Clausen set for spring
Helmet off, smirk on, Notre Dame quarterback Jimmy Clausen unveiled a new longer 'do that looked like he could now fit right in with the pop music group Hanson.
MMMBop.
"I'm growing it out a little bit," the sophomore-to-be said, confirming the obvious.
He then proceeded to mostly not let his hair down in his first meeting with the media since just before game 9 of last season.
Good strategy. Brilliant strategy, actually. Not that it makes for scintillating sound bites, but measured fits Clausen at this stage of his career -- at least where it concerns his off-the-field life.
"We're just going to take one day at a time," he professed. "Each and every day get better and never take a step back."
You almost half-expected him to utter, "There's no 'I' in team" at some point.
Every question that focused on Clausen himself, he fanned out his answer to include his teammates or some concept of blending in or that last year's 3-9 nightmare was just the tonic to fuel an Irish football renaissance.
Whether you believe it comes from the heart or from a script, Jimmy Clausen is living it and ND fourth-year head coach Charlie Weis is eating it up.
The one truth Weis himself became involuntarily immersed in last year is that perception -- whether it's accurate or not, flattering or not -- can't be uncoupled from good intentions and a dazzling résumé. In fact, if you let it, perception can bleed into and overpower reality at a place like Notre Dame.
"The two positions at Notre Dame, in football, that are under the most scrutiny are the head coach and the quarterback," said Weis, his Irish now through three spring practice sessions of 15 total. "That's just the way it is."
There's no way Weis wants to let a loose compound modifier here or a careless adjective there poison the progress he is seeing with Clausen on the field these days.
And the progress is stunning -- but expected, through Weis' lens anyway. It starts with the physical -- Clausen jumping from 194 pounds to 212 since Thanksgiving. This is not fast-food weight, Hostess-Cupcakes weight, either.
"His body is going to help him in a lot of facets," Weis said. "It isn't just arm strength and being able to deliver the ball. It's also being able to shrug off guys when you've got bodies around you and a hand on you. There's way too many times last year he'd go down too easy."
Mentally, the playbook hasn't expanded, but Clausen can now handle the more-advanced sections, and that makes Weis' offensive concepts pop. Weis explains it this way -- unpredictability is the beauty in the offense. Weis achieves this by running the same plays out of different looks and formations, thus making it difficult for an opposing defensive coordinator to make much sense out of studying game films.
This is what drove the prolific offenses in 2005 and 2006, with veteran Brady Quinn running the show.
"But if the quarterback can't handle multiple looks, then you really have gained no advantage of doing it," Weis said, "because then all you're doing is confusing your own guy. You never got a repetition of plays over and over and over again, because you didn't have a form of disguise."
What made it worse was that former Georgia Tech defensive coordinator Jon Tenuta -- now ironically on Weis' coaching staff -- painfully exposed the flaws further in the 2007 season opener with relentless pressure, a template opposing teams copied for the rest of the season. The harder lesson was that Weis deepened the chasm between reality and even his own expectations with coaching missteps of his own, missteps he has pledged to address by sort of a partial reinvention of himself this spring.
And the most visible step in that process meant taking a step away from being the de facto offensive coordinator and truly giving equal time to the defense and special teams.
"When you don't have to zone in on just one aspect," Weis said, "you can see a bigger picture."
Yet Clausen is right in the middle of it, still.
Never mind that the formula for every national champion in the BCS Era has been a Top 25 defense. Weis feels he has addressed that with the hiring of coordinator Corwin Brown last year and Tenuta this winter.
But his street cred, if you will, is still as a developer of quarterbacks. And even with the revamping and restructuring, this is the aspect of Weis' job that gives him the adrenaline fix.
Clausen represents the most difficult and inviting challenge all rolled into one for Weis. The Californian with the ideal gene pool and perfectly cultivated learning curve wasn't inherited from a previous coaching staff. He wasn't a rough-around-the-edges guy that had to be fixed and rescued. This was the prospect in the recruiting class of 2007, and hand-picked by Weis, no less. Anything less than Brady Quinn-type numbers and success four years later would change the way Weis is looked upon from the outside.
In fact, Clausen arrived facing a steeper climb from his own reputation than the one left from Quinn's sparkling legacy.
Weis salivated how well the 20-year-old freshman could read defenses last fall and marveled at his toughness. The football progression was relatively easy, even with a less-than-healthy throwing elbow. It's the everything-else phase that was and still is filled with land mines.
The Clausen family, including brother Casey and Rick -- both former college quarterbacks, has been muted. Jimmy himself met with the media just three times last season, as did the rest of the Irish freshmen, so silence more often than not was his calling card by controlled design.
Harder to control was team chemistry. Weis knows you can foster respect and funnel it, but you can't legislate it.
"I don't think you can force leadership on anyone," Weis said. "but the kid has it in him. It's just that a lot of times when you're a younger guy, you're afraid to let it out, because you haven't earned your stripes yet.
"I think at the quarterback position, if you don't show some leadership, you really have a problem on offense. I talked to (Clausen) the other day about the big difference between players looking at you and players looking to you. When players are looking at you, they're not looking at you as a leader. They're just looking at a guy who's running the plays.
"When they're looking to you, how they're counting on you to be the guy. And if we could get the offensive players to look to him instead of at him, then we've really turned the corner."
And then it might be safe enough for Clausen to reveal whether he has a psychedelic personality -- or not.
In the meantime, Clausen continues to be -- behinds the scenes -- a dynamic recruiter, prodding the nation's top prospects -- even elite quarterbacks such as Dayne Crist -- to come join him. So far, so impressive.
Yet in wider view, it's not clear whether the rest of the college football world has bought into Clausen's promise as much as Weis has. To Clausen's credit, he spit out the image of gagging on a silver spoon last season, but there are just as imposing challenges that are still ahead.
Tough questions. Tough answers. Growing pains. Scrutiny beyond what is reasonable or sane at times. It helps to have two brothers who have walked in similar paths. But looking at the deep end of the pool for a long time doesn't mean you can swim in it.
Clausen, though, is ready to dive in. All in.
"One thing (my brothers) told me ever since they went into college, there's going to be people who love you and people who hate you," Clausen said. "You've just got to take it how it is and go on."
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