Drew Pyne was ready for his first spring practice. The Notre Dame quarterback studied the playbook diligently, both for memory and for comprehension. He felt he understood all the necessary reads. He was as ready as he could be.
“Once I went in there, I wasn’t nervous at all,” Pyne said this past Saturday. “I knew everything, and it was so much easier.”
Of course, that was early last March, and it was the only spring practice the then-early-enrolled freshman would get before the coronavirus pandemic forced Notre Dame to send the football team home for more than three months.