Riley Leonard's pledge to transfer to Notre Dame may have broader magnitude
The now-imminent transfer of Duke quarterback Riley Leonard to Notre Dame represents multiple leaps of faith beyond his own.
There’s the ongoing vision of Irish head coach Marcus Freeman that Gerad Parker’s year 2 evolution as Notre Dame’s offensive coordinator will not only be big-game apparent, but that he’ll be able to retool his scheme to fit Leonard’s dual-threat skill set as well.
Perhaps the biggest-picture implications of Leonard’s decision, announced Tuesday in a video on Instagram, is the notion that the Notre Dame administration may finally be bending on its rigid transfer policy regarding underclassman student-athletes.
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Grad transfers, and student-athletes who had just finished their freshman seasons in good standing were reasonable, if not pretty easy, takes for admissions in the dawning, no-waiting portal era. Where Freeman, athletic director Jack Swarbrick, men’s basketball coach Micah Shrewsberry and women’s basketball coach Niele Ivey, among others, have been seeking/negotiating/imploring is some middle ground beyond that.
The resistance from the administration was two-fold — perhaps being overly discerning about transferring credits as well pushing the idea that a Notre Dame undergraduate degree should consist of the majority of classes having been taken at ND.
Freeman, Shrewsberry and Ivey have received plenty of hard “nos” to a group that includes juniors-to-be and seniors-to-be who have not yet received their undergrad degree, with few exceptions.
Leonard is in the latter category, having been a part of the 2021 national recruiting class that saw him rated as a three-star prospect by Rivals and as the No. 15 dual-threat prospect in that class. He was ranked nine spots below the QB the Irish signed in that cycle, 2023 Alabama third-stringer Tyler Buchner, who's back in the transfer portal himself for the second time in eights months and could return to Notre Dame as a lacrosse player this spring.
Another hint of the Notre Dame administration might be ambling toward compromise is a junior wide receiver, Clemson's Beaux Collins, whose two-day portal recruiting visit Wednesday and Thursday overlapped Leonard's. With one year of eligibility left, he committed to Notre Dame on Sunday.
As far as the athletics side of things, Leonard — set to enroll in mid-January — will be competing in the spring to be Notre Dame’s third transfer portal starter in four seasons, following Wisconsin transfer Jack Coan in 2021 and Wake Forest’s Sam Hartman this season.
The 6-foot-4 212-pound Fairhope, Ala., product’s first game in an Irish uniform presumably will be against his former head coach, Mike Elko, who left Duke for Texas A&M early last week. The Irish open the 2024 season in College Station, Texas, against the Aggies in the first game between the two schools in 23 years and fifth overall.
It’ll be Notre Dame’s first regular-season game against an SEC opponent since a 23-17 loss at Georgia early in the 2019 season.
Leonard’s last game for Duke came Oct. 28 against Louisville, with him laboring to play through a recurring ankle injury. He will not play in the Blue Devils' Dec, 23 Birmingham Bowl matchup with Troy. Duke finished the regular season with freshman third-stringer Grayson Loftis running the offense.
Leonard will join a quarterback room at Notre Dame that, for now, includes sophomore Steve Angeli, freshman Kenny Minchey and early enrollee CJ Carr for the spring semester.
“My thought was that adding a fourth [quarterback] would make sure that we at least have three if somebody decides to transfer after the spring or when we decide to bring in a fourth,” Freeman said via Zoom on Nov. 27. “If we didn’t bring in a fourth and then somebody transferred when I named a starter in spring, now you’re left with two.
“That’s kind of my thought process as we continuously move forward. Having four protects you if somebody decides to leave from the end of the season till throughout spring. That’s the real reason why even last year, I thought about this, and then this year when I made the decision after the bye week, that we needed a fourth quarterback on scholarship.
“That’s the real reason. It isn’t that I don’t have a belief in the guys we have here. I have a strong belief in Steve and Kenny. Then, obviously, we’ll have somebody coming in. But it’s more so if somebody decides to transfer, we have to make sure that we have at least three scholarship quarterbacks left.”
Leonard played in seven games for Duke last season, with a dip in his statistics reflective of trying to play through injuries. He completed 95 of his 165 passes (57.6%) for 1,102 yards with three touchdowns and three interceptions. He rushed for 352 yards and four touchdowns on 58 carries.
What generated buzz about an NFL future was his 2022 season, becoming the full-time starter that year. Leonard was one of only two players in the FBS that season to throw for 20 or more TDs and rush for 13 or more scores. His complete stat line was 2,967 passing yards and 20 passing touchdowns on 250-of-392 attempts (63.8%) with six interceptions. He also turned 124 carries into 699 yards (5.6 yards per carry) and 13 touchdowns.
This past season Leonard suffered a high ankle sprain in a 21-14 loss to Notre Dame on Sept. 30 on Duke’s final offensive play of the game. ND nose tackle Howard Cross III sacked and stripped the ball from him. Hartman waited for Leonard to leave the injury tent after the game to speak to him briefly.
Leonard finished the game 12-of-27 passing (44.4%) for 134 yards with one touchdown and one interception. He also rushed 18 times for 88 yards.
That injury forced Leonard to miss Duke’s next game, after a bye week — a 24-3 win over NC State on Oct. 14. He played through the pain against Florida State on Oct. 21 until reinjuring the ankle in the second half, and against Louisville on Oct. 28 before suffering a toe injury that sidelined him for the rest of the season.
“Definitely an interesting [quarterback] to watch,” Rivals national recruiting director Adam Gorney said last week of Leonard on the Inside ND Sports Podcast. “I don’t think he’s as productive as Sam Hartman was at Wake Forest, but he’s certainly sort of following that same path — a lower-level ACC school that he kind of made really, really good and now might be looking for a new opportunity to close out his college career.
“That’s a name definitely to monitor and to watch and should be a perfect fit for what Notre Dame wants to do on offense.”
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