Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/514677
"With many younger players in the wings, [the coaching staff] wanted to develop them more heavily in the rota- tion — a need that I understand and appreciate," Hegarty said in a prepared statement to ESPN about his transfer. The "younger players" Hegarty refer- enced are the 6-4½, 325-pound Nelson and 6-6, 316-pound Bars. Both arrived as tackles and both redshirted as fresh- men last season. By October, Nelson was working at guard, and in December a more fully healthy Bars was described by Kelly as potentially the finest offen- sive line prospect he's seen in his 25 sea- sons as a head coach. Whereas Nelson is consistently de- scribed as a mauler, Bars is lauded as an advanced technician with exceptional football IQ and footwork. "Quenton's kind of a bigger, thicker, more kind of a brawler type," Notre Dame offensive line coach Harry Hies- tand said. "Alex is more technique con- scious, but they both have a tremendous will to be good and a tremendous work ethic to get these fundamentals down. They just have different body types, but they are very similar." The Red Bank, N.J., native Nelson was the highest-rated Notre Dame recruit in 2014 (No. 29 nationally) and the only one to be awarded the full five stars by Rivals.com. A popular contention is it probably wasn't worthwhile to redshirt him last season because similar to cur- rent senior tackle Ronnie Stanley, he is expected to be good enough to not have to return for a fifth year (although 2014 NFL All-Pro Zack Martin did in 2013). "It wasn't tough for me," said Nel- son, whose persona is much more shy around the media, about not playing. "I'm pretty humble and I understood that there were guys ahead of me who were better than me and I had a lot of room to grow. I did — and I still have a lot of improvement to make." He's cut down his body fat, has taken tae kwon do to improve his hands, and slightly acknowledges that guard might be the best fit for his on-field tempera- ment. "I felt good at tackle, but at guard I have someone right in front of me," Nel- son said. "… It's more of a battle." Better technique — "playing lower, hands inside, elbows in, just starting to fight with your hands in pass pro," Nel- son lists — is on his "to do" list prior to August camp. Although Bars is maybe the lone Irish offensive tackle recruit the past two sea- sons, he received the audition at guard this spring to see if he might be one of the team's five best offensive linemen. At worst, he could be the "sixth man" either at guard or tackle. "We think later, if we have to do some cross-training [at tackle] with Bars, we could do that, but we want to give him a chance to start [at guard]," Kelly said at the start of spring. "We do not want to shortchange Bars' reps at the left guard position. He's going to have a chance to start, then we'll figure it out from there." For Bars, there is no preference. "I'm just playing the position that they tell me to do," he said. "I'll adjust to how I need to move and my technique ac- cording to that position." His progress was impeded last Au- gust because of a cast on his left wrist from surgery in the spring on a fractured scaphoid bone that went unnoticed since his sophomore year in high school.