First off, how did the season go coaching the quarterbacks for the Toronto Argonauts?
It was fun being back in Canada! I was blessed to help coach a really good team. Our quarterback, McLeod Bethel-Thompson, led the league in passing and we won the Grey Cup. Bethel-Thompson was actually injured in the fourth quarter of the Grey Cup and we were losing at the time, but our backup Chad Kelly drove us for two scores and the win.
I’m proud of what the quarterback room accomplished – the whole team really – it was a special group. The coaches and players. We had some great leaders on the team – they never quit. It was just one of those seasons.
That’s a great segue – I was wondering, as a guy who’s coached across many different areas in football, how is coaching quarterbacks different from all of those other areas? What does it take to be a successful quarterback coach?
That’s a great question. With every position there’s a need to coach-up the details. The fundamentals and techniques and what you believe in as a coach. Those all have to be in place and you have to put in the work to sharpen those details.
Each position group has their own challenges. Wide receivers have to understand how to beat press coverage, for example. Each position has role assignments for every play and they need to understand how they contribute to each play based on those assignments. Receivers have hot alerts. Linemen have to know how to deal with different fronts, what to do if they are covered or not covered and what to do at the second level.
With quarterbacks, one of the most special traits they need is how to be a leader. So I’m working on helping them develop those leadership skills. There can only be one voice in the huddle, so that’s a big focus of mine when I’m coaching quarterbacks. It’s an in-between the lines thing. They have to be great salesmen.
How do you coach a guy to be a good leader?
Look at Trevor Lawrence in the Chargers playoff game. He threw four picks in the first half! In a home playoff game! Now, everyone is looking at him after that. But he obviously did a great job selling that everything was going to be ok. You have to be able to constantly sell that – when things are or are not going well. Everything is ok! Four picks – no sweat! If players believe in you, anything is possible. You saw that in Jacksonville – that’s hard to do.
Coaching fundamentals with quarterbacks is obviously important- showing them how to transition their weight and follow through with the throw to maximize velocity or touch; to help with their vision of the field and the details in preparing for a game. I experienced a lot of that early on with Kurt Warner. After each series you go back to the iPad and look at what happened on the field to see if it was what you expected to see or not. That’s one part of the job.
But how a quarterback is at communication is a big part of what I coach as well. As a quarterback you have to get to know your personnel on a personal basis. How they respond to leadership. Do they need encouragement or do they need to be yelled at a bit to get them fired up? That’s why I love coaching quarterbacks – that’s a big part of it.
Is some of the leadership stuff innate though? Especially at the NFL level?
Some of it is innate, that’s a fair point. But it’s a skill you can develop. There are things you can point out as a coach – opportunities you can point out. You can talk to them about certain interactions they had during games with other players and coaches and talk to them about how they handled them. You have to act differently as a leader. I don’t like seeing quarterbacks throw their hands up in the air towards the sidelines from the field. To me that’s the start of seeing breakdowns occur. I’m all about respect, and if you start seeing things like that it means things are out of balance. That creates indecision with other players, issues between players and coaches, and sometimes even between coaches and that can lead up to ownership.
As a leader you don’t want to create that type of environment. You have to be accountable – things come up and you have to set the standard for how to deal with them.
What are some of the ways you’ve been able to do that with quarterbacks?
Cowher and I were both Pittsburgh guys and I took this from him – my dad was the same way. He told me that I should understand that his door was always open and that I could talk to him about anything and ask him tough questions. But that I needed to understand that I should be ready for some tough answers as well.
I took that with me. You always know the expectations and standards that way. That’s basic human decency. I’ve talked to quarterbacks and told them to go talk to a receiver if they’ve dropped a couple of passes. Now, they’ll do that on their own at times. But you have to help them see those things and learn what to do to. And they need to be able to go and talk to their coaches as well.
And whether it’s a good or bad play, I tell quarterbacks they have to be able to flush it. It’s all about the next play.
What’s the toughest part of all of that?
As as quarterback you need to be visible. You have to communicate. You can’t be late for meetings. You have to be visible.
Leading by example is great. But if everyone is leading by example that’s 11 people doing their job. At some point you need a leader to stand up and be vocal.
That’s the tough part – how do you hold others accountable? There has to be a commitment – as a quarterback you can’t be afraid to be the bad guy. I remember talking to Rich Gannon about what needed to be turned around when he went to Oakland. He told me that when they gave him a tour of the facilities and they went to the locker room, he saw the pool table there. He said he collected all of the balls from the pool table and told the staff to put them away. They weren’t there to play pool, he said, and every minute they were playing pool was a minute they weren’t in the weight room or film room. Now, that may not have been the reason they won more games. But they won, even if, as he said, he wasn’t the most popular person there.
Looking at Pittsburgh with a soon-to-be second year quarterback, how do you do that at a young age?
It’s hard to do for a young quarterback. You haven’t put up the numbers yet to prove yourself.
You have to be savvy – you have to know where and how to push to address those areas where you think there is a lack of accountability. If a guy isn’t studying the playbook or he’s staying out late – how do you handle that? You have to have the guts to do that. Joe Walton said that you have to be one of the most physically tough people to play in the NFL, but you have to be even more mentally tough as a quarterback. It can’t bother you if guys are upset with you. And it’s a balancing act – you can’t just go on cussing guys out either.
And it’s also about poise and vision and playing with anticipation – all of those things. Sam Wyche taught me in Buffalo that you can get a quarterback 97% ready. He said he got this from Bill Walsh. You can work on the gameplans, fundamentals, the rules for each play and get prepared for coverages. But inevitably in every game it’s that 3% gray area – that’s where the best quarterbacks operate better in. When a situation occurs that wasn’t in the gameplan, that guy can go against the rules because of his poise and vision. Kurt Warner told me of a time when a coach asked him why he threw a pass that wasn’t in the gameplan. He said that he saw the WILL linebacker’s left leg on the inside of the defensive end and knew that he couldn’t get over to the weak side slot in time. That’s the kind of thing that the better quarterbacks can see and do.
How do you gameplan with a young quarterback so it’s not overwhelming yet not so simplistic that it makes it difficult to succeed on offense?
That’s the million dollar question. How much is too much for a young quarterback? Logically it only makes sense that the smaller the plan the more you can do in reps each week to get as many looks and viewpoints as you can for each play.
Some people say it’s good to sit a quarterback early – but look at Ben Roethlisberger and what he was able to do as a rookie. So it all varies – and it all comes down to the relationship you build with your quarterback. That’s why I love what I do. As a coach you have to understand what he can handle – and he has to be honest about that too. Then you try to add where needed to give you a competitive advantage over the season. You usually start smaller and build on that. Some staff carry plays from camp through the season and never use them, or bring them out late in the season. But you usually want to build on each week to keep the young quarterback comfortable with the offense.
Sometimes you call the same thing often just to keep him comfortable. If you have a good running game that certainly helps!
I like to stack completions early and give them some confidence. Then they take a few hits to get them comfortable with the physicality of the game. Make no mistake – that’s a big part of the game as well for a quarterback. Defensive players are monsters – people don’t understand that. They are so strong and fast and want to take a quarterback’s head off. They need to get exposed to that and have that dissipate in their heads.
Read more by former Steelers via the book Steelers Takeaways: Player Memories Through the Decades. To order, just click on the book:
