Riley Leonard has shown indisputable in-season Notre Dame football growth

The Notre Dame football team has improved quite a bit since the start of the season. Or at least, since Week 2. And it’s clear that the biggest reason the team has improved is because Riley Leonard has improved quite a bit since that loss to the Northern Illinois Huskies.

Starting with his game against Purdue, Leonard has completed 68% of his passes for 1,036 yards, 8 touchdowns and just one interception. He’s also only been sacked four times in six games and has averaged more than 7 yards per carry, and has scored 10 of his 11 rushing touchdowns on the season.

It’s not just the numbers that show the Notre Dame football quarterback has improved greatly as the season has gone on. PFF sent out information on Tuesday that shows he’s the fourth best quarterback in the entire country over that span.

Notre Dame football is seeing resurgent Riley Leonard

Easily the biggest part of Leonard’s turnaround is that he started from a place where there were legitimately fans who were calling for him to sit down in place of Steve Angeli or Kenny Minchey. It wasn’t just fans either. Plenty of analysts believed that it was perhaps time to try someone else until the transfer could get his head straight.

Marcus Freeman came under quite a bit of fire in the early days because he stood by Leonard. So did Mike Denbrock. There were dissection of their comments, as well as the QB1’s when it seemed like the Irish were hampering their offense in order to try and tailor it to him.

Turns out, they were doing the right thing. The Notre Dame football team is on a roll that could end up allowing them to host a playoff game. Back in the days of the Week 2 debacle, that seemed nie impossible.