Sam Hartman Looks The Part In Notre Dame Blue-Gold Game

Notre Dame football coach Marcus Freeman shares thoughts on quarterback Sam Hartman after Saturday's spring game

That was the Sam Hartman we expected to see. The Sam Hartman that took the rain drenched field on Saturday afternoon in Notre Dame’s Blue-Gold spring football game was every bit as good as advertised.

The Wake Forest graduate transfer looked far from precision-like in two practices that were open to the media this spring, but he threw with exacting accuracy in his short amount of time on the field. Hartman barely broke a sweat in completing his first five passes and finished the day by going 13 for 16 for 189 yards and two touchdowns in less than a half for the Gold team.

"He played well today,” Irish head coach Marcus Freeman proclaimed after the spring finale. "I mean, he played really well and it's really good to see. As the head coach of this football team, I'm like, yeah that's what you want to see. You want to see some production from the offense. But yeah, that's what I expected.”

Hartman threw 110 touchdown passes in 48 career games in his five seasons at Wake Forest, which ranked 18th all-time in NCAA history.. He enters what will be his first and only season at Notre Dame with 12,967 career passing yards, which ranks 19th all-time among FBS quarterbacks. He has a chance to move as high as No. 2 on that list by the time the 2023 season ends.

"When we went out to look for a transfer portal quarterback, you don't look for the second, third, fourth (best),” Freeman offered. "You look for the best player in the country that would fit in your locker room. Sam Hartman showed today why he was extremely successful at Wake Forest, and I think he'll be extremely successful here.”

Hartman’s favorite target Saturday was freshman early enrollee Jaden Greathouse, who was in 8th grade when Hartman was a freshman at Wake Forest in 2018. Greathouse finished with game-highs of 11 receptions for 118 yards while rising junior Jayden Thomas added four catches for 71 yards and a touchdown.

Other receivers like Tobias Merriweather, Chris Tyree and Deion Colzie (five combined receptions for 33 yards) suited up for the Blue team with Tyler Buchner. The junior to be didn’t fare nearly as well as Hartman. Buchner completed just 8 of 18 passes for 44 yards. He also threw one of two interceptions (the other was by walk-on Dylan Devezin on the game’s final play) in the game. 

Buchner’s interception came on an underthrown ball that was snagged by cornerback Jaden Mickey on a downfield throw.

"I told (Buchner), I gotta take responsibility because on third down I went in there and I was trying to help the offense,” Freeman recalled. "I was like “It's cover two, its cover two’ and it ended up not being cover two. He said ‘You owe me one’. I said ‘I'll take responsibility. I'll tell the media don't worry about it. I got this one’. So yeah, that was on me.”

Freeman says he saw continued growth from Hartman from practice one through Saturday’s scrimmage, which was officially practice 15 of the spring. After five years running Wake’s slow mesh offense, he spent the spring learning a new pro style system.

Did Hartman have time in the pocket that Buchner didn’t have? Sure. Buchner had more potential starting skill players around him while Hartman had three likely offensive line starters protecting him in left tackle Joe Alt, center Zeke Correll and left guard Billy Schrauth.

Regardless of what he saw Saturday, Freeman sees a quarterback competition that he is not willing to publicly close.

"I think we still have a quarterback battle,” Freeman said. "You can't determine a winner or loser based off one practice. Practice 15. You can't base a decision off of what we view as a certain outcome. There's a lot that goes into it. There's a lot that goes into a quarterback battle but obviously the quarterback play. I know just being out there, we got to go back and watch the film.

"Everybody's going to praise Sam for how he played today and they're going to criticize Tyler,” Freeman continued. "They both probably played pretty well. We have to look at the film. I know stats might not see it, but both of them are tremendously talented. We'll go back and evaluate all 15 practices and continue to look as we move forward.”

Hartman looked the part on Saturday. Buchner did not. Those will be the images we will remember until we look at them again in August. 

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