If you are lucky enough to find a young, supremely talented quarterback who is able to flat-out win his job, you count your blessings daily. But if you happen to lose that young gun to injury, it might be considered catastrophic.
But not if you’re Notre Dame football coach Charles Fant. When sophomore Alex Darras went down with a knee sprain in the Irish season opener, Fant had a man and a plan in hand. Both man and plan were on display Friday night as Notre Dame won its District 7-AA opener over Chattanooga Christian, 50-13.
The man was senior Clay Heltzel, who a year ago was a basketball player giving football one last try. Based on his performance Friday — 8-of-18 passing for 150 yards and a touchdown, plus a 71-yard scoring run — he made the right move.
“He was unbelievable,” Fant said amid a postgame swarm of fans. “What’s even more amazing is that he hadn’t played quarterback since seventh grade and only came back out for football last year.
“We really try to prepare ourselves for any possibility, and we worked extensively with Clay to have him ready in just this situation,” the coach explained. “But what I also did was look up my old head coach [Ringgold’s] Robert Akins and sat down to learn their offense. What I was impressed with was how they got so many different people involved in the offense. That’s what we needed.”