It appears we won’t know until tomorrow who will start at quarterback for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. ND Coach Brian Kelly said yesterday:
“We’re evaluating that right now. We’ve just finished grading all the film. We’ll meet here about four to start to discuss things relative to personnel and then whatever decision we make, we’ll talk to the quarterbacks involved and then get rolling again on Monday with the decision as to how we go.”
Given how close the QB derby was this preseason, and how much Tommy Rees out-performed Dayne Crist on Saturday, most college football people expect Rees to get the nod.
Even though Rees led the team to 20 points and Crist zero, and Rees put much better numbers (24-34 for 296 yards, 2 TD, 2 INT, in a situation where the USF defense knew he was going to be primarily passing versus Crist 7-15 for 95 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT) it doesn’t mean the decision will be crystal clear.
“Sometimes you want to evaluate – was it as bad as you thought or was it better than you thought because when you take a step back and look at the film you get a better understanding of maybe it wasn’t the quarterback’s fault on this play. We’ll find out where we want to go for the rest of the season and that will be a critical decision,” Kelly said.
Crist was cut and dry the higher rated prospect, and physically, he’s much closer to what you look for in a QB than Rees. However, more importantly Rees is 4-0 as a starter while Crist is 4-6. Both signal callers need to be ready at a moment’s notice in every game because you never know when the game situation will call upon QB2 entering the game.
“if you’re a competitor and you want to be the guy, just like last year,” Rees said Saturday.
“you never know when you’re going to be called and you’ve got to be ready to go because you’ve got all your teammates counting on you and you can’t let them down.”
And if Crist unexpectedly gets the call, Rees will support him; much like he did this summer when Dayne was named the starter.
“Everyone wants to be the starting quarterback. But as soon as we found out, I went up to Dayne and told him I’m behind him 100 percent, I’m not going to hang my head and be that guy. I’m going to come out here every day ready to work and push him to be better and he’s going to push me, and I told him I was 100 percent behind him. We’re so close that there was really no hard feelings or anything like that,” Rees said.
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