Jack Coan's Irish Future Written Long Ago
The letter is a dozen years old.
It might as well be a crystal ball masquerading as faded notebook paper; Nostradamus would appreciate such a glimpse into the future.
In painstaking, between-the-lines cursive writing – a precursor of his unflinching commitment to details – Jack Coan, days before his 11th birthday, details his top Christmas wish in a letter to his parents, Donna and Mike, circa December 2009.
“If I had to pick one Christmas gift in the world,” Coan writes in charcoal pencil, a Notre Dame logo and former Irish standouts' names dotting the page, “it would probably be going to a Notre Dame football game.”
This weekend, kickoff a little more than 72 hours away, Coan finally is going to that Notre Dame football game.
He's the starting quarterback for the consensus top-10 Fighting Irish. They visit Florida State Sunday in a primetime affair set for national broadcast (7:30 p.m., ABC).
“All things happen for a reason,” says Mike Coan, a business owner and as gregarious as his son is measured. “It's like it was meant to be. When he committed to Notre Dame a few months ago, Donna looked up in the attic and got all Jack's things down. She found the letter where Jack said his dream was for his dad to take him to a Notre Dame game.
“Notre Dame is Notre Dame, you know? That was Jack's dream. But Jack told me the other day, it's still never happened. I've still never taken him to a game. He's taking me.”
Jack Coan takes 26 games' experience, 18 of them starts, as Wisconsin's quarterback with him Sunday night into the Seminoles' Doak Campbell Stadium.
Though he brings only eight months as Notre Dame student and football player into his Irish debut, the 6-foot-3-.25-inch, 223-pound former Notre Dame lacrosse commitment carries with him an everyman, steely resolve honed from years of observing his father.
He's still the guy with a 2,700-yard, 18-touchdown and 70% completion rate season under his belt, despite injuries, from Wisconsin's 2019 campaign.
“I'd say that hard-working mindset probably came from dad,” recalls Coan, choosing his childhood dream school for a final season of college football when Texas, Tennessee and myriad other programs also sought his services last December. “My dad's a blue-collar guy. He's the hardest worker I've ever seen in my life.
“So from a young age, I always wanted to be like him in terms of his work-ethic, and to be honest with you, I love football and everything that comes with it. So as much as I can do with football, I'm going to do it.”
Perhaps the biggest thing Coan continues to do with football is earn the respect and trust of his Notre Dame teammates through his consistent, steady-as-cruise-control approach to the game.
“I think Jack, he reminds me – I'm not trying to compare him to somebody – but this guy is really good; he reminds me a lot of playing (former Alabama quarterback) Mac Jones last year in the semifinal,” Irish All-American safety Kyle Hamilton says. “He's just really good at doing his job, and he never really makes mistakes. He's just always putting the ball in the right spot, making the right checks. He's like the oil to the machine of the offense. And he's done a great job adjusting and becoming a leader for our offense and whole team, really. I really applaud him for that. He's a great guy, and he's been a great leader for us.
“Him and Mac Jones, in a sense, why I say that, is they because they both, you don't really realize they're there until they make a big play. That's what quarterbacks are supposed to do, and they don't really make too many mistakes. That's what quarterbacks are supposed to do, and I think he's going to be a really big pick-up for us.”
Mike Coan remembers Jack easily picking up … well most anything as a toddler. Like learning to ride a bicycle.
“Jack is different; he was different when he was 2 years old, riding a two-wheeler around this lake, he just gets on it and starts riding,” says Mike, owner of Coan's Landscaping in Sayville, N.Y. “Jack just gets on it and goes. It was crazy. My wife called me and said, 'Mike, you gotta see this. He's just riding around (Byron Lake). So I left work and came down.
“When he was committed for lacrosse, it would snow here and I'd be in bed at midnight, hear something in backyard, hear this scraping. He's shoveling 8 inches' snow off the backyard. I said, 'Son, what the hell are you doing?' He said, 'Dad, I don't want this stuff to freeze. I gotta shoot.' He would be out there shooting every single day when he was going for lacrosse.”
Former University of Tennessee and NFL quarterback Matt Simms, his family name fairly synonymous with the quarterback position in football for decades, continues to see in Jack Coan the work ethic present from their earliest training sessions some three years ago.
“Jack is the son of Marcus Aurelius, he invented stoicism and shows no emotion,” Simms, now an assistant coach at powerhouse Don Bosco Prep and also operating his Simms Complete QB training school, says. “He's very to the point, works his tail off, is all about business and loves the game.
“He's one of those guys in today's day and age that is an anomaly. You're used to everyone telling everyone how they feel to the utmost detail, but Jack is the utmost soldier just ready to work and get after it every time.”
Those are traits both Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly and offensive coordinator Tommy Rees, himself a former highly scrutinized Irish signal-caller, enumerate as critical to Coan's ownership of the offense.
“It's huge. Look, we know the expectations and pressures that get put on a quarterback at Notre Dame,” Rees says. “I think his ability to stay even-keeled, to stay level-headed, to not let moments become too large is going to pay dividends as the season goes on.”
Adds Kelly, “I mean he's been really good. He's been what he has been. That's the nice part about it, right?
“He's the same guy every day. You don't go to practice and say, 'Who's that guy?' He is so consistent in terms of who he is and his makeup, his preparation. I think he's even improved since the spring in a number of the more detailed areas that we've asked him to. I think that's the mark of a very good quarterback.”
Coan's on-field calm is testament to his all-hours-of-the-day preparations. He's fastidious in his dietary regimen – even as Mike Coan tries to occasionally ply his son with a cheeseburger.
“Oh my God, my wife, when Jack's home it's like every 45 minutes it's a Thanksgiving dinner,” Coan says of his son's salmon-sweet-potatoes-eggs-avocado-laden diet. “But at 10:30, he goes to bed. And then he'll be like, 'Gotta watch film.' I was looking at him going up to bed and was like, 'What are you doing now?' He says, 'I'm bringing up some protein shakes, because I'm gonna wake up in the middle of the night and drink one of those. He won't eat anything bad. Nothing. I'm eating cheeseburgers, M&M's, ice cream. He says, 'Dad, you eat like a toddler.'”
Coan's oftentimes among the very first people into Notre Dame's Guglielmino Athletics Complex, coach or player.
Last out, too, which is why a warning months ago from Mike Coan to Tommy Rees resonates yet.
“I told Coach Rees, this kid's different,” Coan recalls. “I said, 'Rees, you have a girlfriend?' He said, 'Yes.' I said, 'Tell her you won't see her for a few months. This guy is gonna be so far up their butts, man.'
“Rees calls me up like three weeks into it and he says, 'Mike, oh my God. You were right.'”
None of Coan's commitment surprises Simms, son of NFL legend Phil Simms and brother of former Texas and Tampa Bay quarterback Chris Simms. He knows first-hand, through his own and his family's experiences, what is required to lead from the quarterback position.
“I think his biggest strength, and the thing I noticed about Jack right away,” Simms says, “anytime you coach him, say 'Hey, Jack, on this play, this type throw, try to do this. Experiment with this type technique.' He's able to apply it extremely quickly; one, two reps max, he's already grasping what you're instilling in him. I think the most impressive thing, really, for any quarterback is how quickly he can apply knowledge from film to field, being told on the sideline to make adjustment. Jack makes that adjustment and can understand it extremely quick.”
For his part, Simms expects a rather quick understanding to overtake Wisconsin about how much the Badgers are likely to miss Coan, even as they fully turn over their offense to sophomore signal-caller Graham Mertz.
“One thing we're excited about, just with a coach like Brian Kelly, to be in that scheme and be working with an aggressive young offensive coordinator like Tommy Rees calling plays, I think we'll get to see the full onslaught of what Jack gets to offer,” Simms says. “At times it felt like Wisconsin kind of constricted him with their style of play. Wisconsin will see. They'll miss Jack probably more than Jack will miss Wisconsin. Jack took them to the (Big Ten) championship game and was playing with a broken foot.
“He's a baller, he really is.”
Coan also, finally, is recognizing a childhood dream.
“Obviously Notre Dame is a place I kind of always wanted to come,” Coan says. “If they had offered me in high school, I probably would have come here, to be honest with you.
“This is a program that always has championship expectations, which is sort of what drew me to here. I just wanted to be a part of this culture and become a great Notre Dame Man. That drew me here.”
Christmas miracle? Luck of the Irish? Nah. Merely the vision of Jack Coan.