By John Brice
Special Contributor
All it took was a mention in passing that Tyler Buchner potentially could be back on a football field … passing in 2022.
Notre Dame’s sophomore quarterback had been injured in the waning moments of an incomplete comeback-attempt Sept. 10 against Marshall inside Notre Dame Stadium.
“Likely out for the season” had been the dreaded prognosis in the aftermath of Buchner’s injury and the Fighting Irish’s 0-2 start.
Within days of surgery on his left, non-throwing shoulder, Buchner was back around his Notre Dame teammates. Couple weeks later, restless and rehabbing, he was back throwing footballs.
Now? He’s fully preparing alongside his Irish brethren as they prepare for Friday’s Gator Bowl against South Carolina. Buchner, Steve Angeli and Ron Powlus III comprise the team’s quarterback room with Drew Pyne’s abrupt departure earlier this month for the NCAA Transfer Portal, and Buchner is the lone figure with any starting experience.
“You know, it didn’t really cross my mind until the team doctors and the people I trust told me it was a possibility to come back, but once I knew it was a possibility, it was then in my mind however many weeks ago that was,” Buchner said. “Then things were feeling good in my shoulder and I came back to practice.
“I was practicing USC week; I was practicing but not really, just sort of ingraining slowly back into things. I did individual stuff BC week. Wasn’t doing a whole lot, but throwing some balls and stuff.”
Buchner and Angeli, as he’s wrapping up his 12th month on campus as a first-year collegiate student-athlete, are seeking to capitalize on these 15 December practices – both to be ready for the Gamecocks, who enter the bowl after a pair of late-season wins against top-10 Clemson and Tennessee, and to springboard into 2023.
“Everything we’re doing is kind of focused on ball,” said Angeli, who logged a mere seven snaps during Notre Dame’s 8-4 regular season. “Here in the mornings, here into the afternoons and we have time to put all of our focus on football and getting better. And the development is great, just getting to focus more on the young guys and preparing for South Carolina is a goal and also being able to go good-on-good and get some live reps against some great guys has been really beneficial for my development.”
Even in his absence from the playing field, Buchner continued to develop. He remained a fixture in every film session, stayed around the team on the practice field and helped chart the games, as well as offer thoughts on what he was seeing, inside the coaches’ box each game day.
“I think you see it from a different vantage point, see at as a coach does, you’re able to take a step back and kind of understand how a coach views the game and that’s how a quarterback should view the game,” Irish offensive coordinator Tommy Rees said, “and I think being in the box, you see it a certain way. I think it just helped slow some things down for him.”
Buchner, for one, noted a more expansive picture of the field that he has carried back with him into these late-year practices.
“Yeah, 100% see the field more completely,” he said. “I tried to contribute as much as I could up there, tried to be as valuable as I can and I did that throughout the year up there. It helped me, seeing the game from that perspective.
“I sort of developed a new understanding and relationship with football. Less as a quarterback and like just throwing the ball to certain places because that’s what the play says and instead just more schematically from sort of that deeper understanding of the game before.”
To that end, both Angeli and Buchner have worked to perpetuate a greater understanding of how they each see the game. Their regular film sessions inside the Guglielmino Athletics Complex have spawned outside communications, most often in the form of querying each other via text messages.
“Mostly when we watched stuff together, we were able to bounce those questions off each other in the room but when we’re not in the building at home, watching film and see some stuff, it’s no problem to shoot a question off into our group chat and see what guys have to say,” Angeli said. “What they think and then I can re-watch and see if I could see it through their lens. You can never stop finding better ways to do things and we’re trying to challenge everything.
“After reps in practice and seeing a coverage, it’s like, ‘Hey, would you have gone here or here?’ And I might say, ‘Well, I think I might have gone here based on the coverage,’ and he would say, ‘OK, I think I would go there.’ It’s just the way you see it, but there’s definitely multiple ways to run our offense but in the end we’re just trying to execute and make plays.”
In Angeli, Buchner has found a comfortable sounding board for the small circle of people within any football program who see things from the same vantage.
“It’s nice being able to, Steve knows a lot of football and our offense, and there’s only so many people that see things from a quarterback’s perspective about football and in our offense,” Buchner said. “There’s Coach Rees, the quarterbacks and the G.A.s, and sometimes you don’t want to text a coach. Sometimes you just want to text a buddy because it’s a lot more casual, and I think that’s certainly beneficial.”
In the spirited work from Angeli and Buchner this month, wideout Deion Colzie has seen a boost to the entire Irish offense – especially as Buchner has sacrificed to make an early return for his teammates.
“I can honestly say both of them are looking really good right now, I cannot lie about that,” Colzie said. “They’re both looking really good, and we’re starting to build connections with both of them and if it happens that both play in the bowl game, we’ll be ready for that. I feel confident right now in both of them.
“It definitely gives us energy, gives us the drive to produce. We know he was a missed guy; we missed T-Buch, obviously, and we’re happy that he’s back and he’s cleared and he’s ready to go. He motivates us every day to keep working and don’t give up until you get what you want done.”