Ex-QB Buchner back with Irish, but as receiver

Adam Rittenberg, ESPN

• Senior Citizen WriterMay 31, 2024, 01:54 PM ET Close College football press reporter.
• Signed up with ESPN.com in 2008.
• Graduate of Northwestern University.Former Notre Dame starting quarterback Tyler Buchner, who joined the school’s lacrosse team this spring after playing football last fall at Alabama, will go back to the Combating Irish football group for the 2024 season as a walk-on. Buchner will play wide receiver for the Irish. He was a reserve midfield and had one help in 10 games for Notre Dame’s lacrosse team, which won its 2nd straight national championship on Monday against Maryland. Buchner, a junior, will play lacrosse for Notre Dame in 2025. Previous Irish QB Tyler Buchner, who played lacrosse last season, will return to the football group to play pass receiver. Frank Jansky/Icon Sportswire”Having the ability to play the game I have actually loved given that I can remember and playing for Notre Dame had been my dream,”Buchner wrote

  in a letter to the Notre Dame community.”I risked all of it and believed I had actually lost it all, as I did not believe even going back to football at Notre Dame would be in the cards.”The 6-foot-1, 215-pound Buchner opened the 2022 season as Notre Dame’s beginning quarterback before missing out on 10 games with injury. After

  helping Notre Dame to a Gator Bowl win, he completed for the beginning job in the spring of 2023 with Sam Hartman before transferring to Alabama, where he reconnected with offensive planner Tommy Rees.Last fall, Buchner began Alabama’s Week 3 game against South Florida but had a hard time, completing 5 of 14 passes for 34 yards.

  In his letter, Buchner composed that he then was benched for the very first time in his career, “fell under a deep psychological hole “and”felt hopeless and hated football.” He wrote that he had scholarship opportunities to play quarterback elsewhere but just wished to go back to Notre Dame, where he took 9 classes this spring to complete his degree.Editor’s Picks 2 Related Buchner will sign up with a wide receiver group that consists of Jordan Faison, a previous walk-on who starred for Notre Dame’s lacrosse group this season, scoring 21 objectives.”It would have been

  easy for the football training personnel to see me simply as a player who had actually left, however rather, I am grateful they were able to see me as a young man eager to return and contribute in any way I might for the greater good of the team,”Buchner wrote.Coach Marcus Freeman informed ESPN in April that he had actually seen Buchner on the lacrosse field and wished him well as he reacclimated to the sport.” He is an excellent boy and comes from a fantastic household that will continue to do excellent things in the athletic world, however in the game of life,”Freeman said then.” We’re a huge fan of Tyler Buchner and I look forward to watching him have much success.”