Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly asks you to ignore the 4.42-second 40-yard dash Chase Claypool blazed at the 2020 NFL Combine. And definitely try not to dwell on the fact Claypool, whom the Steelers selected with the No. 49 overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft, ran that at 6-foot-4, 238 pounds. Sure, it marked the fastest 40 by any 230-pound-plus receiver since Calvin Johnson in 2006, but just push it aside for now.
After recruiting Claypool and watching him day after day for four years at Notre Dame, Kelly can't shake a different trait of Claypool's from the front of his mind.
"I think when the change really occurred for Chase, in terms of his play, is that he became a great practice player," Kelly was saying of Claypool during a Zoom video conference with media Tuesday afternoon. "I think all the really, really good players show themself in practice. I think it's when he came to practice every day and started to practice in a manner that would prepare him to be a great player is when we really saw a difference in him. That then carried over to the classroom. And it carried on in the community and how he handled himself, so maturity and all those things started to kick in as well. And that's just the maturation process that you see in every program."
While Kelly believes that specific evolution took Claypool to the next level during his four-year stint at Notre Dame, the traits were apparent from the jump. When Kelly and his staff first recruited Claypool out of Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada, they were stricken by all those physical traits, of course, but the main takeaway was something else. Something you can't attach a number to or flip into a statistic.
"We got some film and we were pleasantly surprised that he was a young man that, when we did some research on him, was a really good student," Kelly said. "We were up on the West Coast, we were up in Washington / Oregon recruiting, and it was a very short flight, so we took it. [We] loved what we saw in a competitive situation, in basketball, and began to dig a little bit more on who he was as a person."
Wanna narrow all that down to one key element, coach?
"The way he really impressed us was his competitiveness," Kelly added. "Certainly, there's a lot of guys that can run and catch, but we loved the way he competed. We felt, for us, it was a wide receiver with great size and great potential, and hats off to him. He realized that potential. He bought into our strength-and-conditioning program and matured and he's a great success story because he put in the time and effort in a program that ... you will develop here at Notre Dame if you come in with the right mindset. And he certainly did."
In fact, throughout Kelly's 40-minute conference, about 10 minutes of which was devoted to Claypool, neither Claypool's 40-yard dash nor his 19 bench-press reps — fifth-best among all receivers — came to the forefront. With Claypool, focusing on the numbers misses the bigger point: He's a high-character human being who's channeling his passion into the game of football.
Not a bad place to start.
"He's extremely competitive and he wants to win at everything he does," Kelly said. "Secondly, he takes care of himself. Physically fit. Answers the bell every week. Very durable. Play after play, snap after snap, he's not a guy that is prone to injury."
All that said, on game day, it's impossible to ignore a player of that size at wide receiver, 4.42-second 40 or not. Claypool is gifted physically, and Kelly won't downplay the benefit that creates for him on the football field.
"Everybody's looking for traits, and the physical traits for him are his size and length and [catching] radius, that he can go up and catch the football and create mismatches," Kelly said.
But ...
"So elite traits, physically, and then from certainly an excellence standpoint, he's got an incredible drive and a competitiveness in him that separates him amongst many."
Right back to the "drive" and "competitiveness."
Where, oh where, did we hear that before?
“Sharp young man. Great size. Great speed,” Steelers GM Kevin Colbert said of Claypool on a conference call after Day 2 of the 2020 NFL Draft. “He’s got great competitiveness. We really got close to him down at the Senior Bowl, and the work he did on the special teams really stood out in practices. Of course, we knew about his receiving abilities, but when you saw him up close working the way he did in the special teams parts of practices, it really showed the competitiveness this young man has, to go along with his size and his speed and his receiving abilities.”
It all adds up, especially when you consider Claypool's playing style: He's tough and physical, and isolated one-on-one, he'll simply beat you by being taller and stronger, plucking the ball out from an area you literally can't reach. That makes him an ideal outside receiver at the NFL level, but once again, Kelly says you'll miss the larger point at play if you narrow your focus there and there alone.
"His size, obviously, stands out," Kelly began. "So you like to match him out on the perimeter because of his size, his ability to run the line on the outside where you can put the ball up one-on-one and let him use his size to an advantage. But we've had him inside. We played him in the slot a little bit as well. He's extremely versatile."
Then there's the blocking. I mean, just watch the top of the screen here. You'll find him:
Poor soul never had a chance.
"He can come down and block anybody," Kelly said. "Safeties, rovers, corners, obviously, he can mismatch on them."
Competitive. High character. Intense drive. Prioritizes winning. Willing (and punishing) blocker.
It's almost like Claypool was meant to play for the Steelers or something, eh?
