How Notre Dame plans to plug and play both Kizer and Zaire at quarterback in the Texas opener

With the clocking ticking on Notre Dame’s college football opener at Texas, Irish Coach Brian Kelly recently addressed the question that had been hanging over his team for months: Who will play quarterback, incumbent junior DeShone Kizer or now-healthy senior Malik Zaire?

His answer: both.

Kelly said there still was no clear separation between Kizer, who passed for 21 touchdowns as he led the Irish to a 10-3 record last season, and Zaire, who carried the team in a 38-3 rout of Texas in last year’s opener before suffering a season-ending ankle injury in the next game.

Kizer and Zaire will both play in Austin on Sept. 4, Kelly said, contradicting the expectations the coach laid out in the spring that he would pick just one.

“It was clear to me that the more we practiced, the more that they were going to make plays,” Kelly said. “It was not going to change anything. Both of these guys were two of our top play-makers.

“So the decision was made, and then I think now they can just settle into getting better every day. They don’t have to worry about a competition for the Texas game. They can just focus on getting better.”

Kelly has not revealed which quarterback will start or how he plans to divide the playing time, leaving open scenarios in which Kizer and Zaire switch off drives or are inserted depending on down and distance.

The similarities between the quarterbacks’ styles allow the team to easily transition from one to the other, Kelly said.

“There’s not a big change when one is in versus the other,” Kelly said. “There’s play-call differences, but that doesn’t require much change at all.”

Kelly told Irish Illustrated in June that he worried about changing identities when juggling quarterbacks, pointing to Ohio State’s issues last season with J.T. Barrett and Cardale Jones. Kelly said the “plug and play” nature of Notre Dame’s two-quarterback system would help maintain one offensive identity.

Though Zaire and Kizer each said they respected their coach’s decision, Kelly acknowledged it was not what either had hoped for.

“There’s always going to be that struggle with the individual versus the team,” Kelly said. “They clearly understand that the team is most important and winning and beating Texas is more important than how they feel about the current situation.

“But down deep, I’m sure they are probably not happy with sharing the position.”

Competition at quarterback is nothing new in South Bend. In fall 2015, Zaire was vying with Everett Golson, who led Notre Dame to the 2013 national championship game but was a major factor in the team’s collapse toward the end of an 8-5 2014 season.

Kelly anointed Zaire as the starter and Golson transferred to Florida State.

It seemed the Zaire era had begun in earnest when he dominated Texas to open last season. Then came the ankle injury in Week 2 against Virginia.

Kizer, a redshirt freshman who was third string before Golson’s transfer, stepped in and threw a 40-yard, game-winning touchdown pass in the game’s final 13 seconds. With him at quarterback, Notre Dame went on to defeat of its all regular season opponents except No. 2 Clemson and No. 3 Stanford, earning a Fiesta Bowl matchup against Ohio State.

Despite his winning record and 2,882 yards passing, Kizer found himself again in competition when Zaire returned from his injury at full strength. And Zaire is now in a similar position to where he was a year ago, now against a player on the rise instead of one in decline.