On Saturdays, you’ll typically find Notre Dame graduate safety Jordan Clark roaming the Irish defense. As the football team’s starting nickelback, Clark does a little bit of everything, handling run support responsibilities and coverage of interior receivers.
Off the field, he's even more than that. Occasionally, he stops by Murphy’s Ice Cream Shoppe on Angela Boulevard and takes on another role: podcast host. Since finalizing his move from Arizona State, where he played for the past five years, to Notre Dame in December, Clark has combined a career after football with the game he loves now.
It all started in the spring when Clark sat down with Shaun Crawford, a safety at Notre Dame from 2015 to 2020. Crawford hosts Varsity House Podcast, which provides “exclusive access and authentic conversations with some of the most notable figures in sports” according to the show’s website. Recently, stars like Kyle Hamilton, Julian Love and Arike Ogunbowale have joined Crawford. In March, it was Clark who spoke with Crawford for nearly an hour on Notre Dame football, philosophy and favorite spots around campus.
“We just had a great conversation, and he felt like [podcasting] was something that I could possibly be good at,” Clark recalled. “He’s looking to give guys a platform [and] looking to give guys an opportunity to maximize their time in college — and obviously me being here [to] maximize my Notre Dame experience. And we felt that a podcast would be a great way for me to meet people and to put something in the media portfolio … Ultimately, it’s been really cool.”
Clark is now three episodes deep in his own show, The Irish Scoop, which runs under the Varsity House umbrella. He’s already featured junior cornerback Benjamin Morrison, sophomore running back Jeremiyah Love and graduate safety Xavier Watts as guests, bringing Notre Dame football fans closer to the names they know and love. The show has also helped Clark build connections at Notre Dame and pursue a post-football career in the media, much like his father Ryan has since retiring from a 13-year NFL tenure in 2014.
For as amiable as Jordan Clark may appear behind the microphone, he means business on the gridiron. One of the most experienced players on Notre Dame’s team, Clark flies around the field, laying hard hits and making key pass breakups. Sometimes, Clark gets into the Irish defense, a “physical and violent” one as he described it too much for his own good. Two weeks ago, he got mixed up with Louisville wide receiver Chris Bell and offered a headbutt that earned the Irish a 15-yard penalty.
Some players wouldn’t buy into the teaching moment that followed during the week, but Clark gets it. He came to Notre Dame to learn and develop as much as he could in one year’s time.
“If you feel like you need to handle something, there’s ample opportunity to do it in between whistles,” Clark said. “That’s what I talked to Coach [Freeman] about — just being a little bit more composed in that situation. Obviously, you never want to let anyone disrespect you, but ultimately we want to win football games. Moving forward, I’ll definitely look at situations like that and things like that with that mindset.”
“I just can’t cost my team 15 [yards],” Clark simply said of his mistake.
Fortunately for the Irish, Clark far more often takes yardage away from the opposing team. In that same Louisville game, he made a couple of big plays early on that showed off his positional range. On one occasion, he lost a step on his receiver downfield but recovered nicely to break up a deep ball at the goal line. On another, he stepped up in the flat with perfect timing to deliver a huge hit on the running back.
Thanks to the wealth of experience he picked up during five seasons in Tempe — and the intensity of Notre Dame’s practices — Clark shows up ready to go.
“The way that we prepare every week, we go all out. And I go to Notre Dame — I play against the really good players in practice,” Clark said. “So when you get in the game you’ve gotta move around, you’ve gotta do something different, it’s not nerve-wracking. You don’t feel out of place because the speed of the game is not what it is in practice.”
Moving around is always integral to the nickelback’s style of play, but that reached an even larger degree for Clark in the Louisville game. During the week leading up to the game, junior cornerback Jaden Mickey announced his intentions to transfer. Sophomore cornerback Christian Gray, who typically starts, never saw the field due to an injury. That thrust Clark into a more coverage-heavy workload, one that he and the Irish defense handled well enough to secure a 31-24 win.
“Guys know every single position. They sent me out there to do it, but I felt like anybody could’ve went out there and played corner,” Clark said. “That’s just how we prepare. That’s our mindset in our room, and our coaches do a great job of preparing us for those moments.”
If it were up to Clark, he would probably want to try every other position in the secondary. He’s a student of defense and its intricacies. During his appearance on Varsity House Podcast, Clark shared the moment that he identified Notre Dame as the best fit for him. While visiting the school with his father, Jordan met defensive coordinator Al Golden and stepped into his office. There, Golden showed the two of them a sheet on which he has kept track of everything he’s learned about defense over the course of his career. Jordan was amazed. His father, an NFL defensive back for more than a decade, was “mesmerized,” as Jordan put it.
Now that he’s a part of Notre Dame’s elaborate and elite defense, it’s the simple things about Golden’s scheme that mean the most to Clark.
“I love that he lets us compete. He trusts us … and his calls are reflective of that,” Clark said.
Notre Dame trusts Clark, and Clark trusts Notre Dame. Whether it’s on the set at Murphy’s or on the field at Notre Dame Stadium, he has complete confidence that he’s in the right place.
