The QB The Making of Modern Quarterbacks

by Bruce Feldman

  “It’s a crapshoot. Bill O’Brien is a very smart man. He’s gonna come back to one thing: Who’s the most trustworthy quarterback? If I take you as a quarterback at number one, and you’re a bust, everybody gets fired.”

  Palmer also didn’t subscribe to former NFL coach Tom Rossley’s notion that the number one quality a QB needs is magic, which also factored into the Manziel versus Bortles debate.

  “I think you need in today’s game to be more of a problem solver than a magician,” Palmer said. His example is a veteran NFL QB, who he said can be as good as anybody and as bad as anybody. “He can keep you from going to the playoffs, and he can throw for 5,000 yards every single year. Every single time [he] drops back, he’s thinking, ‘How do I make a play?’ He can’t help himself. Sometimes you gotta make a play. But if you drop back with the mind-set of ‘How do I make the play?’ the NFL is too good and too competitive, and you are not good enough to do that every time. And Johnny Manziel drops back every time, thinking, ‘I’m going to make a play.’ And he makes a ton of plays, but if he goes into the NFL with that type of mind-set and that kind of confidence, I think he’s gonna have some difficulties, because Robert Griffin III sure had a lot of difficulties in the NFL this year.”

  FEBRUARY 21, 2014.

  The first real buzz from inside Lucas Oil Stadium during the NFL Combine came when word circulated on an early Friday morning in late February that Johnny Manziel had been measured officially by the League at 5′11¾″. That detail only added to the intrigue surrounding Manziel—listed by Texas A&M at 6′1″—as the entire NFL brain trust—every exec, coach, assistant, scout, and media member—gathered in Indianapolis for the week. The factoid that no quarterback measuring under six feet had been selected in the first two rounds of the NFL Draft since 1953 must’ve popped up a hundred times in the skywalks and bars around a town overrun by NFL types.

  By 9:30 a.m. ET, Whitfield was making the rounds in the media area of Lucas Oil Stadium, getting pulled in different directions between NFL Network, ESPN, and a host of other people with digital recorders and flip cams.

  “He’s already done nine interviews since we arrived here this morning,” said Jeanine Juliano, an Alabama undergrad and former Miss Teen Alabama interning as an executive assistant with Whitfield’s company.

  Whitfield, who had in part turned his penchant for creative analogies into a cottage industry, didn’t miss an opportunity to poke at the skepticism rooted in Manziel’s measuring a tad below some kind of magic six-foot barometer. He held up a quarter-inch snippet of paper on the NFL Network to make his case about how silly such thinking would be for that to be a reason not to draft Manziel.

  Sal Paolantonio, a veteran ESPN reporter, commended Whitfield on his little prop as he walked by en route to the bathroom.

  “Man, I’m talked out,” Whitfield said, before noting that the quarter-inch piece of paper was actually a tag from his dry cleaning.

  “Might as well have fun, since people love making a big deal of a quarter inch,” Whitfield told me. “He’s the same height he was when he was ‘007’ in the SEC. You wanna bet your franchise on a quarter of an inch?”

  After hearing that Manziel was en route to the media area for his press conference, Whitfield settled into a seat in the second row in front of the podium to get a jump on what he figured to be a mob scene. A handful of other reporters noticed Whitfield positioning himself and followed suit. One writer asked Whitfield, “What have you done this week to address his height?”

  “I don’t know. You’d have to talk to [Manziel’s parents] Paul and Michele about that one,” Whitfield said.

  Kevin O’Connell, who flew in with Ryan Flaherty, entered the room and sat down behind Whitfield. Their talk went from which teams were interested in speaking to their QBs before it turned to Logan Thomas’s new look. Whitfield had prodded the towering Virginia Tech quarterback to go to a barber before getting on the plane to fly to Indy.

  “I told him, ‘You gotta come in clean here,’ ” Whitfield said. “ ‘The beard’s gonna come back. Your chance to make a first impression won’t.’ ”

  One year earlier, Whitfield had offered up a similar message to another one of his QB protégés, Arizona’s Matt Scott, an athletic, strong-armed quarterback many had projected to go in the third or fourth round.

  “He just did not get it,” Whitfield said. “He didn’t think it was a serious deal.”

  Scott showed up in Indy with a goatee. He ended up going undrafted, before getting signed with the Jacksonville Jaguars. Would he have gotten drafted if he had come in clean-shaven? Who knows? But Whitfield wasn’t about to let Thomas give anybody another reason to be skeptical.

  Whitfield had gotten something of a false alarm. Manziel’s press conference wouldn’t start for another ninety minutes. But it was still a mob scene. Tom Coughlin, the head coach who had won two Super Bowls with the New York Giants, was holding his own press conference on the opposite side of the room with about one-fifth the crowd of media.

  Ultimately, Manziel, as he always was, appeared at ease in front of the podium. “This is life now, this is a job for me, taking it very seriously, and I’m really excited about the future,” he said. “I feel like I play like I’m ten feet tall … I’m probably one of the most competitive people on the face of the Earth.”

  Some media members wrote that Manziel was over-coached for the press conference. Regardless, Whitfield was pleased. So was Manziel.

  The next morning the quarterbacks were on the turf for their forties and whatever other drills the NFL coaches wanted to put them through. Manziel, like Bridgewater, had opted not to throw at the Combine on the advice of his agents, preferring to hold off till his Pro Day, where he would be working with receivers he knew and had timing with. Bortles, though, was determined to show the NFL brass he just wanted a chance to compete.

  Outside the media room, about twenty yards from the ESPN set, were several big flat-screen TVs showing the NFL Network’s coverage from the field. In one of the metal folding chairs by the TVs sat Palmer like a nervous father, watching Bortles throwing passes. Much of the discussion among NFL analysts, though, was about Logan Thomas, who put on a dazzling display of athleticism, running the fastest 40-yard dash time among QBs (4.61), jumping the highest (35.5 inches), the farthest (9′10″), and throwing the hardest (60 mph). (Manziel’s official 40-time was 4.68, while Bridgewater chose not to run. Bortles’s was a disappointing 4.93. Manziel ran the fastest 20-yard shuttle time at 4.03 seconds, ahead of Thomas’s 4.18.)

  NFL Network draft analyst Mike Mayock said Thomas’s footwork was “lazy” but observed that the ball came out of his hand “beautifully.” Still, Mayock lamented that Thomas’s “tape is so bad.” His colleague, former NFL coach Steve Mariucci, sounded more optimistic: “I think he’s smart enough to learn. He’s had some big games. I think he would be fun to coach.”

  Whitfield, listening to the commentary, was irked, pointing out as he walked away that Mayock also once had Cam Newton ranked below Blaine Gabbert and Jake Locker in his draft class.

  Four hours later, Manziel had already flown out. Whitfield felt like celebrating. He was getting good feedback from his NFL connections about Manziel, and Thomas had created more intrigue with his arm strength and his freakish athleticism. He settled into one of the couches in the lobby bar at the JW Marriott waiting for Flaherty and Thomas. In between fielding text messages, Whitfield thumbed at his smartphone to check what was being said about his protégés.

  “I had three NFL coaches say, ‘We wanna see [Manziel] throw with anticipation,’ ” Whitfield said of the feedback he got in regard to Manziel’s upcoming Pro Day, which he planned to have 100 percent from under center. Flaherty arrived grinning. Thomas looked exhausted as he collapsed onto a couch. He recounted the oddest question he had gotten asked by a team in one of the fifteen-minute meetings he had in the NFL’s speed-dating setup with prospects. He was asked how many things he could do with a brick. He said he
came up with six, but at the moment, Thomas was too fried to name them.

  “Hey, G—You’ll love this,” Thomas told Whitfield. “They [the NFL coaches during his workout] were telling me to slow my drops. I lit up the outs. I was 5 of 7.”

  Jeanine Juliano—Whitfield’s assistant—seated next to Thomas, did a Twitter search for Thomas’s name, which unlocked a torrent of snarky comments reacting to any praise he’d gotten for his show in Indy. Asked why the venom toward Thomas, she was told it was probably backlash from draft analysts once touting him as a potential first overall pick of the draft.

  “But I didn’t do any of that,” Thomas said, shrugging. “That wasn’t anything I said.”

  At that point, he was just looking forward to getting his first-class-upgrade flight back to California and taking his girlfriend to Disneyland before gearing back up for his Pro Day.

  11.

  THE COMEBACK ROUTE

  FEBRUARY 9, 2014.

  A kid with shoulder-length blond hair sprawling from underneath a white baseball cap that was turned backward took a seven-step drop. His big red Nike high-tops kicked up sod as three pass-rushers waving big puffy pads gave chase.

  “PUT A LOT OF PRESSURE ON THIS GUY! GO! GET UP-FIELD!” yelled Steve Clarkson from ten feet away as he did a countdown.

  “SIX!… FIVE!…”

  The QB darted left, evading one of the rushers.

  “SEE IT! FEEL IT!… THREE!… TWO!”

  The quarterback almost survived the drill, avoiding being tagged by the D-linemen for nine seconds, but with one second remaining, the kid brushed into another player. The quarterback flung the ball down in disgust.

  These were the eight-year-olds.

  It was a gray Sunday morning at Cathedral High in downtown Los Angeles. Legend had it that the school was haunted. Even the Cathedral’s athletic teams are named the Phantoms to honor the school’s rep. In the background, you could hear constant chatter from a preacher blaring through speakers via the church located just a few yards beyond the end zone. None of the quarterbacks seemed the least bit distracted, though. A few of their parents watched from the bleachers while a dozen more sat behind them at umbrella-covered picnic tables reading books, scanning tablets, and pecking at their smartphones.

  Clarkson prodded both his QBs serving as ersatz defensive linemen (“Make ’em work! Make ’em panic!”) and the quarterbacks dealing with the pressure (“Try to feel the rush, and keep your eyes downfield, but NO MATTER WHAT, PROTECT THE BALL!!!”)

  This was a typical Sunday at Cathedral. Clarkson had been conducting his workout sessions for more than two dozen QBs—ages eight to eighteen—for the previous four years. On the football field were four different drill stations.

  Almost all the QBs arrived at least a half hour before the 9:00 a.m. session began. Clarkson actually had an earlier one-on-one with a high school sophomore who had been flying in from Colorado the previous couple of weeks. The fifty-two-year-old coach, wearing a gray “Dreammaker” sweat suit, looked more like a former lineman than an old quarterback. Clarkson played in college at 205 pounds but appeared north of 255 now. The lower half of his cheeky, round face was covered with gray whiskers.

  Many of these quarterbacks had been with Clarkson for years. Two quarterbacks in the 9:00 a.m. group were high-level recruits. One, Travis Waller, a 6′3″, 195-pounder from Anaheim’s Servite High School, came in as a wide receiver and was a standout track athlete who had already been offered scholarships at Washington and Northwestern. “He’s got a huge ceiling,” said Clarkson. Waller had a sense of urgency, too. Unlike a lot of Clarkson’s pupils, Waller came from a modest background. He was being raised by a single mother. “I’m not the richest kid, so we give up some things so I can come here and she can pay Steve,” said Waller, who had been coming to Clarkson’s Sunday-morning group sessions for two years. “I take every rep seriously. It costs a lot, but it’s definitely worth it. I saw a dramatic change right away.”

  Some of the other quarterbacks drove Mercedes and BMWs. Waller didn’t even have a car, his mom, Bridgette, said. “I drive a 2008 Saturn Vue, and we live in an apartment in Fullerton. We sacrifice vacations. We don’t eat out a lot. We don’t go to the movies.” But the Wallers looked at the Clarkson training as an investment that could be worth $200,000 in a college scholarship and even more if he developed the way his coach said he could.

  “Some people may get up and go to church on Sundays; we go to Steve,” Bridgette said.

  The other touted QB had high, layered, dark hair and a toothy grin, resembling a younger Taylor Lautner. He was wearing a pink long-sleeve shirt and black “Dreammaker” shorts with pink tights and black socks.

  “Brady looks like a young Joe Namath,” said Clarkson while taking a break, as he watched seventeen-year-old Brady White do footwork drills. “He actually reminds me of Aaron Rodgers.”

  White, the son of a senior vice president at CBRE—the world’s largest commercial real estate service—had been training with Clarkson since he was in the sixth grade.

  He was ranked—depending on which scouting service you checked—as one of the nation’s top five QB prospects in the 2015 recruiting class. He played at a program known for cranking out college quarterbacks, Hart High in LA suburb Newhall, California. White already had scholarship offers from Cal, Illinois, and Indiana, among others. His online recruiting profile listed him as 6′2″, 186 pounds, but his wiry frame made him appear lighter than that. The very mention of that seemingly innocuous detail prompted a defensive comment from Clarkson.

  “People forget [that] John Elway was 170 [pounds] as a freshman at Stanford,” Clarkson said, evoking the third Hall of Fame–caliber QB in respect to young Brady White within a thirty-second stretch.

  “Brady, are you dressed this way for Valentine’s [Day]?” Clarkson yelled to the high schooler as he ran over to a new station.

  In a few hours, the field would be covered with hundreds of teenage football players, not just quarterbacks, as part of a high school 7-on-7 league Clarkson helped run. One of the teams was making the two-hour drive up from San Diego. Its star quarterback was a ninth-grader named Tate Martell, another Clarkson protégé. In July 2012, as a fourteen-year-old, soon-to-be eighth-grader, Martell—then a home-school student—accepted a scholarship offer to play quarterback for the University of Washington. The Huskies program at the time was run by head coach Steve Sarkisian—one of Clarkson’s first protégés some twenty-plus years earlier. Martell, then around 5′11″, 170-pounds, started to draw attention from college programs with his performance for the Mira Mesa Chargers in the Throwback Football League, Clarkson said. The TFL was another Clarkson creation. It was a springtime, full-contact, club football league that played its games during the months of April, May, and June. Clarkson charged each kid $300 for the season. The sixteen-team league “was created specifically to recruit, develop, and showcase the very best football talent at the sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade levels.” In 2013, the TFL had six more kids receive major college scholarship offers, according to the league website. “I think it’s the future of football,” Clarkson said.

  Martell was actually a year older than most of the other students in his grade. That was because his father, a former college wrestler, had held him back in seventh grade so the boy would be more physically and mentally mature as he went through high school and college. It’s a move several Clarkson disciples have made. Clarkson showed Sarkisian film of Martell and had the coach hooked.

  “If you could clone Fran Tarkenton and Brett Favre, you would have Tate Martell,” Clarkson told Sarkisian.

  The Martell commitment, which made national news, was reminiscent of the story of his buddy, David Sills V, also a Clarkson guy. In 2010, as a thirteen-year-old, Sills committed to a scholarship offer from USC and then-coach Lane Kiffin.

  Brady White and Tate Martell and their parents all were featured in a December 2013 60 Minutes segment about Clarkson titled “Quarterback Guru.” T
he thirteen-minute piece had aired six weeks earlier, touted as “Morley Safer talks to the ‘Quarterback Guru’ who says the new norm to get to the NFL as a quarterback starts with a tutor like him training kids as young as eight.”

  It had been a good winter for Clarkson and his Dreammaker brand. In January, he appeared on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report for a spoof of him teaching Stephen Colbert how to play quarterback.

  Clarkson also planned to train Oakland Raiders QB Terrelle Pryor for the next five months on Tuesdays and Thursdays, he said. Clarkson had worked with the former Buckeyes star some when he was at Ohio State, although Pryor was still a major project when he arrived in the NFL as a third-round pick in 2011. In 2013, Pryor spent his off-season in Southern California working with Tom House. Pryor even later admitted to reporters that, until he met House, “I never really knew how to throw a football before.”

  BRADY WHITE AND TRAVIS Waller, the alphas of Clarkson’s Sunday-morning group, were part of a loaded crop of Southern California quarterbacks in the 2015 recruiting class. White was a consensus top-five QB, and there were actually three other Los Angeles area quarterbacks ranked even higher. “Five of the eight quarterbacks we liked the most are LA kids,” one SEC coach said. “Usually that area’s overrated for quarterbacks. This year, it seems to be the opposite.”