Max Brosmer's mind and mentality are fit for the NFL
Brosmer's strong first impression with the Vikings was years in the making
By Matthew Coller
Coffee shop employees in Portsmouth, New Hampshire must have been pretty confused when Greg Harbaugh Jr. and Max Brosmer walked in as the store opened and didn’t leave until it closed. They must have wondered: What the heck could these guys be talking about for hours on end? Though I suppose if the baristas are ball knowers, they would have recognized an offense being installed when they saw one.
During the process of recruiting Brosmer, Harbaugh Jr., who is the Minnesota Gophers’ offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach, flew from Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport to Boston Logan Airport and then drove an hour-and-a-half to meet up with Brosmer on a weekly basis. They had to meet 15 minutes away from the University of New Hampshire’s campus in Durham to avoid breaking recruiting rules (which still exist, believe it or not). In those meetings, Harbaugh Jr. guided Brosmer through every detail of Minnesota’s offense.
“I had to prepare for those meetings in a coffee shop… I could not go up there and BS him,” Harbaugh Jr. said over the phone. “If I would have done that, he might have decommitted.”
Brosmer spent the first five years of his college football career playing for New Hampshire, electing to go there are play right away as a freshman back in 2019 instead of attempting to walk on at a bigger program and getting few opportunities. In 2022 and 2023, he put together excellent seasons with 56 touchdowns to just 15 interceptions, led FCS in passing yards in ‘23 and earned an FCS second-team All-American nod along with numerous other accolades. With his extra year of eligibility due to COVID, Brosmer was looking or one shot to play big-time college football. Meanwhile the Gophers were trying to find a transition quarterback.
Under head coach PJ Fleck, the Gophers have not had many quarterbacks and the signal callers that they have had are players that they recruited from high school. But when 2023 starter Athan Kaliakmanis decided to transfer and the next-QB-up Drake Lindsey was still in the development phase as a freshman, Fleck and his staff went on the hunt for a short-term solution under center. Brosmer and the Gophers were connected through quarterback trainer Quincy Avery, who is from Minneapolis and works with numerous college and NFL QBs.
Harbaugh Jr. first talked with Brosmer right after the Gophers’ matchup with Wisconsin on November 25, 2023. Minnesota made Brosmer an offer and set up an official visit for the following week. After leaving his campus visit, the star FCS quarterback flew back to Boston Logan Airport, got in an Uber ride back to New Hampshire and got on the phone to let the Gophers know that he was coming to Minnesota despite some more hefty financial offers from other schools.
But a verbal commitment isn’t written in stone. Harbaugh Jr. knew that every time he went to the coffee shop in Portsmouth, he wasn’t just showing Brosmer a bunch of offensive play calls and hand signals, he was selling the quarterback on himself. Every coffeehouse install was another example of how things were going to go when they were working together in Minnesota.
“What I learned from him was that, whatever you told him, you better think through as a coach because he is going to absorb it and learn it,” Harbaugh Jr. said. “I had to think through every single thing that I was installing with him and make sure that it made sense.”
Brosmer was sold on Harbaugh Jr. and the Gophers’ offense and stuck with his commitment to come to Minnesota. His passionate attitude toward learning the game showed up right away.
“By the time he stepped on campus, he knew the entire offense,” Harbaugh Jr. said “Our first player practice, Darius Taylor came up to me after the practice and said, ‘coach this guy knows more of the offense than I do.’ He just picked up on it so fast.”
Harbaugh Jr. half joked that Brosmer is not for every coach because he might wear out some people.
“We would meet in January and February in the office at 5:15, 5:30 and we would go until the staff got in and then he would sit there with the staff and talk about things… that’s how he got it so fast,” Harbaugh Jr. said.
“I learned in spring ball that he wanted to be coached on every single play,” Harbaugh Jr. continued. “It’s a unique quality because a lot of kids don’t want to be coached that way, they don’t want feedback all the time — positive or negative.”
If some of this sounds familiar, that’s because Brosmer sounds very similar to his indefatigable NFL coach Kevin O’Connell.
“I think Max [Brosmer] is as smart as any young player that I've been around,” O’Connell said following Brosmer’s strong showing in OTAs/minicamp.
The Vikings signed him as an undrafted free agent following a strong season with the Gophers that saw Brosmer win eight of 13 games and throw for 2,801 yards, 18 touchdowns and six interceptions.
“Anytime that the Gophers were on TV and I could see it, just watching a lot of the things,” O’Connell said. “And then we spent some time with their coaching staff…sharing ideas and how we do things and some of the ways we teach things, and so there's some good carryover for things that he's done during his time with the Gophers.”
The path from the FCS’s top passing offense to the NFL wasn’t total rainbows and flowers. Harbaugh Jr. said that the spring sessions were challenging because Brosmer had only played in one system with one set of coaches for his entire college career. He was so involved in the New Hampshire offense that he was part of the game-planning meetings with coaches.
The Gophers’ opener was tough on Brosmer. In front of a big home crowd against North Carolina, Brosmer lost a fumble in the fourth quarter that gave the Tar Heels a key field goal and the Gophers ultimately lost on a last-second missed field goal.
“If I had to go back and change one thing, I would go back and be more aggressive in the first game of the year against North Carolina,” Harbaugh Jr said. “I was too conservative with him in the first half and I should have just said screw it and started throwing the ball all the way around and got him super comfortable.”
Brosmer had to learn on the fly how to deal with the ups and downs of Power 5 football.
In the following weeks he would not only figure out how to deal with tough times but emerge as one of the best Gopher quarterbacks in recent program history.
Harbaugh Jr. felt that things came together a few weeks later for Brosmer, ironically in one of the team’s worst games of the year overall: A 31-14 loss to Iowa.
“The first half against Iowa he was lights out. He played really well,” Harbaugh Jr. said. “What he told me was that he quit worrying about everything against Iowa. He told me that he looked up into the stands and thought, ‘what am I freaking out about? It’s a packed stadium, I’m playing against Iowa, just forget about everything, play football and have fun.’ That’s when I thought it clicked for him.”
From there, Brosmer played well against the defending national champions Michigan — a game in which the Gophers were robbed by a bad call on an onside kick recovery that would have given them one final drive for the win. And then the QB picked up steam. He managed the USC game well, averaging 8.8 yards per attempt while only needing 19 passes to win. He dinked and dunked his way to a victory against UCLA. He went off for 320 yards and four TDs against Maryland.
The vibe of the entire program changed during that run. The Gophers had a legit quarterback.
Against top-25 ranked Illinois, Brosmer gutted out a win, highlighted by a 75-yard fourth quarter touchdown drive that gave the Gophers the lead and the victory.
“His stat line, he only completed 58% of his balls whereas Maryland he threw for 320 and four TDs but Illinois was the game that he had to battle,” Harbaugh Jr. said. “We were on the road and they were the 24th ranked and he battled through everything they threw at him.”
That may have been the game that his coach was most pleased with but the moment where Brosmer made the most personal growth came next. The Gophers had a chance to do something special against Penn State, taking the top-ranked Nittany Lions to the final bell. They fell short 26-25. The following week, the Gophers took home The Axe in their rivalry game against Wisconsin and Brosmer threw for two touchdowns and received a 91.9 PFF grade, his second highest of the year.
“The Penn State to Wisconsin game was probably the most growth I saw because he was a kid that dwelled on so many things,” Harbaugh Jr. said. “To see him bounce back [after Penn State] and go play the way he did against Wisconsin and win the game on the road in 20 degree weather for The Axe on a short week, that’s where I saw him grow so much. How he could flip the switch again — because he was down on Sunday after Penn State. I walked in and he was down and I was like, ‘you gotta snap out of it,’ and I sent him right into Fleck’s office and then he was back. That was what we needed in that situation. I think that was where I saw the most growth.”
That growth put him in position to play in the NFL.
Brosmer went undrafted but there were multiple teams interested in bringing him aboard as an undrafted free agent. People who know Brosmer knew the best fit without thinking twice: O’Connell’s Vikings.
“I’ve known KOC for quite some time and those two, they nerd out about football in the same way,” Quincy Avery said over the phone.
Avery has known Brosmer since he was in seventh grade. He has been there training him every step of the way. In fact, when Avery was reached for this story, he was preparing to go to Florida and work with Brosmer as he prepares for his first NFL camp. Avery sees Brosmer’s dedication and football intelligence as the type of superpower that gives him a chance to play in the pros for a long time.
“He operates at a different level and people trust him,” Avery said. “He could basically install that offense that they were running. Max has the highest level of football knowledge, that’s why he’s been successful. Of course he can throw but his ability to do all the little things on the mental side has really separated him.”
Avery continued:
“He’s a football savant. He could be a coach really, really quickly after he’s done playing.”
On the throwing side of things, Avery said that he feels Brosmer’s accuracy is his strong point but he hasn’t lagged behind in arm strength when working out alongside NFL QBs. The QB mentor pointed out that Brosmer has often tweaked his mechanics throughout his career based on the latest research available about what make the best and most efficient passers stand out.
“His ability to rotate and use ground force is what allows him to throw so hard,” Avery said. “He’s made a lot of tweaks and changes to his throwing motion through the years. In the same way that he’s nerdy about the X’s and O’s, he’s nerdy about throwing the ball at the highest level. He’s always trying to find the cutting edge information to make sure that he’s able to get as much force as possible.”
When Brosmer arrived at TCO Performance Center, he did not seem out of place, making a strong impression on his first day at rookie minicamp.
“The starting point of just pretty efficient thrower of the football from a standpoint of fundamentals, technique, his ability to generate some pretty good revolutions and RPMs on the ball with pretty limited movement in the pocket,” O’Connell said following rookie minicamp practice. “From a standpoint of his high football IQ – I think it shows up when he can arrive here, spend a couple hours in meetings, and he's out there making corrections in the middle of a 7-on-7 walk-through.”
Brosmer may have had an advantage because Harbaugh Jr. implemented concepts and ideas from O’Connell’s offense last year. When Harbaugh Jr. was a receivers coach at Western Michigan, he spent time studying Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay offenses that have influenced O’Connell’s style. He brought that knowledge to Minnesota.
“We were doing a lot of the same concepts and if you put on our tape from spring ball it looks very similar to what Kevin is doing with the Vikings,” Harbaugh Jr. said. The relationship that PJ and Kevin have, it’s working well for Max and setting him up hopefully for a long-term future in the NFL.
Brosmer is going to have to reach back into every bit of his journey to find ways to thrive with the Vikings, whether it’s concepts on a white board or the race against time to learn every bit of the offense (possible in a Minneapolis coffee shop?) before he battles for the No. 3 spot on the roster in camp or it’s handling the pressure of preseason action.
“Going to play in the Big Ten was a huge help for me, just feeling the energy of a 60,000-person crowd or a 112,000-person crowd and feeling what big-time football feels like and now that I’m at the professional level it’s only going to get to a larger scale from there,” Brosmer said.
There will be some new experiences, like getting very few reps during practice or less one-on-one coaching than McCarthy and Howell. But there will be some familiar experiences, like when he takes his first snaps and says to himself, ‘What am I freaking out about? Just play football and have fun.’
“Going undrafted and coming here, things are supposed to happen for a reason,” Brosmer said. “Coming out of high school I went to New Hampshire a reason and I learned what the reason was through my years there, went to Minnesota and it happened for a reason and now I come back to Minnesota to start my professional career. I’m always looking for the reason that I’m here and the people here are absolutely incredible and I can’t wait to find out what my journey looks like along my path here.”
This was a good article. I really enjoyed it.
Hopefully we now have a long term back up QB or at least future QBs coach!