The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - The secret sauce of QB development, with Tom Gormely, Will Hewlett and Bruce Feldman

Episode Date: July 19, 2023

Josh Allen becoming a perennial MVP candidate? Jalen Hurts leading his team to the Super Bowl? Those weren't exactly foregone conclusions when they entered the league. Quarterback development looks a whole lot different today than it did just a few years ago. How did we get to this point, and what is the secret sauce of developing a quarterback in the present day? Tom Gormely, the director of sports performance and sports science at Tork Sports Performance, quarterback coach Will Hewlett, and Bruce Feldman, college football reporter at The Athletic, join Robert Mays to dive into the topic on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.Follow Robert on Twitter: @robertmaysFollow Tom on Twitter: @GormelyTMFollow Will on Twitter: @WillHewlettFollow Bruce on Twitter: @BruceFeldmanCFBSubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTubeThis episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/MAYS and get on your way to being your best self. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. Welcome. It's the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays. Great show for you guys today. One of the stories of the league, in my opinion, over the last few years is just the gains that we have seen from quarterbacks, from where they were as prospects, where they are as NFL players, and even from where they've been early in their careers to where they can go

in year two, year three. I mean, guys that are in the MVP conversation, guys that are getting market-setting contracts, J-1 Hertz, Josh Allen. And if you look at what those guys were as rookies or what you look at where they were their last year in college, it was not easy to predict these sorts of results that they would eventually end up in this place. But these stories of improvement are no longer exceptions. They're happening more and more. So I wanted to do a show where we kind of explore how and why that's possible. What is the secret sauce that can lead to these success stories of quarterback development?

And to help me dig into that today, we're having kind of two different sorts of conversations. A little bit later in the show, Bruce Feldman from The Athletic, who's done just an enormous amount of work on this subject over the last 10 years. He literally wrote a book called the QB in 2013 about the private quarterback coaching world and Elite 11 and kind of the process that guys go through when they're young. And, you know, Bruce has done continued work on that. He wrote a story about Jordan Palmer and Josh Allen and some of these tools two years ago, you know, right after Josh had his huge break. out, you know, Bruce has thought about the position, and he has conversations with people at the NFL and college level consistently about how guys succeed. He had a lot of exposure to Jaylen Hertz when Jaylen was a college player. So I want to talk to Bruce just about some of the intangible aspects that we may have missed with these players. What about Jaylen Hertz and Josh Allen, even when they were in college, maybe could have led us to believe that this sort of improvement, these sort of gains might be possible about their makeup, about their personalities, and maybe about our misunderstandings of what is important. important at the position. Before we talk to Bruce, though, I really wanted to have a discussion with two guys who actually worked with Anthony Richardson before the draft and have worked with other NFL quarterbacks, be it Brock Purdy, some other players that we've seen, really be different as pros than they were as college prospects. One of those guys is Tom Gormley, who is a director of sports performance and the head of sports science at Torque Sports. He's a doctor of physical therapy. He's trained athletes, and he has a particular specialization in rotational and throwing athletes. And the biomechanics that goes into that process. We also chat with Will Hewitt, who's one of the country's top quarterback

trainers. He worked with Anthony Richardson before the draft. He's worked with other NFL quarterbacks and works closely with Tom in kind of creating the plans and the development strategies for these guys. So really enjoy the conversation I had with both of them about really what goes into this on a scientific, granular level as you're working on accuracy, velocity, kind of the nuts and bolts for how you make quarterbacks better. Let's get to that conversation. right now. I wanted to start this conversation with a quote. And this is from former Steelers GM, Kevin Colbert. And this is at the Combine in 2022. I mean, this is a year and a half ago. He said to Sports Illustrated, I think if you study quarterbacks over history, accuracy at the collegiate

level is usually a great indicator of accuracy at the professional level, albeit in a different game. He was talking about the non-negotiable aspects of quarterback play in his mind. Something in a college prospect tends to need to succeed in the NFL. And history has shown us that that's a pretty common refrain in the football community. You know, that quarterbacks couldn't get more accurate. Many people who've played and judged the position over time have said something similar. But I think we've seen some recent examples of people improving this in this area by a lot. You know, Josh Allen being a very good example, but also the hope is that Anthony Richardson,

who both of you guys trained this spring, becomes another one of these test cases. So, Will, I wanted to ask you specifically, how has the thinking changed about how quarterbacks can improve their accuracy earlier in their careers. Well, I mean, I think by nature, the NFL and all sports, for that matter, there's typically an entrenched mindset that's kind of been passed down through generations. It's like, this is how things have been done, and, you know, this is what it is, and this is what a quarterback looks like. And I think over the past 20 years, there's been obviously an evolution, and even so much

in the past 10 years with the kind of increased number of quarterbacks that have been. have the ability to move the ball with their legs. The game is evolving. Now what you're starting to see is the position is shrinking in terms of the actual height. Guys are smaller. You don't have to be the, in fact, if you're the old 6'5 statue guy, you're probably a lower rated prospect than someone that's 6-2, you know, 6-1 that's more athletic now. So I think the game, you know, in the sense of like the old school Damarino days where it's dropped back and the quarterback delivers the football down the field. There's a lot more moving parts to the position. So I think the people are a little bit more open to, you know, I don't want to say less emphasis on accuracy,

because accuracy still is very, very important. But there's guys that are delivering the balls in different manners that it's changing windows and it's changing the way the games played. For that matter, though, I think there's typically a mindset that, you know, you can't change those things. People are what they are. And maybe because I make a living off of proving those people wrong, but of course I'm going to say this, but you know, as much

as football coaches are experts at football, what myself and what Tom does is, you know, we dig down to levels that the coaches don't have the luxury of doing. So we're really specialists in other areas. So as good as you know, Shanahan and McVey and

And, you know, O'Connell is, is drawing up a beautiful play on the board and executing on the field. You know, what we've really made an impact is doing that with the technical side of the game. Because we don't have to, I don't have to worry about, like, hey, what depth is the post route going to be at? That's cool. We'll help it get there. So that's kind of the approach that, you know, we take, I take. I mean, I think it's something you can definitely improve. you can measure it and you can see on-field results.

And Tom, I'm sure it's different for every guy that you work with. You have a specialized plan for everyone that you work with. But anecdotally, let's say you have a quarterback like Anthony Richardson, who may have struggled with some of the accuracy details in college, and that's an area of his game where he needs to make some strides. Where does your kind of diagnostic of a player like that begin? How do you kind of start to formulate a plan for how you're going to work for a player with that particular deficiency?

see. Yeah, I think with every quarterback, honestly, and especially with Anthony, it starts with not me per se, right? More of your classical football acumen guys, Will those guys on that half, right? Watching film of him playing football, right? Which is, is he inaccurate because he has a wide open curl route and he just spiked it seven feet into the ground? Or is he inaccurate because he made the wrong read through into a really tight window, his wide receiver dropped it, and that's an incompletion, right? So I think they went through that, right? And you go through understanding like, hey, maybe his accuracy issues are not as blown up as maybe some might think, right?

Some of it might be like window throws, drops, separation of his receivers. There are some other stuff that probably played into it. But then, yeah, of course, like he does have some accuracy issues in college and some inefficiencies. And really when you come to the diagnostic side, we bring in a guy, Chris Hess. who owns biometric, he's a biomechanical analyst essentially, right? So he brings in 3D motion capture quality system. We assess the quarterback and we get data feedback from the quarterback, right? So once you assess them, we get data on hip shoulder separation angles, how the pelvis is moving, how the arm's moving, when the pelvis is moving, when it's decelerating. And there's little hallmarks

that you look at, arm path, arm pattern, when your arm slots, when you release it, what's happening at your lead leg block, what's happening at your pelvis, that are indicators for maybe accuracy issues because of a lot of noise in the system at the point of release, which obviously is all going to make accuracy harder. So you're assessing that under slow motion capture, and then it's our job to apply that slow motion capture across the spectrum. And what I mean by that is really figuring out, well, are we seeing this inefficiency because he doesn't have the movement capacity. Somewhere along his system, he has limited joint mobility, limited tissue mobility, limited strength, limited power, limited stability, limited mobility, right? There's a bunch of

physical aspects that it could be. Or is this the fact that motor learning wise and skill acquisition wise and motor seeking wise, his motor pattern is inefficient or poor to get there? Or is it he's throttling this throw or he's throttling this movement in a way that is, making it more complex than it needs to be, therefore leading to faulty patterns, right? And that's kind of the reverse engineering. You're reverse engineering a thrower from game film through motion capture, all the way back to kind of the weight room and the table, figuring out where do these restrictions lie that might lead to accuracy issues.

And you start picking those things off, right? You just start attacking them one at a time. And as you attack them, you pay attention to the risk. result, right? You basically give him little constraint-based mechanisms, little throwing pli-o drills, mobility stuff on the table, and you start to shape an organism or a human or a thrower by how you allow him to explore his movement with different constraint-based drills. And when he starts to feel more efficient patterning, you then basically go back and assess it with Will on the football field and watch him throw. And you start to get an eye for, oh, wait, he's hitting outroutes.

chest tight or helmet height consistently on the first throw, not the third throw after he feels it out. And you start to make changes in what is considered accuracy, right? And then you've got to add complexity and movement and reading defenses. And there's a whole spectrum of this down the line of complexity of movement. But that's the start. The start is analysis, data, and having a system in place to make sure that you're not just guessing, but you're actually assessing what could be the problem in the throw. So the biometric aspect to it and the motion capture and Chris has worked with other quarterback trainers and Josh Allen and a lot of guys over the last few years.

So, well, I wanted to ask you, the data you're getting from some of that motion capture stuff, the granularity of it, obviously you can't just see from the naked eye and that's a benefit. Are the takeaways from that and the insights from that similar to what you would have had without the data? Are they bringing you in a new direction or are they giving you more detail about things you probably would have thought 10 years ago as you were judging quarterbacks and how they should move. Yeah. It's funny. I was on the field today. We had an athlete out there that I'd worked with, I don't know, three or four years ago, Sam Ellinger. And one of the comments was when we previously

worked and we hadn't had a chance to work from quite some time, but we're kind of getting back to some of the things that we're doing. And my explanation to him, he's like, you know, talk to me about like some of the differences you see from back then and now i was like you know we're we're we're going back to some of the things that we had worked on previously it's just now with tom and the information i've access to i now i know exactly what that was doing so i was on the right path i just didn't have confirmation from an actual biomechanical standpoint that hey this is actually what you're creating by doing this drill so um whether it's just you know experience luck whatever the case is I've I've got the flight hours in in quarterback training to know what looks

right and what looks wrong and then with the help of Tom now it's like plugging in the data and the analysis to go okay well what you're seeing is actually this so with the with the data and I think this is the trick to it you know the careful thing about it is there's an you know the interpretation of the data is really really important like if you interpret it incorrectly I mean it's it's not only is it useless, it can be dangerous. You can sit athletes back. So my job is to, depending on we're at in the process, like there was a moment in Combine training where we had information on deficiencies that was still happening in the throw. But like Tom and I decided like, okay, cool. So we're going to ignore those right now and just focus in on him just feeling good about this

because we can't keep laying, you know, loading the athlete with, hey, you know, you need to get your foot a couple of inches wider or, you know, a couple of inches wider. Or, you know, you know, you need to drive your back hip a little bit more. So I think there's always a, we're always chasing that perfect throw from a data standpoint. But you're also looking for that feedback on the field. And the athlete knows. I mean, we had a moment today with one of our guys. It was like, oh, yeah, I found it again, you know.

And so we didn't have any analysis out there. We have a little iPhone camera that we're like peeking at things. And so I think there's an art form to the coaching side of it where we, we know the data confirms a lot of stuff, but we can still go on the field. You know, you know, Tom can see on the weight room and the plios and we can, we can analyze a movement and go, okay, well, based on all the guys we've seen, the information we have, this is what this is and this needs to be better. And then just feeling it out for each guy, because every athlete is different. I think that's the differentiator is being able to separate, you know, Anthony Richardson

from Kyle Trask and Kyle Trask and Kyle Trask from Nathan Peterman and so on. Tom, you mentioned kind of the two different explanations we could have for this. One is that the guy is athletic enough and has the physical ability to access these movements. He's just not doing it. And two, a guy just doesn't have the pathways to make his body move like that. And the first part of that is so interesting to me because of the two, if you're trying to draw a through line with these guys who have made these strides, both Jalen Hertz, Josh Allen, they're insane athletes. Like they're off the charts athletes. So even though the quarterback position and some of the stuff we're digging into, there's a level of technicality to it, I still feel like having that reservoir of athleticism is

necessary for this to happen. So just what kind of athleticism are we talking about? What ways does your body need to move and what do you need to be able to do to make some of these improvements that we're talking about? Yeah. So I'm going to talk about like the first part first that's not necessarily the question, then I'll talk about the question. But I think you're correct, right, in the sense that elite athlete,

especially the more athletic they get, right, are really just master compensators. They can get into poor positions and figure out a way to just up the chain, literally one after another, create a compensation until they still spend a spiral somewhere, right? It's what's the consistency of throwing like that maybe gets hindered. But that's why they still got to the NFL with limitations, right? because they are freaks, right? They're freaks and they know how to compensate around poor movement patterns. When you get to like, what athlete is required to have that happen?

I think there's two sides. One is the structural limitations, right? So for example, say just you had zero, so this would be like 90 degrees of ER. But say you had no more external rotation than this. Like you were just right here at 90. Your elbow bents at 90 degrees. Yeah, basically, we're like, I'm laying my arm back, right? I'm just stuck right here.

Most throwers are going to have extra external rotation, right? So like 90 degrees would be normal for average population. If you're a baseball player, we're looking at like 110 to like 130 sometimes. And football players may be like 110ish, 115, right? Not quite as much external rotation. But say you were just strictly, you had no extra layback. You couldn't lay your arm back anymore. There are other things in the chain that would happen from the ground up that would have to take place for you to be able to throw a ball because you don't have the capacity to rely on sitting back and creating this passive ER to IR whip, which we want.

But you don't have it. Like you literally don't have that structure. So if we could, Will could be on the field all day instructing layback and like feeling hip shoulder separation and a ton of layback. I can do plio drills that are like focusing around generating total rotation arc and getting layback. But structurally, the athlete doesn't have layback. Like they don't have it there. So until you get on the table and we work on posterior glides and gaining external rotation

a little bit through some capsular mobility, it doesn't matter what you do drill-wise or QB coach-wise, they're not going to have layback. They don't have it structurally. So I think that's like one part of the limitation, which doesn't rely on like what kind athlete is it? It's do they just have like structural limitations currently? Sure. Your body moves in a certain way or it doesn't.

Correct. Or they don't have spinal rotate like they're limiting their two spine rotation or they're limited to hip rotation. There's a there's a million right. That can be influenced. Then the other side is okay, they have all this range that you need. They're strong. They're powerful.

Just over time for whatever reason, whether it's arm pain, arm injury, overcoaching from some quarterback coach that was really really. in high school or really rigid in college that put them in like this crazy tight unathletic pattern. They pattern tens of thousands of times in a pattern that is now stiff and frozen and not natural. And it's regaining the natural movement pattern that high level throwing is. And that doesn't mean quarterbacking. That means javelin throwing, swinging a tennis racket, playing shortstop, pitching, throwing, throwing a runner out from center field playing quarterback right it's all high level rotational kinematics

and throwing and sometimes quarterback coaching can freeze a quarterback because it's over mechanical and really mean we'll spend eight to 12 weeks just breaking all that stuff away right just getting rid of that stuff and instead focusing around what is good at natural throwing biomechanics and how does that then relate to quarterbacking and getting in and out of proper drops and positioning and sequencing? But there is a natural stroke of fluidity. You think about golf swings. There's a tempo to throw it, right? High level throwers are throwing in rhythm, in tempo,

within natural progression of hip shoulder separation, transmitting itself to an arm spiral. And that's what releases the ball. And anything that's more rigid than that is not. what you see at the highest level quarterbacks on Sunday. They're not rigid, right? They're fluid and there's rotational kinematics taking place. You've got to train your quarterbacks like that or else you're training your quarterback further and further away from Aaron Rogers and Patrick Mahomes, right, where you should be training them towards that style. I don't mean to throw anybody under the bus here, but the first name that comes to mind when it comes to that school of quarterback training and kind of

what maybe the previous decade looked like compared to training now is a guy like Josh Rosen and like what he ended up becoming and players that were in that mold rather than the guys that we see right now, which I think that we see a vast difference between the previous kind of paradigm of what we expect from the position and this one. Tom, I'm curious, how often do the types of athleticism that you're talking about and that are applicable to the position align with kind of the public's understanding of athleticism? How often is like a big explosive athlete does he have this stuff or is the correlation maybe less than we might expect? That's a loaded question. But for throwers, so throwing in a really nerdy term, it's a triplanner

movement happening within a second, right? So there's three planes of forces, right? Frontal plane, transverse plane, which is the rotation, sagittal plane, basically, that loading up and down in front of you. And it eventually happens, one, two, three, four. four, five, six, whatever, the kinematic sequence can be like six to eight steps, transmitting forces up the, of the body.

So athleticism, like, if you give me a rigid, stiff, but strong, powerful guy, right? Like,

Usain bowl. I was going to ask sprinters is the example I was going to ask. Yeah. And they actually have a spinal engine and they rotate a little bit, so I don't want to throw Usain boat on it. Maybe he could throw.

I have no idea. I'm just going to throw it like a generalization out here. the transmission of force relies on being rigid in some capacity, right? Because the rigidity allows great force production back into the ground in a singular plane, just this sagittal plane directly in front of you, putting force behind you and just digging, right? It's singular plane. So if I were to take that guy and tell him, well, all of your power needs to produce in a rotational or transverse plane, all of your powers produced by spinning,

they wouldn't be overly efficient at producing it, right? So even though they're a tremendous athlete over here, it wouldn't be a tremendous thrower, right? They wouldn't throw 100 miles an hour on a baseball field. And if you've seen it, like obviously baseball players are definitely underrated athletes. In my opinion, obviously, they work with a lot of baseball players. It's a different sort of athleticism. And that's kind of what I'm getting at.

But their capacity to rotate, right? Like you might see some pitcher kind of like sloppy, a little bit chubby, out of shape by the public's perception, but his ability to produce rotational force and accept force is absolutely elite, and he's throwing 99 miles an hour on the map, right? And at the heart of a quarterback, that's what we're looking for, first or foremost, right? Like, we love the ability to be dynamic and run a fast 40 and jump over people. Of course, that's like an additive to the game.

But throwing requires mobility and stability in a rotational plane, which is much different than I think what the general public perceives as athleticism. That's exactly what I was interested in, because that makes total sense to me. Well, so kind of getting to the third step of this that Tom was talking about, okay, now we can access this stuff. And now it's about ingraining it, where this becomes second nature. It's not something you're ever going to think about. It takes one throw instead of three throws to access what you want to do.

You talked to Ted Wynne at the Athletic for a piece you did. pre-draft about Anthony. You were talking about some of the things he needed to work on. You said the hips should move first and the arm should come along for the ride. A lot of his misses come from accelerating his arm late or over-rotating his body past his aiming point. Okay, that sounds very technical. But at a very baseline level, when you're working on that sort of granularity,

how do you get from having it be drill work and having it be something you're consciously having to think about to having to be something that's ingrained when you get into a game type situation, the situation is changing, the bullets are. flying you don't have guys regress back to what is natural and what is comfortable well um i think that's maybe the differentiator on what we do um i'll tell you we don't do it with what most people think quarterback training is um in in in the the sense of shuffling and jumping over bags and cones and throwing into nets and stuff and um you know maybe that's uh a little harsh but i think it's important like transfer training is is the most important part of what we do.

Otherwise, it just doesn't matter. It's a complete waste of time. And I think you have to have an intimate understanding. I'm not classically educated in motor learning, but I've studied, you know, constraint-based teaching theories. I understand how athletes learn implicitly, explicitly, what language means. And so you have to create drills that have layers of complexity. So if you think of football as the most complex, you know, we got 11 versus 11.

That's the highest level of complexity. That's, in that moment, the athlete can't really think about technique. We don't want them thinking about technique. You take it down a notch. You have seven on seven, right, which is not really seven on seven, it's seven versus five, right? That's a less layer of complexity. But you can start to, you know, focus on more tactical aspects of the game, posture aspects of the game. But again, still, you're focused on other things happening.

but then you've got to go down. You've got to keep taking pieces off the field to find that simplicity where the athlete can now focus on the mechanical change. But I think that's the magic in the training where we prep that prime that, reinforce that pre-throw and post-throw with drills that are specific to that athlete.

And my job when the football gets in the hand is to create a scenario that's similar to the game-like feel where there's just varied levels, of distraction and pressure where they have to multitask and they're going to fail and then they're going to get it right. And then so we kind of look at the stages of motor learning. You want to be an unconscious movement where they're not thinking about it anymore, right? Sometimes you'll see athletes that'll make a change in the offseason and by week three, it's completely gone back to how it was, right? So you've got to log reps.

And I think that's, you know, a lot of the research in that world has been done actually in you know, the physical therapy and injury, like when people come out of accidents, they're trying to walk again. So we're trying to bank a certain amount of reps where we create these motor pathways that are just, you know, they're automatic. And so you have to, you have to just level up the amount of complexity in the drills that you do. And we do that with just creating certain scenarios with athletes, you know, maybe it's a rush, maybe it's a time moment maybe we're constraining the field, we're not allowing him to move a certain way. We're kind of nudging them towards the moment where they self-discover it. It's that light bulb moment you're

going for. And so a good drill will lead the athlete to the solution, right? We can say, hey, do this. That's great. And they'll try to, they'll fumble through it. But there's that moment they need to have where they go, oh, that felt different. So a lot of the stuff we do, and it's, it is really so dynamic and different for every athlete. But there's certain criteria that we use in buckets that we use. Like, this guy's going to be really good at this drill. So, you know, we create, you know,

scenarios that are going to put them in those positions. And I think that's where it starts to happen. And then this is where I think, where the industry will separate itself is that the teams that embrace this, you know, holistic, you know, approach to training where you can't, it's so difficult to do. just do this in the off season.

And then you go into camp and then, all right, we're going to forget all that. We're just going to go play football, right? And then you go to the weight room, and that's got nothing to do with what we're doing. And so there's no connection between all the systems. Well, the best guys are the ones that have connection from the day they step off the field, boom,

the weight room, the physical therapist, the position coach, right? And all those things are connected and they're all layered so they have the most support. And you know, and you see some of the starting quarterbacks in the NFL, like we just saw Bobby Strip with Patrick Mahomes, right? Like he's integrated into the chief system because that's what is best for Patrick Mahomes.

That's awesome. So you're going to start to see the teams that embrace that approach are going to have a competitive advantage of the ones that don't. What Will was referring to there is Bobby Strupp, who is Patrick's trainer, featured on quarterback the show on Netflix if you guys have not watched it. And he's kind of integrated to what the chiefs do. I wanted to ask you, well, so regarding Anthony, one of the things that you told, told Ted and one of the things that he wrote is essentially a lot of his upper body mechanics are not stuff you had to mess with. He's a natural thrower.

That part is like, okay, that's okay. Let's work on the footwork aspect of this. So that example you're using of a guy getting to week three and then kind of going back to the bad habits he had in the offseason. If a guy's major deficiencies are footwork based, do you feel like it's easier to kind of prevent that backside compared to retooling how a guy's throwing motion is in the top half of his body? Yes and no. I mean, I think, you know, even though that it may be a footwork issue, it's like the footwork issue leads to an upper body issue. It's like things are all connected, right? But you've got to find a starting spot. If someone has a like a pathway issue in their stroke, that can be really difficult to change. That can take a lot of work,

meaning that they have something they don't or do do that's detrimental to the throat. like a pause or like a hitch. I tend to not like to use the word wind up because there's certain things in a throw that I think, you know, the not all windups are created different, right? Like the way that Tim Tebow used to dip the ball is completely different from the way that, you know, maybe Josh Allen uses his arm, right? So I'm careful to use terms like that because length isn't necessarily a bad thing. But typically, yeah, if there's a stroke issue, there's a lot of work.

a lot of time that needs to go into that. And those things take a lot of effort to correct. And there are correctable in the sum that, you know, maybe they're not, but generally speaking, we can get better at a lot of those things. I think from the low body standpoint, when it's, you know, just about how they get set up, maybe it's an adjustment in how they drop in certain concepts, right?

So, you know, in football, the drop is kind of the timeline of the play, right? So it's where there's a three-step drop, five-step drop, a seven-step drop, you know, with a hitch, two hitches with action. Manipulating those things from athlete to athlete, I think, is also where the game is evolving a little bit. Guys will approach their pre-throw movement a little bit differently to put them in a more biomechanically sound position to have more success, you know, in the past, right? Previously, it's like, hey, this is a system we run, athlete, you have to fit this system,

and if you don't, too bad. If you have a once-in-a-lifetime generational athlete that's not comfortable that way. Maybe let's adjust your system a little bit to fit them so they can have success. And that's, I think, maybe the modern approach that I think we're finding is like, hey, like, let's, the system's easier to adjust and let's have the athlete work to a place of efficiency and comfort level for that. Tom, you used a term already during the show, one that I've seen in every piece I've read about mechanics and quarterbacking, one that was featured on the quarterback show that Bobby Strip was using by Patrick. Hip, shoulder separation, seems to be a very buzzy term when it comes to this world.

Can you explain to me what that means and why it's important? Yeah, I mean, first I just want to say that like the point before this last point that Will just made, which is the synergistic effect of training, and obviously he has not formally trained, but has a really dense understanding of like dynamic ecologics or constraint-based theory. That is how you do retrieve skills as an athlete. or as a person. It doesn't matter. And that is kind of the hallmark to, yeah, how we train quarterbacks here. But realistically, how you would learn any skill that you wanted to learn if you

wanted to learn it efficiently. And so finding QB coaches or finding training facilities that understand how all pieces of loading layer themselves on top of each other to eventually go from a cognitive stage of learning and then eventually applying that stage of learning in some kind of retrieval stage and eventually making it automatic in retrieval so that you can have complexity of task and environment and chaos around you. But retrieve the correct movement is the art in teaching movement. And like Will said, he listens to the athlete. Right. There's actually very little coaching going on probably by classical terms when you're out there watching me sit out there or Will sit out there with the quarterback, it's a lot of listening to what the athlete feels

so that you can help shape the movement. And that is important, but it also takes a really dense understanding of the mechanics and of the biomechanics and of the skill-based theory, right? Like how do you shape movement? And that's what Will's great at. So obviously, I just wanted to retouch on that. No, that's great. That's excellent because I think it's extremely important.

And those kind of stages of thinking about it where it's cognitive and then you're in kind of a retrieval stage and then the retrieval happens much, much quicker. Thinking about it in those terms in those stages, I think is a good illustration for people to got to understand what that kind of line or graph looks like. And also understanding that it's like a golf swing, right? That's the comparison I was also thinking about. Yeah. Like autonomous retrieval, like just because Anthony could look perfect for three weeks,

if he's gone for four weeks and just doing nothing say he's on vacation, it's not just going to be perfect again, right? The difference is the athlete having a high complexity of understanding now of what he wants to feel and having drills set forth that we know we can nudge him back to the feeling much quicker, you get a much quicker turnaround. So even like you said, at week four, if all of a sudden his footwork was off or whatever, it's a lot easier to integrate like, hey, focus on this, this, this drill-wise, this week, pre-throw, post-throw, and hopefully quickly nudge back to the better feeling and boom, accuracy.

better or whatever. I also don't want people to think that like you learn a movement pattern and you just never lose it. It's just like you're perfect forever. Like no, it comes and goes. Like you're striking golf balls perfectly for a year and all of a sudden it's like, I have a slice again. A familiar experience for a lot of us.

Exactly. Okay, hip, shoulder separation. Yeah. So buzz term, I think it's a buzz term because at the heart of like, if you have tier one understanding of biomechanics, it's like that you throw with more than just your arm. Like I think that's like the elementary level of something beyond just like you throw with your arm. And then right under that is the force is generated between by the association between your

pelvis and your torso. Right. And that's still like not the most complex version of this understanding, but it's like the next level. And really all that it means is that you have your. what hand is on top here. Okay. So you have your torso up here, your pelvis here.

The disassociation between those two things creates what we call spinal engine, right? So if my pelvis starts to rotate and my torso winks back, I get this tension angle that happens from my hip up to my arm. And essentially, it's like winding up a spring to eventually let it uncoil. and if that is put together with the right angle and the right timing and timing is just as important as total angle, it will produce a very rapid and aggressive transfer of force from your hip back up to your arm, which most likely is laying back at that point in time and create this transition from ER to IR very suddenly. And that's where you get this whip, right? That arm whip effect that allows you to throw a. from multiple arm angles, but also allows you to produce high levels of velocity and high levels of spin rate.

So it's been documented in the baseball world a lot. And it's kind of really easy to measure in the baseball world because you can basically take overhead cameras and cameras around the mound. The pitcher has full control of what's going on. And you can really hone into developing total angle and total sequencing. For a quarterback, it requires a more dynamic environment. in motion capture, but also a more dynamic environment when you think about what hip shoulder separation is. So we're always trying to generate the proper amount

of hip shoulder separation total angle, but more importantly, understanding the sequence behind pelvic to torso relationship on a varied level and varied type of throwing, because every throw is going to allow for different amounts of separation. but the key is that you always start your throw by accelerating your pelvis first and then eventually transmitting that to your torso increasing the total angle is really good.

You could become really efficient. You can generate high levels of force. You heard Bobby talk about it. Patrick is incredible at it. And that's, I mean, yes, that's the goal for high level throwing is how can we get the pelvis to disassociate from the torso within a certain. time horizon. And Will, in some of the kind of off platform stuff that you were working on with Anthony,

this necessity of having his shoulders kind of stay perpendicular to the line of scrimmage while he's on the move like this, how do you kind of make sure that as you're working on the separation and kind of the snap and the whip that comes with that sort of power, how do you try to combine that with the stability necessary to make sure you're doing all of the stuff while being accurate? You're creating velocity. you're creating torque, all of this stuff, but also you're making sure that you're drilling down on the certain things

that are going to make the ball go where you want it to go, not go as hard as you want it to go, if that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think part of the, you know,

it's like stability before variability. So we're trying to create a stable platform where the athlete has a good feedback mechanism to know, okay, when my ball does this, it's because this happens, right? And so they get this little self-correction pattern

on the field. But ultimately the game is played inside the pocket and for some guys outside the pocket. And then by play design outside the pocket. And so there's certain things that happen on the run that are emphasized. The nice thing actually about throwing on movement is sometimes for some athletes, it quietens everything down. Their window of opportunity to throw the football is brief because of the pace of the feet moving. And so it sometimes forces them in. into a state where they have to do things correctly. There's literally less to think about. And so we actually start our athletes with movement,

generally speaking very, very early in a lot of training sessions because we think we help, we know, we see it, the athletes start to get synchronized. Like what you have to do when you're rolling to the left from a right-handed thrower is different than what you have to do in rolling to the right. Similar characteristics in throwing right arm angles and hip-shoulders separation but you know the the extreme angles that you have to

separate going to your left really help emphasize that in just regular movement and then the arm speed and the angle you have to take your arm through going to the right so these little carryovers from from movement training is actually helpful for back in the pocket and so but we try to try to blend all those things together and then you know the nice thing about training is that and the environment that we try to create is is it's a it's sometimes a problem with football especially NFL players is it's such a a production results based environment that they're often almost scared to open up because they can't miss they can't make a mistake so everything becomes guided and safe and and so

for athletes coming out of college it's not usually an issue but we're we have permission to like this sometimes we'll say I don't care if this ball goes 15 feet over the receiver head, just do this. And then there'll be a lot of like good jobs after throws that go, you know, flying over the guy's head, but they come out just a beautiful, like, even there was a throw today on the field where it was like a low throw, but it was like, how did that feel? It's like, it felt good. I like, let's dig into that and it's changed the angle of your launch point, right? So these little nuances without the pocket in the pocket, I think you can dig into giving them,

permission to fail and and and but also you know they can take that next rep. And I think that's also how we measure progress too. Like Tom said earlier, it's like, you know, okay, there's two bad reps and three good reps and then one bad rep. But that one rep correction is what we're going for with guys where it's like, boom, I got it. I fixed on the next wrap. So talking about velocity a little bit more, you know, improvements in accuracy are

notable because they're obvious, right? Like we can watch someone like Josh Allen. We can see the uptick and completion percentage one. But we can also to see fewer sports. braid throws. Velocity is tougher for the layman to notice because we don't access to those numbers. There's no radar gun on an NFL field looking at quarterbacks. You could pick it up, but maybe it's a little bit subtler. So Tom, when you're working with somebody like Brock Purdy before the draft, like how do you begin the process of adding like velocity and zip on some of these

guys as throwers? Yeah. So I mean, luckily, because I work with so many baseball players, that's basically the name of the game, right? So you use like for Brock, I just basically literally use the same scientific thought process to developing velocity with a baseball player that you're going to do

developing velocity with a football player. So same idea. You assess. We go through our assessment, but you also you tried data. So we had total yardage he was able to hit. We had velocity with a radar gun. We wanted to know where he was at, right?

Because arm strength was what I like the answers you wanted to answer. And I guess I'll dig into it a little bit, but basically the idea behind velocity is maybe like threefold, right? How do you generate force from the ground up? So that would be your normal kinetic chain, like generating adequate force on the ground up,

not creating too much anterior shift, having a good lead leg block. So basically not leaking force up to your arm somewhere else. That really is like kind of regardless. You have a cannon or not because that's going to enhance velocity. It's also going to screw up accuracy. So like those are kind of hallmarks, right? But you're going to work on that.

Then you got two other options to enhance velocity. You have total rotational arc. So the more layback you have, the more velocity you'll be able to produce. If you're laying back passively, you create a longer arc. That longer arc over a shorter period of time is going to deliver more force behind the ball. We get more velocity, right? So Patrick Bohm's massive amount of layback baseball player, canon. Josh Allen, massive amount of layback, canon.

Anthony Richardson, massive amount of layback, canon, right? So you'll see total layback is something you want to work on. because they need that layback. So for people who can't see right now, the layback is literally your arm is up. It's your elbow and your hand bending backwards behind you. That's what layback is in the terms that you're describing. So like if you go baseball players, there's like famous, you know, images of Randy Johnson's like hand almost like below his elbow, right? Sure.

So yeah, so that's layback, right? That total external rotation is what allows a larger angle of rotation, which could enhance velocity. the next step is to move your arm faster through that total angle. And so essentially when you start going on the case of, I want to enhance velocity a little bit, you're working on the kinetic chain and the kinematic sequence that's no matter what. And then the flip side, you're going to work on obviously your plio drills that are working on arm path

in sequence and pattern and efficiency of movement. But in someone that you're trying to enhance velocity with, you're also going to pick both physical therapy drills, making sure you're working on his ER, right, his capsule or ER, regaining some of that layback. And also working on drills with maybe overloaded implements that will lay his arm back because they're a little bit heavier, right? And obviously there's a way to do it and you have to be careful doing it because it's also going to tug on your labrum. So there's like other medical effects that you're trying to take into account of how aggressive you can or can't be with some of

these things. But essentially using a weighted ball program to gain layback. Right. and then you're going to use underloaded implements or lighter implements to enhance arm speed. And that's basically the scientific approach to gain range and then move your arm faster in that range. But it doesn't relate to holding a football. You're going to do it off of the football field. When we grab the football and we test retest on Friday every week on a day where it's a high intensity day and we've been prepped to test, then we want to see ticks up in velocity, ticks up in distance. And that's where you know you're affecting change on the football field, but you're creating change off of the football field.

And that's the key to generating velocity, generating motor learning, generating new movement patterns, understanding center of mass or basis support. All that stuff happens off the football field. And then it's exposed on the football field. And that's the same way, right? So better kinematic sequence, better total rotation arc, more extra rotation range. And then total arm speed. that's kind of how you enhance it obviously we have a system how we do it um i gave you the synopsis of it um but yeah i mean if that's a problem that's what you attack and obviously for anthony

not something we specifically attacked just part of think he's good i mean his art and he gained velocity and yardage just through a plio plan right but not directed around sure specifically trying to gain velocity kind of putting a bow on this Well, I'm just curious, you know, somebody who's done this for a little while and just looking at the changes in technology, the changes in practices and just how you do this, how you work on quarterbacks getting from point A to point B. Do you think we're at a place where we're going to continue to see what would have been previously thought of as unprecedented gains from guys because now they are, they're precedented now. Now it's just we can expect it. It's possible now because of the tools in place to see quarterbacks improve even from years one to three of the NFL were, to prospects to NFL players in ways that we probably wouldn't have thought possible a decade ago.

Yeah, I mean, I think so. I think there's still room there is, you know, because part of it's also, you know, through our approach and teaching and training, it also, you get an appreciation for evaluating as well and understanding like what certain athletes are capable of and being able to measure upside and seeing that, you know, that there's an athlete that may be under the rate. I mean, we see it all the time, right? Like guys like Mahomes and Allen who were essentially, nobody's a strong term,

but nobody really knew who Mahomes was coming out of high school. Overlux. I mean, the local area, right? Yeah, Josh Allen is a perfect example. He had to, like, beg people to go to college. So I think being able to identify and understand what's capable out of athletes, you know, and then also applying these things earlier in the process. Now, I have to be careful by saying that because, you know, Johnny QB dad over here is going to have

his five-year-old out there with a 19-pound ball trying to increase arm velocity. That is not how you do it. Just stick to tag and, and a wiffle ball at that age. But, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, you're able to take a more comprehensive approach earlier on with athletes. athletes, you know, the game of golf and baseball, they've kind of been doing this for quite some time. And there's probably some limitation where the arm's just going to explode because they can't take any more force. But I think there's still enough room in football. And, you know, with, it's a small world. You know, people talk.

But I think there's also, you know, it's kind of the old school way of doing things. And football is very a traditional sport in that aspect. So the new school guys are kind of making waves. and their approaches, we see it in just how teams communicate with us. There's some teams that are just like, yeah, come on, whatever you want, you know, come to practice, talk to our coaches, da-da-da, and there's other guys that we may never talk to ever, and that's fine.

We'll still work with their athletes. So yeah, but I think there's more that we will see. And the more that's, you know, I think there's three athletes that run to six foot at the combine this year, one under, and four of them that are under six one. And so that's a different type of dynamic player that you're allowing to participate in the position. So it's going to be exciting to see where it continues to go.

Just the idea that a team would look at somebody, and I'm very bullish on him. I'm very excited about him. But that a team would look at Anthony's kind of college resume, 13 starts, you know, some of the box score numbers and just say, top five pick, let's do it. I think that's encouraging. I think that's exciting. And you even talk to people that are as far as you can be on the other side of this when it's not about tools and it's not about. traits, guys in the analytics community that I've talked to where they look at the success stories that we've seen recently and even they're bullish on what he can potentially do.

And I think that is such an indication that we've seen kind of a changing of the guard, not just in terms of what we're looking for at the position, but in terms of how far a guy can go if he has the right collection of both physical traits and mental makeup. And I think that as we continue to see those success stories, the game becomes more and more exciting because that position is accessible from more and more people that inherently make the game more exciting because we're just dealing with a different sort of athlete and a different sort of fireworks show and that is good for everybody I think it's funny quarterback is a lot of time the one position on the field that that person that's the only position that they could play

that they'd have no business playing any other position on the field and and so that's why I think so unique about it because of the the skill sets required to you know you You're telling me Kirk Cousins is going to line up the defensive back. No, it's not happening, right? There's nothing else that guy's playing. I think he's amazing. That's what's cool with players like Anthony. There's like seven other positions he could play if he wanted to.

So, yeah, that's good stuff. It makes my Sunday is much more enjoyable as the position trends that direction. And I appreciate the work you guys are putting in to get us there. Tom, well, thank you very much for the time, guys. I learned a lot. I'm sure our listeners did as well. It's a fascinating subject. So thank you very much for spending it with us.

Thank you. Thank you. No problem. Joining us now, it is the athletic zone, Bruce Feldman, somebody I really wanted to have this discussion with because, Bruce, you've done a ton of work. Quarterback development in the quarterback space. You've watched a lot of these guys in college. So sincerely appreciate you joining us today. Oh, I'm looking forward to this.

Thanks. Okay. So out of curiosity, this is where I want to start. I want to go back to when some of these guys that we were discussing here, whether it's Jaywin Hertz, Josh Allen, when they were pre-draft prospect, when they were coming out of college. Not to put you on the spot here, but what did you think about their professional hopes and what they projected to be as college,

as NFL quarterback specifically? Well, I was dead wrong on Josh Allen. It was a couple of things. So his completion numbers were pretty modest, to put it best. He was in the mid-50s. And when Wyoming played Power 5 opposition, his numbers were not very good. And I think his junior year,

he actually had a handful of NFL guys on that offense. Now the senior year, not as much. But I, like a lot of my colleagues who cover college football, I think was pretty cynical when it comes to, ooh, scouts love this throw. Yes. There's definitely wow stuff on film. But I didn't think there was going to be enough consistency

and just, you know, he was going to be accurate enough to be a big, NFL starter. And into his rookie year, it was interesting because I've only done one NFL game as a sideline reporter. My crew did a Bill's Lions game, which while it was Josh Allen against Matthew Stafford, it was a terrible game. It was my crew. So it was deep into December.

And his best weapon at the time was a guy named Robert Foster. Oh, I remember. very you know like super fast former five star guy kind of struggled adapting to the offense and everything but he had speed and they had no running backs i mean they were um you know basically at that point day ball to his credit did a lot of really good work you know leaning on his legs i mean he's almost a tight end size guy and they were they were functional i got back from that trip just working you know in the meetings and around him and i remember i told Stu Mandel, the guy who was also very skeptical of Josh Allen. And I said, you know what? I think we might be wrong on this one because they really loved him. They talked him up so much in the meetings and privately and different things. And we had, you know, day ball was really great with us because my analyst and the crew was

Brady Quinn who'd been with him multiple stops and he knows double really well. And it was interesting to hear how they talked about him. And so it's been interesting to see just what he's become in the NFL. Because I don't know of anybody who covers college football who saw that coming. And what about Jay one Hertz? Which I think for you is particularly interesting because you had a lot of interaction with Jaywin Hertz. You were doing a lot of his games. You guys had a lot of conversations.

So what did you think as somebody who was kind of tab to as a day two pick and would be a project or some sort of long-term projection in the NFL, no matter where he went? What did you think about him as kind of a pre-draft outlook? He was very interesting to me because I covered him a little out Alabama, but actually a lot at Oklahoma and did a bunch of his games. And so on Tuesdays, sometimes they would give me Jalen Hertz and we talk. And he was super smart. And he came across as much, much more mature than the average 20 year old, which I think is what he was at the time. And so, you know, he was really deep. And I knew, you know, Coach's kid.

And like I think that one of the interesting things in looking back, because I've had conversations with some people who were around him at Alabama who coached him was he was almost the opposite side of the coin from Tua in terms of Tua might not have known what was going on and what he was supposed to do with the ball, but he would make a trigger and it would jump out of his hand and get there. Whereas Jalen might have known where he was supposed to go with the ball, but he would hold it and just kind of it was a little bit hesitant. not because he didn't know what to do with it. It was just a little, it just didn't flow as easily at that point. Now, he made a ton of plays and he was a great leader for them. But then he gets to Oklahoma, and obviously he was a really good fit with what Lincoln, Riley was going to ask him to do. So you saw a lot of really good things in him.

What he would, you know, in our conversations, you know, it was almost like there was questions that I might ask, and then he might offer some other stuff to go as if he'd say, I can see you're not thinking about this part. Let me point out to you. And it would be like, you know, Kyler and without him saying it directly as this, Kyler and Baker Mayfield had a year behind the scenes to trance, pick up an offense, to get to know their teammates.

I didn't have any of that. He didn't say it as bluntly as that. He just kind of put it in front of me. He was like, hey, why don't you think about this? And so I was a, you know, I don't know, say all the way, a believer in him. If you told me he was going to be a mid-first-round pick, I'd be like, yeah. I mean, he's physically, he's smart, he's super strong, he's athletic.

I don't know. Is he going to be accurate enough to be an elite quarterback? We'll see. I don't know. I was, you know, I knew he had all the intangibles, but what's been fun to see is, again, and I think this is a little bit, it's not dayball, but what he got with a place where they decided, you know what, we're going to major in what he's really comfortable in and he's really good at. And he has worked himself into being an elite quarterback and, you know,

love watching the Eagles. I root for them, you know, because of some of the people I know who are now on that team and having covered them. And he's certainly one of them. You know, I just think he was a very misunderstood guy. And so there was a time when he was a counselor at the elite 11 and he was there with two. It was right, you know, it was right after the, the, they won the national title. And even though, I mean, there may be a year difference in age, you know, like he, the way he spoke to people was just so, you know, like there was a lot of wisdom in him. It's just not a term that I feel like I would use to describe a lot of players that I cover, not because they're not smart. They're just young. And he was different. So, um, did I think he was going to,

lead a team to a Super Bowl within a couple of years? No. But I'm not shocked that he's turned out to be a really, really good quarterback and a guy people have a ton of respect for. I think the description that you used in a piece that you wrote about Jaylen earlier this year is that some guys, when they're a little bit more mature in college, they're 21 going on 25. You can see that. He was 25 going on Nick Saban in terms of some of the wisdom and the outlook that he had, which I thought was a very good way of putting it. So that misunderstanding maybe of what Jaylen Hertz was, I want to get into some broader maybe misunderstandings that we've had about some of these guys, maybe what we missed as part of the process, whether it was these guys as college players or even in their first couple years

in the NFL that could get us in a window into what is now possible. So as you look at Josh Allen, Jalen Hurts, some of these other guys that have gotten better at the position and have kind of risen to this borderline elite level but hadn't been there the whole time. What sort of commonalities have you started to pick out? And what do you think that can tell us about some other guys that might beyond a similar trajectory. I think that it's not a cookie cutter deal, right? I've been so impressed by what Dayball did, even with the Giants this year with Daniel Jones.

And I think it's something like, I don't know how flexible. And I'm not saying they were totally inflexible. You cover the NFL much more than I do. And I'm covering it almost backwards because I covered into the draft and keep up on who these guys. war that I covered, but I just feel like, you know, I go back to, I grew up a Steelers fan a long, long time ago, and I remembered, I didn't, I was as a little kid, so it's not like I knew the

inner workings of how the Steelers operated, but I remember hearing these NFL films sound bites from Terry Bradshaw talking about Chuck Knoll and how Chuck, Terry Bradshaw would talk about him and, you know, as to say, you know, if you just pat me on the butt one time, you know, I'll lift the world for you kind of thing. And I think a lot of times, maybe it was old school coaching that was just like, hey, this is going to be my way. Can you conform to it? And I think somewhere along the way, you know, certainly with Bill Walsh and the West Coast

offense, certainly was a great fit for Joe Montana. You'd see some of that. And I think you definitely see it with Andy Reed, even though Andy Reid's an older guy, what he's able to do to get his players to be at their best. I think that is something that kind of was a change. Like when Patrick Mahomes came in, I mean, he went into the perfect situation with the perfect coach, and he's bringing a lot with him.

And I think that that was an eye-opener for a lot of people in the NFL, because I just think before it was like, okay, this guy's not quite what we thought, or he can't learn it, or he's this, or he's that, as opposed to what can we do to make it work? You know, and there's so many, the one commonality I see with a lot of guys who are thriving now, and most of them are under 30, is the coaches are allowing them to major in what they're really, really good at,

as opposed to know that's a college thing or whatever. You know, I mean, I just think to try to have all these guys try to play quarterback like Tom Brady does or did in the early days of the Patriots, I think was setting a lot of guys up to fail who shouldn't fail, right? And so it's a hard equation for a lot of teams because I think they're spending all these money on coaches and there's a certain system.

And then if a guy gets hurt, then what do you do? But I think that's the biggest difference is you're seeing teams really buy in and say, okay, what can we do to give this? this guy the best chance to flourish whether and that's why I can't want you to watch the Colts this year yeah what kind of super freak athlete they've got and they just drafted and I know that the head coach is really good at whether it's Justin Herbert in San Diego if you're LA or wherever the charge of war that year or um you know this you know the last past time with with Jalen I know

he's really good with with playing to the strengths of his guy if we're trying to to project forward to what the end result is. Jalen Hertz getting this type of contract, Josh Allen becoming like an MVP level quarterback. That's kind of like the finishing point of the development. I think more coaches around the league are helping their quarterbacks in the early stages of the development in two different ways. One, it's having them incorporate college concepts just to make them comfortable in year one, year two before you've mastered everything.

And we've had examples of that going back to RG3 with Kyle Shanahan, right? Like there's this new school of coaches being willing to do that. what Joe Burrow did with his first season in his first season in Cincinnati and some of the stuff they allowed him to lean on. And we've seen that in so many different ways with the Ravens built around Lamar Jackson. I think so many coaches around the league now are asking, what can my guy do well, not what can't he do well? And I think that early on that allows these teams to kind of build these hyper-specific offenses around their strengths and kind of gives them like an intermediate period on the way to becoming the quarterbacks that they hopefully will become. And I think that's been a huge part of it. But I also think that that intermediate stage, there's a different type of quarterback that's being deployed now.

And that type of quarterback's athleticism also allows them to kind of navigate that period. If you can do stuff on the ground with your legs, if you can scramble, if you can kind of solve these problems in different ways, then that helps kind of stage one of 10 in what your development is going to become. So I think the types of athletes being deployed and the plans for those athletes are different than they've probably ever been. And that's why I think that if you're looking at a Josh Allen, a Jaywin-Hertz, maybe eventually in Anthony Richardson, it's not going to be maybe one or two isolated cases of these kind of non-traditional guys improving in ways that we've never seen before because I think they're just more factors lining up in their favor than we've ever seen. I would agree. There's two things that when you were talking, I feel like maybe I'm wrong, but I thought you were a Bears fan or you grew up in Chicago. So I know there's some kind of thing, right? Yes.

You have one of these guys who is an ultra elite athlete who has, like, I'm interested to see what happens. I did a bunch of Ohio State games when Justin Fields was there. And he is, I mean, I don't know, Lamar is a phenomenal runner. I'm trying to think of anybody I've seen who is like a high level college quarterback who can run any better than him. I'm going to take Cam Newton away because he's, you know, he's enormous athlete. but in the last, you know, eight years, I mean, he's really fast. Like, there are certain guys, and I don't know what that threshold is who can outrun NFL linebackers.

Like, this is one who can. Like, back when Tebow was coming out, that was one who couldn't. I mean, he couldn't outrun defensive ends, so the stuff he could do in college and get away with, and that was his security blanket. That turned out, that, you know, fizzled out. Now it is, you know, Justin Fields, he can outrun almost everybody on the field. probably. And I think what they do with him will be, will be interesting. But the backside of that for me is going to be,

you have a quarterback like Hendon Hooker who really got Tennessee football out of a decade-long ditch. And he did it by playing this version of the Baylor offense, which had totally non-traditional routes and concepts that were very different. And so we've seen a bunch of players who came out of that system bust in the NFL. Corey Coleman receiver who tore up the Big 12. He just wasn't polished enough as a receiver by the time. I think the Browns drafted him and it didn't work out. But now I think like Hendon Hooker coming off injury is going to have, because he's coming

off injury, we'll have that year or so to acclimate. I think he's smart enough because he came from a different system before he got to Tennessee. But I think the back to the, why I call it the backside of this is, If he goes somewhere and it won't happen, I don't think he'll have a chance to prove whether he can really flourish in the NFL by the time the next draft comes around because there's a bigger quarterback with an even bigger arm coming out of Tennessee next year in Joe Milton, who did not do well at Michigan, but has a chance to, you know, a second act at Tennessee this year where he has people really excited. And he has somewhat in the realm of Josh Allen kind of tools. He's about the same size. His arm is of that caliber. The accuracy is some concern.

But then, like I said, you're getting now to the point where it's like, okay, how do we cater to this guy because he's not Tom Brady? Because, you know, he's not out of that 1980s, 90s mold of the quarterback who is not cookie cutter. but they came up a certain way and they weren't, beating you with their legs was not their first option. It wasn't even their third option. I think the thing is with all of these guys, it's understanding that eventually they're going to have to transcend that one thing they do really well. They're going to have to step outside of that eventually.

It's kind of embracing what they do maybe in the first two, three years of their career, but understanding that it's on the way to being a more complete quarterback. back. And so I think the biggest question with that is the makeup that a lot of these guys have. And if they're willing to kind of push through to that second stage. And one of the things that I was really intrigued by and what you were writing about J.1 Hertz is that throughout every stage of his NFL or his college career, he really had like a very quiet confidence about him. But it came with, I think, what maybe was the strength coach at Oklahoma described as like a certain vulnerability as well. Maybe it was like Mike Loxi. Somebody somebody described it that way where he said, he was confident, but he was also vulnerable to kind of take coaching. So when we're kind of looking at the physical aspect of a lot of these success stories, I think that there's a certain level of athleticism guys need to hit in order to kind of build on and develop in the way that we want to. But it also seems like there's an intangible kind of emotional aspect to this as well,

where they have to be confident enough to kind of push through things, but humble enough to kind of take coaching and work on the things they need to improve on. And that's what I was so, I thought was so notable. and the stuff that you wrote about J-1 Hertz, but also I remember going to Buffalo in 2019 and talking to Josh Allen about some of this stuff. And he was just so realistic about where he was and where he needed to get better. And there was this kind of thing of, I believe I'm going to get where I want to go, but I understand that I'm very far away from that right now. And that combination of like kind of dedication and confidence combined with this humility and realism about and realistic kind of viewpoint about who you are, I don't know if we can ever figure out who has that and who doesn't, but it almost feels like it'll be a non-negotiable aspect to this process.

And it's a hard thing to pick up exactly what it is right away because I think for most of us who cover them, we're not of that, you know, kind of thing. Like I had these, you know, like this stuff with Jalen Hertz, it's almost like, you remember that scene from the usual suspects when Chas Palman Terry kind of like, all of a sudden, everything gets revealed and Kevin Spacey's character starts walking. You know, at one point, one of the last questions I think I probably had asked, hurts when he was at Oklahoma. I wasn't even a question. I think it was just a comment. I was like, I feel like you have a really good book in you someday.

He just laughed and he kind of was like, yeah, I think I probably do. Or kind of, and he knew the roadmap better than anybody else, including probably a lot of coaches who were like, saw him to some degree as a means to an end because, oh yeah, I've seen running quarterbacks or I've seen a guy who is like, you know, strong enough where he played a little like an hback, but he had more speed and just, you know, he's just a fascinating person to to kind of be around because some of these guys are a lot sharper than everybody around them. And I think they know it. And I think they're mindful of how it comes out. You know, like I was fortunate enough in 2019 to be around LSU and Joe Burrow the last

half of that year on their title run. And so I was in a lot of their meetings and their walkthroughs and I would see how the team took on his personality. And I mean, they just absolutely smashed Georgia. And it was a loaded Georgia team on defense with athletes. And they blew them out. Basically, it was a de facto home game. And the way LSU was coming into that. game like an hour before kickoff was exactly exactly the the way they carry themselves at Wednesday practice. You'd see him in walkthroughs and it was just like, you know, he's as close. And Ogeron, the head coach at that time told me, you know, like a coach on the field, like that turn gets thrown around. There's not been one like that. I mean, not to that degree.

And he's a coach's kid and he grew up around it. And he knew that I'm getting a second chance that I didn't think I was going to get because Ohio State wasn't going to play me because they could find better and I didn't think somebody was going to believe in me at this stage. And it was like perfect timing because he got with some guys who were, you know, Justin Jefferson, only the people in LSU knew how special he was. Like the recruiting guys didn't see it. And so you'd see all these things kind of come together. But at the same time, what you had and you used the thing with Josh Allen, who obviously was,

you know, had to go to junior college because he was under, you know, nobody wanted him. And you see some of it. And even like, you know, Aaron Rogers, I mean, Butte College, they, you know, they were looking at his tight end and not him. And so even where, you know, the version we see of Aaron Rogers on Pat McAfee's show is probably, in a lot of ways, is dramatically different from the guy 20 years ago who was, you know, had just been 5-11 and he was, you know, late growth. And they were trying to do this different stuff with him.

and everybody was talking, you know, like about, he was in the PAC 12, the pack 10 the same time as Matt Leiner was tearing it up at USC, you know, and like he completes 23 in a row in the Coliseum and they still lose, but, you know, just barely. And I just think the humility and the chip on their shoulder and all those things that they bring with them, like Tom Brady has that, right? Tom Brady wasn't a great quarterback. He didn't have a great college career, right? And so he was, you know, famously the, the 199th pick. And so I think the thing you're talking about, it may materialize. I think there's very few guys who had feel like they had everything and it didn't undo them, right?

Like John Elway, you know, was great at everything and everybody wanted him and, you know, and Peyton Manning, even if he wasn't a, you know, a fat,

you know, didn't move great. And, you know, like I don't know what the thing he was, working against. But most of these guys to play that position, I feel like there's something where it's the combination of, yeah, people doubt me to, you know, whatever, where it's manufactured to where it's actually real. And I think there is a real part of it. If it was totally manufactured,

I don't think, I think they wouldn't be able to use it the way they can. I also think that it was totally manufactured, you'd run out eventually. Like, if that's actually how you were wired, I think that it's hard for that to be a renewable resource. And one of the things that you said about Jaywin Hertz and wrote about him earlier this year that I thought was so interesting, is that some people who have been around him think that a lot of it is not extrinsic. It's just intrinsic. He's very into the process of getting better. And if you talk to Josh Allen, it's not as much like, fuck you to the people who said I couldn't do it. It's I'm actually interested in this. Like this process of me developing these skills. And when he was talking to me about, he was talking

about golf and how when you play golf, you kind of learn how to shape these different shots and you understand you don't need to swing as hard and you kind of learn what goes into the mechanics of it and that leads to improvement. And when he was talking about certain throws he would make in certain areas of the field, there was that kind of genuine joy that he seemed to derive from figuring that out. And Jaylen Hertz seems to be the same sort of guy where there's something about just the process of self-improvement that they really seem to enjoy. And I think that discipline that you can bring to the work to the craft every single day, that is renewable because. that's not something that you have to pull from somewhere else. And again, that's going to be hard for a GM to figure out in some sort of pre-draft meeting with these guys. But if we're trying to reverse engineer some of this stuff, it feels like that specific trait is something you're going to need if you have to go pretty far from point A to point B in your development story.

Yeah. And I think there's something to be said for the guys who've always like, and I hesitate to bring up this quarterback's name just because it's somebody who didn't work out. But, like, I remember having this conversation with a private quarterback coach this year. And it was about the guy who has everything, like has an elite offensive line, has like the Ohio State caliber receivers. And he's always bringing an army with him. And yeah, there's something to be said for the guy who can lead that. But at the same time, you know, some of the guys were talking about, certainly Josh Allen fits in that category.

and it's the ones where, okay, he's always had the deepest, you know, arsenal with him or whatever. And I think that's the part where you are, you know, the resourcefulness, like Dill, Trentilfries used to call it like the figured outness, you know, like who has that trait and that quality. And I just think that, you know, you look back at some of the guys who, who, you go, why didn't that guy make it? it because I thought, you know, whatever.

And sometimes it's that quality of just like, okay, like, you know, what's my second act going to be? How am I going to pick it up? And those are the guys who I feel like find a way, right? You know, like I remember doing a game. It was a Texas tech game when Mahomes was there. And they were playing Kansas. Kansas was horrific. It was an 11 a.m. kick.

It was like driving into a doctor's office. And so I'm a silent reporter. I'm thinking Kansas is like has a chance to win this game. And I'm waiting for Cliff Kingsbury to bench Patrick Mahomes and put in Davis Webb. Davis Webb is like the most talented backup quarterback in the country at that time. And he had been the starter. And he's a guy that Cliff thought, I think he's going to be a top 10 pick someday. He's super smart.

He's got an NFL. He's quarterback coach now. Now he's a quarterback coach. You know, Josh Allen's backup for a while. while. Like, and for some reason, Cliff did not make that move. You know, he kept, he kept Patrick in. They hung on to win the game. If it was anybody else, they'd probably lose. And then I, you know, I think that some, something to that is, hey, I see something in this guy. I want, I, I don't want, and again, I've, I've never had this, now he's out in L.A. again at USC. Maybe I'll,

I'll bring it up or whatever. But like, I don't know what his rationale was because almost anybody else I think would have gone to the other quarterback. Like at that point, nobody else outside of maybe Cliff's Kingsbury thought Patrick Mahomes were going to be a first round pick. I mean,

you know, like back then, I think he knew he had a lot of talent. But it's just, I think the part of it is it's such a intangibles position that even if you have all the physical traits, it's that where it's such a, in exact science that I think even the experts get confused all the time and they miss because

it's easy to miss. And I think because you think this one great, you know, this guy has everything, but if he's on a team, usually these teams are so loaded that you can get a false read on it. And so, you know, again, I'm not really sure what the exact takeaway on that. But I just think that it's the resourcefulness, that sometimes you're going to, you know, it's a position where you are going to get knocked down. It's a position where, like, I went, I was at the elite 11 this year. It's in Southern California. And there's only so much you can tell in shorts and a T-shirt. And so my colleague at Fox, Chris Peterson, who's now, you know, former great Boise State and Washington coach, I remember we both had the same reaction. There was a kid who had one of the

strongest arms there was one of the highest rated kids. And he threw a pick in a, uh, seven on seven game. And we both were like, okay, what now? This is the best window you're going to get. And the kid did not have a poker face and you could see him kind of reeling. And that's the stuff. That doesn't mean because he kind of, I don't want to say he went in the tank, but he kind of struggled after that.

Oh, I think that kid should go from a five star to a three star. I mean, who knows? They're still developing. They're still, you know, they're 17 years old. I just think a lot of times you just got to watch and play out. And maybe maybe the players. going to thrive when you think they're going to tuck it away or maybe they're going to sink when everything seems like they don't have the answers. And that's a mindset thing, but I also think

that extends to the physical part of things as well. How resourceful are you as an athlete? And that's what we're seeing at the position where these guys who can make things, make plays happen as things break down that are a little bit more flexible as throwers. You wrote a piece about some of the technology and some of the stuff that Jordan Palmer was using with guys like Josh Allen and Joe Burrow like two years ago in 2021. And Jordan had a quote in that story that I think you can think about in a couple different levels. He said, the better the athlete, the better the compensator, right? And I think that we see that now. And he was talking about literally like core strength compensation. But I also think that you can extend that to the better the athlete, the better you can

compensate for shortcomings in your game or compensate for shortcomings in whatever the play design gave you before the snap even happened. So I think that we're seeing that. It's the resourcefulness, not only on the mental side of it, we're like, all right, what happens when something breaks down, but what happens when something breaks down on the physical side of it as well? So I think that the really, really good athletes kind of have more answers to a lot of these questions that are presented to them. And they're also really good in different ways than probably most of us ever thought mattered. Yes. Right. This is a real time kind of example.

We were talking about, you know, I coach my kid in football and we're like, when we were in on a road. trip we visited some coach I know and he was had them had him and some of this junior high kids working out with a medicine mall what they did and I was like now I got to go buy one of these or what and and I was explained to her like Patrick Mahomes one of the greatest strength he has as an athlete is incredible core strength and it's because this specific trainer bobby strupe in texas we'd been working with forever they developed something where you know a lot of of times, you know, like as an older sports writer, but I think even, you're an announcer, you tend to think of, oh, he has a strong arm. Well, it's not necessarily the arm that's always the

strongest, that makes the ball go that far, right? And so I think it's an oversimplification, but there are certain things that we're finding out or that other, you know, experts have known about for a little while that really matter, that I think quite honestly, a lot of us didn't pay that much mind to 10 years ago. And that's the fascinating part. I think as the science kind of goes and you're just looking at, well, he throws it this way and it doesn't look right.

Okay, well, maybe we thought it didn't look right 20 years ago, but maybe it actually does now. You know, I see we were somewhere on the road. I remember watching a kid throw this like a bunch of kids were swimming in the pool and I watched this one kid throw and you'd see front side close where it's like he's even in the pool And it's not like used to be where your, you know, your front side, your hand was guiding it or it was almost down by your hip. And you're seeing things now that high school kids have been taught and they're picking up on it.

It's not to say that they're all going to be having a chance to play in the NFL. But I think there's a lot of things that have now, in terms of biomechanics, have changed how people look at the position too. I also feel like with a lot of the improvements in the science and the way that we study these things, even if it's become more. scientific, it's become less rigid, if that makes sense. And I think that's also serving a lot of these athletes, because I think that some of these guys who came from, you know, a lot of the quarterback schooling and like the overall process that you wrote about in your book 10 years ago, I think a lot of those teachings came with a certain level of rigidity over that span. And I think that's kind of going away now as we see the type of athletes change, where again,

there's a level of flexibility in the ways that you're allowed to solve problems at the position. And I think now that's even trickling down to how these private quarterbacks, coaches are teaching these guys where I don't think that was probably the case 10 years ago. No. And I think some of that is the baseball backgrounds where it's like, you know, different arm slots. Was he a middle infielder? There's a quarterback who's committed to Alabama now, Julianne. I remember watching him, you know, a couple of weeks ago at this quarterback camp where it was like he looked like a middle infielder slinging it around. And I say that in a good way. And I think that that's really different from how it was looked at, not that.

long ago because you could sometimes see how a guy throws and it may be a wind up. I know that that's something he picked up from baseball and that wasn't necessarily a good thing because you don't want, you know, obviously a slow release or different things of that nature where they have to try to coach it out of them because I think at times it is really hard to undo certain things and, you know, this goes back to the Tom House days of trying to not try to reteach Tim Tebow how to throw a football, but I think what you can do in short in T-shirts is much different than what happens

when there's 300-pounders chasing you and do those things revert back. And I think that's why it's hard to see, okay, how much can, some guys can improve a lot. And Josh Allen is certainly one of them. And I think Jalen Hertz is certainly one of them. Some other guys, you wonder, okay, this hasn't worked out great.

what's, you know, what's my plan B? Not meaning what's my plan B am I going to go, go try to play pro baseball now because I got drafted? It's just like, okay, how do I keep developing? Because, I mean, in the NFL, I think, you know, I heard this just recently about, you know, we were talking about NFL receivers who maybe didn't have the refinement because the offensive they came from.

It's like, it's hard to learn a lot of stuff that you did not know coming out because, like, their job is to get you ready for games, not to get not to not to completely overhaul what you didn't know so if we're putting a bow on this i think some of the non-negotiable stuff that coming out of this conversation you need a certain level of just kind of dedication discipline to understanding where your shortcomings are and how to improve them like we saw that with jalen hurts we saw that with josh allen there's like an intelligence there's an emotional intelligence there's a humility that kind of comes with that there's a certain level of athleticism that you need to hit to kind of create that flexibility to improve.

Like, you just need to be a certain level of athlete. And I think that's becoming a non-negotiable aspect of the position, period. But I think if you look at Josh Allen, J-1 Hertz specifically, I mean, these are two guys that are just off the charts in terms of what kind of athlete they are. Josh Allen's one of the best athletes to play the position we've ever seen. And J-1-Hertz is the guys, everything single, every single thing we hear about him as a tester and a weightlifter and everything else. Like, he is an exceptional athlete.

So kind of being able to graft these ideas and these improvement plans onto that level of athlete becomes really, really important. And then what else would you say outside of those two aspects of kind of are the non-negotiable parts of this? You know, in terms of the non-negotiable, I just think it is the mindset of I didn't, you know, they're constantly developing. I suspect Jalen Hertz, whatever, it's going to be 4.0 now is going to look a lot different than the one from 2021. one, you know, like as, because I think now you're growing into, okay, now this is what defense they're going to try to do to me. This is how I think that that's the part that we're seeing guys in their mid-20s, you know, now be the best quarterbacks in football. That's been a, you know, like that generation before them, you can go back to like, you know, the Brett Farreveeer of the 90s,

most of the best quarterbacks always felt like they were in their 30s, right? It's just like a position that it was like, you're not playing for a while. And then once you are, it takes you a while to get your feet set where these guys, like you said earlier, were able to showcase what they could do and play off it. And there's just not that many guys. I mean, Lamar Jackson was doing amazing things when he was like 22 years old in the NFL. I think people forget how young he was and how young he still is, right? And it's almost like, well, he's not this guy. I was like, he's basically putting on that offense on his shoulders and everybody knows it, you know, kind of thing.

And I think so the thing that comes with that to me is an incredible amount of mental toughness. Because that position, you are just like, nobody thinks you're going to make it through the year, right? And whether you're Jalen Hurts size or Kyler Murray's size, like, that's the thing that I think is, is we can't put the piece on. Like Ben Rothelisberger is bigger than most tight ends. And Ben Rothelisberger took a beating, right? And so, and maybe when you play the way they play might mean less shots a little bit. But I just think the mental and physical toughness, I think that's the part that, you know, is the biggest non-negotiable.

I don't know how you can play in this way. And you can say like 20 years ago, the game was. was was more cutthroat and nasty. But I think at the same time, there's a lot of other things that make it mentally, you know, mentally draining because there are so many things that are on you and like, you know, there's less continuity with teams and different things are just,

there's just a lot of other pieces to it. And that's why I think, you know, it goes into what you said about the humility. I mean, I think that is like the overlooked aspect, because so much of that position is like an it factor guy, but there's something that's like almost at odds with it because you're trying not to show weakness, but you are as I think it was Benny Wiley,

was the guy who told me about Jalen, was like, you're trying not to show weakness, but it's okay to show vulnerability. You know, like there's an interesting juxtaposition between those two things. And I think to do all that, it takes an incredible amount of mental strength to have that kind of security in this day and age to not get sucked into, oh, what's what's

Instagram or my Twitter going to say? Yeah, the balance of that. And the quote is really good. He said, while he talked about J. Juan Hurd said he carried himself differently, not with arrogance at all, but with supreme confidence. And he was also vulnerable at the same time. When you have a do with that kind of confidence, that's successful, but also that vulnerable

to take your coaching and take your words where you're trying to build this guy up, that's rare. And I think that these cases are rare for that reason because the formula, the recipe whatever, to kind of go from an average quarterback, a below average quarterback to one of the guys that's the best in the league, an MVP level player, it just takes a rare combination of traits to get there. But we've seen it a couple different times over the last few years. And the Colts are hoping that we're going to see it again with the guy like Anthony Richardson. The Bears are hoping that we're going to see it again with a guy like Justin Field. So now we'll get those answers. Bruce Feldman sincerely appreciate the time.

You have a fantastic perspective on all of this, having watched these guys in college, having studied the position in ways a few other people have, literally wrote a book on the process of quarterback development and the business that comes with it about 10 years ago, a book that I revisit very often. So thank you very much for the time, my friends. Always get a chat with you.

Thanks, Robert. All right, guys, that's all we got. Thank you so much to Tom. Thank you to Will. Thank you to Bruce. Again, a dense conversation, but one that I think is really helpful, If we're going to talk about the improvements these guys make on Sundays and how that impacts the sport, how the rise of a guy like J-1 Hertz, how the improvement of guy like Josh Allen shapes the NFL, I think it's important to try to dig into what happens in July, what happens in June, what are the steps that kind of take these guys from point A to point B.

And I thought that all three of our guests today did a great job in illustrating that for us. I sincerely appreciate the time and the insight from all of them. This is running on Wednesday. day tomorrow, we're going to have a conversation with Sam Schwarzstein from Amazon, who's been on the show before, kind of runs analytics over there with the Amazon broadcasts. We're going to talk about where analytics in the NFL is and go beyond some of the fork-down decision-making conversations and just the way that those departments within teams have been portrayed in terms of what they do and try to dig into what they're actually doing,

what they're actually chasing. I had some conversations with people within buildings to try to get ready for this show. We want to try to give you guys some insight into what is actually happening with analytics departments and the state of analytics in the NFL. So very excited about that show with Sam. We will be back tomorrow to dig into that. In the meantime, really appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you soon. This was The Athletic Football Show.