What Notre Dame OC Tommy Rees said about not taking a transfer quarterback in 2022 offseason
Remember when former USC quarterback and current Pittsburgh signal caller Kedon Slovis said the first team to contact him upon entering the NCAA transfer portal last December was Notre Dame? What wild times those were.
Nearing one year later, Notre Dame has started two quarterbacks for the first time in their careers in two of the Fighting Irish’s first three games of the 2022 season. Slovis, meanwhile, started 26 games at USC and the first two games for Pitt this fall before missing Week 3’s game against Western Michigan with an undisclosed injury. He’s set to return in Week 4.
The specifics of the conversation between Slovis and Notre Dame were never revealed. All that is common knowledge is that it occurred. How many other quarterbacks did Notre Dame talk to? That’s also not concrete information. But Irish offensive coordinator Tommy Rees gave reason to believe it was more than one during his Tuesday evening press conference.
“We certainly looked around,” Rees said. “There are a lot of reasons why sometimes transfers work and don’t work. To go through all the reasons why is probably a waste of time at this point. It’s something we looked into. It’s something we had conversations about and with. For reasons in our control and out of our control, it just didn’t happen. That’s that. We continue to press on and move forward.”
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What moving forward looks like for Notre Dame in the short term is junior Drew Pyne starting and true freshman Steve Angeli backing him up. The only other quarterback on the roster is sophomore Ron Powlus III, a local product who’s the son of former Notre Dame starting quarterback Ron Powlus. Powlus III did not arrive on campus with as lofty expectations as his father. He might not ever start a game for the Irish.
So, in essence, it’s just Pyne and Angeli after the season-ending shoulder injury to sophomore Tyler Buchner. If nothing else, a transfer addition at quarterback would have assuaged depth concerns. It could have ultimately produced a starter, too, like it did when Notre Dame brought in Jack Coan from Wisconsin for the 2021 season. That worked out pretty well.
Related: The Notre Dame football transfer portal conundrum
Slovis has thrown for 8,079 yards with 60 touchdowns and 25 interceptions in his career. Even with their three combined starts this season and everything else they had done prior to this year, Buchner and Pyne have combined for 1,082 passing yards with 8 touchdowns and 6 interceptions. Slovis would have likely come in and won the job in a three-way offseason quarterback competition.
Did he turn Notre Dame down? Did Notre Dame back off? Again, the particulars have not been stated by either party. But there were other quarterback transfer candidates in the portal. Plenty of schools ended up with one. Notre Dame did not. Could the Irish reel one in after the 2022 season concludes? Head coach Marcus Freeman did not rule that out.
“That’s something we’ll talk about after the season, see where Tyler Buchner is coming back from injury,” Freeman said. “It’s a long season ahead. We still have nine guaranteed games to evaluate Drew, Steve Angeli and Ron Powlus. If that’s a position of need where we have to go get a high school quarterback or a transfer quarterback, we’ll definitely evaluate that.”
The Irish might even be the first to call the hot new pick of the lot. But it doesn’t mean they’ll take the plunge. See: Slovis and the several other quarterbacks who went elsewhere, from JT Daniels to Michael Penix Jr. and plenty of others.
