In a wide-open quarterback draft class, a surprise name or two could emerge as a first-round talent this season. ESPN NFL Draft expert Jordan Reid believes one of those names could be Notre Dame’s Riley Leonard.
Monday morning on SportsCenter, Reid said he does not have Leonard in the first round at the moment, but he’s ‘excited to see’ the ex-Duke signal-caller this season in South Bend.
“If you remember, the very first week of the season, they had a big victory over Clemson,” Reid said. “A big reason behind that was how Leonard played. Now, he transitions to Notre Dame who is under new offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock, who was at LSU with Jayden Daniels over the past few years.”
Daniels’ value skyrocketed after he began working with Denbrock, going from an afterthought to a top-2 pick in the 2024 NFL Draft.
“He is gonna be in that exact same offense that Jayden Daniels was in over those past two seasons during his time at LSU, and we saw how he was able to catapult his draft stock into being the No. 2 overall pick,” Reid said. “So Riley Leonard of Notre Dame is one name to keep an eye on that a year from now, we could be looking at as a potential early-round pick.”
Reid also named Leonard one of his seven “top names to know” in the 2025 quarterback draft class, alongside Georgia’s Carson Beck, Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders, Texas’ Quinn Ewers, Ole Miss’ Jaxson Dart, Miami’s Cam Ward and Alabama’s Jalen Milroe.
Notre Dame Tweets of the Day
Leonard is making an impact in the South Bend community.
It’s a new world in college football, and Notre Dame is part of it.
The Irish cap off an excellent Saturday for college football in Week 1.
Quote of the day
“That’s the thing I was most proud of; we were good at a lot of things. Not just, ‘Hey, we stopped the run.’ Or, ‘We had sacks.’ Or, ‘We had this.’ I’d rather be somewhere between 5 and 25 in 20 different categories than be No. 1 or selling out to be No. 1 in a certain thing.”
— Notre Dame defensive coordinator Al Golden on the 2023 Irish defense
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