Senior quarterback Riley Leonard earned selection to the 2024 Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award Watch List. The Golden Arm Award annually recognizes the top senior or upperclassman quarterback set to graduate with their class.
It marks Leonard’s second-career selection to the Golden Arm Award Watch List (also named in 2023). Leonard was also selected to the award’s Top 25 in 2023.
Two Notre Dame signal-callers have won the award: quarterback Tony Rice in 1989 and quarterback Brady Quinn in 2006.
Leonard has already been named to the 2024 watch lists for the Walter Camp Player of the Year and the Maxwell Award. In 2023, Leonard started all seven games in which he played for Duke, going 95-for-165 and 1,102 yards (57.5 percent completion rate) and three touchdowns. He rushed 58 times for 352 yards (44-yard long) and four touchdowns on the season.
In 2022, he started all 13 games for the Blue Devils, completing 250-of-392 (.638) passes for 2,967 yards with 20 touchdowns, while leading the team in rushing with 699 yards on 124 carries and 13 touchdowns. He was one of three FBS quarterbacks to amass more than 2,900 passing yards and 695 rushing yards, joining LSU’s Jayden Daniels and North Carolina’s Drake Maye.
Johnny Unitas was an 18-year veteran of the NFL, who played his collegiate career at the University of Louisville before joining the Baltimore Colts in 1958. His career passing figures include 2,830 pass completions for 40,239 yards, 290 touchdowns and throwing a touchdown pass in 47 consecutive games.
This year’s award winner will be presented the Golden Arm Award trophy at the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award celebration at the Four Seasons Hotel in Baltimore, Maryland on Friday, December 6, 2024.