Football Quarterbacks...How the exceptional became the norm.

MahomesMagic · 11-16-2021, 12:43 PM

In the Throws of Change
As defenses threatened to overwhelm a generation of homogeneous passers, quarterbacks were saved by an evolution, which has sparked a coaching revolution. How the exceptional became the norm.
CONOR ORR

One of the most fascinating developments in modern quarterbacking was uncovered in the dark recesses of football Twitter.

There, quarterback junkies search for an edge in video clips, scanning the slow-motion drop-backs, releases and follow-throughs of the best players in the world, trying to identify the mechanical quirks that lead to the most staggeringly beautiful—and stunningly improbable—throws we see every Sunday.

So it was that the Aaron Rodgers Foot Pop came to be known. Some warm-up footage showed the Packers’ quarterback shooting his lead (left) foot in the air for a split second, then touching it quietly back to Earth just after releasing the ball. At full speed it looks like a bit of an Irish step dance; well-timed photographs of Rodgers in action make it seem as if he is levitating as he passes. But the Foot Pop is actually a biomechanical adaptation by Rodgers to, as one quarterbacking expert says, generate a “buildup of rotational force let out in a quicker timeline for explosive power.” If that’s too much to digest, then simply know this: It was something the likes of which we had never seen, and it unlocked Rodgers’s arm talent in ways no one could conceive.

....

The move went against decades of rigid quarterback instruction demanding that the lead foot be planted securely to ensure an accurate delivery. The Foot Pop even looks different from the traditional throwing motion Rodgers had in 2005, when he entered the NFL. Its effectiveness, however, allowed Green Bay to include imaginative route concepts in its playbook that didn’t exist elsewhere, throws that only Rodgers could make. Study almost any of his biggest passes over the past seven years, and it starts to stand out. After a while it’s like watching a magician so many times that you know how the rabbit is hidden but you can’t help but still be enthralled by the sleight of hand.

....

Some Mahomes stuff and more on why QB play is so much better on average than before.

A small sampling from just the first month of the NFL season:

• Kyler Murray, against the Titans, rolls to his right to evade charging pass rusher Harold Landry and splays both of his legs in the air like a shortstop making a throw from the hole to first base. To generate power while aloft, the top half of Murray’s torso twitches as if it were a rotating sprinkler head. His throw traces a path reminiscent of a screwball’s, zipping just beyond a defender and into the outstretched hands of DeAndre Hopkins, meeting the star receiver in stride in the back of the end zone.

• Lamar Jackson takes a shotgun snap on a third-and-4 and immediately steps up into a crowded pocket to avoid Chiefs pass rusher Chris Jones, crashing from the offense’s right side. Jackson sees an open wide receiver but, unable to stride forward in this platform, instead jumps, putting his left hand on the back of an offensive lineman for support, and hooks his throwing arm as if he’s launching a discus. Marquise Brown catches the ball 25 yards down field and trots in for a 42-yard touchdown.

• Patrick Mahomes, facing the Browns, sprints toward the right sideline, his back, right foot stepping on his own 20-yard line. With his left leg elevated, the violence of his throwing motion torques his head so that, just after the release, he’s looking over his left shoulder. The ball travels 50 yards to the Browns’ 30 and into the arms of Tyreek Hill, who runs the rest of the way for a score.

....

Before a series of beautiful and strange circumstances brought the likes of Rodgers, Russell Wilson, Dak Prescott, Mahomes, Josh Allen, Jackson, Murray and Justin Herbert into the football world, the species was threatened. A growing mediocrity had taken hold, with a few well-coached, archetypal pocket passers fighting back a wave of new defenses that threatened to reprise the touchdown-scarce NFL of the 1960s and ’70s.

In the wild, circumstances like these are how a species either reaches extinction or avoids that fate by evolving. “It’s like Jurassic Park—life finds a way, right?” says Shane Campbell-Staton, an assistant professor of evolutionary biology at Princeton. “At the same time, some species are going extinct. They are. But that is also part of evolutionary change.”

Mahomes, like Rodgers, ushered in a new maneuver. It comes on run-pass option (RPO) plays, when the quarterback takes a shotgun snap and presents the ball for a handoff while reading a defender at the linebacker level; if that defender plays the run, the QB pulls the ball back and throws instead. Quarterbacks passing in an RPO used to reset their frame completely

to use a traditional motion and mechanics. Mahomes, however, began making RPO throws with his feet still set up for a handoff, rather than targeted toward the receiver, so that he could get the ball out much faster. Like the Foot Pop, it has become ubiquitous in the NFL.

The quarterback species now had its cultural equivalent to larger toe pads and longer limbs to pass on to future members. Around them, an infrastructure of coaches, agents, trainers and parents began to grapple with the questions necessary to hone the skills for throws that could, regardless of the defense and coverage, still result in a 40-yard touchdown.

What if we let our best athlete play quarterback?
What if we welcomed the volatility that might come along with that?
What if we tried to better understand on-field chaos and found a way to practice it?
What if we questioned the existing knowledge?

“What would have happened if Patrick Mahomes had modeled his game completely after Peyton Manning?” asks Bobby Stroupe, a health, performance and player development coach who works with the K.C. quarterback. “If he tried to stand on his tippy toes and dance around and throw the ball down like a dart, would you even know his name?”

https://www.si.com/nfl/2021/11/16/co...ing-revolution

Pitt Gorilla · 11-16-2021, 01:27 PM

That's pretty awesome. QB play has been getting better for a while. Not sure why it took so long to decide that QBs didn't have to be tall, slow, lumbering white guys who threw the ball a certain way. Rogers and Wilson were critical in that development.

AdolfOliverBush · 11-16-2021, 01:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MahomesMagic

“What would have happened if Patrick Mahomes had modeled his game completely after Peyton Manning?” asks Bobby Stroupe, a health, performance and player development coach who works with the K.C. quarterback. “If he tried to stand on his tippy toes and dance around and throw the ball down like a dart, would you even know his name?”

Good article, but Mahomes could wedge the football into his ass crack and fire it downfield using a blast of high-pressure anal vapor, and still be the best QB in the NFL.

ToxSocks · 11-16-2021, 01:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AdolfOliverBush

Good article, but Mahomes could wedge the football into his ass crack and fire it downfield using a blast of high-pressure anal vapor, and still be the best QB in the NFL.

I heard he's been working on this in practice.

**Rain Man** · 11-16-2021, 01:58 PM

Very interesting. I like the science within the game.

Mennonite · 11-16-2021, 02:02 PM

This sounds like a load of horse shit to me.

Pitt Gorilla · 11-16-2021, 02:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Detoxing

I heard he's been working on this in practice.

As if he'd actually have to practice that...

stevegroganfan · 11-16-2021, 02:50 PM

This article comes across as a bunch of complete utter horseshi* BS. Brady supposedly had quarterback coaches/training as far back as high school if not before then. No doubt training is marginally better now but very marginally better. Players probably started first going to QB schools in 70's or 80's.

The bigger difference and its a huge difference is QB's and wide receivers are no longer getting absolutely pummeled by defenders like they were before the 90's....even in the past 10 years as Brady has alluded to the rules have gotten softer. Rule changes have favored scoring and protecting players which favors the QB.

I have Brady as the GOAT since I honestly believe it. The guy is underrated and not overrated but at the time if the rules were the same as the 60's and even 70's, even Joe Montana's career wouldn't have been as long. Brady wouldn't be playing at 44 with the NFL rules of the 50's. No qb or receiver would unless they want to be hospitalized. Over time, rules have favored keeping players, specifically QB's and wide receivers, healthy.

At one point, players couldn't avoid hits by sliding. At one point, horse collars were completely legal and bringing players down by their face masks was legal. While some of those rules changed quickly, for decades defenders were allowed to INJURE players on purpose by just breaking bones and inflicting massive pain.

I am not exaggerating here. My father if he wanted to wasn't far off from making the NFL. He was probably fast enough and even scrimmaged against players on an NFL team and did well. He had friends in the league including one that made the HOF. Back then besides being athletic enough, you needed to be half crazy since you were inevitably going to get a serious injury if you stayed in the league long enough, pay wasn't that great and medical technology wasn't very good at repairing the inevitable injuries.

That type of defense from 50's to even early 90's, makes the touchdown pass that Mac Jones threw to a receiver this past weekend with two players nearby less likely. In the past, the defense may have tried to take the receivers head off or just smashed him in the back with the crown of the helmet as the best way to defend one of his touchdown passes.

Tougher to focus on extreme accuracy in that environment when you are first focused on survival. And receivers can run less "precise" routes when they are legitimately afraid of being killed on the field.

Mobile qb's have been apart of the entire history of the NFL and black mobile QB's have been a big part of the league since the 1990's. Increased success in regular season at least has more to do with rule changes than anything else.

11-16-2021, 12:43 PM
MahomesMagic Generational Player Join Date: May 2017 Location: Honolulu Casino cash: $280400	Quarterbacks...How the exceptional became the norm. In the Throws of Change As defenses threatened to overwhelm a generation of homogeneous passers, quarterbacks were saved by an evolution, which has sparked a coaching revolution. How the exceptional became the norm. CONOR ORR One of the most fascinating developments in modern quarterbacking was uncovered in the dark recesses of football Twitter. There, quarterback junkies search for an edge in video clips, scanning the slow-motion drop-backs, releases and follow-throughs of the best players in the world, trying to identify the mechanical quirks that lead to the most staggeringly beautiful—and stunningly improbable—throws we see every Sunday. So it was that the Aaron Rodgers Foot Pop came to be known. Some warm-up footage showed the Packers’ quarterback shooting his lead (left) foot in the air for a split second, then touching it quietly back to Earth just after releasing the ball. At full speed it looks like a bit of an Irish step dance; well-timed photographs of Rodgers in action make it seem as if he is levitating as he passes. But the Foot Pop is actually a biomechanical adaptation by Rodgers to, as one quarterbacking expert says, generate a “buildup of rotational force let out in a quicker timeline for explosive power.” If that’s too much to digest, then simply know this: It was something the likes of which we had never seen, and it unlocked Rodgers’s arm talent in ways no one could conceive. .... The move went against decades of rigid quarterback instruction demanding that the lead foot be planted securely to ensure an accurate delivery. The Foot Pop even looks different from the traditional throwing motion Rodgers had in 2005, when he entered the NFL. Its effectiveness, however, allowed Green Bay to include imaginative route concepts in its playbook that didn’t exist elsewhere, throws that only Rodgers could make. Study almost any of his biggest passes over the past seven years, and it starts to stand out. After a while it’s like watching a magician so many times that you know how the rabbit is hidden but you can’t help but still be enthralled by the sleight of hand. .... Some Mahomes stuff and more on why QB play is so much better on average than before. A small sampling from just the first month of the NFL season: • Kyler Murray, against the Titans, rolls to his right to evade charging pass rusher Harold Landry and splays both of his legs in the air like a shortstop making a throw from the hole to first base. To generate power while aloft, the top half of Murray’s torso twitches as if it were a rotating sprinkler head. His throw traces a path reminiscent of a screwball’s, zipping just beyond a defender and into the outstretched hands of DeAndre Hopkins, meeting the star receiver in stride in the back of the end zone. • Lamar Jackson takes a shotgun snap on a third-and-4 and immediately steps up into a crowded pocket to avoid Chiefs pass rusher Chris Jones, crashing from the offense’s right side. Jackson sees an open wide receiver but, unable to stride forward in this platform, instead jumps, putting his left hand on the back of an offensive lineman for support, and hooks his throwing arm as if he’s launching a discus. Marquise Brown catches the ball 25 yards down field and trots in for a 42-yard touchdown. • Patrick Mahomes, facing the Browns, sprints toward the right sideline, his back, right foot stepping on his own 20-yard line. With his left leg elevated, the violence of his throwing motion torques his head so that, just after the release, he’s looking over his left shoulder. The ball travels 50 yards to the Browns’ 30 and into the arms of Tyreek Hill, who runs the rest of the way for a score. .... Before a series of beautiful and strange circumstances brought the likes of Rodgers, Russell Wilson, Dak Prescott, Mahomes, Josh Allen, Jackson, Murray and Justin Herbert into the football world, the species was threatened. A growing mediocrity had taken hold, with a few well-coached, archetypal pocket passers fighting back a wave of new defenses that threatened to reprise the touchdown-scarce NFL of the 1960s and ’70s. In the wild, circumstances like these are how a species either reaches extinction or avoids that fate by evolving. “It’s like Jurassic Park—life finds a way, right?” says Shane Campbell-Staton, an assistant professor of evolutionary biology at Princeton. “At the same time, some species are going extinct. They are. But that is also part of evolutionary change.” Mahomes, like Rodgers, ushered in a new maneuver. It comes on run-pass option (RPO) plays, when the quarterback takes a shotgun snap and presents the ball for a handoff while reading a defender at the linebacker level; if that defender plays the run, the QB pulls the ball back and throws instead. Quarterbacks passing in an RPO used to reset their frame completely to use a traditional motion and mechanics. Mahomes, however, began making RPO throws with his feet still set up for a handoff, rather than targeted toward the receiver, so that he could get the ball out much faster. Like the Foot Pop, it has become ubiquitous in the NFL. The quarterback species now had its cultural equivalent to larger toe pads and longer limbs to pass on to future members. Around them, an infrastructure of coaches, agents, trainers and parents began to grapple with the questions necessary to hone the skills for throws that could, regardless of the defense and coverage, still result in a 40-yard touchdown. What if we let our best athlete play quarterback? What if we welcomed the volatility that might come along with that? What if we tried to better understand on-field chaos and found a way to practice it? What if we questioned the existing knowledge? “What would have happened if Patrick Mahomes had modeled his game completely after Peyton Manning?” asks Bobby Stroupe, a health, performance and player development coach who works with the K.C. quarterback. “If he tried to stand on his tippy toes and dance around and throw the ball down like a dart, would you even know his name?” https://www.si.com/nfl/2021/11/16/co...ing-revolution
Posts: 10,177

11-16-2021, 01:27 PM	#2
Pitt Gorilla Banned! Join Date: Sep 2000 Location: NOT Columbia, MO 65201 Casino cash: $-169806	That's pretty awesome. QB play has been getting better for a while. Not sure why it took so long to decide that QBs didn't have to be tall, slow, lumbering white guys who threw the ball a certain way. Rogers and Wilson were critical in that development. __________________ Your son is a bench warmer because of your weak genetics not because of the coach Norlin Mommsen is disgusting.
Posts: 47,386	1 0

11-16-2021, 01:58 PM	#5
Rain Man Seize life. Be an ermine. Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: My house Casino cash: $-742449 VARSITY	Very interesting. I like the science within the game. __________________ Active fan of the greatest team in NFL history.
Posts: 145,573

11-16-2021, 02:02 PM	#6
Mennonite Veteran Join Date: Jun 2014 Casino cash: $10258572	This sounds like a load of horse shit to me.
Posts: 3,378

11-16-2021, 02:50 PM	#8
stevegroganfan Starter Join Date: Jan 2019 Casino cash: $3410400	This article comes across as a bunch of complete utter horseshi* BS. Brady supposedly had quarterback coaches/training as far back as high school if not before then. No doubt training is marginally better now but very marginally better. Players probably started first going to QB schools in 70's or 80's. The bigger difference and its a huge difference is QB's and wide receivers are no longer getting absolutely pummeled by defenders like they were before the 90's....even in the past 10 years as Brady has alluded to the rules have gotten softer. Rule changes have favored scoring and protecting players which favors the QB. I have Brady as the GOAT since I honestly believe it. The guy is underrated and not overrated but at the time if the rules were the same as the 60's and even 70's, even Joe Montana's career wouldn't have been as long. Brady wouldn't be playing at 44 with the NFL rules of the 50's. No qb or receiver would unless they want to be hospitalized. Over time, rules have favored keeping players, specifically QB's and wide receivers, healthy. At one point, players couldn't avoid hits by sliding. At one point, horse collars were completely legal and bringing players down by their face masks was legal. While some of those rules changed quickly, for decades defenders were allowed to INJURE players on purpose by just breaking bones and inflicting massive pain. I am not exaggerating here. My father if he wanted to wasn't far off from making the NFL. He was probably fast enough and even scrimmaged against players on an NFL team and did well. He had friends in the league including one that made the HOF. Back then besides being athletic enough, you needed to be half crazy since you were inevitably going to get a serious injury if you stayed in the league long enough, pay wasn't that great and medical technology wasn't very good at repairing the inevitable injuries. That type of defense from 50's to even early 90's, makes the touchdown pass that Mac Jones threw to a receiver this past weekend with two players nearby less likely. In the past, the defense may have tried to take the receivers head off or just smashed him in the back with the crown of the helmet as the best way to defend one of his touchdown passes. Tougher to focus on extreme accuracy in that environment when you are first focused on survival. And receivers can run less "precise" routes when they are legitimately afraid of being killed on the field. Mobile qb's have been apart of the entire history of the NFL and black mobile QB's have been a big part of the league since the 1990's. Increased success in regular season at least has more to do with rule changes than anything else.
Posts: 590