SOUTH BEND —Notre Dame football coach Marcus Freeman praised backup quarterback Kenny Minchey for his mature reaction after losing out last week to CJ Carr for the starting job.
“Exactly what I thought it was going to be,” Freeman said Tuesday Aug. 26. “There was a disappointment that is a natural human reaction that any competitor is going to have when not named the starter. I knew after a day or so he was going to use it to make him a better version of Kenny. That’s what I’ve seen.”
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A 6-foot-2, 208-pound redshirt sophomore from Hendersonville, Tenn., where he starred at the same high school as former Irish wideout Golden Tate, Minchey has yet to throw an incomplete pass in three career attempts at the college level.
Notre Dame opens the 2025 season on Sunday night at 10th-ranked Miami, which plays at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla. The Irish needed backup quarterback Steve Angeli for a game-turning series the last time they visited that venue, beating Penn State in the Orange Bowl semifinal of the College Football Playoff on Jan. 9.
A late addition to the 2023 recruiting class after de-committing from Pittsburgh, Minchey gave Carr all he could handle in their 18-day training camp duel.
“I hesitate saying, ‘This is why I made the decision,’ because what I don’t want to do is look at a positive for one guy and a negative for another,” Freeman said. “Statistically (it was) as close to any quarterback competition I’ve ever been a part of. I was looking for that to be the reason to make a decision, and it wasn’t clear.
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“They were both really, really good statistically. I just had to make a difficult decision and I had to trust my gut a little bit.”
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The key questions that tipped the derby toward Carr included the opening opponent, the noisy venue and the fanfare that would result.
“All those things played into my decision,” Freeman said, “but that’s kind of it. That’s a little bit of a gray answer.”
There was nothing halfway about Minchey’s comportment, Freeman said, in the wake of this setback.
“He’s practiced, he’s prepared in a way that you expect Kenny Minchey to do,” Freeman said. “That’s a sign of maturity. I didn’t expect him to be happy with my decision but I did expect after a day or so to see the maturity of Kenny Minchey in terms of being able to go back to work, understanding delayed gratification.
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“It’s delayed gratification, right? Your job is to reach your full potential. There are things you can do deliberately. You can use this as a motivator. You can use multiple different things as a motivator to put the work in. But he will be ready if his number is called, and I knew that when I made this decision.”
Mike Berardino covers Notre Dame football for the South Bend Tribune and NDInsider.com. Follow him on social media @MikeBerardino.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman explains choice of CJ Carr over Kenny Minchey
