Marcus Freeman Closes The Book On Notre Dame Spring Practice And Looks To The Summer

Head coach Marcus Freeman closed the chapter on his fourth spring at the helm at Notre Dame. He met with the media this afternoon to break down some of the takeaways from this spring. Obviously, the quarterback competition drew a lot of attention now that he, and the offensive staff, have narrowed it down to a two man competition. Freeman also discussed the improvements made on defense, the players returning from injury in the summer and the young, but experienced, offensive line.

“We believe that both Kenny Minchey and CJ Carr have the ability to be the starting quarterback. Both have done a tremendous job in improving through spring practice. Every single quarterback has improved and it was awesome to see. It’s just tough when you have limited reps to truly see someone separate themselves. Some days, they would get 12 team reps each and that’s not many. That’s probably why I said it’s hard to have a true three quarterback battle going into fall camp. There’s just not enough reps to go around. You talk about two guys that don’t have much, if any, real game experience.

The thing you can create, when you have a true competition where it’s 50/50 and you guys are going to battle it out, is that you’re going to try and put some of that pressure that a true game is going to present. You have to perform in practice because, if you don’t perform consistently, that other guy is pretty good and can start running away with this race. I’m pleased that we’re going to have a true competition as we begin fall camp. We’re going to try and create some pressure situations for those guys that they have to perform in so the first time they feel that pressure won’t be when we play in Miami, Florida.”