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Mike Sanford Commits Quarterbacks To The Process, Not The Big Picture

Sanford is in his second season as Notre Dame’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach.
Sanford is in his second season as Notre Dame’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach.

Mike Sanford says he has not seen a quarterback competition like this in his coaching career.

The second-year Irish offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach is overseeing the three-way battle between senior Malik Zaire, junior DeShone Kizer and sophomore Brandon Wimbush to see which signal-caller will start at Texas on Labor Day weekend.

Sanford would not commit to calling Notre Dame’s quarterback depth the best in the nation — “Teams that get caught up in that, you better put forth an unbelievable product for 14 games,” he said — but is hoping the Irish will put themselves in position to run the table with the help of the quarterbacks.

“We’re so process-oriented,” he said. “We don’t really think about comparing ourselves to any other group. We just want to be a championship-caliber quarterback group and we weren’t a year ago. We weren’t.

“We won 10 football games, which is great, but we want to win 14 football games and we have to play that way every single opportunity we’re on the field in practice and games.”

One year ago, Notre Dame had pushed the start of spring ball back a couple weeks as it finalized the hirings of Sanford and three other new assistants. The former Boise State quarterback said the difference in comfort level now with 12 months ago is night and day.

“We were definitely swimming a little bit. I was, I should say, a year ago,” he said. “It’s a lot smoother this year. It’s made a significant difference. Even personally, it’s great to know you can invest in these young men’s lives and you can start to see the growth from the football field from a year ago. A guy like Brandon, seeing how he’s grown in a short period of time and be able to see that a little bit more to fruition is definitely preferred over leaving after a year, which I did at Boise. You don’t want to be a part of that because you lose that growth component that you really want to see the next year and the next year.

“The good thing is I have a wife that loves South Bend, Indiana, loves living here. It’s great to be able to see that continuity year in and year out.”

Rather than focus on each day being a competition between the three players, Sanford has emphasized the need for each to reinvent themselves this spring regardless of what their competitors are doing.

“You always want to be pushed by the other guys around you,” he said. “I’ve really never been part of a quarterback situation in spring ball that wasn’t competitive. That’s just something you should come to grips with as a quarterback and talk about that. No matter what, you’re going to have to reinvent your game and be significantly better than you were a year ago at this time and definitely a year ago at the completion of the season. They’ve done a great job with that, realizing that it’s more about their own growth themselves and we are going to quantify it.

“That’s going to be some form of statistical comparison, but it’s really about your own individual growth that should happen whether there’s an incumbent starter or three, four or five guys vying for a job.”

Notre Dame has continued — and furthered — its commitment to statistical analysis while evaluating the three quarterbacks, which Sanford believes will be a valuable piece of information when the coaching staff ultimately decides on its man.

“The biggest challenge is constantly keeping everybody process-oriented,” Sanford said. “If we could stay on the process and really not worry about the big picture because it’s going to be proven out over the course of time. We’re going to figure out the best way to give our team the chance to win a championship and that’s what we’re going to do with that group, but we have to individually and me as a coach and Coach [Brian] Kelly as a head coach, we have to work with that group about being focused on just that next step.

“Each and every day there’s another door you have to bust through and once you bust through that door, hypothetically there’s another door waiting for you and you have to bust through that door. We have to be process-oriented and not worry too much about the big picture.”

Even if the big picture includes a race more wide open and with greater potential than the man leading it has ever seen.

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