Young QBs are more prepared than ever for this moment
Young QBs are more prepared than ever for this moment
Twin Cities based QB coach Cleveland McCoy is training kids starting at a young age, part of a trend that has young QBs more ready than ever
By Matthew Coller
When Cleveland McCoy was growing up playing in the backyard with his cousins, he always played quarterback. He was older and bigger than everyone else so he could throw the ball better. And that was the extent of his quarterback training during childhood.
His size and natural athleticism landed him in a high school offense where the quarterback ran more than passed. He had enough success doing that to become the starting quarterback for three years at South Carolina State University.
His athleticism and raw arm strength carried him in college. Technique? Scheme? Those things were foreign to him. McCoy remembers playing the NCAA video game and someone mentioning that the opponent was playing Cover-2 defense.
“What’s that?” he thought.
While we would love to romanticize the idea of a kid going from his backyard to the bigtime, the days of young wannabe quarterbacks throwing on a Joe Namath jersey and tossing the pigskin through an old tire are long gone.
Nobody knows this better than McCoy. He found out exactly how far behind he was with the technical elements of the game when he arrived in the pros. McCoy went to the CFL in 2008.
“What have I done?” he asked himself during his first practices with the Winnipeg Bombers.
McCoy still worked his way into pro opportunities with the Lions and Packers and played in several arena leagues but he couldn’t help wondering how things might have been different if he had a little more guidance from a young age.
“Once you make it to that level everyone is good,” he said. “What’s going to separate you from the next guy? It’s the mental part. The mental piece was so big coming from college to pro. You are the man in college and now you have to learn a whole new playbook. The preparation piece was big for me. I was like, man, I’m really behind. My approach to the game has to be totally different.”
After years of fighting the good fight to be QB1, he was forced to rehab an injury in the Twin Cities. McCoy ended up staying and taking a job in the Fridley parks and recreation department.
When McCoy was finished with football, he was bitter.
“I hated football after the whole thing. I was like, I’m done with it,” McCoy said. “I was depressed. People don’t talk about that enough. You go from playing in front of all of these people and suddenly boom, real life hits you. I shunned football, I didn’t want to be a part of it.”
But he couldn’t stay away for long. It was calling him. McCoy started coaching quarterbacks at Patrick Henry High School in 2014 and then Fridley High School from 2016-2018 and took a job at Champlin High in 2019.
Along the way he started working on the side training quarterbacks. He was doing sessions in the park with a co-worker’s son when the co-worker asked him, “how much do I owe you?”
“You don’t owe me anything,” McCoy told him.
“Yes I do, I pay the other guy,” the co-worker told him.
That night he couldn’t get it out of his head how much he enjoyed teaching quarterbacks the lessons he didn’t learn until it was too late — and the thought of getting paid for it was exciting. He decided to start his own business training QBs. He made a website, QBFootballTraining.com, wrote up a biography and decided this was his future.
For the last four years, that’s been McCoy’s focus. He has built his training into a full-time job working with numerous quarterbacks, a number of which have gone on to play college football and one who is hoping to be drafted or land a priority free agent gig this year.
McCoy picked the right time to start his QB training business. The industry has exploded in recent years as players try to get a head start on the competition.
McCoy starts with quarterbacks as young as eight or nine. Your first impression might be that it’s a little young to be talking fundamentals but it’s long been known in other sports like hockey that kids who don’t start skating until they are older have significantly reduced chances of being excellent hockey players. Football is no different. That doesn’t mean McCoy is treating them like Kirk Cousins, of course.
“In that early phase it’s understanding the mechanics of throwing,” McCoy said. “The upper body mechanic and then we break down the footwork component. I always say that you have to have good footwork to play quarterback. That is the foundation. Understanding where your hips need to be, sequence phasing and all that stuff… you don’t want to overwhelm an eight year old. You are teaching them the three-step drop, just the basics.”
He teaches basic coverages and concepts. During 7-on-7s he trains them to understand what “smash” and “hook-curl” means. How to run an RPO and hand the ball off correctly.
“The early preparation is key,” McCoy said. “If you want to be successful at this position, you have to get early tutelage even if it’s just learning the details early.”
The former pro QB said that he is not trying to create “football robots” and encourages kids to do things in ways that work for them but he uses an metaphor to explain what the lessons early for young quarterbacks can do for a player’s confidence:
“If you have crossed this bridge before then you can walk on this bridge and you know the different areas where you can step on the shaky bridge,” he said. “Having the experience and doing it over and over again allows it not to feel uncomfortable when you are out there performing.”
The other part that makes training outside of simply playing high school and college football an absolute necessity these days is that college coaches are more focused on winning than teaching fundamentals. That isn’t a knock, just the reality with limited hours and pressure to win. McCoy points out that Tim Tebow’s throwing motion might have been improved had it been a focus in college. Instead he was a one-read or run QB at Florida because Urban Meyer played to his strengths. When he got to the NFL he was too far behind.
Where McCoy’s story intersects with the Minnesota Vikings’ decision on Thursday night is that we have reached the point where every quarterback has worked with someone like McCoy during their journey to the first round of the NFL Draft. For example, former NFL Quarterback John Beck has worked with Jayden Daniels, JJ McCarthy and Michael Penix Jr. Bo Nix was trained by his dad growing up. Coach Rich Scangarello is working with Caleb Williams.
The pre-draft process alone requires these guys to be deeply knowledgeable about the game. Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell explained at the owner’s meetings what it’s like for a prospect quarterback in individual meetings.
“You just turn on flip on the tape, give them the clicker and have them take you through it,” O’Connell said. “You can ask them questions in real time and see how fast they either remember things, how fast they're digesting the information or the question you're asking. How clearly and articulate can they put that information into real tangible things that then I can use as a coach for feedback to help them in the future. And then I think the value of them learning basically a foreign language in a lot of ways, our system, parts of our system that then you can then go on the grass and see if they understand how we want to set our feet and eyes on this drop or what kind of, when we talk about pocket movement, what that looks like when we talk about on schedule versus off schedule, red zone third down, like how it fits within the framework of… the system that we want to build for them.”
Private coaches aren’t exactly a new thing. There were several well known QB gurus in the industry for many years and QB camps have been increasing in popularity for some time. But now we have reached a point where quarterbacks who are reaching the NFL draft have been working from a very young age all year round on mastering the quarterback position. Every QB coming into this draft is more prepared from a young age than they ever would have been in the past.
“The kids that I’m training now, they are getting what I got later in life,” McCoy said. “By the time they get to high school, college, they are going to be ahead of the game…. It’s a different time.”
Quarterbacks have a lot to learn in the NFL no matter how many hours spent with private training but the players being picked in 2024 are arriving on the shores of the NFL with a professional mindset that was set within them for many years rather than having to grasp it on the fly as McCoy once did.
“There’s only one quarterback, what’s going to separate you?” McCoy said.
We will find out on Thursday night which quarterbacks separated themselves among all the others who wish to be in their shoes. And someday they will try to hold onto their spots as kids who are getting ahead of the game at a young age now come into the NFL even more prepared than they were.