Notre Dame football: Top 5 quarterbacks in school history

In the long tradition of Notre Dame football, there have been a lot of great quarterbacks. These are the five best to ever play for the Fighting Irish:

When people think of Notre Dame football, they think of a long tradition of excellence. This tradition of excellence begins with the long line of great Notre Dame quarterbacks. Even in the years where running backs starred ahead of the quarterback, a good signal-caller was still required if you wanted to win championships. That’s why Notre Dame has had such a long history of excellence; their tradition of great quarterback play.

This is a tradition that is well worth recognition. It’s good to recognize the great quarterbacks of a program if only to remind oneself of what the Notre Dame gold standard should be. This is what players like Ian Book are trying to live and play up to.

Unfortunately, when a team has as long a history as Notre Dame, there’s going to be numerous more than deserving players to miss this list. There are just too many talented players to recognize.

Another challenge is the difficulty in comparing different eras of the quarterback position because it has changed so much over time. Harry Stuhldreher and Brady Quinn had exponentially different expectations on them. So, you need to compare how successful they were at doing what they were expected to do.

Also, please note that these rankings are based on their time with Notre Dame. This is not ranking Notre Dame alumni based on their NFL careers. Sorry, Joe Montana. Cheers Brady Quinn.

In general, players are being graded against their complete resume. This means that they’re expected to have been winners, preferably National Champions. It will help to have received honors like All-American, because this shows that they were the best in the game, for their particular era.

Statistics, meanwhile, are also important. It helps to be Notre Dame’s all-time leading passer. However, in the interest of fairness, this will be graded on a scale. Tommy Rees maybe second all-time in touchdown passes, but that’s largely based on when he played. It won’t help him to get ranked ahead of someone like Harry Stuhldreher.

Now that those ground rules are established, here are the five best Notre Dame quarterbacks of all-time: