The QB: The Making of Modern Quarterbacks Read Online Free PDF Page A

to play tall.
    “We don’t play tall in the pocket.
    “We play strong in the pocket.
    “On the top of his drop, he’s probably 5′7″, but he understands that’s how he needs to play to maximize energy in his body.”
    Whether it was Rodgers, Brees, Manning, or Wilson, Dilfer showed clip after clip of quarterbacks making throws with all their cleats in the ground.
    “We don’t play on our toes,” he said. “The guys who generate the most ball speed are the ones who generate the most ground force.”
    Many of the beliefs Trent Dilfer now holds are contrary to what he and most other quarterbacks were taught. He now believes the essential aspect of a quarterback’s being able to fire a tight spiral comes from the player’s wrist load. He credits former-Major-League-pitcher-turned-biomechanics-whiz Tom House for helping reshape his perspective, his lexicon, and for opening his eyes to the science of throwing.
    “I never understood this until I started studying about how you load the ball as it goes back,” Dilfer said. “It’s amazing how consistent it is, and when you look at guys who struggle with accuracy, they don’t do this. ‘Opposite-equals’ is a position that every great passer gets to. And when the hands separate, you have elbow-wrist association where your opposite wrists are at equal height. Every great quarterback gets there. It happens on foot strike. With the great golfers, their bodies are moving at the same speed as their core, and all that energy is being transferred out to the ball. Whether it’s tennis, throwing a football, [or] hitting a golf ball, you have to be matched up.
    “There’s elbow-wrist association, and the new term is ‘opposite-equal-foot-strike.’ It’s important to understand this.”
    He flipped through play after play before pressing Pause on the moment before the ball was unloaded. “Here’s Matt Ryan, elbow-wrist … Drew Brees, elbow-wrist … Aaron Rodgers, elbow-wrist. It doesn’t change. Every dude gets in[to] that position.”
    Another phrase Dilfer harped on was “hip-shoulder disassociation.”
    “I’m probably the only guy in this room—and the only guy on the planet—who believes that this [motioning to his shoulders] is more important than this [motioning to his legs]. Don’t get me wrong.I think you should train your feet up the yin-yang. But I think this,” Dilfer said, motioning to his upper body, “tells this [motioning to his lower body] what to do.
    “We’ve built a bunch of quarterbacks who need perfect environments. They can go back and crow-hop into a hook. They can do it in a camp setting beautifully. But then in the game, the quarterback goes back, and the guard gets beat[en].”
    COACH : Well, the hook’s wide open.
    QB : Yeah, but, Coach, I had to step to my left.
    COACH : So?
    “I believe you train from the waist up,” Dilfer continued, “and the waist down will follow. And the reason I came to this conclusion is all of this geeking out, watching film, and seeing that the best dudes in the league, their feet aren’t right the majority of the time. A lot of times they don’t have to be.”
    Aaron Rodgers, the Green Bay Packers star who didn’t have a single scholarship offer when he came out of high school, was featured more than any other quarterback in Dilfer’s tutorial. Rodgers’s penchant for being able to deftly zing passes into narrow spaces while throwing against his body or seemingly out of position from his body’s alignment left many of the coaches in awe. On one play, which was used as a prime example of his “hip-shoulder disassociation” premise, Dilfer paused the tape before polling the coaches on where they expected the ball to be thrown, given Rodgers’s contorted posture. Most noted the positioning of his lower body and assumed the QB was throwing to his left. Instead, the ball zipped to the right—an unlikely direction, given his body angle.
    “Wow,” sighed one of the coaches as he