KANSAS CITY, Mo. On a Sunday afternoon last fall, teenager Timothy Dorsey sat in front of the TV and flipped on the Chiefs game, same as hed done hundreds of times before. The Chiefs have long been like a faith in his family, started by his grandfather, carried on by his father.
On this day, Dorsey watched as Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes rolled to his right to elude pressure, contorted his body in a flash and threw a deep ball back to his left.
On the money.
Whoa, the teenager thought. Howd he do that?
Dorsey is a junior at Bishop Miege High School who hopes to be the starting quarterback for the varsity football team this year, and his own training background offers a unique perspective on the collection of otherworldly Mahomes plays. That was his first thought that afternoon. Blissful appreciation.
He snickers at his second.
I bet we start practicing that play this week.
Late at night, after his wife and kids have gone to bed, Justin Hoover digs into some film work. He has long forgotten what it feels like to watch a game as a normal fan. During a college football Saturday or NFL Sunday, he carries a scratch sheet of paper with him, taking notes on quarterback play. Sometimes he uses the app on his iPhone.
In 2013, Hoover opened Spin It Quarterback Academy in Kansas City. Considered a top quarterback guru in the area, hes also the head coach for Shawnee Mission East.
And so a few days after Dorsey watched Mahomes prolong that late fourth-quarter drive with the against-the-grain deep route to wide receiver Tyreek Hill, he showed up at Spin It for a biweekly group session, already knowing what was coming. Jake Wolff, a junior in line to start at Blue Valley this fall, joined him there. Hoover ran them through a series of foundation drills. The layups, he calls them.
Then came the fun stuff. The off-script. The off-platform. The off-schedule. The stuff most coaches tell you not to do.
How its labeled on Hoovers printed schedule: Mahomes Minutes.
You have to practice the hard stuff. You have to practice the, No, no no! moments in order to get that yes result, Hoover says. When the pocket is fine and the window is there, we go back to our training and the stuff weve practiced a million times. But when the pocket breaks down, are we still capable of making a play? That depends whether you have enough reps practicing it.
Earlier this year, Hoover researched the look of the typical quarterback pocket. Combining three years of data at the high school level, he discovered the typical pocket was, well, atypical.
Per his research, only one-third of passes were released without any extra required movement. Without an effective pass rush. With a clean pocket. The remaining two-thirds required some creativity and instincts.
