Notre Dame Football: Five things to know regarding Jurkovec transfer
By Matt Clark
With Ian Book securing the starting quarterback role for the Irish in 2020, Phil Jurkovec likely would have needed to wait until 2021 before getting a shot to become the starting quarterback for Notre Dame. However, even that was far from a guarantee given the amount of depth the Irish are about to enjoy at the quarterback position.
As previously mentioned, Notre Dame already had a 3-star recruit, Brendon Clark, progressing faster than expected at the quarterback position. With Clark’s progression reportedly being significant enough to challenge Jurkovec on the depth chart, there would be no guarantee that Jurkovec would be named the starter over Clark in 2021 even if there were not two top quarterback recruits coming to South Bend.
In 2020, the Irish will benefit from 4-star quarterback recruit Drew Pyne coming to campus. Pyne was ranked by Rivals as the number seven pro-style quarterback in his recruiting class and the number 118 overall recruit. After shining in the Under Armour All-American high school football game, there is a lot of hype surrounding the future of Pyne.
If having Pyne coming to Notre Dame to compete with a crowded quarterback group of Book, Jurkovec and Clark wasn’t concern enough for Jurkovec’s future with the team, the fact that the Irish have one of the top quarterback recruits of the 2021 class committed to them in Tyler Buchner cast further doubt on his future prospects with the Irish.
Buchner, who is coming off a junior year in high school, became the first high school junior since Reggie Bush to be nominated for the Silver Pigskin award — the equivalent to the high school Heisman Trophy award. He was nominated for the award after passing for 3,358 yards and 41 passing touchdowns while rushing for 1,149 yards and 20 rushing touchdowns.
With the amount of depth that would be in the quarterback room in South Bend, there was a very good chance that the once-heralded Jurkovec would not ever receive an opportunity to become a starter with the Irish. As a result, the decision to transfer became extremely easy for Jurkovec.