Notre Dame Football: Top 5 position battles to watch in spring 2018

2. Quarterback

Notre Dame’s quarterback battle has become less and less exciting as the spring has worn on, but it’s still worth monitoring. As it stands right now, senior Brandon Wimbush is pretty much a lock to start Week 1 and will almost certainly get first team reps in the Blue-Gold game. Behind him is Ian Book, a junior most remembered for his late-game heroics in the Irish’s Citrus Bowl win over LSU.

Following the team’s bowl game victory, it seemed as if Book would be the favorite to land the starting job in 2018. In fact, Book’s performance came after he replaced Wimbush earlier in the game. However, what initially appeared to be a strong indication of who would start in 2018 eventually faded into nothing more than a teaser for those in Book’s camp.

Kelly has shown a significant amount of patience with Wimbush, and appears to have based his decision off of Wimbush’s spring performance. While Book is an exciting option at the position, Kelly has referred to his recent play as “spotty”. It makes sense, as that is what the majority of his play looked like last year.

All things considered, we saw one good game from Ian Book. While that was certainly a big win, it could be a argued that we also saw six, maybe seven good games out of Wimbush. Book’s performance was certainly timely, but it might be worth it to see what Wimbush looks like with a year under his belt.