It also didn’t take Cameron long to home in on one of Whitfield’s points of emphasis for draft camp with Manziel, getting him to try to drive the ball more. “It’s kind of a shotgun problem,” Whitfield surmised. From all his time around the Heisman winner and studying his every move, Whitfield was convinced Manziel’s penchant for getting up on his toes wasn’t so much for combating his lack of height but responding to the quarterback’s own supersized adrenaline reservoir.
“Tell him to put his back foot flatter on the ground,” Cameron said. Playing almost exclusively from the shotgun, as Manziel has, can make a quarterback “toes-y,” as Cameron put it.
Two drills into the workout and Cameron became more involved as Manziel began “routes on air.” Cameron, a former quarterback under Lee Corso and a point guard for Bob Knight at Indiana, walked up to a receiver lined up in the slot and got so close, the wideout could tell whether the coach had used paste or gel to brush his teeth that morning.
CAMERON: Covered or open?
MANZIEL: Covered.
CAMERON: That’s wide open. That’s the world you’re going to live in.
That perception is one of the biggest adjustments college quarterbacks must make if they hope to succeed in the NFL. It’s something Cameron spent plenty of time preaching to his first QB at LSU, Zach Mettenberger, a 6′5″ guy with prototype size and arm strength but who had been underwhelming and unfocused till the longtime NFL coach arrived before the 2013 season. Before Cameron, Mettenberger had just a 12–7 TD-INT ratio and took 32 sacks. With him, his TD-INT ratio was improved to 22–8, and he was sacked 11 fewer times and averaged 3 full yards more per pass attempt, a significant jump. An NFL caveat his old boss Marty Schottenheimer always said: “In times of crisis, think players, not plays,” which resonated with O’Connell, who said he picked up that adage from onetime Jets offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer, Marty’s son.
“It’s funny, some guys are just so blackboard-oriented,” Cameron told me, pointing out how his QB had to be prodded into noticing who the players were running the routes, whether they were stars or subs. “It took Mettenberger a bit, to where I’d say, ‘Zach, that’s Jarvis Landry there, and you’re skipping over Jarvis Landry for who?’ To me, you have to be a basketball-mind-set guy. It’s all about matchups, and then the blackboard stuff.”
Landry’s production in crunch time certainly supported Cameron’s faith. In 2013, LSU threw 35 passes on third downs in the direction of Landry; 80 percent of those passes he turned into first downs.
In his days as the Baltimore Ravens’ offensive coordinator, Cameron said he had to coax Joe Flacco to throw the ball more to veteran Anquan Boldin. “Joe would say, ‘Cam, there’s no separation.’ I said, ‘There doesn’t have to be. It’s Anquan. Just throw it in there. If you’re waiting for him to get separation, you’re gonna be waiting a while, but Anquan doesn’t need separation. He just needs one-on-one.’ ”
Cameron had gotten a peek at Johnny Manziel three months earlier, when Texas A&M visited LSU. It was rainy and cold, and the Tigers dominated on both sides of the ball, winning 34–10. Manziel completed just 39 percent of his passes, going 16 of 41. It was the only time all season he completed less than 67 percent of his passes in a game. Cameron credits head coach Les Miles for taking star wide receiver/punt returner Odell Beckham Jr., the best athlete on the team, and putting him on the scout-team offense as quarterback to mimic Manziel to ready the Tiger D. “We also held the ball for over forty minutes in the game,” he said. “We were an up-tempo team but had a plan to trim nine seconds off of every play. We just did the math.”
Observing Manziel in person in Carlsbad, Cameron was reminded of his former quarterback Drew Brees, whom he coached with the San Diego Chargers, noting the Texan’s oversize hands, athleticism, and demeanor.
“Drew had a presence,” Cameron said. “He wasn’t little to me. Hand size makes you weatherproof. I watched as the season went on how certain quarterbacks changed as the weather changed. They weren’t the same. And you gotta be weatherproof in that league.
“Those are the nimblest big feet I think I’ve seen,” Cameron said, watching Manziel’s size 15s dashing all over the field, shifting the coach’s train of thought. “With quarterbacks, you don’t take anybody’s word for it. You listen, but you gotta go form your own conclusion. Now I know why [Saints coach] Sean Peyton was at our game. Drew can dunk a basketball, could’ve been a world class tennis player, is a scratch golfer. He doesn’t have this speed, though, but he does have great escapability. They’re different, but they’re similar. As everybody knows, for every quarterback the NFL has hit on, they’ve missed on ten. Then, if everybody’s in line [as in front office and the coaching staff], that’s the key.”
Cameron had long thought the skepticism about a quarterback’s height was overblown in the NFL. As a college head coach at Indiana from 1998 to 2001, his offense was led by one of the most dynamic dual-threat quarterbacks in college football history, Antwaan Randle El, a 5′10″, 185-pounder who won Big Ten MVP honors in 2001. Cameron wasn’t surprised that Randle El threw a perfect pass on a 43-yard, double-reverse touchdown play to Hines Ward in Super Bowl XL to clinch the game for the Steelers. “Not many guys can come in cold, sprint, and still throw that ball right on the money,” said Cameron.
“He could’ve been a quarterback in the NFL, but very seldom are you going to have a GM, head coach, offensive coordinator, and a QB coach who’ll all be on the same page to give a guy like that an opportunity. And you all have to be on the same page if you go that route. He had tremendous accuracy and as strong an arm as I’ve ever been around. We were going to draft him in San Diego to be our third quarterback and as a receiver, punt returner, but then Pittsburgh took him.”
What’s imperative for Cameron is to find out how resourceful—and resilient—his quarterback is, something he tries to discern almost on a daily basis at practice.
“I want to blitz them every single down from the day they walk in,” Cameron said. “So many people say, ‘Cam, you can’t do that. You’ll destroy the kid.’ Well, if you drafted the right guy, you want them to get in the right mind-set as quickly as you can. I remember the day Philip [Rivers] threw four interceptions in, like, six throws in the two-minute drill. Marty [Schottenheimer] said, ‘What the fuck is going on?’ ”
“I said, ‘Coach, we’ll know by tomorrow whether we drafted the right guy.’ Philip came out the next day and lit it up. To me, you have to get a young quarterback coming into the league to fail as quickly as possible, and hopefully in practice or in a pre-season game, so you can start digging ’em through all the stuff they need to go through. Everybody wants to see what this guy is made of. I’ve seen too many guys try to protect their pick. The reason Flacco had so much success is because of [former Ravens defensive coordinator] Rex [Ryan]. He came to me one day early on and said, ‘If we’re blitzing too much, let us know.’
“I said, ‘We need you to blitz more. We gotta get this guy to grow quickly.’ He couldn’t believe it. He said, ‘That’s awesome.’ We went to the AFC title game. Same thing at LSU. I want [defensive coordinator John Chavis] Chief to blitz us every single down. And I like when the QB gets hit in practice. I don’t want him hurt, but I want him scuffed up, because it’s not 7-on-7.”
Cameron said evaluators get “fooled” by a lot of the videotape they study on quarterbacks. “You’re trying to find out, who is this guy?” Cameron said. “Go get all the away games. Look at all of those ones where they’re close by seven points one way or the other in the fourth quarter. Study them. You’ll be amazed at how many guys come apart at the seams and the others who have the magic. That’s the closest thing that translates to the NFL, because you can’t hear [due to the crowd noise], and everything you do matters. Then, take all their red-zone throws and all the third-down throws, because everything other than that can fool you.”
In 2007, when Cameron was the head coach of the Miami Dolphins, many draft analy
sts speculated that he would use the number nine pick on Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn, an All-American. Cameron wouldn’t touch him. “When you looked at that criteria, he was awful.”
Quinn fell to the number twenty-two pick of the first round. He then bounced around to six teams in seven years and was out of the NFL before he was thirty.
A FIVE-MINUTE DRIVE AWAY from Whitfield draft camp headquarters in Carlsbad was a cutting-edge training center. To enter, you went through an enormous metal and glass gravity-hinge door wide enough for an eighteen-wheeler to roll through. The door somehow was balanced in a technological way such that an eight-year-old could pull it open. This was the entrance to the EXOS training facility, where Dilfer’s TDFB protégé, Jordan Palmer, the Chicago Bears’ backup quarterback, ran his draft camp. EXOS, which used to be known as Athletes’ Performance, has six locations around the country.
Palmer trained three draft hopeful QBs: Washington’s Keith Price, Wyoming’s Brett Smith, and UCF’s Blake Bortles. Smith and Price actually put up gaudier stats in their college careers, but it was the 6′5″, 235-pound Bortles who had the NFL scouting world buzzing.
At five minutes past 8:00 a.m. on the last Thursday in January, Palmer scribbled plays on a glass wall inside the EXOS facility. Price and Smith scarfed down eggs and sausage on the foam plates they had brought over from the Residence Inn across the street where the quarterbacks were staying. The twenty-nine-year-old Palmer harped on details, preaching to them about drawing arrows at the ends of their lines on the routes they drew for NFL personnel people or tweaking Price’s verbiage. “Don’t say, ‘Then, I’m gonna hop back for depth.’ Say, ‘Then, I’m going to re-set for depth.’
“This is not the difference between right and wrong,” Palmer told them. “This is the difference between, ‘This guy’s pretty smart,’ and, ‘This guy knows what the fuck he’s talking about.’ It’s the difference between, ‘Um, excuse me, I was wondering if you come here often, and maybe I could buy you a drink,’ and, ‘What’s up? I’m Keith. Have you ever seen ESPN? S’up, girl?’ ”
One of Palmer’s big selling points to draft clients was his grasp of teaching NFL concepts. A few days earlier, that’s what he’d hoped would’ve resonated with Teddy Bridgewater when the Louisville star toured EXOS. He’d quizzed Bridgewater on what the safety’s responsibility is in “Quarters” coverage.
“He’s got the quarter of the field,” Bridgewater said.
Palmer asked Bridgewater’s advisor, former NFL safety Abe Elam, if he was right. Elam said yes, before Palmer asked him again: “Or, does he have inside leverage run support and eyes on number 2 [receiver]? If number 2 travels across the field or into the flat, he moves his eyes to number 1 and forms a bracket. If number 2 travels vertically, he takes him man to man. That’s what we’re gonna learn, because that changes the way I read Curl-Flat.”
Palmer maintained that everything with quarterbacking hinged on two things: confidence in your abilities and confidence in your understanding.
“I always start by asking, ‘What is the most important trait in a quarterback?’ ” Palmer said, before pointing to his forehead. “This is a muscle, and we can work this every single day.”
Palmer is not a “quarterbacks coach,” he said.
“I am a quarterback consultant. As a consultant, as in my [marketing] business, I come in and say, ‘Here’s where you’re at. Here’s where you guys tell me where you want to be. Here’s some holes, and here’s some holes I think we can fill. If you don’t like them, you fire me at any point and terminate our contract. If you like them, I will build a model or create a campaign to help facilitate those that you’re interested in. You’re the CEO. You’re making the decisions.’
“I think the biggest mistake guys make, and a guy on the East Coast does this all the time from what I hear—is ‘Trust me. Trust me. This is the way to do it.’ I think that is the worst mistake you can make. You know how many dudes played in the League? So this guy who played in Buffalo, and he did something a little different, does that mean he doesn’t know what he’s talking about? I’ve been exposed to a lot of football. I’ve played with some great ones and been coached by some great ones. But the difference is, I’ve also gotten thousands of hours of reps through the Elite 11 of how to say it and how not to message it. I look at it as a doctor.”
When Bortles and Smith arrived in Carlsbad, both loaded on their back leg. Palmer explained the drawbacks of that: “You’re not on balance, and the second problem is over-striding. You can’t throw the ball until your left foot hits the ground. If you want a quicker release, eliminate any unnecessary movement along the way. The longer it takes for my left foot to hit the ground, the slower everything happens.”
Palmer subscribed to many of the Tom House principles about quarterbacks as rotational athletes. That explained why, a few hours later, when he brought Bortles out for a throwing session on the 35-yard turf practice field in the back of the EXOS facility, he had his star protégé doing wall-sits with his arms above his head, elbows at 90 degrees, gliding up the wall, and why the QBs were firing passes to each other from 25 yards apart while on their knees. It was also one of the reasons behind a philosophical difference between Palmer and Whitfield on a teaching point when it came to making touch throws.
“What should happen is, the arm angle should change,” Palmer said. “Me and George vehemently disagree on this. He teaches guys to flick and hold, like shooting 3-pointers. It couldn’t make less sense to me. That’s like me saying I want you to run a 40-yard dash, but I’m gonna put a wall at 41 yards. Your arm isn’t making a basketball motion. Basketball players aren’t rotational athletes. You’re creating all this energy. Why would I stop it?”
Palmer was quick to add that he has great respect for Whitfield. The two had become friends through their work on the Elite 11: “I’ve told guys, ‘If you don’t throw with me, throw with George, because you know what you’re gonna get. You won’t have a guy taking money out of your pocket. He won’t make you worse.’ We offer different products. We’re not competitors.”
Earlier in the week, Palmer had brought his three quarterbacks to Laguna Beach to try one of his passions—stand-up paddle-boarding. Palmer, who grew up surfing, kind of fell into the sport. In his first race, a woman taking part for her fiftieth birthday celebration beat him. He soon realized the workout tied in quite well for a quarterback because of how much the motions and balancing on the board amid the waves tapped into your core muscles and shoulder flexibility. Palmer was delighted when ESPN producers came with him and his QBs for a trip into the water as part of a docu-series on the 2013 draft.
“I think it’s gonna blow up once it gets out, because there’s no better workout for a quarterback off the field, and you can’t get hurt,” he told me.
Palmer’s own playing career had been on life support many times. Unlike his big brother, Carson, he was never a touted recruit or praised for having a huge arm. Coming out of college, he was a sixth-round pick by the Washington Redskins in the 2007 draft and was cut before the season. He sat out the year and then signed with the Arizona Rattlers of the Arena Football League, but the day before he left for camp, his brother’s team, the Cincinnati Bengals, offered him a deal. He was fifth on the depth chart. He said he didn’t “know anything about football” till he met the Bengals’ QB coach Ken Zampese, whom he impressed enough to get kept as the third-string quarterback. “I learned how to learn,” Palmer said.
The younger Palmer lasted three seasons in Cincinnati before being released. A year later, he landed with the Jacksonville Jaguars for a season and got cut again. Then, in the spring of 2013, the week Dilfer’s TDFB was launching, he got a tryout with the Chicago Bears, competing that day with two other members of the 2007 QB draft class, Jamarcus Russell, the top overall pick, and Trent Edwards, a third-rounder. “That order got flipped in terms of productivity that day,” Palmer said. But he was still released by the Bears on the eve of the 2013 season. Howeve
r, after starter Jay Cutler tore a groin muscle at mid-season, Palmer was re-signed and spent the rest of the year living in an Extended Stay America hotel.
“I think the Elite 11 has done a lot for my playing career, because I would’ve never started thinking about the sports psychology side of it,” he said. “I am a slightly above average thrower and a below average athlete. Experience-wise, I’m 114th out of 114 or whatever the number of quarterbacks is. But it doesn’t affect my confidence. I have developed that mind-set. I used to feel like it was something I didn’t have. It’s not God-given. It’s how you were raised and experiences you had growing up. I developed it.”
In Blake Bortles, Palmer had found another late bloomer with a similar approach. Bortles was an afterthought in the recruiting process for most schools. Tulane and Purdue both offered him scholarships, but it was to play tight end. According to the former UCF recruiting coordinator, head coach George O’Leary wasn’t interested in Bortles, a local product, till the Knights whiffed on four other mid-level QB recruits. Colorado State was his only other D1 offer to play quarterback. Bortles, though, started to blossom after the first month of the 2012 season. Then, as a junior, he flashed onto the national radar after sparking visiting UCF to a 38–35 upset of Bridgewater’s unbeaten Louisville team, rallying the Knights from a three-touchdown hole in the second half. For those trying to make the case why Bortles could end up as the first overall pick, it didn’t hurt that he threw 3 touchdown passes to defeat Penn State, the team new Houston Texans head man Bill O’Brien used to coach.
“Blake’s gonna go number one to Houston,” Palmer predicted. “You have a 5′10″ guy [Manziel] who was hands-down the best player in college football. He can do things no one else can do. He’s probably as confident a player as anyone I’ve ever been around, which is why he can do some of the shit he does. He’s also a liability. Can we trust Johnny? Totally scary. Teddy [Bridgewater] is unbelievably productive. Supersmart. Doesn’t own the room. No presence. Two hundred pounds. Then you’ve got Blake. Six-five, 240, gonna run a 4.6. Doesn’t have half the experience the other two guys have. Had a drill sergeant [O’Leary] as a coach. Doesn’t throw the ball as naturally as Teddy does. He’s off-the-charts coachable and will be the coolest guy in the room. Coolest, meaning likable.
The QB The Making of Modern Quarterbacks Page 27