87 days until Notre Dame football: Showing why the Irish got Sam Hartman
BlueandGold.com will release a countdown article highlighting a significant Fighting Irish football statistic every day until the 2023 Notre Dame season opener against Navy in Dublin, Ireland, on Aug. 26. Today, there are 87 days until the Fighting Irish and Midshipmen kick off at Aviva Stadium.
It’s difficult to win big in college football in this era without an elite quarterback.
Three of the quarterbacks who guided their teams to the College Football Playoff last season passed for at least 245 yards per game. The only one who didn’t was Michigan’s JJ McCarthy. He threw for 194.2 yards per game, which ranked 81st nationally among FBS quarterbacks.
There was not good company that far down the list.
McCarthy was one spot ahead of Clemson’s D.J. Uiagalelei, who has since transferred to Oregon State, and one spot ahead of Brayden Schager. Who? Exactly. This isn’t June Jones and Colt Brennan‘s Hawaii anymore.
A few places down the pecking order, at No. 87, is former Notre Dame quarterback Drew Pyne. Pyne passed for 183.7 yards per game. Excluding a mop-up duty appearance in fourth quarter action vs. Marshall, that number was 200.1. That would have put him at No. 78 nationally, right ahead of UCF’s John Rhys Plumlee. The baseball player? Yeah, exactly.
New Notre Dame quarterback Sam Hartman passed for 308.4 yards per game at Wake Forest in 2022, meanwhile. That was No. 7 in the nation. The quarterbacks with better figures were Washington’s Michael Penix Jr. (357.0), Western Kentucky’s Austin Reed (338.9), Georgia Southern’s Kyle Vantrease (327.2), USC’s Caleb Williams (324.1), Houston’s Clayton Tune (313.4) and North Carolina’s Drake Maye (308.6).
Better company.
Notre Dame felt limited through the air with Pyne and Tyler Buchner behind center. Hartman eliminates that worry. He’s played in a different system — and an incredibly unique one at that — for his entire career. That could lead to a lower yards per game total. But the body of work regardless of scheme is there. Hartman threw for 302 yards per game in 2021. Back-to-back 300-plus averages are not a fluke.
Roughly one-third of Pyne’s passing output went to tight end Michael Mayer. Hartman has been known to spread the ball around more. All signs point to the Notre Dame quarterback ranking much higher than No. 87 on the FBS-wide passing yards per game chart in 2023.
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