On3’s J.D. Pickell needs to see this from Notre Dame’s offense in 2024

While Notre Dame football has a great starting quarterback, Riley Leonard, he does come with some baggage.

Leonard battled injuries during his stint at Duke, and unfortunately he brought that issue with him to South Bend. He had ankle surgery during spring camp, which brought many questions about his future health. Missing out on the spring reps hurt his ability to establish rapport with the Irish receivers.

On3’s J.D. Pickell believes that Notre Dame can make some noise in the college football playoff with a condition, “if Mike Denbrock can have a solid plan B in place for Riley Leonard.” At some point he believes that the offense will not work as planned, and will have to make adjustments to be productive.

It’s hard to argue with Pickell’s assessment, as almost every team has an off-day and will struggle. The key is being able to make those in-game adjustments on the fly.

Denbrock has plenty of experience calling plays, so it’s hard to imagine that he hasn’t seen almost everything that a team could throw at him. The question is if he quickly can recognize how to attack a defense when his scripted plays aren’t working.

Plenty is riding on the Notre Dame offense this fall, and if they are up to the challenge, this team will be difficult to defeat.

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