SOUTH BEND, Ind. — It wasn’t a cache of proven gaudy statistics or even a bunch of above-average ones that made Mike Denbrock’s pulse quicken when it became apparent that Duke transfer Riley Leonard could be at the joystick of his latest offensive rollout.
It was the glimpses of who Leonard could turn into.
Projecting how high a ceiling the 6-foot-4, 213-pound senior from Fairhope, Ala., might have was only a small part of the calculus in Denbrock following up concocting the nation’s No. 1 scoring and yard-amassing offense last season at LSU with something that, as Notre Dame’s new offensive coordinator, could minimally pair with ND’s loaded defense to coax a College Football Playoff berth and perhaps even a playoff run.
Designing an offense with that ceiling in mind. Coaching to that projection that was backed up more anecdotally than conclusively. That coaching skill set is what Irish head coach Marcus Freeman had in mind when he made Denbrock’s highest-paid college offensive coordinator and coaxed him back for a third tour of duty in South Bend.
And 15 practices into seventh-ranked Notre Dame’s preseason camp and roughly two weeks before an Aug. 31 date at No. 20 Texas A&M, what does that look like?
A lot like it did with eventual 2023 Heisman Trophy winner Jayden Daniels did at LSU after transferring in from Arizona State after a merely whelming 2021 season.
"I look at those guys so similarly in a lot of aspects,” Denbrock said Saturday of Daniels and Leonard after his offense beat Al Golden’s vaunted defense, 42-40, in an intrasquad scrimmage at Notre Dame Stadium that employed a convoluted scoring system.
“And I'm not saying physical characteristics are exactly the same,” Denbrock continued. “But situationally, from coming into a program and into this offensive system in particular. But in 2022 at LSU, when Jayden started — I think it was the third game of the season — we go to Auburn. And we just, we can't move it.
“I want to say we threw for like 90 yards maybe. 82? 87? I don't know. It was under 100, which my boss at the time [Brian Kelly] reminded me of about 100 times on the plane on the way back. That process that he was going through was me getting familiar with him, him gaining trust and camaraderie with the wide receivers. That process hadn't run its course yet.
“Even though there were receivers running open, he was more entrusted in himself to put the ball down and run it than he was to let go of it. I see some of that same process going on with Riley at times.”
Daniels actually threw for 80 yards on 8-of-20 passing back that Auburn game in 2022. Daniels ran for 59 yards on 16 carries and a TD as LSU rallied from a 17-0 deficit to clip Auburn 21-17. The 73.0 pass-efficiency rating ended up being the second-lowest of Daniels’ five-year college career and his lowest since an ASU loss to Utah in Daniels’ freshman season.
Meanwhile, in 2023, Daniels set an NCAA record for the best pass-efficiency record in a single season, 208.0 — two years after fashioning a 136.2 mark for the season in his final year in an ASU uniform.
“If you're a competitor — and this is how I view Jayden and I view Riley the same way — if you're the competitor that should be the starting quarterback at the University of Notre Dame, then you're going to do whatever you can in your power to make sure we're successful.
"And if you believe in yourself more than you trust the people around you, that can be a little bit of a detriment at times, right? So, [he’s] working through that where that trust gets built, and I think the guys have done a great job of it. It's getting better all the time.
"He knows he can run and make plays. How far can we get him, as he goes through his development here, to now trust the people around him to do the same things that he knows he can do himself? That process, when I talk about us getting better and better as the year goes along, I think that's going to be a piece of it."
How Denbrock fosters that evolution in practice is oftentimes letting the quarterbacks, including Leonard’s backups, figure things out for themselves instead of being constantly fed the answers by Denbrock and QBs coach Gino Guidulgi.
"I think you've got to use practice for the way practice was intended,” Denbrock said “You can't be afraid to let the defense kick your butt while you're learning how to adjust what you're doing. You've got to give them an opportunity to fail or succeed, and stay out of the way.
“Then go back and fix it, with the expectation that we're not going down this road anymore. 'This is fixed, right? And you understand it? Okay, fine.' And I've seen that so much from the quarterbacks in particular. And if anybody's trying to fix them on the field, I'm probably the most guilty of that, because I can't keep my yapper shut half the time.”
While Freeman gushed about the Saturday scrimmage went and how well-prepared the players looked relative to his other teams at this juncture, Denbrock yapped to himself and fumed that the offense didn’t win by more.
Against a defense that may be better than the one that finished fifth nationally in total defense last season and No. 1 in pass-efficiency defense.
“I think right now we’re still in the process of finishing, developing what it’s going to look like week 1,” he said of the Irish offense. “And I think as the season goes along, this development that’s taking place right now offensively can continue to get better and better and better.
“Where we’re going to be week 1 and where we’re going to be at the end of the season, I hope everybody in here can report that you can visibly see how much better they are from where they started. I think you can see that from spring ball to where we are now, and it’s up to us as coaches to make sure that process continues.”
And it starts with evolving Leonard as a quarterback, coaching him to his ceiling, designing the offense to nudge him there.
“What I like about him is he’s not afraid to try and fail, and then learn from it,” Denbrock said. “He doesn’t usually get too bad at paralysis by analysis, which is easy to do going against what our defense does, where you’re standing there just kind of wondering what is the right thing to do.
“He makes a decision and lives with it. Then if we need to fix it or adjust it, we can do it from there. His overall understanding of what we want to eventually become offensively, I think he’s got a clear vision of that and he’s done a good job of kind of running with it.
“Probably the most important thing to me is once I think our football team got a chance to really get to know him and be around him even more than they did in the spring … I think the respect that has grown for him within our locker room is pretty cool to be a part of.”
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