Riley Leonard is starting to round into the kind of shape that could make the Notre Dame football team a real title contender. The Irish quarterback threw for 178 yards and 2 touchdowns while running for another 80 yards and a score.
Those sort of numbers are starting to become par for the course for the transfer QB as he settles into Mike Denbrock's offense and the coordinator and quarterback start to figure things out.
With those kinds of numbers, Leonard helped the Notre Dame football team win a game that at least some analysts thought was going to be a loss. And now, heading into their second bye week of the season, they're 7-1 and boasting several wins over Top 25 teams (at least at the time.) Leonard talked about that after the game.
Riley Leonard discusses Notre Dame football game vs Navy
On What's changed since his early season struggles
"I think a lot of factors come into play there. I'll start with everybody that's been around me. You look at guys like Sam Hartman, who gave me a call and really spoke to me about the opportunities that we have being quarterbacks at Notre Dame. You look at Tyler Buckner, who came back here, going out to eat with him and having his perspective on everything really helped me out a lot."
He doesn't get enough credit. I mean, he puts so much into this program now and has really been a big help to me. Every single teammate that's held me accountable, not only on the football field, but when it comes to my faith as well. Obviously, Notre Dame is a very spiritual place. And I think, allowing Jesus to come into my life and change the way that I walk into a football game has really helped me out a lot..."
On what Navy's defense was showing him
"Yeah, all week. I mean, these guys run everything you could imagine. I mean, half the time, they're dropping eight, but they got 10, 15 different ways to do it. Huge shout out to their defense cuz we were paranoid all week. I mean, we didn't have school this week."
"So we had extra time to get into the film room, but we still came into this game like, what the heck is going on back there? I certainly did. But yeah, we ended up kinda figuring out a little bit and had some success. So at the end of the day, they got 11 guys to cover. So we just stuck to our game plan, did our thing."
All of the comments from Riley Leonard showed that the Notre Dame football captain is a leader, who is rounding into form at just the right time.