What to make of Kelly’s QB announcement

We finally got a decision from Brian Kelly on the quarterback situation. On Wednesday Kelly announced that both DeShone Kizer and Malik Zaire will play in the season opener against Texas. The key phrase there is “against Texas”. We’re not going to see a two quarterback system all year long.

There shouldn’t be much of a shock over Kelly’s announcement. Heck even Kizer said he was kind of expecting it. The Irish have had all summer and fall camp to prepare and devise a game plan for Texas. It’s a different story for the 11 other games when you only have a handful of days to prepare for an opponent. The Texas game will serve as somewhat of a live audition for both Kizer and Zaire. After that we’ll probably see Kelly zero in on one guy...hopefully.

Is this really the decision that is the best for Notre Dame? Yea, it’s a good decision when you have all summer to prepare and come up with a game plan. But what about when you only have a week to devise a game plan? Not so much.

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This “good problem” Kelly has on his hands has the chance to turn into an actual problem. He needs to be very careful on how he handles this situation. It’s tough to see how dragging out this process will be good for team. You don’t want one guy getting ticked off and disrupting whatever type of chemistry you’ve built up in the locker room. It would be just better to pick one guy from the start and go.

It even sounds like the players themselves want just one guy. In an interview on Wednesday, Zaire said that using two quarterbacks is not the most ideal situation.

Last year we saw it at Ohio State with Cardale Jones and J.T. Barrett, and even though they went 12-1, that Ohio State team underperformed all year long. Fortunately for them they had a supremely talented roster and were able to make up for some of their lackluster performances. This year’s Notre Dame team is talented, but not as talented as last year’s OSU team. Will their talent be able to make up for some type of underperformance if there is one? Time will tell.