Notre Dame football coach Marcus Freeman needs to make this QB call

SOUTH BEND — Make the decision.

Get with your quarterbacks coach and break down the pros and cons. Sit with your offensive coordinator and discuss it.

Hop on a golf cart, head across campus and light a candle at the Grotto. Call it an early evening at the Gug, head for home, kiss the wife and kids good night and sleep on it. Pray on it. Flip a coin.

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Whatever it takes to head for the office early Monday morning, maybe Tuesday at the latest, with the conviction as the Notre Dame football coach of who your starting quarterback will be when the No. 5 Irish, a team with serious national championship hopes and dreams, opens the season August 31 at No. 10 Miami (Fla.).

Will it be C.J. Carr or Kenny Minchey at the game’s most important/scrutinized position?

It’s time for head coach Marcus Freeman to know. For position coach Gino Guidugli to know. For offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock to know. For the two QBs to know.

The rest of us? The heck with us. We don’t know, even when we think we know. Who should be the starter? We know even less. Trust us.

But for this football team, for this season and for what it could be, name a starter.

Don’t want to do it in April when it was clear that it would be Carr and Minchey or Minchey and Carr? That’s cool, but Sunday marked four months to the day — 122 total — since veteran Steve Angeli bailed for Syracuse. And still no clear No. 1.

Don’t want to do it the first day of preseason camp July 31? That’s fine, too. Let the two split first team reps 50-50, as we’ve been told they’ve done since Day One, and see where it all goes.

Don’t want to do it as preseason camp ends? It did Sunday almost right at high noon as Carr and Minchey and their Irish teammates traipsed up the tunnel after a 100-plus play scrimmage inside Notre Dame Stadium.

We’ve entered the period where the dog days of August are over. It’s about to get more accelerated and more complicated. Once camp ended, it would mark the start of Miami (Fla.) game mode. Camp’s over and that countdown clock’s ticking.

Freeman refuses Sunday to offer a timeline, but we can. Name a starter today. Tonight. Tomorrow at the latest. If 15 practices over 18 days of camp weren’t enough to decide, what are the next three or four or five or six practices going to do?

We can do this all of August, but the month’s last day, circled in red since January, is closing quickly. Are we sure there will even be any definitive separation? Are we?

Notre Dame can win with Carr. Notre Dame can win with Minchey. Set aside the microscope. Stop splitting hairs. Pick one.

The end of preseason camp didn’t feel like it because of the quarterback situation. Notre Dame could/should be in capable hands with either. The unresolved quarterback situation — Carr or Minchey? — makes it feel like this program cannot move forward toward the opener until this decision is closed.

Decide.

On the second day of camp, before a scrimmage at School Field, before another at Freed Field, before at least two game-like settings in the stadium, before both got better throughout camp, Minchey joked that he didn’t care when a decision might arrive. As long as it was before the Miami game, he was good with that.

Can’t wait that long. Or can we?

Decide.

Let Carr know he’s the guy or let Minchey know he’s the guy so they can start the process of being the guy. And it is a process. Next week — game week — is closing quickly. Freeman cannot take this decision into game week. Carr or Minchey already will have enough on their minds as the starter. Asking them to adjust to their first week as the starter during a game week seems counterproductive.

Being the starting quarterback at Notre Dame is life changing as it is. Best to adjust to that change this week; best to zero in on Miami next week.

Naming a starter now also allows the backup to find the right headspace to be the backup. Say you find out a week out from the Miami game that you’re No. 2. Are you mentally prepared to be that proverbial one play away Labor Day Sunday night in Hard Rock?

Learn your fate today or tomorrow and you’ve got double-digit days to run through the gamut of emotions that await. So don’t wait, Free.

Forget about how waiting to name a starter keeps Notre Dame at a certain competitive advantage over Miami. Say Carr’s the guy. Say Minchey’s the guy. Neither has done anything — n-o-t-h-i-n-g — that Miami might glean from previous game tape. See how Carr took a knee? See how Minchey handed it off? Both are a blank quarterback slate.

Freeman said Sunday that the staff has yet to see that one moment from either quarterback that tells them that he’s the guy. Understandable. Acceptable, even. What if that moment never materializes on the practice field? What if they’re waiting to see something from two guys who have never started a game that they just don’t/won’t show?

There’s a starting quarterback in there. Let someone be one.

We know Freeman’s mantra. He’s preached it since he arrived. He’s practiced it in his first three seasons. He’s lived it daily.

Choose Hard.

This is easy. Make a call and move forward. With the decision. With this season.

It’s time.

Follow South Bend Tribune and NDInsider columnist Tom Noie on X (formerly Twitter): @tnoieNDI. Contact Noie at tnoie@sbtinfo.com

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