A defensive coordinator believes that Notre Dame’s offense under Riley Leonard will look like this Big 12 team

When Notre Dame football head coach Marcus Freeman lured Mike Denbrock away from LSU, many believed that the Irish’ offense would resemble that of the Tigers.

Well, that may not exactly be the case, as personnel will dictate how Notre Dame will look like in less than 10 days. ESPN took a look at each of the top 2024 quarterbacks in college football, and broke them down with some help from anonymous sources.

When talking about Riley Leonard, an unnamed defensive coordinator told them (subscription required) that he believes that the Irish offense will look more like when Denbrock was at Cincinnati with Desmond Ridder as opposed to LSU’s and Jayden Daniels.

The DC didn’t say this had anything to do with Leonard’s skill set, more that Notre Dame doesn’t “have the receivers they had at LSU.” That’s a fair assessment, as the Tigers were very talented at the position last fall.

While at Cincinnati from 2018-2021, Denbrock guided that offense to an average of annual point-per-game total of 38.1. With the talent on those teams, those numbers are pretty impressive.

The hope is that the Irish receivers take that next step and become closer to who Denbrock had in Baton Rouge, which would make Notre Dame’s offense more similar to LSU’s, even if the Bearcats totals aren’t all that terrible. That would be a great development.

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