
This QB stat casts doubt on Notre Dame football's chances to win a title this fall
Either CJ Carr or Kenny Minchey will take over the Irish offense now that Riley Leonard has moved onto the NFL, and in a state shared by On3's J.D. Pickell, it looks like its going to be an uphill battle for Notre Dame to win the national championship.
The former linebacker noted that there has been only one instance for a first-year starting quarterback winning the title over the last five years, and that was with Mac Jones and Alabama in 2020. He goes on to mention that five of the top six betting favorites to win a title this fall, don't have a returning starter. While Pickell doesn't name which teams they are, it's pretty easy to deduce which ones they are: Texas, Georgia, Ohio State, Penn State, Alabama and Oregon.
Only Penn State returns its starter from last year, and if you are like me, Drew Allar just doesn't do it for me, as evident by what Notre Dame did to the Nittany Lions in last years College Football Playoff. Every one of those other teams, along with the Irish will be breaking in a new starting quarterback.
Unfortunately, there is one dark-horse that stands out, that wasn't included in that top group and its Clemson. They have a championship winning head coach, a three-year starter at quarterback returning, and a top defense to go along with it.
While Notre Dame might not have the experience at quarterback, they do all over the rest of the field. Hopefully, that trumps breaking in a brand new starter behind center for the Irish and they can end a long title drought.
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