The making of a future Notre Dame quarterback: Inside the rise of Florida's Noah Grubbs (2024)

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Ephraim Grubbs had watched the youngest of his four sons throw footballs long enough to appreciate the difference between accuracy and command. As a 30-year military veteran, he understands leadership. And as the owner of a construction company in Florida, he grasps the importance of precision, too.

Last summer at Notre Dame, somewhere in the middle of camping at more than a dozen college programs, Noah Grubbs was dealing all of the above. Dad had already given his son a pump-up speech in the parking lot. So at that point Ephraim just sat back and watched, trying to play the part of impartial observer as Noah, who’d already picked up offers from Miami and Duke, auditioned for one at Notre Dame.

“It’s something you always hope for, but the day Noah had was a ball-out day,” Ephraim said. “I heard other dads ask, ‘Who’s that kid? He must be a junior.’ No, he’s going into his sophom*ore year. You can have good days and better days. And Noah was having a better day.”

Marcus Freeman noticed. And agreed. When one of the quarterback drills got off-kilter, Grubbs paused to reset it, reminding the other players about the intent of the workout. Ephraim remembers Freeman passing by, lingering to watch and listen. It takes more than a live arm and natural leadership to get a Notre Dame offer after one year of high school football, but Grubbs showed enough of both for the Irish staff to want to see more.

Quarterbacks coach Gino Guidugli called Grubbs and his father back to the football offices after the camp to keep the conversation going. Father and son knew where this might be headed, which is why they’d stopped at Notre Dame in the first place. Grubbs hadn’t seen “Rudy” and hadn’t grown up on Notre Dame football, but that June day a year ago had piqued his interest as much as his performance had turned Notre Dame’s head.

Then Freeman met with quarterback and dad to make the offer.

“Notre Dame to me didn’t really mean too much because I was so young,” said Grubbs, the No. 12 quarterback prospect in the 247Sports Composite for 2026. “When they offered me, I wasn’t expecting it. I was in between nervous and excited. Probably more excited to be offered by one of best programs.”

Notre Dame wasn’t just another offer on Grubbs’ list, which would eventually include Ohio State, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Florida and Auburn. But the Irish weren’t a dream school, either. The Notre Dame staff needed to work on Grubbs for a year before landing his commitment last month, just before the Irish Invasion camp. A day later, Grubbs was back on campus — he attended last season’s Ohio State game, too — to work out with Class of 2025 commitment Deuce Knight and get to know current Irish quarterbacks CJ Carr and Riley Leonard. Grubbs fit right in.

C O M M I T T E D ☘️ pic.twitter.com/Dd4bUPFnpY

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— Noah Grubbs ✞ (@NoahGrubbsQB) June 2, 2024

If some recruitments are about convincing prospects to make a leap of faith, chasing down Grubbs was more about showing the 6-foot-4, 195-pound quarterback the fit staring back at him from northern Indiana.

Grubbs just needed to figure that out on his own. It wasn’t the first time those closest to the quarterback knew where Grubbs could be heading before the four-star prospect realized it himself.

The Grubbs boys turned the 13th fairway into their unofficial backyard, a home field for the neighborhood make-it-up-as-you-go competitions that drew two dozen boys from around Cypress Loft Place. The Magnolia Planation Golf Course had already ceased operations before it became grounds for neighborhood baseball, soccer and mud football games. Maybe that was for the best. Baseball with metal bats in a thunderstorm? Sure. Mud football in a hurricane. Go for it.

“You name it, we did it,” said Adam Grubbs, 24, the second oldest of the Grubbs boys. “We did some things people should not do on a golf course while it’s raining.”

Adam falls between Lieph, 28, and Eli, 19. Lieph taught Noah golf, dragging his little brother to the range. Lieph plays golfs right-handed and put the bucket of balls between him and Noah. Because Noah wanted to look at his older brother while playing, he learned to swing left-handed, even though he’s a right-handed quarterback. Eli is the only one of the brothers to play football with Noah, who was a freshman quarterback at Lake Mary High School when Eli was a senior offensive lineman. The family jokes Eli was the first to celebrate a touchdown with Noah but never helped him up after giving up a sack.

Growing up trying to keep up on the court, field and diamond with three older brothers and their friends put Noah in a place without knowing it actually put him on a path. Of course Noah would have a hard time keeping up. And of course every loss was actually a step forward, too.

“Sometimes they did let me score,” Noah said. “Most of the time they just made it even harder. It was tough. People 10 years older, it was a struggle, always a dog fight. I loved it.”

The brothers remember it differently: They were more impressed with Noah’s victories than they probably let on at the time. At least not out loud for Noah to hear. The youngest boy in the family would grow to be the biggest and the best. None of the others played college football, although Lieph watched plenty of it while a student at Alabama.

When Adam finally watched Noah compete against players his own age, it became clear the youngest in the family might be going places. The same realization hit Ephraim while coaching Noah’s Pop Warner team, the Lake Mary Rams, to two national championships. Instead of being in over his head physically, Noah was a head taller than much of the competition.

During the Rams’ season in 2019, the Pop Warner team advanced to the championship game at Disney’s Wild World of Sports outside Orlando, less than an hour from Lake Mary. Just before halftime of that title game, Ephraim called timeout to set up a shot play for his grade school quarterback. Noah hit a nearly 70-yard touchdown to make his head coach look smart.

“At that point, I’m like, ‘OK, my brother might be pretty good,’” Adam said.

Lake Mary won that championship with another Grubbs touchdown pass in the final minutes, the quarterback finding his second read, looking right to move the defense before coming back left to hit the tight end. Before the play, Grubbs warned the offense to make sure they tackled any defender who might pick off his pass. His offensive coordinator told him to just focus on executing the play and winning the game.

“I was young and I was so conscious about everything,” Noah said. “Be ready to run because I’m not gonna be able to catch them if it gets picked.”

No need. The kid who grew up getting tossed around by his brothers in a muddy fairway looked clean under pressure. Grubbs was going places; he just needed to find the right path forward.

The quarterback who committed to Marcus Freeman last month has come a long way from the quarterback who Notre Dame’s head coach offered almost a year earlier after just one season of high school football. Last fall as a sophom*ore at Lake Mary, Grubbs set single-season records in passing touchdowns (49) and passing yardage (3,677). He averaged 306.4 yards passing per game. No quarterback in school history completed (207) or attempted (356) more passes in a season.

Grubbs has had a battery of coaches help him get there. Private quarterback coach Baylin Trujillo works with Grubbs four times a week, often alongside other top prospects like Brady Hart from Cocoa, a Michigan commitment who also held a Notre Dame offer. Volunteer Lake Mary coach Tyson Hinshaw, the Pop Warner offensive coordinator who drew up that game-winning play, will break down film with Grubbs and talk through the whys of play calling.

Combined with a commitment to get his body lean — Grubbs said he dropped 40 pounds from his freshman to sophom*ore year after realizing a college quarterback’s build is about more than carrying weight — Grubbs has the resources to prepare for the next level. But having them and utilizing them are two different things. And Grubbs does the latter by habit.

“He responded so well to the mental aspect. I didn’t want to just teach him the position, but why we were doing things,” Hinshaw said. “He was a sponge. He wanted to understand. You want to coach the kids that want to be coached.”

Hinshaw and Grubbs were family friends before they were quarterback and coach. And Hinshaw’s sons, Carson and Chase, were two of Grubbs receivers last season at Lake Mary. Carson will walk on at UCF this fall, where Tyson played wide receiver after switching from quarterback, where he backed up Daunte Culpepper.

Most top quarterback prospects have a private trainer who drill off-platform throws and help gets their names into recruiting circles. Few have a resource like Hinshaw, who’s been with Grubbs since age 7, long before anyone knew him as a college prospect. In fact, Hinshaw is part of the reason Grubbs became a recruiting target. His older brother Darin, now the offensive coordinator at UCF, was the former offensive coordinator at UAB when the Blazers were first to offer.

“His experience, being at the level, being at the next level coaching, that’s helped me a lot,” Grubbs said. “Being on the headset like an OC, hearing how when a defense does this, that this will be open, that makes you better. You’re always trying to improve.”

Trujillo calls Grubbs a “generational talent” and believes he’ll arrive in South Bend in 2026 good enough to push Carr and Knight for reps in practice in what could be an open quarterback competition. Trujillo said he knew Grubbs had a chance to be special from their first meeting, when he told the family he could help develop Grubbs into an elite prospect if he’d go all-in with football. Grubbs quit baseball almost immediately

“Everyone has natural ability. Then you have to work on that be elite,” Trujillo said. “His arm talent is s gift. His leadership has grown. He’s starting to come into his own now. He’s vocal in training. You can tell this is a different player. Watching him joke around with Deuce Knight at Irish Invasion, that was never Noah before. Now he’s comfortable with himself as a player.”

Grubbs held his own at Irish Invasion, making a one-day visit to walk around campus as a commitment. Last week at the Future 50 recruiting event in Orlando, Grubbs stood out again. Now he’s talking about the receivers he wants to recruit in a class that’s just getting started.

These days, Noah Grubbs knows just how much potential he owns, going from the Lake Mary Rams all the way to Notre Dame. As what comes after that next step, there are already opinions on that around Florida, too. And if those prove prophetic, Notre Dame’s quarterback recruiting may be in a great place moving forward.

“When Noah gets to Notre Dame, he’s not just trying to be part of the group, he’s trying to take over,” Trujillo said. “He can go over into several colleges and compete for the job right now. I think the sky’s limit for that kid.

“I think Noah Grubbs is gonna be in the NFL one day.”

(Top photo: Courtesy of the Grubbs family)

Pete Sampson is a staff writer for The Athletic on the Notre Dame football beat, a program he’s covered for the past 21 seasons. The former editor and co-founder of Irish Illustrated, Pete has covered six different regimes in South Bend, reporting on the Fighting Irish from the end of the Bob Davie years through the start of the Marcus Freeman era.