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

the game today [with] eCoach. Off-line is the traditional model for coaching: fields, classrooms. We’re changing it for a new brand of coach. You’ll have access to these guys three[hundred and]-sixty-five [days a year]. Virtually. The eCoachSports model is to connect the kid to the coach in a virtual relationship. We can do video motion analysis. We’re opening our book to you and saying, ‘Take it!’ We’re opening it to college coaches and saying, ‘Take it!’ Axon Sports is here, too. They’re a worldwide leader in cognitive training. I could only throw so many square-outs, but I could sit in a lab and look at a fifty-inch screen and go through the same rep and have it applicable to the field. Get to the finals, and they’ll have five days of working in an Axon lab. The edge of uncomfortable is where you find greatness.”
    Before the “campetition” started, Dilfer introduced two of his coaches: George Whitfield, “the biggest rock star in the quarterback-development space,” and Jordan Palmer, an active NFL QB who had been around the Elite 11 so many years, he actually began as a preteenball boy. Ninety minutes earlier, in a neon yellow long-sleeved shirt, Palmer was working up a sweat, going through many of the same drills the high schoolers would do. Craig Nall, the former Green Bay Packers backup—with a GoPro mini cam rigged to his shoulder—shouted encouragement, as did a handful of the other TDFB coaches, while the twenty-nine-year-old kept his quarterbacking skills sharp. In five days Palmer—the younger, less heralded brother of 2003 Heisman Trophy–winner Carson Palmer—had an audition with the Chicago Bears in hopes of getting an invitation to their training camp.
    Palmer got a close-up on the life of a blue-chip quarterback from observing how his big brother handled everything. He also had the perspective of being the guy passed over for many of the other hyped QB prodigies. He never got invited to the Elite 11. At least not as a camper. He was a ball boy, a receiver, and even when he was in college as the starter at UTEP, he was a counselor. Palmer without hesitation can rattle off the names of all the Elite 11 QBs who got invited the year he didn’t. He can also tell you how far each of them got in football. (Six of them never even threw one NFL pass, and only one of the eleven quarterbacks he was passed over for, career backup Drew Stanton, has had as long a pro career as Palmer.) Some of the other TDFB staffers joked that Jordan Palmer seemed as if he could be Trent Dilfer’s kid brother as much as Carson Palmer’s.
    The younger Palmer’s message to the parents took on a more nuanced tone.
    “I think the worst thing your kids can do and you guys can do is put importance on the stars,” Palmer said, referencing the online recruiting analysts’ evaluation scale, ranging from elite college prospects—“five-stars”—to mediocre—“one-star.”
    “The biggest problem that you get as an athlete is not about where you came from or if you come from a single-parent home; it’s about growing up with a sense of entitlement. ‘I can’t believe these people are making me wait in line. Don’t they know who I am?’ You start drilling that into their head, and endorsing that—it’s the worst thing that you can do. Best thing my dad ever said to me was, ‘Don’t tell me. Show me.’ ”
    Palmer reinforced that message with a story about his famousbrother. On the day the elder Palmer signed his $126-million contract, Jordan and the rest of the family were in his house waiting to celebrate. “We had the champagne ready, and then he gets up and leaves. He went back into his office to study the playbook. I said, ‘Hang on, you can’t take one night off?’ He said, ‘No, I gotta go earn it.’ ”
    NERVES OFTEN ARE THE toughest competition for young QBs. There are no helmets or pads at the Elite 11. No scoreboards, either. Just a lot of eyeballs watching, and for dozens of