Notre Dame still doesn’t have a starting quarterback.

While that might make Irish fans nervous, offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock says Notre Dame isn’t ‘freaking out’ that the competition between Kenny Minchey and CJ Carr is continuing two weeks before the season opener at Miami.

Sunday marked a day many speculated as ‘decision day’ because it was the end of ‘fall camp’ but Irish head coach Marcus Freeman has stayed consistent with his messaging that he would not set a timeline on naming a starting quarterback and that the play of Carr and Minchey would determine who replaces Riley Leonard as the Irish starter.

“We’re still in a competition,” Freeman said Sunday. We’ll go back and evaluate today’s practice today and make a decision. We have to make a decision here soon. I don’t know when we’ll make it. I don’t want to put a timeline on it. They’ve both been playing really really well. You have two guys that have been battling all camp and today was no different. The guys went out there and battled. There were some good things, some things we got to get improved. The best thing I love is that they’ve both gotten better. And that’s the whole point of having a competition. It could raise the level of the people in the competition. And then that’s what has happened. Both of those two have really elevated their play. We’ll make a decision. We’ll make a decision here soon.”

Both quarterbacks have split 1st team reps throughout fall camp so that the coaching staff could evaluate them as best as possible. Freeman says every practice, they’ve done some form of 2-minute situation including on Sunday during the final scrimmage of camp to test Carr and Minchey.

“Part of it is high pressure but also it is them understanding some of those critical details of the last minutes of the half, last minutes of a game and some of the decisions you got to make,” Freeman explained. “It’s not just for the quarterbacks, it’s for everybody. But I think they’ve done a really good job.”

While a lot of positions that have strong competition like safety and linebacker will see a lot of rotation, Freeman has indicated quarterback isn’t a position he’s looking to rotate.

“I think more than anything I think we want to be have some continuity to what we’re doing,” Denbrock explains when asked why Notre Dame wouldn’t want to rotate at the quarterback position. “We want to have some consistency to what we’re doing. There are strengths and weaknesses of both the players that are in competition together. We’ll play to those and make sure that we are designing a plan to attack defenses that take advantage of those strengths.”

No matter who is named the starter, they will have a major challenge and a learning curve opening the season on the road at Miami, Denbrock says.

“I think it’s going to be important that whoever wins the job, we play to the strengths of who they are and not put them in compromising situations, especially too early in the in the season, you know what I mean?” Denbrock continued. I don’t think it’ll change [the offensive system] a bunch but there are some subtle strengths and weaknesses and differences that you have to be aware of when you’re making a plan and obviously highlight the strengths and try to diminish as many of the weaknesses as you can.”

Denbrock will be among those that give input to Freeman but ultimately it will be the head coach who decides who the Irish starting quarterback is.

“I believe we have the best staff in America and so how do you not take some of their opinions into account?” Freeman said. “We’ll talk and at the end of the day. I have to make a decision and it will be my decision, right? I I’m not passing this along on anybody else. I have to make a decision, but I will take into account–like I do all my decisions–the coaches and then we’ll tell the players and we’ll move forward.”

So what will help Freeman make his final decision? It won’t be just the results of plays but the decision making going into each play.

“That’s probably for me more important than anything,” Freeman said. “I don’t want to just sit here and watch the outcome good or bad. It’s like what decision was he supposed to make? Did he make the right decision? Then you look and say, “Okay, was the ball good? Was the protection right?” All those different things that are on his plate. That is more important to me than anything. It’s about decision- making because there’s so many different aspects that go into the outcome of a play, right? The one thing that they control is their decision- making and their ability to get everybody on the same page.”

While many are looking at the negatives of Notre Dame not having a starting quarterback yet, Freeman says there have been plenty of positives. Competition is making both guys better and also making the whole team better because every rep both Carr and Minchey takes is high stakes. And because both players are working a lot with the 1st team, the rest of the starters have become comfortable with the styles of both quarterbacks.

“They’re both really good–they’re really good players, man,” Freeman continued. “They both have a a short-term memory. They’re able to move forward from mistakes. They’re coachable. They both work at the game. they work outside of the NCAA mandated hours. There’s not much negative I can say about them. Those dudes are improving and doing a really good job.”

Denbrock agrees that both Minchey and Carr are good enough to help Notre Dame win football games.

“That’s why it’s such a close competition,” Denbrock says. “Both of those young men have tremendous love and respect within the framework of our locker room. So we’re not as freaked out about the fact that somebody hasn’t been named the starting quarterback as a lot of people seem to be, but it’s because we know both individuals involved. We know how their teammates feel about them, care about them, trust them. They’ve both played really well. So, we’re going to figure this thing out.”

And Denbrock is confident that when that decision is made, he has all the data in place to create a direction that will give the starter the best chance for success. He feels the competition has given him a lot of information on what each QB is good at and what each QB needs to work on.

“Both of those categories are full of things,” Denbrock says. “Having the opportunity while the competition’s ongoing for me to gather data and information about what fits with which guy and when is pretty pretty valuable stuff. Because we’ve had such a good competition, it’s allowed me to really kind of dig into the details of that and put us in a position that when the starter does get named, we’re already ready to go in that direction.”

We’ll breakdown the quarterback battle, the season opener at Miami and the season outlook for the Irish on the season premiere of Notre Dame Federal Credit Union’s Irish Football Fix on Monday, August 25th at 7pm on Pulse FM.