On summer mornings that many of his peers spent wrapped in cocoons of lethargy, John Carlson awoke at 6 a.m. Looming was a 40-mile trip to St. Cloud, Minn. But that was the most direct route to success. Sleep and comfort weren’t detours worth heeding.
Only a St. Cloud orthopedic center offered a program called HEAT, an acronym for High Energy Advanced Training, composed of weight and cardiovascular regimens geared to a given sport. Carlson wanted to be an elite football player, so he surrendered summer to that end. Eventually, a scholarship to Notre Dame was the payoff.
Speaking of heat: The windowless interview room at Penn State felt like a convection oven Saturday, and Carlson was simmering. Years after Carlson’s dawn patrols to St. Cloud, Notre Dame had dropped to 0-2 by losing to the Nittany Lions. It is not what Carlson envisioned when he elected to return for a fifth season. The tight end’s stony mien stifled an unfamiliar frustration: plenty of sacrifice, no payoff.
“I do know we’re disappointed to be 0-2 right now,” Carlson said. “We’re going to do everything in our power to correct the mistakes.”
The corrections could start with Carlson on Saturday at Michigan. The preseason All-American’s highest value is as a receiver, not an extra body to fortify a flimsy offensive line. Yet through two weeks, that is precisely what Carlson has been — an extra blocker with just four receptions, a 6-foot-6-inch, 255-pound weapon hidden in plain sight.
So for their next trick, the Irish seem intent on making Carlson reappear.
“We’ll see if we can’t fix that problem this week,” coach Charlie Weis said. “When you don’t get any offensive production for two weeks in a row, there comes a time when you have to take off the gloves. We’re getting close to that.”
Carlson’s reaction Tuesday to Weis’ plans was typically muted.
“They’re going to have some plays in mind where they’ll put me in position to make plays and [some] asking me to pass-block and run-block,” Carlson said. “Whatever they ask me to do is what I’m going to do.”
Carlson keeps himself under strict control, seemingly measuring each word down to the inflection. At breakfast with family on the morning after the season-opening Georgia Tech debacle, he had justification to vent and a receptive audience for it. Carlson took advantage of neither and said little.
His fifth season, though, demands vocal leadership. So he has become a de facto coach, offering pointers on footwork and head placement and leverage. He is an archetype too. Backup Konrad Reuland notes how precise Carlson runs his pass routes.
“In years past, I haven’t been in a position to be overly vocal,” Carlson said. “That wasn’t my role, and I really wasn’t comfortable with that. But I see a lot of young faces. … That’s my job now. I need to help the young guys along.”
At 0-2, the context for leadership may be dramatically different. The basic calling, though, is unchanged.
“Considering [our] youth, it’s our job to make sure the young guys know we’ve played [only] two games,” Carlson said. “We can’t change the outcomes, but there is a long season ahead.”
Said Carlson’s father, John, Sr.: “Everybody thinks John is this quiet kid from central Minnesota. But he’s a fiery competitor. He’s not going to yell and scream, but he’s sure as heck going to educate them and help them out. If it’s not the main reason, it’s in the top two or three of why he came back.”
He also returned undoubtedly certain he would continue his indelible personal pattern: diligent application of talent followed unfailingly by reward.
Carlson joined the Litchfield (Minn.) High varsity basketball team as a freshman, and that squad is considered among the greatest in Minnesota history, winning a state title with a 30-0 record. In his first game, Carlson trailed on a Litchfield fast break, caught a pass off the backboard from his point guard and dunked it with two hands.
“It’s not a play that high school kids make,” said his brother Alex, a senior on that team who watched the play unfold from half-court, “and he made it as a 9th grader.”
Rarely has there been a diversion in the direct line between Carlson’s means and ends. He undertook a “thickness program” during the spring of his junior year of high school. For eight weeks he would lift at 4 a.m., aiming strictly for additional bulk. By the end of the stretch, Carlson had gained 15 pounds.
At Notre Dame, development was more methodical but nonetheless measurable, from a redshirt year as a freshman to 13 combined catches as a sophomore and junior to 47 catches for 634 yards in 2006.
Only this year has the connection between investment and dividends been severed. That raises the issue of investments of a financial nature down the line — when the NFL assesses Carlson’s worth.
“My focus and concentration is on the season,” Carlson said. “We do all of our work … to win games. This is what we prepared for. I’m not looking ahead to anything past Michigan right now.”
On those early-morning trips to St. Cloud years ago, John Carlson typically did the driving. Sometimes Alex took the wheel, but John functioned much more adequately on limited sleep. So more than once a bleary Alex Carlson pulled over, ceding the wheel before he directed the car into an embankment, and John finished off the trek.
Somewhere along the road, the Irish offense sits sputtering, last in the country in yards per game, lacking an offensive touchdown. It’s about to see if John Carlson can steer it back on course.
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bchamilton@tribune.com
