That's a good question, and one that is difficult to answer concisely. It's also difficult to direct you to a good source to learn from--as with anything that has to be coached, there are a lot of 'flavors', so anything you see can be 90% great and 10% completely wrong. You have to look at a lot of it before you see what's right and what's not. The best thing I can recommend is to give you some examples of guys who do it right, and some guys who have bad tendencies, so you can watch for yourself. You mentioned "throwing off the back foot/leg"--That's (obviously) one of the very last things to see in footwork, I would really categorize that more as "throwing mechanics", but it's worth discussing. "Throwing Mechanics" Lower body issues: "Throwing off his back foot/leg". Matt Stafford does this a lot, for example, Favre used to do it a lot, too. It means he is using only his arm strength to throw the ball, instead of rotating his body around his front leg to get as much leverage as possible. Similarly, you'll hear that a lot of strong-armed QBs "throwing flat-footed". This means they're not rotating at the hips. So while they may be leveraging their upper bodies, they aren't using their lower bodies for even more leverage. Cam Newton is notorious for this. Flacco does it some, as well. RGIII, as well. Some QBs who aren't famously strong armed do this as well, and you can see them do it more and more as the game goes on--Tom Brady, Andy Dalton, and Andrew Luck all do it plenty. Watch Tom Brady early in a game, and his hips, knees, and shoulders are always bouncing in the pocket, then watch him in the 4th quarter of a game where he's been hit a few times, and he becomes a statue. "Didn't step-through the throw". Big Ben does this a lot. It's almost like he knows he's not supposed to throw flat-footed, so he picks up his leg and moves it, but he's not actually using his lower body leverage. Eli Manning also has the strange tendency to fall backwards away from the pass as he throws--almost like he's been coached not to throw from his back leg, so he moves his back leg forward, then effectively throws from his back leg, with no leg there to support him. It's worse. "Locking front leg". Alex Smith doesn't do this as badly as he used to, but he still does it. Fitz still does it a lot (and that isn't his only footwork issue). Even if a QB is throwing off his back leg, his front knee needs to be bent to isolate all the leverage he's generated. If his front leg is locked, the pass will be inaccurate. Some guys get bad habits because playing on softer turf reduces this issue. This issue is more obvious at lower levels where a QB may be playing in a mudhole one week, and on cheap turf over concrete the next. In the old days, a QB could look great in the mud against the Vikings, then play on the "green concrete" in Philly and look awful. The mud would take up some of the impact of the locked knee, while the astroturf on concrete yielded zilch. That's a lot to take in, and there's a lot more to it, and I haven't even touched stance or taking a drop, and how that all plays into timing, or movement in the pocket prior to the pass. I'm tired of typing, and that should be plenty to get somebody started looking at youtube or pulling old articles, or bashing me for posting about something without having coached it at the NFL level. Examples of "good" footwork: Matt Ryan, Drew Brees, Peyton Manning, Dan Marino, Joe Montana, Joe Namath
Goff came out of the Bear Raid and is now the second QB out of an Air Raid-based system to become successful as a full-time starter after Aaron Rodgers from the same school. I think the lousy first year was fairly likely to happen to anybody under any head coach and OC. McVay changing the offense around to a spread really helped year two. I'm also hoping Bates realizes he's not coaching the average bear and adjusts accordingly. I'd take Darnold over Goff every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
The Rams went with the Eli Plan there and it worked. I think every prospect is unique and what worked for Eli and Goff might not be perfect for Darnold. Maybe the Darnold scheme is more like Big Ben's with the first start early in the year and a strong rookie bubble around him to keep things from getting out of hand. There are so many different ways the Jets could approach this.
Yup. Actually, I compare Goff and Rosen favorably. Very similar build, release, arm talent but Rosen came out of school much more adept at reading coverages and moving defenders. Much rather have Darnold.
McVay is a genius. He talks to Goff prior to the snap and gets him in the best situation to succeed. Fisher is just a straight up QB killer. If McVay were there as a rookie, Goff wouldn't have struggled nearly as much IMO.
I was hoping that Bowles' relationship with Bruce Arians would materialize into something. Would bring him in here even if only for the summer. He has worked with Peyton and Big Ben. I am all for that.
Yea he was. You could tell he was burnt out. Even if he visits for a week in late August, Sam could def learn a lot. I bet Bowles has had some talks with him. We will see.
Unrelated, but can anyone guess what NFL stadium this is? View from my desk at work. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Nothing funny about it. I'm not impressed with Jeremy Bates, certainly not as a QB coach. I'm also not impressed by you.
Nice post! This is one of the reasons I came here and stayed - I get to learn things, even as old as I am. It's interesting though...you noted quite a few FQBs, if not HOF'ers who have poor throwing mechanics, and yet they obviously succeeded. What this tells me is that there are some athletes who are so naturally gifted that they can do it "wrong" and still get is right. In fact, trying to "fix" them might actually hurt them. From what I've seen in my time, good coaching that teaches proper mechanics - in all sports - can elevate an "average" player to above average, or even great in some cases, but it can't fix everyone, and isn't a substitute for raw talent. That said, raw talent by itself isn't any guarantee of success either (Josh Allen maybe). Anyway thanks for that lesson!
For the record: I did not create a meme, I simply cut and pasted a widely distributed one from Google that had a fitting caption already in place.
No, The picture and caption fit my thoughts on the matter. I don't give two craps if anyone finds it funny, especially you. It was not meant to be funny. Either you are the most miserable person on the face of the earth or the slowest of mind. 3,000 posts a year, most of them just griping without adding any value at all, I'd hate to be you.
