SOUTH BEND, Ind. — CJ Carr texted Will Hewlett on Monday morning, looking to schedule his next trip to Jacksonville, Fla., just as soon as the quarterback finishes his first semester at Notre Dame. Hewlett, a private quarterbacks coach who trains one top-five pick from last year’s draft and just finished Caleb Williams’ pre-draft workouts last week, got right back to Carr.
Carr and Hewlett have been working together for the past four years, the Carr family scheduling vacations around stops in northern Florida. Sometimes they’ll make seeing Hewlett part of the trip. Sometimes Carr wants to make it the entire trip, basically a working vacation that happens three times per year for three to five days at a time.
The last time Carr worked with Hewlett was before he arrived at Notre Dame for Sun Bowl practices, part of the team but not part of the student body. Hewlett liked what he saw then and felt Carr’s mechanics had hit a high point. When Carr returns next month, those mechanics will travel with him. So will expectations Carr can be something Notre Dame has been searching for during the past decade-plus.
“He’s kind of the unicorn that you’re looking for,” Hewlett said. “Him going to Notre Dame, my thoughts were if they can coach him into it, if they can lay it out for him, he’s going to be able to do it. There was not a matter of making the throws or handling the volume. He’s been a football nerd on the X’s and O’s side of it; he just loves ball.
“Learning the offense and understanding the offense was always going to come pretty quickly, but then you have to make a decision under pressure.”
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During Notre Dame’s jersey scrimmage, which was open to the media last weekend, Carr made dozens of those decisions. Most were correct. Even those that weren’t seemed to break for the former four-star prospect whom Notre Dame prioritized in recruiting over five-star prospect Dante Moore, who was a year older. And while it’s dangerous to read too much into a single practice — Carr’s work was exclusively with the second and third teams — the production was undeniable.
Notre Dame freshman CJ Carr (12) worked with the second- and third-team offenses at practice last weekend. (Austin Hough / USA Today)
Carr hit freshman Cam Williams for a 21-yard touchdown. He improvised a comeback route with Williams while scrambling left. He moved in the pocket, then pushed the ball deep to walk-on Jack Polian near the goal line. And Carr kept the ball on a zone read a play later for a touchdown run.
On a day when Steve Angeli threw two interceptions, including a pick six, Riley Leonard took mental reps behind the play while healing from ankle surgery and Kenny Minchey threw a pick six, Carr was the best of Notre Dame’s quarterbacks. That doesn’t make him Notre Dame’s best quarterback, but it may force coach Marcus Freeman to see the freshman in a different light heading into summer.
Then again, maybe Freeman already does.
“You saw the way he came in during bowl practices as a high school senior and just soaked it all in,” Freeman said. “And every time I walk by coach (Gino) Guidugli’s office, he’s in there. And that’s how you improve. Can you retain the information that your coaches are trying to give you, so that you go out and do it when it matters the most?”
Hewlett had little doubt Carr could do it considering his appetite for improvement, whether that was throwing mechanics or understanding how to generate more power beyond just trying to throw harder. When Carr started with Hewlett — Hewlett also trains Notre Dame’s all-time winningest quarterback Ian Book — the high school freshman couldn’t explain why one throw worked and one didn’t. Now he has enough self-knowledge to explain his successes and failures.
Hewlett believes that jumping a level may unleash part of Carr’s game that was tamped down in high school. That’s not a dig at Saline (Mich.) High School, more an acknowledgment that throwing to receivers like Williams, Jaden Greathouse and Micah Gilbert can open new possibilities.
“Maybe your skill set is just greater than the guys you’re throwing to. You get around guys who can match his skill set, and it opens up another part of your game,” Hewlett said. “Whether it’s a go ball or a contested throw or situation where you can let something go early before a guy isn’t out of his break, but you know he’s gonna be there.”
It’s hard to predict if Carr will do as much during the Blue-Gold Game as he did last weekend. The teams will be divided differently. Starters don’t get much work. But that could allow Carr to work with and against several first-team players, offering a different perspective on what he is now and what he might be later. Carr showed enough last weekend to spin the quarterback position forward next year when Leonard will be gone and the job will again be open.
Considering how much better Carr got during the past year and how much he has improved in his first semester, it’s easy to look ahead with the mid-year enrollee. Hewlett already is.
“There’s no throw on the field that he’s not able to consistently make, whether that’s the deep out air, the corner ball, the post ball. He can drive the field throws that really have to track a long distance,” he said. “It’s hard not to visualize the NFL version of what he might look like. That version is gonna be pretty entertaining and scary.”
(Top photo: Austin Hough / USA Today)
2024-04-17 21:11:54
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