Where Notre Dame QB commit CJ Carr has grown the most, per his private trainer

Will Hewlett is a private quarterbacks coach who is plenty familiar with Notre Dame signal-callers. He has previously worked out with the Fighting Irish quarterbacks who have started in 38 of the Irish’s last 51 games.

He spent a lot of time with Ian Book as early as Book’s middle school days. He’s worked some with Drew Pyne and Tyler Buchner at various camp settings. And currently, Hewlett is the private trainer for Saline (Mich.) High’s CJ Carr, a Notre Dame commit who ranks as the nation’s No. 37 overall player and No. 5 gunslinger per the 2024 On3 Consensus.

Most college quarterbacks these days are set apart in the way they carry themselves because of the importance of the position. You must be a leader. You’re the face of the program and others naturally follow you. But being the quarterback at Notre Dame takes that to a different level.

“You’re being thrusted into that world,” Hewlett told Blue & Gold. “You have to handle the good and the bad. You have to be ready to fail on a public stage, but the flip side is that it can be a highly beneficial stage to be on as well, because if you have success, everyone knows who you are, and it’s a game-changer with NIL.”

Take Book for example. He had big wins in his Notre Dame career and some devastating losses as well. But at all times, he had to carry himself at the highest level.

“I’ve never had a player get a player pulled so much out of a crowd, whether it’s at a rental car facility or a random soccer field in Texas,” said Hewlett. “People would always come up to him and say, ‘Wait, are you Ian Book?’ They’re essentially a professional quarterback with the pressure, media coverage and attention.”

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Notre Dame’s next quarterback: CJ Carr

Hewlett and Carr met a QB Collective camp a couple years back and have trained together on a few occasions. In December, Carr was in the Jacksonville, Fla. area to work with Hewlett for three days.

Carr has a tremendous football background, as his grandfather, Lloyd, was a legendary coach at Michigan, and his father, Jason, played quarterback for the Wolverines in the 90s. His maternal grandfather, Tom Curtis, was an All-American safety at Michigan as well.

The raw talent for Carr as a football player has always been there, but he’s needed to work on refining his game.

“In terms of being coached up by a lot of private coaches, he was raw on that side of things,” Hewlett said, “We’re in the world of how many trainers a quarterback has, but CJ hadn’t gotten into that yet.” 

When they first started working together, it was all about the basics and introducing Carr to a “higher level of mechanics” per Hewlett. Another part of the training is off the field, as Hewlett got Carr in contact with Tom Gormely, who works with Carr on his arm care and arm strength.

“For the last two offseasons we’ve been working on hip placement and really syncing up my throwing motion as a whole,” Carr told Blue & Gold. “We’ve really synced it all together and it’s creating new habits and making it a part of my normal throw. Arm care and getting more strength in my arm are a couple things we work on.”

For their most recent session, Hewlett worked on advanced techniques with Carr.

“We moved into more of explosive movements inside and outside the pocket,” said Hewlett regarding their work in December. “We’re always looking to refine his on-field throwing mechanics, but we were more aggressive in our training style this time. We focused on outside the pocket stuff and movement-based throws.

“He has an elite first step. When he decides to go a direction, he moves very quickly. CJ has an explosive burst, which is uncommon. You don’t realize how quick and agile he is until you see it.”

The phrase “explosive movements” isn’t often used when talked about a primarily pocket quarterback such as Carr, but Hewlett explained that it is an area that Carr has impressed in — working on his ability outside the pocket.

“The training we’ve done previously has been very controlled,” Hewlett said. “We established a baseline. We worked on drops without simulated pressure. We’ve eased that into the training. In this go-around, we did more improvisational drills. That’s what a lot of trainers just do all the time. You see all the fancy Instagram videos of guys running around. It’s an important part of training but it’s not the only part of it.

“We established a really good baseline that we’ll continue to work on, but the next step up was getting more game-like movements.”

In other words, Hewlett has his quarterbacks perfect crawling before they start walking.

“He does a lot things really well naturally,” continued Hewlett. “We want to expose the inefficiencies and helped our quarterbacks work through them and find solutions.”

Where has Carr grown?

The solutions seem to have been found with Carr. His improvements have been clear to Hewlett.

“He’s a lot more of an efficient thrower,” noted Hewlett. “Again, he has a ton of natural talent. His release is elite. When CJ does everything right, he’s one of the best throwers in the country. So the next step is how do we create that every single time? This past time around, he looked stronger and is more consistent. He has a really high ceiling, and he’s raised the floor. He’s more consistent with his mechanics.

“One thing that’s improved is his lower body. His front shoulder, front hip separation is much improved, which essentially equals a more efficient thrower. He utilizes his hips to generate power more than he was before; that was the most noticeable thing. He sustained that and kept it through his junior season, and we’re continuing to build on that. His overall timing and sequence on his throw is better.

“CJ is elite on the board. He loves football. He has the complete package. He has the athleticism and the arm, and he has the mind. I’ve heard more compliments on that kid than just about any quarterback I’ve worked with. People are so impressed by his ability to execute on the board, in the classroom and on the field. He has the complete QB package.”

There are horror stories of quarterback “gurus” training young passers and instilling bad habits in them. For Hewlett, his training is more of an original concept compared to a cookie cutter approach that private coaches who work with the masses might use.

“We are 100 percent personalized to the quarterback,” he explained. “We use a system, but we cater it specifically so that it fits what they need — their weak points and strengths. That means we can’t work with the volume of clients that others do, but the ones we do work with, we can accomplish a whole lot more.”