think I’ve spoken to this before, that I think our best football is going to be coming whatever week that happens to happen.

“Hopefully, that’s Week 1. That’s what we all want, but I think we’ve got an opportunity to get better and better and better as the year goes along. And that comes with playing in the system and gaining experience in real-time reps. And as much as we can replicate it in practice, we try to do that in every way possible. But there’s nothing like it’s going to be when we line up Saturday night in Kyle Field and see what everybody’s all about, quite frankly.”

On how many carries is too many carries for Leonard, a dual-threat quarterback

“I don’t know. What’s the score? I don’t know. Listen, you don’t want to spend it all in the first couple series of the game or whatever. But some of that gets dictated by the flow of the game, quite frankly. It is what it is. You know what I mean? And it’s hard to really know.

“I think they’re going to be skewed towards maybe some of the things they’ve done in the past, with some interjection of some of the things that we saw from Florida a year ago. How much of which are we going to see? And how much does that lend itself to quarterback run as opposed to quick game or drop-back game or misdirection and all those types of things that’s going to kind of have to happen? Kind of the game within the game, quite frankly.”

On Texas A&M athlete Terry Bussey, who might play all three phases Saturday night

“Yeah, he’s electric. He’s electric. A really good, explosive football player that we tried really hard to get at my last place of employment.”