How DeShone Kizer Became the Accidental Face of Notre Dame Football

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — DeShone Kizer had waited for his big moment for so long. And then it came Saturday at Virginia. Kizer, Notre Dame's holder on field-goal attempts, was part of…yes, a fake field goal! Instead of holding the ball on the turf for the kick, he shoveled it ahead to tight end Durham Smythe, who ran in for the Irish's first touchdown of the game.      

"That was the highlight I was waiting for," Kizer said Wednesday. "I knew we were going to run it eventually. And honestly after we scored on it, it was kind of disappointing to think we can't run it again."

You take your thrills when they come, I guess. And maybe it's best not to judge, but a holder flipping a ball does not seem, really, to be much of a lifelong memory. They will not make another Rudy type of movie about it. It feels nothing like a quarterback leading his team on a late drive, throwing an incredible long touchdown pass for the win just when his team was about to lose.

Kizer also did that Saturday, by the way.

When Notre Dame quarterback Malik Zaire broke his ankle, the team had to turn to Kizer, a second-year player—a redshirt freshman and backup QB. From here, Kizer is suddenly the starting quarterback on a team trying to win a national championship. The Irish have a big game Saturday against Georgia Tech.

He's still the holder, too.

We shouldn't even know who Kizer is now. He's sort of just accidentally here. First, Notre Dame wasn't going to recruit him, and then when he got his chance, he bombed.

"Didn't throw the ball well at all…I just kind of X'd them out," he said.

Yet here he is. The QB job was supposed to be between Zaire and Everett Golson. Then, Golson transferred to Florida State and Zaire became the franchise QB. Until he got hurt in the second game of the season.

Hello, DeShone Kizer. One day you play a position, holder, that sounds like a piece of equipment, and the next you're the most visible player on the most visible team in America.

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So who is this guy, anyway? That's the question of the year for Notre Dame.

The Irish aren't the only team facing the query. Zaire is just one example of the epidemic of season-ending injuries in college football. BYU's star quarterback, Taysom Hill, suffered the third season-ending injury of his career. And who is this Tanner Mangum guy, anyway? He's the one who has thrown two Hail Marys for wins.

In some cases, we're learning that accidents aren't always a disaster. Sometimes, they're an opportunity. Kizer took over late in the game Saturday, and the team was so shaken that even Notre Dame's defense fell apart. The players said they had complete faith in Kizer because, well, they're good liars with a good reason to lie. They know what can happen when a QB loses his confidence. When Golson did last year, Notre Dame fell apart.

So in came Kizer, a redshirt freshman accident, and there went the season.

"I was blank," he said, describing how he felt after throwing the game-winning touchdown to receiver Will Fuller. "I didn't even know how goofy I looked [running downfield in celebration] until I saw the pictures and the video afterward. I know I wanted to go celebrate with him and got down there as fast as I possibly could and ended up doing like a little soccer slide into the end zone."

An hour after the game, he called his mother, who was at a birthday party in a wings joint back home in Toledo. She was still crying from what she'd seen on TV.

Her son, the accidental hero.

That's not the Kizer Notre Dame fans are about to get to know, though. The thing that stood out most from Kizer in that game—more than the game-winning touchdown pass, more than his final line of 8-for-12 with 92 yards, more even than the fake field goal—was his eyes. The TV cameras kept focusing on them, and they looked intent but focused. Strong. Not icy, not excited, not angry.

Just dead focused and in deep, calm study.

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"Everything everyone saw Saturday, I've seen more than once," said Greg Dempsey, Kizer's former coach at Central Catholic High School in Toledo.

Was Kizer even nervous going into the game?

"Of course," Kizer said. "It just kind of happened. It wasn't really a thought process. It was too quick to think. You just quickly throw your helmet on, put in the mouthpiece, warm up a little bit and get out there."

He didn't have time to think, didn't have time to let in the noise that can lead to panic. But in Kizer's case, that's usually done by plan. He is less of a runner and more of a passer than Zaire. He also has prototypical QB size: 6'4 ½", 230 pounds.

And he's a thinker.

He told Bleacher Report this week that people have been trying to reach him on social media, congratulate him, tell him they believe in him or trust him. He said he isn't comfortable yet with his new role, and his goal right now is "avoiding the noise."

"I've done a fairly good job of trying to ignore it as much as I can," he said, "kind of push myself in my academics and my football life as much as I possibly can and get those things off my mind."

But look, Kizer isn't that big of a shock. He was highly recruited out of high school, even though he didn't follow the path most kids do to get to a place like this: He played football during the football season, basketball during the basketball season and baseball during the baseball season.

He didn't go to a specialized guru quarterback coach, but instead used the one his high school team had. He didn't go to QB camps. So he was a little slow to develop, and he threw the football like a baseball with too long of a motion.

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Dempsey said Notre Dame wasn't planning to bring in a quarterback that year, but then QB Gunner Kiel left and Golson was kicked out of school for a year over an academic cheating scandal.

And it was those accidents that landed Kizer a chance to throw footballs for former Notre Dame offensive coordinator Chuck Martin. It didn't go well.

Not long after that, though, Kizer called Notre Dame's coaches back and asked for another chance. Dempsey said Kizer told him, "I just didn't feel right [with] them thinking that was me."

So Martin gave him one more shot.

The rest is accidental history.

Greg Couch covers college football for Bleacher Report.