QB Magazine Athlete Feature

The stat line reads like a middle schooler’s. Ten passing touchdowns. Four more on the ground, including a 60-yard run. A total of 467 passing yards across the regular season and playoffs. A quarterback who can put the ball 40 yards downfield.

Julian Clark is eight years old.

The Class of 2035 quarterback — known around Atlanta as “JuX2” — plays tackle for the Gainesville Red Elephants and runs the offense for Zilla Zoo, a nationally ranked 9U 7-on-7 program. He also plays defensive back. He has been playing football for three years total.

The Strategy Part

Ask most third graders why they play and the answer involves scoring. Clark’s answer starts somewhere else.

“I love competition and I love the strategy of the game,” he said. “Being a quarterback lets me lead the offense and make plays for my team, and that’s something I really enjoy.”

He expands on it when asked what he enjoys most about the position, and the phrasing is notably specific.

“I like reading defenses, making plays, and putting my teammates in position to succeed.”

Putting my teammates in position to succeed is the kind of sentence quarterbacks usually arrive at around high school, once they have learned the hard way that a completion requires ten other people to have done their jobs. Clark is describing it as the appeal rather than the burden.

His definition of what the job requires runs the same direction: leadership, confidence, and football IQ, plus staying calm under pressure and making smart decisions. Then the part that sounds like an eight-year-old, in the best way — work hard, listen to your coaches, and believe in yourself even when things get tough.

120 Yards

The day he keeps came last year, at seven.

“One of my most memorable moments was when I threw for 120 yards in a single game when I was eight years old,” Clark said. “That game showed me what I’m capable of when I stay confident and trust my teammates.”

Again, the credit points outward. He describes his best day as evidence about confidence and trust rather than about arm talent — even though, at that age, 120 yards through the air is very much about arm talent.

Coaches Who Weren’t Sure

He also names a challenge that a lot of young players experience and very few say out loud.

“One of the biggest challenges I faced was playing under coaches who didn’t always believe in me,” Clark said. “Instead of letting that stop me, I used it as motivation. I kept working, studying the game, and proving myself every time I stepped on the field.”

Youth football is full of these moments, and they are rarely anyone’s fault — depth charts get set early, kids get sorted by size, and a small third grader with a big arm is easy to overlook. What matters is the response, and Clark’s was to keep showing up and get better. He says the experience made him mentally stronger, which is the useful conclusion to draw.

The coach he credits most is Quan Eberhardt.

“He pays attention to the little details that a lot of people overlook, and he really teaches the game the right way,” Clark said. “He helped me understand football IQ, like reading defenses and thinking ahead as a quarterback.”

He also trains with Joe Pillert of QB EVO, and has already been through a serious camp circuit for his age — Flight School, QB Universe, QB Legacy, You Are Athlete in Charlotte, and the EYSN Youth Combine in back-to-back years.

Vick

His favorite quarterback is Michael Vick, and his reasoning is more thought-through than the pick itself.

“I admire him because he defied the odds and changed the way people looked at the quarterback position,” Clark said. “He showed that a quarterback can be explosive, creative, and still lead a team. I like how confident and fearless he played.”

Explosive and creative and still lead a team. A kid who has been told he does not fit somebody’s idea of a quarterback picked the player whose whole career was about widening that idea.

His goals for the next twelve months are mechanics, accuracy, decision-making, and football IQ — all things he can work on, none of them dependent on anyone else’s opinion of him.

He has a long way to go, and roughly a decade to go it. But the arm is real, and the way he talks about the position is even more promising than the arm.

A Note on Memberships

Julian is eight, and almost all of his football is still ahead of him. What a membership does right now is simply keep track of it.

Heading into the fall, an upgraded QB Magazine membership adds a professionally designed athlete graphic and a profile that grows season by season — a place where the camps, the coaching, and the numbers get recorded as they happen, rather than reconstructed from memory years from now. At his age it is just a home for the story while it is being written.

Explore membership options at quarterbackmagazine.com/memberships.

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