Notre Dame football offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock met with the media last week to talk about a number of different issues. Among those was the battle that is currently going on. However there is one quarterback that probably isn’t really in the fight, who is stll getting plenty of attention from the Irish coaches.
True freshman Blake Hebert probably isn’t going to have a shot to be the starting quarterback only because of the quality of the guys who are on the depth chart ahead of him. CJ Carr, Steve Angeli and Kenny Minchey are expected to be the three headed monster that fights for the starting job.
However, when Denbrock addressed the media, he made it clear that Hebert is showing quite a few things that the Notre Dame football coaches were impressed by. It’s clear that Hebert really is a guy they think could be a factor in the future, even if they really only turned to him because their previous quarterback commit jumped ship.
Blake Hebert turning heads despite long odds in Notre Dame football QB race
Denbrock also made it clear that while it might have looked like Hebert was Plan B, that wasn’t really the case.
"“We were in on Blake early in the process and liked his arm strength. We liked his size, obviously, his physical tools that he had. Thought he had things that they were asking him to do in the scheme that he played in high school, a lot of those concepts and things — even though they probably call it something way different than we do — matched up. So, you could see that he could function in the system that we run pretty well. All of those things went into that.”"
Denbrock also credited one of his assistants for making it possible to land Hebert late in the cycle.
"“Coach [Gino] Guidugli did a great job of kinda keeping in contact with him even though things had moved in a different direction for us. The just in case that you always have to do in the recruiting world. Fortunately, we were able to talk him into coming at the end.”"
Hebert might not win the job for the Notre Dame football this year, but it’s clear the coaching staff is happy to have him on board.