The QB: The Making of Modern Quarterbacks

by Feldman, Bruce

  “It immediately transferred with the accuracy, footwork, and focus,” she said. “How many backhands and volleys did he have to put into the back corner? The amount of time they spent in shot-making and training for pinpoint accuracy is incredible. And I’m so thankful for that.”

  Tom House, the biomechanics whiz, agreed with Lippincott’s take. He has his own example of a budding-tennis-star-turned-QB—his own first football protégé, Drew Brees. The New Orleans Saints star used to beat Andy Roddick when they were tykes in the Texas tennis youth scene.

  “The best carryover from tennis for quarterbacks is the footwork and the durability of the shoulder capsule,” House said. “The footwork for a tennis player with angles, distance, and time translates really well for a quarterback.”

  Rosen laughed about the irony. Every tennis coach he’d ever gone to told him he had terrible feet and how much they needed to quicken him up. Then again, that’s when he was being compared to all these 5′3″, 110-pound kids he towered over. “So, all of a sudden, I come to football, and everyone’s going, ‘Aw, you have amazing feet. You can set up. You can re-set. You can move in the pocket so well.’ It definitely carried over, because tennis is all footwork.”

  The psychological grind from competitive tennis also can prove quite an asset, too, House said. “It’s center stage, like a golfer or a pitcher or a quarterback, where the last two are team sports, but they’re individually based. When you screw up, there’s no place to hide, so you have to deal with it. And the kids who learn to ‘fail fast forward,’ they get over the fact that failing is a bad thing. Failing can actually be a good thing. You learn as much or more from failing as you do from winning.”

  However, growing up in the culture of such an individually based sport can create its own challenges in the transition. “In tennis you have to be extremely self-centered,” Lippincott said, adding that kids like Josh get accustomed to “the lonely life of tennis and traveling on planes with his mother,” whereas in football it’s a culture of “bro love and so many people telling you you’re great.”

  Those factors can create a pretty combustible mix. After a strong debut season with the Bosco varsity, Rosen, then a sophomore, was recruited by some older teammates to join the Snoop Dogg All-Stars off-season 7-on-7 team. His second tournament with the squad ended with the Snoop team getting disqualified in Vegas after a bench-clearing brawl. “Usually coaches and parents would be there to try to break up the fight,” Rosen said, “but in this one, they were coming in swinging.” Rosen’s team won every other tournament they entered.

  “It was a very interesting experience,” he said. “I saw a different side of football and learned how to relate to a lot more people. I definitely gained more cockiness after I hung around all the Snoop Dogg All-Star kids. I learned how to play with their sense of swagger. I think what people may see as arrogance is really me just having fun with the game. A lot of what ruined tennis was, I took it way too seriously, and I took myself way too seriously. All my friends were my enemies [on the court].”

  To some coaches, the big concern—perhaps the only real concern—surrounding Rosen was his “DQ.” Before his junior year of high school, he went to football camp at Stanford, which had been his dream school. He wowed the Cardinal coaching staff with his ability to throw the deep ball. One coach thought Rosen threw it better than any high school kid he’d ever seen. They liked that he was football smart, too, but his personality rubbed them the wrong way.

  Would he fit in with the rest of the team? Could he one day lead the program? Word was, Cardinal head coach David Shaw had his doubts. And, for as much as Rosen wanted a scholarship offer, it never came from Stanford.

  “I’m too confident for my own good at times,” Rosen said. “Sometimes I do come off as arrogant in interviews or whatever, but I feel like that’s also part of what makes my play what it is.”

  Rosen admitted that he’s learned plenty about sharpening his psyche from his tennis roots. His self-talk, which sometimes showed up in his quotes, sounded straight out of Dilfer graduate-level curriculum, only it had gone beyond the realm of such self-talk: “I am confident when I get on the field that a defense cannot beat me, that I am going to beat them with my mind. They cannot run the right play. They will not be able to stop our offense, because the second you start to doubt yourself is the second a defense starts to win. I definitely use it to my advantage. In tennis, I serve and volley every single play, because I feel like in any match that I lose, the opponent didn’t win it. I always lose it, because I feel like it’s my game to lose.”

  What exactly happened between Rosen—an A student and consensus number-one-ranked QB—and Stanford took on a life of its own in recruiting circles, as message-board fodder often does. His mom rolled her eyes at some of the wild speculation that she’d heard and read. She admitted, though, that Josh needed to be more humble and more careful with his words.

  “Let’s just say he has too much confidence,” she said. “He has a big personality. It’s overwhelming at times. He’s very smart and can think real fast. Sometimes, he forgets that all these people are around. His heart is in the right place; he just gets carried away.”

  A few minutes before the Elite 11’s second tryout in Southern California began, it sounded as if Josh Rosen had one of those moments: “I’d like to try to get the Elite 11 invite,” he said, just as the other QBs began to stretch. “I think I’d have to mess up pretty badly for that not to happen.”

  Weeks later, when asked about his brash-sounding quote, Rosen didn’t seem fazed by his no-filter response.

  “Yeah, I probably said something dumb like that,” he said with a chuckle.

  His competition that day included Brady White, Ricky Town, Travis Waller, and Blake Barnett. In the stands, Rosen’s mom sat next to Town’s dad, watching all the action on an eighty-degree day. Rosen, like the rest of the quarterbacks, struggled early, getting his timing with the random receivers he was throwing to. However, by the middle of the workout, his arm—and his nimble footwork—had the coaches gushing.

  “He throws it better than any kid we’ve seen in two years,” Roth said.

  The coaches selected him as the MVP of the event and invited him to the Elite 11—even though Trent Dilfer wasn’t in attendance to give his seal of approval.

  “I think his physical tools are perfect,” Roth told me days after the event. “When I hear dudes skeptical of his physical tools, I think, ‘God, do I know what I’m talking about?’ I think his physical tools are awesome. I don’t know what Troy Aikman looked like in high school, but I bet this is what he looked like. The ball rips out of his hand. He’s got a frame. On tape, he’s athletic.

  “You are gonna have to put him in conflict situations to see who he is. We didn’t do that. But what we did do is, we got to know his personality. I don’t think he’s trying to be ‘the number one quarterback in America.’ That’s why I like him. I don’t think he’s trying to be anything. I don’t think he knows better. He’s just a kid from Manhattan Beach. Really smart parents. Got some cash. Knows he’s good. Likes to compete. That’s all I got. I can’t wait to put him through a two-minute drill and freak out on this kid. Just to see what happens when someone’s breathing down on his neck. Can’t wait to see how serious he takes it. If he’s truly a great one, there are no other choices. You’re either competing, or you’re not.”

  The skepticism about whether Rosen really loved football surprised Roth after watching the QB work out and interact with the other players. “I liked his personality,” Roth said. “I think he’s got Dude Qualities to him, but I think he needs someone to develop him. But, if that’s the case [that he doesn’t truly love the game], then he won’t make it. You have to be a football junkie. At some other positions you can get by. Maybe this goes back to that California thing, like how many of these guys really need it?”

  Rosen’s reaction to the skepticism about whether he loved football: “I think that’s a weird thing to say.


  “I went from a sport that I quit because I didn’t love it, and I learned a lesson, because I did not like the sport, and that’s what ruined it for me. Why would I go to another sport that, deep down, I also don’t like? Maybe I’m not thrilled to go to practice every day, but I love the sport of football. I love winning, and I love putting massive, obnoxiously large state rings on my finger.”

  He said he took pride in helping put his high school, a longtime underdog in its league, over the top to win a championship. After he announced that he would be staying in Southern California to attend UCLA, he said he hoped he could do the same for the Bruins.

  • • •

  WHITFIELD, LIKE DILFER, MISSED seeing Rosen’s showing that earned him the golden ticket. Whitfield had to stay down in San Diego, where a dozen college quarterbacks had flown in that day to spend their spring breaks training with him. Johnny Manziel and Logan Thomas, both pleased with their workouts at the NFL Combine, were also in the final stages of prepping for their individual Pro Days. Among the college guys in town were 2014 Heisman Trophy–contender Baylor QB Bryce Petty, as well as starters from the Pac-12 (Arizona State’s Taylor Kelly) and the ACC (North Carolina’s Marquise Williams and Virginia’s David Watford), and Jerrod Heard, a member of the 2013 Elite 11 class who was expected to help resurrect the Texas program. The vibe was different than that of a typical week of Whitfield’s NFL draft camp. He brought in a DJ setup ten yards from the edge of the field blasting hip-hop; had all his interns in color-coordinated matching shirts and shorts; and rented two vans, which he referred to as “Tank 1” and “Tank 2,” to shuttle the players around in.

  This part of the private quarterback coach business had taken off in the past two years, especially for Whitfield. He hosted groups of college QBs for week-long gatherings from spring into the start of the summer. It was a by-product of the NCAA not allowing college coaches to be hands-on with their own players in skill development in the off-season, and of QBs seeing the “extra” work other guys around the country were getting. And of Whitfield’s growing celebrity in the football world. Later in the year, Whitfield had a week during which he brought in sixteen college QBs, including two from Tennessee who were competing for the Vols’ starting job. Neither kid realized the other was coming out to San Diego to train with Whitfield till the first session of the week. Whitfield also lined up guest speakers ranging from NFL greats John Lynch and Marshall Faulk to veteran QB coach Dana Bible, a Bill Walsh disciple who helped develop unheralded recruits Matt Ryan and Russell Wilson into stars. Their talks circled back in one fashion or another to perseverance.

  Brandon Harris, the strong-armed Louisiana kid who the Elite 11 passed over in 2013, was one of the quarterbacks to spend a week with Whitfield, just days after Anthony Jennings, the guy he’s battling for the vacant starting job at LSU, trained with the QB Whisperer. Harris was using the Elite 11 snub as motivation. “It does hurt your pride,” he said. “I’m not gonna lie. I’m a completely honest person. I saw guys who I knew were better than me. I saw some guys who are great quarterbacks—Kyle Allen, Jerrod Heard—but I saw some of the guys who made the cut over me.… Well, it’s fine, I’ll grow from this. It’s added some fire to me; I’m gonna play with it. I am going to prove these guys wrong. Ray Lewis spoke to us at LSU when I first got there. He said Mel Kiper said he was undersized. Ray said, ‘One day I’m gonna make that guy apologize to me.’ Well, I think the same thing is gonna happen for me. I’m not saying it’s gonna happen at the NFL Draft. It could be when we win an SEC Championship or down the road when I’m up for a Heisman Trophy, but I think [Dilfer’s] going to apologize to me and say he made a mistake.”

  Another reflection of the growth of Whitfield’s rep: the level of blowback he was receiving from competitors. On one of the days when he had the sixteen college QBs with him, former NFL quarterback Jeff Garcia, now a private coach, showed up at the same high school field in Del Mar to train a protégé. Whitfield moved his group over so Garcia had some field to work. Then one of Whitfield’s interns showed him snarky comments Garcia had made about him online. Whitfield grabbed the intern’s phone and took it over to Garcia, who initially backpedaled from the tweets, but then challenged Whitfield on his coaching credentials as compared to his own NFL pedigree.

  “That was great,” Whitfield said. “And we cheered for you, but I don’t think you understand that this is a different realm. You know Andy Reid never played quarterback, and I know Coach Holmgren never played in the NFL, and those guys are celebrated as some of the best coaches in football.”

  Garcia brought up having to share a panel once on NFL Network, where Whitfield was IDed as a “Quarterback Guru.”

  “That was bullshit,” Garcia said.

  “Listen, you’re gonna get everything you work for in this arena, but you coming at me isn’t gonna help,” Whitfield said before walking back to his group.

  Whitfield scheduled his spring-break QB camp in two groups that started at 8:00 a.m. in two different locations on the University of California at San Diego campus. Before Manziel and Thomas’s daily sessions started, Whitfield called on them to play guest lecturers.

  “Come on in here, Leonidas,” Whitfield yelled over to Manziel as he strolled in five minutes after Thomas arrived.

  “Between the two of ’em, they’ve had every experience a college quarterback could possibly have,” Whitfield said before introducing Logan Thomas and Johnny Manziel to the college quarterbacks seated on the ground in a semicircle like Cub Scouts around a campfire. “They’ve both been booed, cheered, celebrated, and written off.”

  David Watford, who was actually in the same recruiting class as Manziel, asked him about the biggest change he’d made during that first time visiting Whitfield almost exactly two years earlier, which helped him win the A&M starting QB job.

  “I just needed confidence,” Manziel said. “I just wasn’t happy with how my spring went. We picked one thing that I really wanted to work on, and that was keeping my left elbow tucked in so I could drive the ball harder.”

  Whitfield reminded the QBs that any time they bought something—even if it was only a pack of gum—to make sure they kept the receipt to keep their school’s compliance people—and potentially the NCAA—happy. He was also candid speaking about Thomas and Manziel’s own challenges in front of them as their Pro Days approached.

  “Logan’s biggest thing is consistency,” Whitfield explained, “because he was inconsistent, so it’s what he left on tape. With Johnny, some people question, ‘Can he drop, and can he drive the ball, and can he play in rhythm?’ A lot of the stuff they work on isn’t sexy enough to write cover stories on. That’s why we got the hood up and we’re working on the engine. These guys are now like racehorses three days before the Kentucky Derby. They’re agitated.”

  Another one of Whitfield’s guest speakers during the week for spring break was Trent Dilfer, who showed up on Tuesday after spending Monday in Carlsbad with Jordan Palmer, to check out his draft camp with Blake Bortles. Dilfer walked around observing the various stations Whitfield’s staff had set up for all the college QBs.

  He stood, arms folded and beaming, as he watched two sets of quarterbacks throwing the ball to each other from twenty yards apart with both knees on the ground. “If you’re doing it wrong, your body’s going to fall forward, and you’ll have to catch yourself,” Dilfer yelled. Or the quarterbacks would, literally, fall on their faces.

  The drill was one Dilfer had actually come up with at the end of his career after hearing his old QB coach Jim Zorn talk so much about the rotational nature of a throwing motion. Dilfer, being as big a student as he was of the golf swing, saw the correlation with what he noticed on super slo-mo video of how elite quarterbacks’ bodies moved and their “hip-shoulder disassociation.”

  “When people say the feet are the most important thing, I always say they are one of the most important things if they work in conjunction with the rest,” he later said. “If you’re
only talking feet, you’re ignoring what I’m seeing on film from every great passer: They have the ability to disassociate their upper half from their lower half, because you can’t guarantee your offensive line’s protection. You can’t guarantee where you can put your feet, but you can guarantee what you can do with your upper body.

  “There always has been the one-knee-down drill that people have taught forever. I saw the flaw in that. That’s not how the body moves, from what I’m seeing on tape. With one knee on the ground, you still have some lower-body control. With the knee that’s up, those cleats are in the ground, and you can manipulate it. If I put my right knee down and left knee up, I can activate my left hamstring and still feel my lower half moving. With both knees on the ground, my hamstrings are completely relaxed, and I have to torque my left shoulder underneath my chin. I have to rotate my core to generate any type of speed. Not only that, my right elbow has to work backward, not up, and my left arm needs to work with it, since my left thumb is tucked underneath my Dri-FIT. It was a way of simulating the proper biomechanics when the feet aren’t involved.”

  The muscular Watford, while still on his knees, asked Dilfer’s advice about a mechanical issue he’d been trying to solve for years, where his left arm—his front arm—drives down too much in his throwing motion.

  “Get your shirt on,” Dilfer told him.

  Dilfer’s response wasn’t about a show of respect, but rather about providing Watford with a prop for a little trick the old quarterback had taught himself. Dilfer had learned from his old mentor Jeff Tedford about how vital the left arm was in the throwing motion. Tedford, years after coaching Dilfer at Fresno, turned an underachieving Kyle Boller into a first-round pick after coming up with a contraption tying a shoestring to the strong-armed QB’s wrist up at Cal. Dilfer had developed a mechanical flaw with his own left arm. He tried Tedford’s shoestring method. He also tried using a bungee cord from his garage, but with all the surgeries he’d had on his upper body, nothing seemed to work. Then, in the mid-2000s, when Dri-FIT gear became the norm, Dilfer got the idea to stick his left thumb under the collar of his Dri-FIT shirt and realized he’d found his solution, because it kept the quarterback’s motion compact.