Notre Dame Fighting Irish nearly landed national champion QB

Will Howard could’ve been the Notre Dame Fighting Irish QB last year. Instead, in a cruel twist of fate, he was on the other sideline when Notre Dame fell in the College Football Playoff championship. Riley Leonard was under center for the Fighting Irish instead. That resulted in a 34-23 loss for Notre Dame in their first chance at a title in several years.

Howard said on The Scarlet and Gray Podcast, “I thought I was going to end up at Notre Dame. A lot of people don’t know this, this was very under wraps. They ended up signing Riley [Leonard] right before I was about to commit. I was about to commit that day, I call my agent and he’s like, ‘Sorry.'”

The move to sign Leonard came as a big surprise to Howard, who admitted that it p****d him off. “People didn’t know that had happened going into the National Championship,” Howard added. “The general manager was standing on the sideline when we were warming up, and I was just staring daggers through him.”

Ohio State also had reported interest in Leonard beforehand, so it’s reasonable to think there could’ve been a reality where last year’s CFP title game was played with the QBs on opposite sides. Howard led the Buckeyes to their first title since 2014, and Leonard came up short.

In that game, Howard was 17/21 with 231 passing yards and two touchdowns. On the other side, Leonard went 22/31 with 255 yards and two touchdowns (and added one on the ground), so it’s not as if either side got an excellent or horrible game from their QB. The difference really came down to the rushing offense, where OSU ran for 214 yards (5.2 yards per clip) to Notre Dame’s 53.