If you’re a Notre Dame fan, recent developments around the quarterback position might leave you scratching your head a bit.
This past offseason, the Fighting Irish reportedly reached out to former Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers with a major NIL offer on the table. While Ewers ultimately ended up entering the NFL Draft and getting selected by the Miami Dolphins, his agent allegedly revealed that Notre Dame was one of the two schools that seriously pushed for him.
That kind of pursuit says a lot. If Notre Dame was feeling good about their quarterback room back in January, would they really have been throwing big NIL money at a quarterback who, let’s be honest, didn’t exactly light it up last season in Austin?
From the outside, it might seem like Notre Dame is now all-in on freshman C.J. Carr. After all, Steve Angeli, the presumed starter heading into the spring, just transferred out of South Bend. The job is seemingly Carr’s to lose, with sophomore Kenny Minchey now the only real competition left in the room. The coaching staff has said all the right things about Carr’s development, but the timing of their interest in Ewers feels like a flashing yellow light—proceed with caution.
Think about it: Ewers was coming off a rollercoaster year at Texas. He showed flashes but was also inconsistent, and Longhorns fans were openly calling for Arch Manning to take over the job at several points in the season. Despite that, Notre Dame still saw enough value in him to try and lure him in with what was rumored to be a massive NIL package. That’s not a move you make unless you’re seriously uncertain about what you’ve got internally.
So now Notre Dame is trying to publicly project confidence in their quarterback room, but it feels a little forced. And to be fair, they have every reason to want Carr to be the guy. He’s a talented recruit with great pedigree and the potential to lead the Irish into a new era. But we’ve seen this play out before—handing the keys to a young quarterback can be a gamble, especially without a proven, experienced option as insurance.
And at this point, Kenny Minchey is more of a developmental prospect than a battle-tested backup.
The irony in all this? If Notre Dame had landed Ewers, fans probably would’ve been skeptical too, wondering why the staff was bringing in another transfer who hadn’t fully broken through in his last stop. But the fact that they made that move—and failed—tells us something far more important: they aren’t as sure about this QB room as they’d like everyone to believe.