Everett Golson Finally Feeling the Pressure of Being Notre Dame Quarterback

Welcome to Notre Dame, Everett Golson.

That's likely how this week feels for Notre Dame's senior quarterback. And while Golson has been in South Bend for a long time—a redshirt season after enrolling early in 2011, a national title game run in 2012 and the much-discussed academic sabbatical in 2013—only now, after his recent struggles, does Golson really know what it feels like to be the quarterback at Notre Dame. 

Never mind that Golson's second year as a starting quarterback is actually one of the more statistically impressive seasons in the country. Sure, he's ninth in the country in total offense and fourth in points responsible for. But nobody cares about that. 

Not when all people can talk about is his 17 turnovers in the past five games, with the Irish quarterback rightfully wearing the collar for Notre Dame's "Debacle in the Desert," a five-turnover nightmare that saw the Irish give up 28 straight points in just under eight dubious first-half minutes to fall into a 31-3 hole they could never dig out from. 

Even with a gaudy 17-3 record as a starting quarterback, Golson finally now knows what it feels like to be in the Irish fans' custom-built doghouse. 

After housing Tommy Rees the past three seasons and Dayne Crist before that, perhaps Golson can now carve his name into the wooden beam (like Brooks and Red in The Shawshank Redemption), joining names like Jimmy Clausen, Brady Quinn, Carlyle Holiday, Gary Godsey, Matt LoVecchio and Jarious Jackson, ad infinitum. 

That's playing quarterback for the Irish. And it's something I asked Rees about on Wednesday. 

"You know what you’re getting into when you’re the quarterback at Notre Dame," Rees said. "You get a lot of praise, but you also get a lot of scrutiny, right or wrong, that's just the way it is."

Golson has handled that scrutiny like a leader, taking difficult questions after every game as the turnovers piled up. He did the same thing after the loss to Arizona State, the last player to take questions from press looking for an answer, when the rest of the team was ready to get on a plane and escape a nightmare of an afternoon. 

"Honestly, I think it’s all on me," Golson said after the game. "You play with fire as much as I did today, you know you are going to get burnt eventually. I’ve go to practice to get better, got to clean up in practice. I think that’s where it really starts, in practice."

Tuesday afternoon, Brian Kelly talked about the team putting the Arizona State game behind itself, something his quarterback needs to do. And after openly acknowledging Golson's mistakes in his postgame recap in Tempe, Kelly was proud of the way the signal-caller has handled things. 

"I think what's been talked about, the buck stops with the quarterback, right? I think Everett made that pretty clear," Kelly said. "I think he took full responsibility for what needs to happen at that position. I think that's really the most important thing."  

Cleaning up his game is the next step. Against a Northwestern defense that's given up just 210 passing yards a game, Golson may be facing a struggling Wildcat team, but their strength will match up well with the Irish passing attack. 

After seeing his first true on-field adversity, now Golson's job is to turn things around. Rees went through similar situations in his sometimes rocky career in South Bend. And he thinks Golson will come out of it just fine. 

"I believed in my ability, believed in the process, and leaned on my teammates and just dove further into football," Rees said. "Ev will handle it fine. Confidence is no issue for him, he’ll bounce back strong." 

That's life as Notre Dame's quarterback. And even if Notre Dame's disappointing removal from the College Football Playoff isn't all Golson's fault, it all comes back to the man in the middle of the offense. 

Name	Comp. %	Yards	TDs	INTs
Everett Golson	61.7	2,757	24	11
Tommy Rees	65.5	2,871	20	14
Jimmy Clausen	60.9	3,172	25	17
Brady Quinn	54.1	2,586	17	10

"I'm proud of the way he's handled the scrutiny of being under the bright lights of the turnovers," Kelly said. "I said that in the press conference he's responsible for all the turnovers. But that's not to mean that he's to be blamed for all of the turnovers."

A closer look will implicate guys like Ronnie Stanley and Christian Lombard—two veteran offensive linemen who failed to execute blocks on Arizona State's offensive linemen and to turn batted passes into interceptions—or senior tight end Ben Koyack, who has played a lot of good snaps this season but quite a few bad ones last Saturday. 

But you don't read cries for Hunter Bivin or Mike McGlinchey taking over the Internet or reasons for Durham Smythe and Tyler Luatua to get a jump-start on their careers now. 

The last Notre Dame quarterback to get out of South Bend unscathed will be the first one. So welcome to the club, Everett Golson. 

Now get back to winning football games. 

*Unless otherwise noted, all quotes obtained firsthand.