How focusing on the details helps Notre Dame OT Joe Alt get better
During his fall camp-opening press conference Wednesday, Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman laid out the “clarity equals velocity” mindset that he has for his team. Essentially, to play as fast as Notre Dame wants them to play, Freeman’s players have to understand their assignments to a crystal-clear extent.
Junior offensive tackle Joe Alt, an engineering major, added another layer to the philosophy.
“It wasn’t clarity equals speed; it was clarity equals velocity,” Alt said after practice Monday. “The idea of that is you have to have a direction with your speed. We obviously want to play fast, but the direction piece comes with knowing it.”
Alt confirmed that the phrase was always “clarity equals velocity,” not the less sensical “clarity equals speed,” but he wanted his coaches to make sure that they explained the difference. And they did.
“The biggest thing with that is just to understand the details of it,” Alt said. “You can play as fast as you want, but if you don’t really know what you’re trying to get accomplished, you’re just meandering, not really doing anything.”
Details are a sticking point for Alt. Every day, he picks two things — one in pass protection and one in run blocking — at which he wants to get better during the given practice. In pass protection, which Alt said is the most important thing he does, he’s working on using his length and the strength of his first punch as well as he can.
Some of his goals can be even more specific: The nearly six-foot-eight Alt wants to play exactly four inches lower in everything he does this season.
“That’s been something I’ve really been focusing on with [offensive line] coach [Joe] Rudolph,” Alt said. “Been doing a lot of work with that, and I think I’ve come a long way from the last spring ball. That’s been a main focus for me.”
Alt — and his counterpart, junior right tackle Blake Fisher — have made an impression on Notre Dame’s highly-regarded freshman offensive tackles, Sullivan Absher and Charles Jagusah. They’ve both gotten plenty of hands-on work with the veteran starters, but they can also see how detail-oriented Alt and Fisher are.
“They can make the calls that the center makes every play,” Jagusah said. “They know what’s going on at all times, and it helps them have a better plan. Because if you know what everybody’s doing, you know exactly how you want to block it.”
Some of Alt’s emphasis on the details comes in trivial ways, like his pronunciation of the word “bagel.” In a video Notre Dame tweeted, Alt went on a “food tour” of New York City, which his teammate, graduate center Zeke Correll, sharply criticized. (“It was terrible. He couldn’t have picked worse places to go.”) When he tried a bagel sandwich, the Minnesota native made sure the audience knew he pronounces it “BAG-el,” not “BAY-gel.”
Alt reiterated that Monday.
“Oh, it’s still BAG-el,” Alt said. “It will always be BAG-el.”
Back to football: Alt’s focus on the minutiae isn’t changing any time soon, despite his national recognition. Asked how much of a finished product he believes he is, Alt strongly pushed back on the idea, saying he doesn’t think that at all.
Much like the formula for velocity — D-X over D-T, as he repeated instantly when a reporter asked him about it — Alt is still changing over time.
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