Notre Dame football: Top 5 quarterbacks in school history

Notre Dame has five quarterbacks in the College Football Hall of Fame who didn’t make this list. They are Frank Carideo, Ralph Guglielmi, Paul Hornung, John Huarte, and Bob Williams. Hornung and Huarte both won the Heisman Trophy but did not make this top 5 Notre Dame quarterbacks of all-time list.

Here’s the thing, there are nine Notre Dame quarterbacks in the College Football Hall of Fame. Being in the Hall of Fame isn’t a prerequisite to making this list.  Making the list of top-5 Notre Dame quarterbacks ever is about an all-around resume, not whether or not they received one particular honor.

Frank Carideo was a two time All-American and two-time National Champion but just missed this list. Ralph Guglielmi was an All-American too but lacks an all-around resume to make the top-5 Notre Dame quarterbacks list. Paul Hornung has a Heisman Trophy that even he agrees should have gone to Jim Brown. John Huarte, an All-American and Heisman winner, narrowly missed the list. Meanwhile, Bob Williams, who was an All-American and National Champion, is also on the outside looking in on this list.

That isn’t to say that these aren’t amazing players, who deserve recognition in their own right. But, really, the legacy of a Notre Dame quarterback is more than being an All-American. It’s about winning championships and waking up the echoes of past glory.

Tony Rice, Joe Montana, and Terry Hanratty all deserve mention as well.

Rice, of course, led Notre Dame to its only National Championship under Lou Holtz, was an excellent dual-threat who overcame academic struggles to star for the Irish. Montana may be the best NFL quarterback ever, and he had some great performances with Notre Dame. However, with the Irish, he didn’t start with any consistency. He did win two Cotton Bowls and a National Championship, though. Finally, Terry Hanratty was an All-American, but perhaps better known for being the player who got injured to make way for Joe Theismann.

Statistically, a case could be made for Jimmy Clausen and Ian Book. The issue is they don’t have resumes that extend deeply beyond those stats. Granted, Book will still have another year to potentially change that.

Oh, and Gus Dorais, who played quarterback for Notre Dame in 1913, when the Irish attacked Army with the forward pass.