SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Steve Angeli grew up staring at that red line, so he knows the drill. Football in hand, he watches the line move on the monitor in front of him. When it starts to flash, Angeli begins his throwing motion while also reading the defense in front of him. If the linebacker shades toward the boundary, Angeli throws toward the field. If that linebacker moves toward the field, Angeli hits a route to the boundary.

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Everything about the drill is filmed, tracked and scored. There’s a radar gun to measure velocity and a timer to track quickness of release. It lets Angeli know where he stands, as if he needs much outside validation these days. After committing to Notre Dame last week, making him the next quarterback from a New Jersey parochial powerhouse to find a home in South Bend, Angeli has never been more certain of where he stands.

The 6-foot-3, 215-pound quarterback from Bergen Catholic will be one of the faces of Notre Dame’s next class. He’s a four-star prospect on Rivals and a three-star on 247Sports. He plans to be one of Notre Dame’s better recruiters, and he plays 7-on-7 with the Boom program outside Chicago and its collection of national receiver targets.

Getting here and committing to a place where many always thought he’d end up hasn’t always been straightforward. And it might have looked slow or felt fast, depending on the point of view. But there’s a science to managing all that, something that can be traced back to that reaction training exercise. Private quarterbacks coach Matt Bastardi runs that drill and has worked with Angeli since the fourth grade. He said no quarterback he’s worked with reacts more quickly than Angeli.

Look at the red line, watch it flash, read the defense, throw.

Do it over and over and over again until it’s part of the wiring.

“I was able to process information so quickly,” Angeli said. “By training the neuromuscular, things that go on with vision and reaction times, it really helped me a lot to be able to kind of process information quickly, make decisions fast and be able to see and read defenses very quickly.”

In other words, Notre Dame’s next quarterback knows what’s in front of him, even if the view takes some interpretation for everybody else. That’s probably the best way to view the past year for Angeli. Nearly his entire recruitment unfolded during a pandemic, without any in-person interaction or evaluation from Notre Dame. Angeli was able to get to Penn State and Ohio State — both offered — before COVID-19 shut down recruiting and threatened last season.

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Notre Dame was still relatively early to offer; Angeli and four-star quarterback Gavin Wimsatt were the first quarterback offers in the 2022 recruiting class. Those offers came in mid-August last year, and Notre Dame didn’t offer another quarterback until moving on five-star Ty Simpson (now committed to Alabama) in January and four-star Drew Allar (now committed to Penn State) in February.

The presumption around Notre Dame winning out for Angeli dates back to the 1940s, when his great uncle Pete Berezney won a national title playing for Frank Leahy. In more modern times, one of Angeli’s older brothers played high school ball at St. Peter’s Prep with Brandon Wimbush. Angeli counts Quenton Nelson as a family friend. While researching the Irish, Angeli connected with defensive linemen Jayson and Justin Ademilola, plus linebacker Shayne Simon. He also talked to Wimbush and Nelson.

“I never felt rushed at all or pressured by anything exterior by coaches or anything like that,” Angeli said. “Just after going through the process with Notre Dame, there really wasn’t anything else I was looking for.”

Angeli noted the commitment of Simpson to Alabama and Notre Dame’s move on Allar. Even though he said those moves didn’t impact his timeline with the Irish, he understood his window with Notre Dame was not infinite. So in mid-February when the NCAA extended the recruiting dead period through May 31, Angeli came to terms with the fact he wasn’t going to see any more of Notre Dame than he’d already seen.

On Feb. 23, Angeli and his family joined a Zoom call with Rees, wondering if it was time to close the deal. Angeli said he asked Rees some tough questions and got some back from the Irish offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. Angeli called the meeting one of the best conversations he had with Rees since those first ones back in August. He wanted to know about NFL development, offensive scheme and networking beyond South Bend. All boxes were checked. From there, Angeli wanted to connect with Brian Kelly, an introduction Rees said he’d arrange for the next week.

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“Coach Rees was so honest about everything,” Angeli said. “He’s a hungry, confident coach. Exactly the type of guy I want to play for.”

On March 4, Angeli talked with Kelly and committed.

It may be an open competition next winter when Angeli enrolls early. With Wisconsin graduate transfer Jack Coan the likely starter for his one year at Notre Dame, the job should be up for grabs a year from now among Brendon Clark, Drew Pyne, Tyler Buchner, Ron Powlus III and Angeli.

But that’s all a long way from now for Angeli, who has just a single shortened season of starting experience on his resume. Bergen Catholic went 5-1 last fall in a run-first offense behind a offensive line dealing with considerable turnover. Angeli finished 68 of 115 for 919 yards, six touchdowns and three interceptions. Those numbers require some context considering Angeli’s commitment follows Buchner, who turned six-touchdown games in a regular thing at The Bishop’s School. Never mind the impact of the pandemic on high school football, Angeli was playing against a different tier of competition than Buchner faced around San Diego.

“You can’t just look at stats,” Bastardi said. “Look at the all the guys at his position in his class in the top 20 who didn’t play a game this year, and they have offers from Alabama and Clemson. For a first-year starter under fire, I think he did very, very well.

“If you’re watching his games, like no doubt Coach Rees is, you’re not looking at his stats, per se. Those college teams are watching, and they see why.”

Indeed, Stanford, Arizona, Iowa and Syracuse offered Angeli after his junior season.

Whatever Angeli did or didn’t show in high school box scores, Notre Dame stuck with him for almost eight months. He knew the culture of the program before experiencing it, and for a program that prioritizes fit as much as Notre Dame does, that counts for more than something.

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Angeli helped build on that understanding in December when he took a self-guided tour of campus with his dad for a sort of unofficial-unofficial visit. Angeli had flown into Chicago for a 7-on-7 tournament that got relocated to northwest Indiana due to COVID-19 restrictions. Father and son made the drive over to campus on the same afternoon Notre Dame was playing Clemson in the ACC championship game.

Angeli visited the grotto and the basilica and walked the campus. He looked through the gates of Notre Dame Stadium and pressed his face to the windows of the Gug to see the weight room. He watched the first part of the ACC championship game on his phone while walking, then caught the rest on the drive back toward Chicago.

“It was a great look because I don’t think I’ll ever see it that way again,” Angeli said. “Getting a feel for the campus without people there and still getting that special feeling, it really helped a lot.”

In the end, that trip was another data point in a recruitment that had plenty of them, even a commitment to Notre Dame seemed likely from the start. Angeli liked to say his recruitment was going to be a race to the middle, that he’d find his place in the college football landscape and that program would ultimately find him. In the end, that journey may have been as much about discovery as it was confirmation, ending at a place where his family has history and the program has a bright future.

“Notre Dame had everything I was looking for. They have an elite education and they play championship football right up against (Alabama and Clemson),” Angeli said. “That’s something I wanted to be a part of.”

In the end, maybe the recruitment of Steve Angeli was just another decision. And like the red line Angeli watches while training with Bastardi back in New Jersey, the quarterback has spent a lifetime preparing for this outcome.

(Photo courtesy of 247Sports)