No pressure: How CJ Carr is on his way to being a Notre Dame starting quarterback

Notre Dame quarterbacks coach Gino Guidugli and presumptive Fighting Irish QB1 Riley Leonard are supposed to be on the same page. Two minds working as one to beat opposing defenses. But there’s something they just can’t see eye-to-eye on.

Leonard wants the QBs to go “live” in fall camp practices, opening them up to tackling. As any good coach would, Guidugli said that’s a no-no.

Among the many things they do agree on, however, is the future of freshman CJ Carr.

“CJ is going to be a very good player,” Guidugli said. “At the end of the day, that’s what it is.”

“He’s way, way, way above where I was as a freshman,” Leonard said. “Honestly, like night and day. His mental preparation. His will to learn. He’s just so eager to develop himself as a quarterback, and he just loves football.”

Loving football is a family endeavor for Carr, of course, whose grandfather, Lloyd Carr, coached Michigan to a national championship in 1997. It’s not just football that speaks to Notre Dame’s first-year signal-caller, though. It’s competition, period, in its purest form.

Carr has taken in as much of the Olympics his rigorous first fall camp schedule has allowed him to, which has not been a lot by his own admission, but something Team USA track and field gold medalist Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone said in a press conference struck him. Stuck with him.

“Pressure is an illusion.”

Carr wrote that down on his left hand in thick, black ink prior to Saturday’s practice.

“Just kind of reminds me not to put too much pressure on myself, to go out here and win every second, every play,” Carr said.

There aren’t many 18-year-olds who play the most important position in the sport who approach preseason practices that way. There aren’t any at all who win every second, every play. Carr is in a small class of those who win most, though. He’s been doing that since he enrolled early and got 15 spring practices under his belt.

Those sessions were confidence boosters for Carr. Every one of them.

“The spring helped a lot with just getting what the offense is going to be, what our calls are, where everyone’s going and how it should kind of operate,” Carr said. “Now in the fall, it’s just kind of honing in the little details, making sure everything’s perfect. And so I think spring, for me at least, was just a great way to get a base of what we’re doing, what we want to do and what we want to be. Just building off that.”

There may be two years before Carr ever starts a game in a Notre Dame uniform. There may be two months. Some of that is out of his control. What he does from sun up to sun down in August, though, is all on him. Nobody’s pressuring him to do what he does, either. He’s in charge. Fall camp is what he makes it.

Not what anyone else says it is or what it should be.

“I can control whether I’m feeling it or not,” Carr said of the illusory pressure. “I kind of realized that when the Olympian said that. I try not to think of it like that. I think of this is an opportunity. This isn’t something that’s threatening me. This is something that I can learn from. Something that I can create. Everything I do is an opportunity, not a threat.”

Again, wise beyond his years. The only senior quarterback on the Notre Dame roster has noticed. How could he not?

“A lot of freshman at this time of year are coasting, trying to figure it out,” Leonard said. “New school, let me do this, go here. He just wants to watch film and hang out with us.

“I try to give him advice, but the kid doesn’t really need to much advice to be honest with you. He’s pretty dialed.”

Carr’s position coach has obviously noticed, too.

“He’s thew first one in the meeting room every morning,” Guidugli said. “He has great questions. He’s always looking for some tape to watch. He’s going to be a really good one.”

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