SOUTH BEND, Ind. — If quarterback Riley Leonard even has a shred of angst stirring inside of him mere days ahead of his first game in a Notre Dame uniform, the Duke transfer ought to change his major to Theatre.
And test out of taking any classes. And then go pick up his Oscar.
Tuesday night after practice in sweltering South Bend, with the heat index topping out at 108 degrees during the seventh-ranked Irish workout, Leonard was bubbling, smiling, steering clear of cliches and exuding cool confidence without sounding disrespectful.
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“What would it be like to shut down 100,000?” Leonard was asked in a group media session about the anticipated oversized throng expected to show up at Kyle Field in College Station, Texas and cheer against Leonard on Saturday night (7:30 p.m. EDT; ABC-TV).
“That’d be sick,” he beamed. “That’d be awesome. Especially those guys. That would be really fun.”
Those guys are the 20th-ranked Texas A&M Aggies, ND’s season-opening opponent and coached by the man, Mike Elko, who was Leonard’s head coach at Duke for two of the three years the senior from Fairhope, Ala., spent there.
He’s also the same man Leonard convinced to let him play in two more games after suffering an ankle injury against Notre Dame on Sept. 30 that was serious enough that it’d eventually require two surgeries in 2024 to make it right.
After initially suffering the injury, Leonard took two weeks off, one of them a bye week, before returning and posting the two worst single-game pass-efficiency ratings of his 27 game career to date. In back-to-back losses at Florida State (38-20) and Louisville (23-0), on Oct. 21 and 28, he was a combined 16-of-39 passing for 190 yards and 0 TDs with two interceptions.
Against the Cardinals he managed just 13 yards on the run, on 10 carries — the 1.3-yard-per-carry average the second-worst of his career in games that he was the starter.
A case of turf toe sustained by Leonard in the Louisville game convinced Elko not to consider using the QB again that season.
And now Leonard is ready to make his comeback, with both his ankle and aplomb fully rehabbed, against the one-time Irish defensive coordinator and still the defensive strategist in his short run so far as a head coach.
“He knows what plays I like, what plays I don’t like,” Leonard said of Elko. “Everybody calls him a defensive coach. He’s really an everything coach, to be honest with you.
“He was in all the offensive meetings. He knew every play that was going in. He knew what I liked, what I didn’t like. So yeah, from top to bottom.”
And the emotions of playing against him?
“As the game builds up for me, for whatever reason, I become more and more emotionless,: Leonard said, “because I become more confident. I’m going to get there on Saturday and they’re going to call a play and I’m going to have repped it, shoot, 10-15 times by now.
“Nerves come with lack of preparation, and the more I prepare and practice and things like that, my nerves just calm down.”
Elko, meanwhile, told the media earlier this week, he thought Leonard had the X’s-and-O’s advantage in their reunion matchup.
“Yeah, that sounds like something he’d say,” Leonard said with a laugh when read the Elko quote. “He might just be sugarcoating for y’all. I don’t know. I think we’ve both got advantages.”
Sizing up the Irish O-line shuffle
The flip side of the feel-good part of the rise of training camp surprises Anthonie Knapp and Sam Pendleton is what happens to the chemistry of the offensive line room with the veterans displaced at left tackle and left guard by two players with a combined 15 college game snaps?
“I think it's, obviously, something that if you do a good job of making sure you're communicating everything that's going on, that the process is transparent, that alleviates a lot of the things that can come up down the road,” Notre Dame offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock said after practice on Tuesday.
“And also the type of young man that's attracted to be part of the University of Notre Dame and the football program are guys that are here for the right reasons. They're in it for the University of Notre Dame football program, and they trust the coaches in the decisions that were made.”
The decision this week was to give Knapp the opportunity to become the 11th Notre Dame offensive lineman to start a game as a freshman and the third-ever to do so in a season opener, displacing grad senior Tosh Baker in the process.
Knapp’s sidekick at left guard will be Pendleton, a sophomore who beat out last year’s opening-night starting guards, seniors Rocco Spindler and Pat Coogan. Junior Billy Schrauth emerged in spring as the top guard on the roster, and will start Saturday night at right guard — coaxing a fall camp competition for one spot between Spindler and Coogan that Pendleton eventually hijacked.
What pushed those two to the top of the depth chart?
“So, start off with Sam,” Denbrock said. “The type of toughness and lead by example, physicality, kind of that aura that you want surrounding your offensive line, I think he embodies that very well.
“And [he] kind of helps bring that to the other guys on the line, if you will, along with those other two guys that are out playing on the inside.
“Knapper is a guy who's kind of been incredible. Since he’s walked on campus, he's been such a quick study that I've never viewed him as a freshman, just because of how quick he picks things up, how fundamentally sound he is with what he does, and the consistency that he plays with. So, those things have led to us making the decisions that we have.”
And that decision funnels them — as well as right tackle Aamil Wagner, Schrauth and center Ashton Craig — into a competition against one of the best defensive lines in the country on Saturday night.
“I feel good about assignment stuff,” Denbrock said about the two newbies avoiding rookie mistakes. “This is a good group of defensive linemen they're matched up against.
“Are they going to win every battle? No. Are they going to lose every battle? No. We want them sticking their face on people and battling all night long. And we'll take the result.”
Come on feel the noise
What’s a big Notre Dame road game without a report that loud music was played at practice in the days leading up to it? And someone in the media groping to qualify the extent of the decibel level and its expected effect on the game’s outcome?
Notre Dame grad senior defensive tackle Rylie Mills has been probed about it enough over the course of his career to provide a thoughtful perspective on what the real value of turning up the volume in practice.
“It does and it doesn't [prepare the team],” Mills said. “Like when we played Virginia Tech, I would say that it does in the sense of when you get into a chaotic situation and you’ve got music blaring or crowd noise blaring, and it’s tough to communicate.
“I think that's where it really helps, because in those moments, if you can simulate that, it can really help you when you get there. But it's hard to replicate how many people are in Texas A&M's stadium.
“We've got like four Bose speakers. You're not going to get the same sound. But, hopefully, in those chaotic situations, it will help kind of get the similar effect of not being able to hear what's going on.”
Loren Landow’s influence
A common thread throughout the player interviews since February is the effect first-year director of football performance Loren Landow has had on their physical improvement and game evolution.
He’s also a key figure in their mental preparation.
Mills cited Landow in helping the team put the marquee opener into perspective, win or lose, in terms of the big picture of the 2024 season.
“Obviously, no one likes to lose,” Mills said. “I hate it, but we've got 12 games to play —16 if we keep going in the playoffs. If you're going to sit there and lose your mind after losing one game, I mean, you're just not mentally tough.
“And I think that's something that coach Landow has preached. It's like, 'Hey, whatever happens, happens, and then you’ve got to just flush it.'
Win or lose.
“That's really a life lesson,” Mills continued. “Bad [stuff] is going to happen all the time, and it's really just how you want to react to it. So, I have the utmost confidence in this team to be able to flush whatever happens.
“Obviously, I know we're going to go out there and dominate and execute to the highest potential. But whatever happens in those situations, you've got to keep going.”
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