MOST OF WHITFIELD’S DISCIPLES came to him in San Diego, the laid-back Southern California metropolis he’s dubbed “Dime City.” Whitfield came up with the nickname because he wanted his home turf to be known for quarterbacks who throw perfect passes—“dimes.” Dime City also meshed with Whitfield’s view that great quarterbacks have a superhero quality to them. Superheroes are born out of adversity, Whitfield said, noting that Aaron Rodgers had no scholarship offers out of high school and was once sent a letter by a Big Ten coach telling him that he wasn’t D1 material; Tom Brady was the skinny 199th pick of the NFL Draft, and undersized Drew Brees grew up down the street in Austin from Texas and was passed over by the local Longhorns. Dime City sounded like a place where superhero-QBs trained. Whitfield’s visiting protégés also noted the double entendre of “Dime City.” “Dime” also referred to the stunning women (perfect “10s”) who seemed to be everywhere in San Diego.
Whitfield’s June road trip to Bryan, Texas, had been in the works for months. Johnny Manziel’s late arrival to the session already had Whitfield on edge. After all, these June workouts were supposed to take place at SMU, before Manziel had Whitfield, Chase Griffin, his dad, and the other three college QBs reroute three hours south. Manziel only got his coach more frustrated as Whitfield sensed that his star pupil was just going through the motions. Was Manziel distracted by having two of his buddies there? Was he hungover from the night before? Was he sick? Whatever the reason, Whitfield cut the session off after forty-five lackluster minutes, telling Manziel to get his head right for their afternoon session scheduled for 5:00 p.m. Whitfield’s next group was three lower-profile QBs: two transfers, Jacob Karam at Memphis by way of Texas Tech, and Drew Allen at Syracuse by way of Oklahoma, along with Montana State freshman Dakota Prukop.
Manziel and his two buddies headed to a golf course a mile down the road, bringing young Chase with them to get brunch. They were the only diners in the posh country club, in a scene that felt as if it was right out of Entourage. The group hung on every breath and move Manziel made. He was in a prickly mood but loosened up a little listening to the precocious twelve-year-old Griffin tell the story of how his father grew up in a single-parent home and made it to Harvard Law.
Whitfield seemed more annoyed still after Manziel left the high school field to get lunch after the morning sessions. Driving around College Station, Whitfield ended up at a Texas A&M bookstore. He walked in to see that seemingly half the store was hawking Johnny Football gear—hats, jerseys, T-shirts, all with Manziel’s number, 2, or with the Heisman outline.
“The strongest man-love there is is to wear someone else’s jersey,” Whitfield said, marveling at the collection of colors and styles of Aggie #2 jerseys. “It is admiration more than just respect.”
Whitfield had been around star QBs before, but he had never seen anything quite like this or seen it happen so fast. Less than a year ago at that point, almost nobody in the store would’ve known who Johnny Manziel was if he walked in. Now he was the biggest celeb in their world. Whitfield likened the evolving situation to the movie Rocky III, where Rocky Balboa was no longer the gritty underdog out to prove people wrong. Now the hero was surrounded by excess and enablers, and his vision was clouded. His hunger had been satisfied.
“It’s like, Rocky’s not going as hard, because there’s a circus around him,” Whitfield said. “Now there’s a piano right by the ring. [Rocky’s brother-in-law] Paulie’s selling commemorative pens. Meanwhile, Clubber Lang’s training in someplace with exposed pipes, trying to catch him.”
Whitfield’s world, too, had changed. In the car leaving the bookstore, he took a call from an unrecognized number. It was the head coach of an FBS program asking if Whitfield had some time to work with his new quarterback. Whitfield tried to say politely that he didn’t. Five minutes later, he got a call from the uncle of Brandon Harris, asking if he had time to train the talented Louisiana high school quarterback. Whitfield said if Harris was up for making the five-hour drive over, he’d work him in the next day.
Whitfield still had two workout sessions set for later in the afternoon. The first session went well. Allen and Karam were both in second-chance mode, having transferred to smaller football programs, hoping for strong senior seasons to catch NFL scouts’ eyes, while Prukop was just hoping to keep up with the FBS guys. They were riveted to every move Whitfield made. That workout concluded with no sign of Manziel, who was scheduled for the second session.
A half hour later, Whitfield got the Aggies star on the phone. They bickered over what time the workout was slated for. Whitfield was hearing a mix of excuses, apathy, and angst. This was a different side of Manziel than Whitfield had ever dealt with. It was a side he’d only heard about.
“My head’s just not into it today,” Manziel told Whitfield. “I don’t know what it is.”
Whitfield was more frustrated than angry. The only reason he’d come to South Texas in the hundred-degree heat was for Manziel. He could’ve spent more time back in Ohio with his family.
“I’ll come back,” Manziel told him.
“Nah, I’m not gonna guilt you about it,” Whitfield replied.
Twenty minutes later, Manziel arrived in an SUV with Turtle and another buddy. The Heisman Trophy winner was flustered. Whitfield didn’t have much to say to his protégé. He looked disappointed. It was hard to tell if Manziel was upset at Whitfield or himself. However, after the QB took his own iPhone and fired it into the ground, it became apparent that Manziel was more annoyed at himself, Whitfield later said.
The sound of the smartphone shattering on the concrete startled an elderly couple walking laps around the school parking lot.
“I had to take inventory,” Whitfield said later. “I never knew any of that type of stuff [what Manziel felt he had to juggle]. His family is in College Station. All his friends are in College Station. College Station is his running path. All of a sudden, I’m in his town. I’m in his world. Every time he’d come into San Diego, he’d get better. He didn’t golf there. There was no leisure. He was there to work.”
After Manziel’s spectacular first season, Whitfield wanted him to stay in college for more than two seasons playing in the SEC, but after this trip, he started to rethink that. “Staying meant [he’d have to] stay in [College Station] and swim through all that stuff. Everybody had a stake on his time down there. He was a pleaser, and, for the most part, he’d been great at compartmentalizing, but down there it was all colliding together.”
Manziel didn’t offer any explanation for his outburst or for his lax behavior. He only told Whitfield he’d be ready to go in the morning, before he and his friends drove off again.
Asked if he ever thought that that day might’ve been his last with Manziel, Whitfield said no. “I’m invested. He was clearly overloaded. Instead of barking at him and lighting him up, I had to remember that he was only nineteen. His brain must have hurt from how fast he was growing. Of all the people in his world, I know that I’m going to have to have some range and flexibility and some rigidness. So you treat him [the way you would] your kid brother. That’s our relationship.
“I think he was trying to let me know how frustrated he was with himself when he smashed his phone. He’s carrying all this [emotional] stuff from his girl, his next girl, his buddies, his coaches, and then I’m down there, and I can’t be all fired up, too.”
The next morning Whitfield’s other group of college QBs was up first. Two local high school football coaches had driven over to observe the training and learn from Whitfield. One got to play broom man for the Havoc drill.
At 10:07, a truck pulled up, and Manziel got out, barefoot. He was wearing a Dallas Cowboys shirt and some basketball shorts that hung down below his knees. He wandered over to the far end zone of the field, where Whitfield was working with Allen, Karam, and Prukop. He slapped hands with the other quarterbacks and made small talk with Allen and Karam. Manziel’s mom, Michelle, drove up, as did a longtime family friend who brought h
is nine-year-old son, whom Whitfield was also helping to train. Manziel was in an upbeat mood. Problem was, his buddies had his cleats in their truck, and they were no longer around.
“Where are they?” Manziel asked Whitfield.
“Huh? They’re not my crew,” Whitfield replied.
A few minutes passed as Whitfield joked with the other QBs.
“How long does it take to get Taco Cabana?” Manziel muttered to himself.
Whitfield ignored Manziel until he put on his shoes.
Of the eight training sessions Whitfield had scripted for the trip, he later said, Manziel really only got one in. However, Whitfield added, “We got a nice understanding of who ‘we’ are. I think I would’ve pretty much lost him if I let him set the training or if I was just more of a fan. I didn’t want that. I came down for the progress. I told him, ‘You and I can hang out any old time.’ I think he was wandering all over the road, and you gotta be a guardrail at some point.”
6.
THE MAD SCIENTIST
Ground zero in the quarterback coaching world was a dark weight room set underneath the left-field bleachers of Dedeaux Field, the USC baseball stadium. Here, a sixty-six-year-old man in a hooded sweatshirt gave lectures while seated on a large lime green exercise ball. On a particularly crisp Thursday morning in early December, the audience was a dozen pitchers, three New York Yankees’ front-office executives, a javelin thrower, a junior college quarterback, and one female golfer.
The man in the sweatshirt in front of the group had salt-and-pepper hair, a bristly mustache, and a wry grin. Tom House looked a lot like the brainier of the Smothers brothers. In the 1970s, House pitched in the Major Leagues for almost a decade with the Atlanta Braves, Boston Red Sox, and Seattle Mariners. He finished his career with a 29–23 record and a solid 3.79 ERA, although he was best known in his baseball career for something that happened off the mound. In 1974, as a twenty-seven-year-old relief pitcher with the Braves, House was standing in the Atlanta bullpen when teammate Hank Aaron whacked his record-breaking 715th home run over the outfield wall. House barely had to move to catch it. If he didn’t reach up, the ball would’ve clunked him right in the forehead.
House began his lecture by asking each of the pitchers in the room what was the hardest they’d ever thrown a baseball. They went around the room, touting numbers that would make baseball scouts’ hearts race: 98 miles per hour, 98, 97, 95, 92, 97, 98.
Even seated on a group of weight benches in a loose semicircle around the former Major Leaguer, it was obvious the pitchers dwarfed the 5′9″ House. He nodded to the Yankees front-office guy sitting with two colleagues, asking, “You’re having your big meeting tomorrow. What’re the three things you look for?”
There was a five-second pause.
“I’ll help you out with the first one,” House said. “Pitchability.”
“Yeah, right,” the Yankees personnel guy replied. “Stuff. We’re always looking for command, control. Deception. I’d guess athleticism. Being able to repeat it.”
House: “And then velocity, right?”
“Oh, yeah, velocity is last.”
“Here’s something that I know pisses you off, Tommy,” House said in the direction of a lanky 6′5″ career minor league pitcher in his late twenties who was moonlighting as a substitute teacher. “My best was 82 [mph]. I got nine years in the big leagues. I signed before they had [radar/speed] guns, or I would’ve never signed. What are the three kinds of velocity? Do you have any idea? If not, that’s OK. That’s why we’re here.”
The minor leaguer House was speaking to answered, “Perceived?”
HOUSE: That’s not my first one. It is one. But the first one is real—what the gun says. Unfortunately, to play college baseball, you gotta throw 90, unless you’re left-handed. But tell me about perceived velocity.
“How it looks to the hitter?” said another pitcher.
HOUSE: Close.
He called on another guy, who proceeded to guess.
HOUSE: OK. What is one foot of distance to the hitter? Three miles an hour? It’s how close you get. So, what is effective velocity?
“It’s how [the hitter’s] brain interprets the speed of the pitch based on his experience with the previous pitch?” ventured another pitcher. “An 88-mile-per-hour fastball up and in is actually 92 to the hitter’s eye. Down the middle of the plate is actually 88. Down all the way is …”
“Real close,” House said. “That’s a B-plus. It’s 6 (miles per hour), not 3, not 4. Basically an 86-mile-per-hour fastball down the middle is 92 up and in and 80 down and away. Guys like me have to pitch backwards. What does pitching backwards mean?”
One of the Yankees personnel people who should have been well-versed in the answer offered up with a hint of hesitation in his voice, “Starting soft? In hitter’s counts, throwing soft, and in advantage counts, throwing hard. If I was behind in the count, I’d throw a changeup.”
House responded by asking, “What’s a lockout pitch?” House was big on answering questions with more questions and also liked responding to answers with more questions even before letting people know if their answer was right or even on the right track. His ability to survive in the majors by keeping people off balance had not diminished with age.
“The only reason I pitched in the big leagues is because I was left-handed and could throw a curveball,” House told me a few minutes before starting his lecture. “If I was right-handed, I wouldn’t have pitched past high school. There’s a level of talent that has to be there, but with that talent, the ceiling is pretty high.”
House became a Major League pitching coach after his playing career ended when he was released at the age of thirty-one. In the past three decades, he had shepherded the pitching careers of everyone from Nolan Ryan to Randy Johnson and is the co-founder of the National Pitching Association. House, who wore glasses while on the mound in his big league career, had earned a PhD in performance psychology, a Master’s degree in marketing, an MBA, written almost two dozen books, and was now known to many in the sports world as “The Professor.” “Sports are games of failure, coached by negative people in a misinformation environment,” he told me. “These guys are surviving in spite of themselves.”
Baseball is the biggest game of failure out there, followed by hockey, in House’s view. “You can make a million dollars in a month as a hitter and fail seven out of ten times. Pitchers fail half the time. In all sports, there’s a lot of good intentions but not a whole lot of science-based information. We call it, ‘Fail Fast Forward.’ The guys who get ahead are the ones who aren’t afraid to fail, but they don’t fail the same way too often. The fear of failure—especially with smart, middle-class, white kids—is usually what holds them back, because they are so afraid to screw up.
“I was blessed because I was right in the crease between what they called the Old School and what is now the New School. Yogi Berra said it best when he said ‘50 percent of baseball is 90 percent mental.’ I saw guys with great tools who never made it because of what was going on between the ears. I went ahead and got my PhD in science because too many guys were failing with mental, emotional issues, and I had no clue what to do. I figured if I could bring in some academic help, maybe that’d give me some direction on what to do with my practical experience.”
WHETHER SOMEONE IN HIS weight room had provided a correct answer or not, House kept volleying questions at the group.
“Anyone know who Warren Spahn was?”
Silence.
“Big old bowlegged guy with a dip in his mouth,” House said. “Smelled like a goat, couldn’t trap a pig in a ditch, winningest left-hand pitcher in baseball.”
“House, get over here!” House said, his voice deepening as he imitated Spahn, right down to pretending he was spitting out a mouthful of tobacco juice. “Don’t throw a short-armed man in. Or a long-armed man away. You gotta be before the bat. Or after the bat. You just can’t be during the bat.”
“I thought, wh
at the fuck is this guy talking about? I didn’t have hard [a good fastball]. I had to make my fastball look better. So when you say you throw 98? Awesome, but it’s not 98. Anybody remember the Julio Franco story?”
No one in the weight room knew the Julio Franco story. And it was probably better that way for House—and for everyone else in attendance. Franco, a three-time All-Star and former American League batting champ from the Dominican Republic, reportedly used to take batting practice with a weighted donut still on the bat while in the cage. In baseball circles, there was something of a mythology rooted in Franco’s, um, machismo. Franco played for the Texas Rangers from 1989 to ’93, at the same time House was the team’s pitching coach.
“So we’re at old Arlington Stadium. Good old days. It’s a rainout. Everyone’s talking. And Julio likes to talk. ‘Da’ big boy,’ ” House said with a Latino accent as he took his palm and started pounding his chest. “ ‘He could hit hundred thuuuur-tee mi’ per hour fass-bo.’
“So the other guys are, like, ‘No chance. No way.’ Everyone started throwing money onto the table. Pretty soon there’s four grand. We go down to the cages and put the JUGS [pitching machine] up to 130.
“Whhhooosssssh! It’s bouncing off the back wall like I’ve never seen. And Julio swung that forty-ounce monster bat. He fouls the first one off and then fouls the second one off. Then he starts making contact and starts ripping it. Then,” House continued, his eyebrows arching in astonishment, “he starts moving closer to the machine. And before you know it, he’s hitting 130-mph fastballs from ten feet in front of home plate.
The QB The Making of Modern Quarterbacks Page 14