Ohio State QB Kyle McCord put in 10,000 hours for those 85 seconds at Notre Dame

Matt Simms watched on television Saturday night, Ohio State inside Notre Dame Stadium, Simms having more than casual interest.

“What a moment for that young man,” Simms said in a text the next morning.

The man of that moment, St. Joseph’s Prep graduate Kyle McCord, is Ohio State’s starting quarterback. An achievement to hang his hat on comes after not being named Ohio State’s 2023 starter until basically the last possible moment. Was McCord ready for … this?

With 85 seconds to go at Notre Dame, the Buckeyes suddenly were behind by four points, so it was end zone or bust, everything on the line, even national playoff implications. Could there be a bigger early-season stage?

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Simms works with young quarterbacks. He played the position. You could call it the family business, for the son of Phil and brother of Chris.

“We got connected in the summer going into his junior [high school] season,” Simms said of McCord.

First meeting, first impression?

“His frame, his presence,” Simms said back in August. “The way he’s able to communicate with his coaches. There’s a certain feeling you get as a coach or a player when you’re talking football. ‘Yes, this person knows exactly what I’m talking about when I make this point.’ "

Call it a bonus right off the bat.

“Sometimes, it’s, ‘OK, this kid doesn’t quite get it yet, keep saying it until he absorbs it.’ ”

No big surprise McCord was at that higher end of the scale. He is himself the son of a former Rutgers quarterback. The Prep is known for being advanced in its own coaching ways.

It was easy to wonder how much McCord would lean on his favorite Prep target, Marvin Harrison Jr., but the Irish were doing everything they could to take the nation’s foremost receiving threat out of this equation.

Still, imagine the temptation. More than anybody, McCord knows all the wonder plays Harrison has made in his life, whether against Georgia or Pittsburgh Central Catholic.

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Nope, didn’t faze the QB. If Notre Dame wanted to surround Harrison with three people, that presented opportunities. Not easy ones. A couple of the windows McCord threw into on that last drive, the winning touchdown scoring with one second left, were barely bigger than the ball.

“I’ve seen him make those big-time throws during his workouts many, many times,” Simms texted Sunday morning. “We saw the 10,000-hour [rule] displayed on national television.”

Whether 10,000 hours really is required to master a skill, up for debate. His point: McCord had put in all the hours to prepare for 85 seconds. (Notre Dame, meanwhile, prepared for hours and hours only to have 10 players on the field for the last couple of defensive plays.)

Let’s go back to some teenage hours for McCord, when creativity was on the agenda.

“Quarterbacks — you’re going to be a great imitator,” Simms said.

They’d work on that: Give me your impression of Mahomes, drop sidearm … Give me Peyton.

“They can imitate the great ones, but when they do it themselves, they have that little flair,” Simms said. “You can’t just copy and paste.”

Imitating Patrick Mahomes wasn’t just done for kicks.

“I don’t want you to even care what happens with the football,” Simms would tell McCord. “I just want you to let it go.”

How did it feel? Awkward? Natural?

“When you really strike gold,” Simms said, “the quarterback looks like he already knows. ‘Felt awesome, easy.’ "

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To Simms, McCord already had both a physical and mental awareness. The commitment was obvious.

“He was that four-star working to get that fifth star,” Simms said of McCord’s recruiting status at the time.

A typical session was extended for them because McCord was traveling up from South Jersey to Bergen County.

“He’s one of those — he can work,” Simms said. “He can work, and keep work fun.”

A scouting assessment?

“Super-talented,” Simms said. “He’s got an NFL-caliber arm. He’s getting more athletic, flexible, more multiple. I thought at first he was too stiff, too cookie-cutter-ish. Sort of like, this is how a quarterback should look. I saw more and more of that athleticism pour out of him. Making throws on the run look so much more easy and graceful.”

They haven’t worked together since McCord went off to Ohio State, but they stay in touch.

“He’s a football player,” Simms said. “I told him last week after the Western Kentucky game, I saw him evolve on the field during the game.”

Saturday night, 85 seconds to show something, “we all saw another evolution,” Simms said.

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