Notre Dame Quarterback Brendon Clark Has "Crazy Tunnel Vision"
With fifth-year senior Ian Book headed into his final season as the quarterback of Notre Dame, the Irish have young, promising sophomore Brendon Clark waiting in the wings.
Book has certainly compiled an impressive resume during his collegiate career leaving tough shoes to fill. However, Clark has been working hard behind the scenes in preparation of becoming his successor.
Since his junior year of high school, Clark has been in good hands training with 26-year-old quarterback coach Malcolm Bell.
Bell had his own success in college at the quarterback position, starting 34 games for North Carolina Central University from 2013-2016. During this period, he would lead the Eagles to three-straight conference championships. He also set a school record with a 56.6% career completion percentage and finished second in program history with 6,340 passing yards and 7,844 yards of total offense.
Following graduation, Bell was given a shot playing in the Canadian Football League, but unfortunately his career was cut prior to the conclusion of his first preseason.
Despite a solid college career, Bell was aware he had several disadvantages at the quarterback position, compared to his opponents, due to a lack of available private training in the Virginia area.
This led him to start recruiting young quarterbacks to help them work on their technique and be the best players they can be. Bell works with a wide range of signal callers from high schoolers, to incoming recruits, and established college quarterbacks tailoring film to their on the field drills.
He schools them in various different aspects on and off the field to help polish their craft in order to transform into legit NFL Draft prospects.
“My goal is to give young high school and college quarterbacks the best opportunity and training to succeed,” said Bell in a phone interview with Irish Breakdown. “No matter how good they are they can always improve in some areas. My own failures as a player gave me my drive to help these young guys do better.”
As his students began to see positive results in their performance on the field, Bell’s reputation grew in the Richmond-area. This caused the Clark family to reach out in 2018 as their son, Brendon, was a three-star quarterback recruit who de-committed from Wake Forest in favor of Notre Dame.
After working with Clark for two years, Bell has noticed some impressive traits and poise in the youngster.
“He’s just one of those guys who remains humble and has crazy tunnel vision,” said Bell. “He doesn’t have a twitter and barely uses Instagram, which is usually centered around kids his age.
“He’s (Clark) a regular blue-collar kid that goes to work every day no matter the conditions, continued Bell. "He isn’t fazed by the bright lights or the media. All he wants to do is work hard and get better in order to be successful.”
This extra work behind the scenes will hopefully bode well for Clark, who moved up on Notre Dame’s depth chart to second string following the 2019 season after former four-star recruit Phil Jurkovec announced he was transferring to Boston College.
Although head coach Brian Kelly originally pinned Jurkovec as the “quarterback of the future,” Clark is showing the right attitude and work ethic to step up and fill this role.
His trainer, Bell also seems to think so as he believes Clark’s personality will be able to tune out the noise and handle any competition of incoming top recruits including four-star commit Drew Pyne, who is joining the Irish in 2020.
“He’s able to channel his emotions and handle his business. He has a four-star guy coming in next year, he sees it but he doesn’t feel it," explained Bell. "He doesn’t care. He understands that if you handle your business, study, watch film and perform then you will be fine."
Bell is hosting a May 15 virtual webinar event called “All Things Quarterback,” for quarterbacks of all ages. According to Bell, there will be 15 FBS quarterbacks on the call, along with several Division II, and high school level players.
Most notably this list includes Clark, plus Duke’s Chase Brice, who served as Trevor Lawrence’s backup at Clemson, West Virginia’s Donovan Riddick, Virginia Tech’s Hendon Hooker, and Utah’s Jake Bentley, among others.
“The older guys will be sharing their on and off the field experiences as college quarterbacks with some of my younger players that are in the recruitment process or entering their first year on a college campus,” said Bell.
“The plan is for them to be able to take the younger players through their own journeys, successes and failures and talk about how they got here," he continued. "They’re at an age where it’ll largely benefit them hearing this kind of stuff of hopefully being able to relate to the many diverse levels present on the call.”
“It’s so important for quarterbacks to listen to other people besides just their coaches and trainers. It’s really big for them to learn from outside sources, who have similar playing experiences,” said Bell.
In 2019, Clark appeared in two-blowouts in his first year at Notre Dame going 1-for-2 with 22 yards and a touchdown while running for 33 yards on the ground.
While time will tell whether Clark will be the next great Notre Dame quarterback, he is showing maturity and initiative given the extra work he’s been putting in with Bell. These lessons he is learning from his peers will hopefully pay dividends in the development of his career.
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