Notre Dame Football: Two Fighting Irish QBs highlight 90-player Maxwell Award watch list
By Greg Hadley
Notre Dame football is looking for a strong showing in 2016, and quarterbacks Malik Zaire and DeShone Kizer highlight the start of the preseason watch lists for the Irish.
College football is still almost two months away from officially kicking off, but Tuesday marked one of the first steps in the buildup to the actual season with the release of the Maxwell Award watch list.
All the names you’d expect to be there were present: Deshaun Watson, Christian McCaffery, Dalvin Cook, Baker Mayfield and Leonard Fournette, to name a few. But there were some surprises as well, with the biggest one being the presence of both Malik Zaire and DeShone Kizer.
Zaire and Kizer are currently locked in a battle for Notre Dame’s starting QB job, as the Irish broke from spring camp without either player seeming to have a real edge. Zaire is older and has shown flashes of brilliance while on the field, but Kizer took on the starting job early last season when Zaire was injured and led the Irish to a Fiesta Bowl berth.
The Maxwell Award, considered one of the most prestigious honors in college ball, is awarded to the best player in the country.
Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly has been cagey, to the say the least, about whether Zaire or Kizer will be under center in 2016, so the Maxwell Committee hedged its bet and threw both on the watch list. No other program has two signal callers on the list.
A Notre Dame fan may be tempted to see Tuesday’s announcement as confirmation that no matter who starts at QB for the Irish in 2016, he’ll be one of the best players in the country. And to a certain extent, that’s probably true.
Both Zaire and Kizer are talented players with a whole lot of potential. Whoever does start will likely be catapulted into the Heisman (and, by extension, the Maxwell) discussion. However, a bit of context should throw some cold water on Domers’ dreams of the best player in college football playing quarterback for the Irish.
The Maxwell watch list is 90 players long and 17 other programs have two players on it.* Clemson and Baylor have three each. To a certain extent, this list is less a group of potential best players in the country and more a collection of very good ones. No one actually believes Jake Butt will be the best college football player in the nation.
More from Notre Dame Fighting Irish
- Ranking college football’s top 10 quarterbacks after Week 3
- Notre Dame Football Lands Massive Commitment from QB Deuce Knight
- College Football Playoff: Projected top 4 after Week 3
- 3 takeaways from Notre Dame football’s win over Central michigan
- Notre Dame football: 3 bold predictions vs. Central Michigan in Week 3
Something tells me the Maxwell committee was stretching to fill 90 slots with players who could, with at least a shred of integrity, be called contenders for the best player in the FBS. So rather than choose one or the other, they put Zaire and Kizer on the list, even though one might not play a down this season.
All of this serves to highlight just how ridiculous watch lists can be. Any program that had a player named to the Maxwell Award list tweeted about it and made it sound as though they have one of the nation’s absolute top players.
They don’t though; they have a player or two who could be good. The sheer number of names, combined with how early in the summer it is, before any team has gathered for preseason camp, lessens the honor that might come from being named to such a list.
Next: Which Game of Thrones House is Your CFB Program?
* Those teams are, in no particular order: Penn State, Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia Tech, TCU, Boise State, Miami, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Temple, Southern Miss, Texas A&M, Washington, Washington State, USC, Cincinnati and Michigan.