Ah, the benefits of a fully stocked roster.

For the first time since Tyrone Willingham struggled to fill a roster with D-I recruits, the Irish will have a full 85-man allotment of scholarships on their roster. And of all the positions where battles will be fought for playing time, no spot on the depth chart will have as many eyes on it as the quarterback spot.

With Nate Montana’s exit to the Grizzlies of Montana and Luke Massa spending the spring at wide receiver, four quarterbacks will take snaps for the Irish. Two, Dayne Crist and Tommy Rees, we’ve seen. Two, Andrew Hendrix and early-entrant Everett Golson, we haven’t.

Helping to kick start this discussion, our friends at Her Loyal Sons pontificated on what quarterback had the better season last year: Dayne Crist or Tommy Rees.

Without completing hijacking their column, The Biscuit (who is on a mission to attend ND’s Annual Fantasy Camp, which I can attest is a once-in-a-lifetime experience) looked at five different criteria for judging the two players:

1) Stats

2) ND’s running attack

3) ND’s defensive performance

4) The competition

5) The competition’s defense

Here’s where he came out:

Overall, these two players had pretty similar performances stats-wise. Rees edges out Crist in a few key categories, and played against an overall more difficult schedule. But Crist was more productive against a tougher set of defenses, and wasn’t helped out by the Irish Running Game or Defense the way that Rees was.

Obviously, one statistical area where Rees trumps Crist was in the W/L column, with Rees piloting the Irish through most of a 4-1 stretch while Dayne went 4-4 before getting injured early against Tulsa. But as we discussed back in December, setting an appropriate bar for Crist was one area where most fans/analysts/bloggers failed.

Even with a five-star pedigree, Crist was walking into a new offensive system after spending two seasons immersed in Charlie Weis’ way of playing quarterback. He was a first-time starting quarterback playing his first year in a new system and doing it after rehabbing from a major knee injury that added another hurdle to his development process.

Comparing Crist’s physical tools to those of Tommy Rees isn’t going to come out in favor of Rees. In fact, Rees won’t come out in front of any of the six quarterbacks that were on the roster at the New Year. But Kelly made it clear that he’s got a clear vision on how he’s offense will adapt during year two of his tenure.

“Suffice to say that I’m pretty clear on the styles that we have and how to utilize those styles within our offense,” Kelly said. “Not everybody can run the style of offense that I would want us to be running, so we’re going to utilize our quarterbacks to best help us win football games.”

What style offense Kelly will run in 2011 might be an evolutionary question befitting Darwin. During his state of the program remarks before Signing Day, Kelly talked about the changes that come with coaching Notre Dame.

“In 21 years of being a head coach, most of the jobs I’ve had revolved around not just winning, but being exciting, being relevant, putting fans in the seats,” Kelly said, comparing work under the Golden Dome to that at Cincinnati, Central Michigan and Grand Valley State. “None of those things matter at Notre Dame. I don’t have to create an exciting offense, I just have to win football games, and defense goes hand in hand with winning.”

Those comments might mean that the hurry-up, no-huddle, time-of-possession-is-an-overrated-philosophy that dominated the opening days of the Kelly era are over. With the Irish’s defense resurgence coming much sooner than anybody ever expected, it’s clear that Kelly’s way of winning football games won’t get in the way of simply winning games, style points be damned.

All that being said, don’t expect Kelly to simply trade in an offensive philosophy 20 years in the making for a slug-it-out, just win the game mentality. It could simply mean he hasn’t found his signature quarterback yet.

‘‘It’s a guaranteed Heisman Trophy to whoever that guy is,’’ former Cincinnati quarterback Ben Mauk to the Chicago Sun-Times a few weeks ago. ‘‘Once he gets a guy in there he can trust — they’re on the same page and they go through those meetings where he knows he’s on the same page — then you’ll see a whole new dimension to the offense.’’

(As the Irish pursue Mauk’s younger brother, highly-touted prep quarterback Maty Mauk, it’s clear that Kelly and company can certainly rely on big brother’s endorsement.)

In the one season that we’ve seen of both Crist and Tommy Rees, it’s hard to determine that either of those guys is purely that quarterback, but it’s also clear looking at Kelly’s track record that he’s won plenty of football games with quarterbacks of all shapes and sizes.

The days continue to tick down to March 23, the official start to Irish spring practice. Those fifteen sessions will give all of us our first look at Golson, a pure spread quarterback, and Hendrix, a player whose toolbox might contain attributes unparalleled amongst the rest of the competition.

There’ll be plenty of time to read between the lines as each quarterback states their case for playing time come autumn. But it’s clear that whoever Kelly trusts to lead the offense, they’ll be one of the largest factors determining the fate of the 2011 Irish.