Reviewing the Redshirts is an off-season project meant to resurrect discussion about the 2022 Notre Dame freshmen who retained a year of eligibility and discuss their possible impact in 2023 and beyond. The Fighting Irish were able to redshirt 17 players this past season while 1 player medically retired (Joey Tanona) and another player has transferred already to Syracuse (Jayden Bellamy).
Today we’ll take a look at a quarterback who turned a lot of heads during last year’s spring game but finds himself in a tough position heading into his redshirt freshman season.
QB Steve Angeli
Hometown: Oradell, New Jersey
Height: 6-2 3/8
Weight: 211
247Sports Composite Ranking: 4-star, No. 21 QB, No. 4 NJ, No. 365 National, 0.8962 score
18 Stripes Grade: 84.0
Murtaugh’s Blurb from the Class Grade:
Good size with an upper-body frame capable of adding a lot more muscle. He throws a really tight spiral with incredible consistency. Nice compact, over-the-top throwing motion. Angeli’s accuracy looks quite good on the short-to-intermediate throws. Decent enough athlete who probably won’t escape a ton of pressure in the pocket but occasionally runs for a first down when needed. There’s potential to become a really steady and smart pro-style-ish pocket passer. Obviously, people don’t get too excited about steadiness. I don’t see many traits that make me think Angeli is a multi-year starter at Notre Dame.
Angeli enrolled early at Notre Dame in January 2022 without a ton of fanfare. Given that he was a distant 3rd-string throughout practices and into the season not much was expected of him while Tyler Buchner and Drew Pyne shared the majority of 1st-team and varsity reps.
However, in the brief glimpses witnessed during practices Angeli picked up quite a bit of praise from the media and certainly did his best not to bring his stock down at all during the Blue-Gold Game.
Need at Position: Low
Now, the hard part.
As we discussed in the Sam Hartman grad transfer scouting report it’s not Tyler Buchner who has to worry that much about his future compared to Angeli. The eligibility clock for Peanut Butter starts ticking this season and the addition of Hartman really pushes the New Jersey native down the pecking order and keeps him away from valuable reps in practice.
Expected Spot on the 2023 Depth Chart: 3rd String
There was a minute there where things seemed to be trending toward Angeli being a bit of a surprise from the 2022 recruiting class with whispers that maybe he’d be the long-term future for the Irish. Most didn’t expect Drew Pyne to stick around (he did not) and whether one is a believer in Tyler Buchner or not, the reality is he’s been hurt a lot in his career.
You didn’t have to squint too hard to see a path opening up for Angeli to ascend to the starter’s role.
Then during the spring game, he looked really sharp going 11 of 13 for 180 yards with 1 touchdown through the air and finished things off with this walk-off rushing touchdown to win it for the gold team:
Awesome play in the fun but meaningless spring game.Â
While he ended up never attempting a pass, Angeli was a beneficiary of Buchner’s injury by picking up more practice reps with the varsity and seeing action in a couple games this past season. All in all, 2022 was a pretty successful year for him.
Unfortunately, Angeli looks to be having another season where he’s getting scraps in practice and now has Kenny Minchey on campus for spring with CJ Carr coming in less than a year, too. He’s effectively being squeezed in on the depth chart by older and younger players.
In the vast majority of situations across the country, Angeli would be looking to transfer as soon as possible. For now, Angeli seems patient enough to wait through another spring practice. History tell us he will transfer at some point without a clearer path to playing but history also tells us things can get weird very quickly at Notre Dame and that playing time may come quicker than expected.
It is a strange new world. If Buchner gets injured in the spring game, or just walking down steps, a lot of reps open up for Angeli. Ditto for Hartman, a lot of miles and pounding on his body.
Or maybe Minchey sees that Buchner is playing lights out, Carr is an EE and also lights out, and Minchey transfers spring of next year. Angeli is again second string behind an injury prone TB in 2024.
If Minchey, TB, and Carr all stay healthy and stay around and pan out we can have the nice QB problem where if someone gets injured, ie which young and ready-to-play stud do we bring in next? That’s a 2024 problem I wouldn’t mind having. By that point will Angeli have a degree anyway?
Until then, I think about our QB room and Angeli and get strong Tommy Rees/Ian Book vibes.
A lot of good examples above as to why QBs should be patient and not have a knee-jerk reaction to transfer. Injuries happen every year, and you never know if others might be impatient and transfer out which can open a path to playing time.
Most QB’s don’t see it that way. If they think they are starter material, they want to be at a program that is starting them.
I think ND’s 4 for 40 pitch counters this to some degree plus the fact that most recruits ND go after have a bit higher integrity than your average college athlete, however I don’t think those things in themselves will keep a QB that wants to be QB1 around if they don’t see a path to playing time.
Towards the end I’m agreeing more with that thought. Jury is still out on the 2021 (Buchner) and 2022 (Angeli) QB, but for one reason or another all three of the QB’s from 2018-20 transferred out of ND without a degree (Jurkovec, Clark, Pyne).
Pyne was fairly patient himself, but you won’t find too many QB’s that stick around for a fourth football season at their first program if they’re not on the field. Even for Buchner, the prospect (or promise) of being the opening day starter in 2024 is probably the driving factor on for bucking the trend.
If I were Angeli, I’d probably leave Notre Dame now if I wanted to get on the field, unless I knew that Buchner was going to depart before next season. Hartman has 2023 locked up and “anything can happen” but Angeli’s starring down the barrel of scout team. That’s a demotion from where he was in 2022 and demotions for QB’s are usually met with departures.
I thought Pyne graduated, no?
He did graduate…and because of Covid year still has 3 seasons left to play.
Good for Drew!
I’ll defer to others, but I always saw Pyne listed as a junior. He enrolled in summer 2020, which means he was around for five semesters (plus three summers). Thought I read somewhere he didn’t graduate, which is partially why the timing of his decision to leave caught ND by surprise. They figured he would stick around for this spring and finish that up, not bolt immediately.
I think some might assume he was a graduate due to how he apparently used the portal immediately, as graduates can. But I believe he simply he announced he was intending to transfer the Friday afternoon before the under-grad portal actually opened early the next week, effectively the same thing anyways.
(Also in the FWIW bin, his message about leaving says his greatest honor was being a “Notre Dame student-athlete”, not an impending ND graduate, which maybe doesn’t answer everything but I found to be a notable omission.)
NBC says he graduated.
I think the reason the coaches were surprised that he decided to transfer when he did was because Pyne had the opportunity for QB battle with Buchner in spring and fall practice to see who QB1 would be. Plus, he would have got reps in the bowl game. And as a graduate, he could enter the portal after the bowl game.
However, I think Pyne looked at it more as “they started Buchner over me this year, he’ll be healthy in the spring and next year, they talked about brining in a transfer, Angeli and Minchey will be pushing for playing time from the back. I don’t have a spot. So I can go now and acclimate before spring practices with my new team.” Much like an early enrollee from high school.
Even if not a graduate, he could have entered the portal in January following the bowl game and before spring semester. Obviously they were shocking (and it was shocking) that he didn’t at least stay for the final game and wanted to get his new home lined up before the (post) season was over.
Agree on the logic for Pyne, and it was fitting. You can’t tell your starting QB that you’re going to the portal and genuinely expect him to remain with the program for very long.
I think Freeman telling Pyne that when he did plays into Pyne not really being a graduate (despite Doug Farmer writing differently). If Pyne had degree in hand and you tell him that, you can’t be shocked when he bolts. If you tell him that you’re going shopping, you’re doing so with the hopes he sticks around to finish his degree and be a part of the team until then, I would think.
Can see both sides. On the side of staying, he can get an ND degree, and then transfer and play at a smaller school his grad year for the experience of being QB1. He can also enjoy the ND NIL money which could be better than he might get as the starting QB for Toledo or Rutgers.
Or he could say that he’s good enough to be a P5 QB and wants to maximize his playing time while he can since he’s not going to the NFL.
But I feel like if he was going to do that he would have already when Minchey committed.
In hindsight, I think he did the right thing for his playing career. He probably couldn’t have stayed at ND for the spring to finish up and then also still secure a P5 starting job somewhere else in May. He wasn’t that good to where doors would always be open for him, he had to find a seat before the music stopped.
Also, the semantics of Pyne receiving a ND degree or not are beside the point of the original statement about QB’s not staying patient. Pyne has eligibility left in 2024 and 2025. ND could (and probably was) trying to sell Pyne the same thing that they are selling to Buchner, which is stay patient and you likely will get the chance to be the opening day 2024 starter and we’ll see what happens from there. QB’s don’t often stay that patient when they’re looking at a demotion on the depth chart.
It’s probably a win for the program if 2/3 of their QB’s stay when they brought in Hartman. It looks like that might happen, though I’ll believe Buchner and Angeli are both staying when fall rolls around. Possibly a “best case scenario” to lose Pyne and keep the higher-ceiling Buchner too, at that, should that actually happen.