Apparently Notre Dame Still Does Not Have a Quarterback

Heading into 2018, Notre Dame went 2-2 across their last four games, and likely would have been 1-3 in that stretch if Brian Kelly had not benched quarterback Brandon Wimbush in the bowl game.

Across those four games, Wimbush went 33 of 75 (44%) for 584 yards, throwing 5 touchdowns with 4 interceptions. Heading into his senior year, Wimbush has struggled to even stay above 50% with his passing, completing only 49.5% in 2017.

Across those last four games, the numbers were not pretty, with completion percentages of 47.6%, 50%, 39.3% and 37.7%.

• 10-21-1-2 (47.6%) 119 yards … in a 33-point loss to Miami (Fla.)
• 9-18-2-0 (50%) 164 yards … in a 7-point win over Navy
• 11-28-2-2 (39.3%) 249 yards … in an 18-point loss to Stanford
• 3-8-0-0 (37.%) for 52 yards … earlier in a 4-point win over LSU, later sparked by Ian Book after Wimbush was benched

It would be difficult to suggest that Wimbush could step up and serve as an elite college quarterback, let alone an NFL prospect at that position. For that matter, it is difficult to picture him as a caretaker quarterback within an otherwise elite team.  One wonders if it might be even be cruel to him and his future to not give him an opportunity at other positions.

(Even Carlyle Holiday, after being given limited opportunities at wide receiver and as a return man, got onto an NFL scout team and earned a few years on NFL rosters as a wide receiver and on special teams. Surely Wimbush deserves a chance to showcase his athleticism in other places besides the failed experiment at quarterback.)

Ian Book, who sparked Notre Dame to the second-tier New Year’s Day bowl win over LSU in the Citrus Bowl has shown flashes of promise, perhaps enough to suggest that he might grow and rise to some greater level of plausibility in the role than Wimbush. In the Citrus Bowl, Book came off the bench to go 14 of 19 (73.7%) for 164 yards, with 2 touchdowns and 1 interception. On the year, Book completed 61.3% of his passes, although he did have 4 interceptions to go with 4 touchdowns over the course of the season. Book led Notre Dame to victory over North Carolina at mid-season, while Wimbush sat out.

Yet the fact that, even with Wimbush flailing, Book has not been named the starter, perhaps calls into question whether Notre Dame has a starter in Book — which means Notre Dame might not have a legitimate starter at all at the quarterback position. In other words, if Wimbush is that bad, and Book still is not the starter, what does that say about Book, or what Brian Kelly sees in practice.

Perhaps Kelly simply has some kind of prejuice in favor all-purpose athletes at the quarterback position, with some running ability while heaving strong-armed passes without great consistency.

Fans are left wondering whether, without an elite option in the depth chart, Kelly has decided to plug in Wimbush as an extra running back, with the hope that he can avoid throwing the game away, and get lucky once in a while with throws reaching the mark.

Or perhaps he is hoping that more talented players at the wide receiver position will make something out of enough the throws, even if the results of a particular completion — for the less than half the time that a pass does get completed — are minimized by the receiver having to stop and contort to bring it in, instead of getting the ball on-the-mark and properly timed.

Then again, with Notre Dame tolerating nearly a decade of a coach who has never won a major bowl game (let alone a major college national championship) —  is Notre Dame settling for a new standard. Is the new standard not to “Play Like a Champion” like the sign at Notre Dame and Oklahoma has exhorted, but rather to simply be part of the gang in college football, and perhaps to simply be plausible — to vacillate between semi-respectacle mediocrity and top-25 plausibility — and, all the while, to provide just enough of the Notre Dame fantasy to milk the brand for some of the biggest money in the college game.

Unless Ian Book turns out to be better than Kelly apparently thinks he is, or somebody else emerges from the depth chart, fans might be stuck watching an all-purpose athlete at the quarterback position, running here and there, with a periodic strong-armed heave that just might be completed if higher-quality receivers doing something acrobatic to haul it in.