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Somewhat off topice but it's so interesting to read about all this stuff that breaks down the science of perfect mechanics for a QB. I'm fine with Pep Hamilton. But I almost wish we could steal Mario Verduzco from Nebraska after reading this.
https://theathletic.com/1046003/2019...rian-martinez/
https://theathletic.com/1046003/2019...rian-martinez/
This is the office of Mario Verduzco, the second-year quarterbacks coach at Nebraska. He is 63, has thick, gray, feathered hair and wears round-framed glasses much like the ones favored by John Lennon. Verduzco is prone to slipping off his shoes while discussing the throwing motion and rattling off philosophical quotes and physics formulas. He cites Schmidt’s name and his work while talking about the intricacies of the quarterback position to the point where one wonders if the late UCLA professor should be considered one of the godfathers of quarterback coaching.
Verduzco brings up the aspect of Schmidt’s theory on the specificity of skill, which gets into why he thinks there has been a lot of confusion in the quarterback coaching space. “Even if two skills are quite similar — for example, throwing a baseball and throwing a football correlate damn nearly to zero,” Verduzco says. “That’s not me speaking. That’s the research. You want to screw up a guy’s tennis stroke, have him go play racquetball. And vice versa.”
The playing environment for a quarterback is unlike anything else in sports, he explains.
“Pitchers are on a mound,” he says. “We’re not on a mound. They operate in an absolutely closed environment. The position that I coach is the most open environment skill in all sport. Golf and bowling are closed environment sports. Basketball is a semi-open, closed environment sport, meaning they can do all sorts of stuff but they can’t jack you in the jaw, and the basket is not gonna move. In hockey, they can check you, but the goal’s not gonna move. We’ve got to drop back, eyeballs downfield, throw the ball to a moving target, and those targets are being guarded. All while four or five maniacs are trying to rip your balls off your body.”
Verduzco brings up the aspect of Schmidt’s theory on the specificity of skill, which gets into why he thinks there has been a lot of confusion in the quarterback coaching space. “Even if two skills are quite similar — for example, throwing a baseball and throwing a football correlate damn nearly to zero,” Verduzco says. “That’s not me speaking. That’s the research. You want to screw up a guy’s tennis stroke, have him go play racquetball. And vice versa.”
The playing environment for a quarterback is unlike anything else in sports, he explains.
“Pitchers are on a mound,” he says. “We’re not on a mound. They operate in an absolutely closed environment. The position that I coach is the most open environment skill in all sport. Golf and bowling are closed environment sports. Basketball is a semi-open, closed environment sport, meaning they can do all sorts of stuff but they can’t jack you in the jaw, and the basket is not gonna move. In hockey, they can check you, but the goal’s not gonna move. We’ve got to drop back, eyeballs downfield, throw the ball to a moving target, and those targets are being guarded. All while four or five maniacs are trying to rip your balls off your body.”
Verduzco’s latest gem is Nebraska sophomore Adrian Martinez, a freshman All-American last season. The Fresno, Calif., native completed 65 percent of his passes — the second-highest single-season total in Nebraska history — and rushed for 629 yards in 2018.
Verduzco made some subtle tweaks with Martinez, who had missed his senior season of high school with a shoulder injury. When Martinez arrived in Lincoln as an early enrollee in 2018, Frost asked Verduzco if the young QB would be able to get more juice on the ball.
“Don’t worry about it,” Verduzco told him. “We’ll get it taken care of.”
Verduzco turned to the Butt Drill, which asks the quarterback to throw a football from the seat of his pants, forcing the passer to focus from his shoulder to his hand. “We’re isolating the musculature that throws the football, therefore strengthening it, and we’re gonna increase the flexibility of the shoulder joint — he doesn’t have to worry about hip rotation,” Verduzco says of the merits of the drill. “All he’s worried about it that piece of the puzzle, and we’re rippin’ it.”
The issue Verduzco identified was one of rhythm, as Martinez was bringing the ball back at a slower tempo than when it was going forward. The drill can help solve that. “They’ll bring the ball back slowly — BOOM — then let it rip,” he says. “It’s to get them to understand it’s like a rubber band. Expand and contract. Expand and contract. Cha-Ching! Cha-Ching! Cha-Ching! Once the new program took over, he never looked back.”
Sure enough, during last year’s preseason camp, Frost was wowed by the velocity on Martinez’s throws.
Verduzco made some subtle tweaks with Martinez, who had missed his senior season of high school with a shoulder injury. When Martinez arrived in Lincoln as an early enrollee in 2018, Frost asked Verduzco if the young QB would be able to get more juice on the ball.
“Don’t worry about it,” Verduzco told him. “We’ll get it taken care of.”
Verduzco turned to the Butt Drill, which asks the quarterback to throw a football from the seat of his pants, forcing the passer to focus from his shoulder to his hand. “We’re isolating the musculature that throws the football, therefore strengthening it, and we’re gonna increase the flexibility of the shoulder joint — he doesn’t have to worry about hip rotation,” Verduzco says of the merits of the drill. “All he’s worried about it that piece of the puzzle, and we’re rippin’ it.”
The issue Verduzco identified was one of rhythm, as Martinez was bringing the ball back at a slower tempo than when it was going forward. The drill can help solve that. “They’ll bring the ball back slowly — BOOM — then let it rip,” he says. “It’s to get them to understand it’s like a rubber band. Expand and contract. Expand and contract. Cha-Ching! Cha-Ching! Cha-Ching! Once the new program took over, he never looked back.”
Sure enough, during last year’s preseason camp, Frost was wowed by the velocity on Martinez’s throws.
Verduzco also goes into great detail about what he believes is one of the bigger misnomers in quarterback coaching: “Blocked trials will improve the performance for an isolated skill but will have a detrimental impact on learning the array of requisite skills. Random Variable Practice will have a positive impact on both learning and performance. This fact must be tempered with the stage of learning.”
Verduzco’s adherence to Schmidt’s theory about random variable practice shows when he is on the practice field. When he has his QBs doing 12 reps, it can be a mix of frontside curl, a backside hitch, a backside post, but all are in variable random order to be more in line with how a quarterback has to operate within the game.
He suspects few other quarterback coaches in college football, if any, are incorporating random variable practice to train their QBs unless they’ve heard him speak in a lecture or they understand the notion of Schmidt’s Scheme theory. “It’s really simple,” he says, adding that the first time quarterbacks get into this practice mode, it “shocks their brain”, and the results, initially, are pretty ugly.
Verduzco’s methods incorporate a lot of throwing at practice, his quarterbacks say. He has all kinds of throws and drills for them — rapid-fire, progressives and regressives; T-drills; zero-, 45- and 90-degree, 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock throws.
Another piece of the puzzle for a quarterback, from the psychological perspective, is kinesthetic awareness. “Then, once he’s aware of it, we’re golden,” Verduzco says, employing a method he’s taken from Schmidt of exaggerating the error in both directions.
Verduzco’s adherence to Schmidt’s theory about random variable practice shows when he is on the practice field. When he has his QBs doing 12 reps, it can be a mix of frontside curl, a backside hitch, a backside post, but all are in variable random order to be more in line with how a quarterback has to operate within the game.
He suspects few other quarterback coaches in college football, if any, are incorporating random variable practice to train their QBs unless they’ve heard him speak in a lecture or they understand the notion of Schmidt’s Scheme theory. “It’s really simple,” he says, adding that the first time quarterbacks get into this practice mode, it “shocks their brain”, and the results, initially, are pretty ugly.
Verduzco’s methods incorporate a lot of throwing at practice, his quarterbacks say. He has all kinds of throws and drills for them — rapid-fire, progressives and regressives; T-drills; zero-, 45- and 90-degree, 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock throws.
Another piece of the puzzle for a quarterback, from the psychological perspective, is kinesthetic awareness. “Then, once he’s aware of it, we’re golden,” Verduzco says, employing a method he’s taken from Schmidt of exaggerating the error in both directions.
How quarterbacks learn and improve does not need to be a mystery. It’s much more a science, and that is the Verduzco method.
“The way I coach our guys that play for us, is that I want to give you the principles by which you can go ahead and coach yourself. I want to get to the point where that guy doesn’t need me. I want to give them the principles now, as I see it.
“The science is readily available and has been so for quite a long time. All that was required was to research the appropriate academic disciplines related to each of the four domains of learning, extrapolate said research and apply it to the position.”
“The way I coach our guys that play for us, is that I want to give you the principles by which you can go ahead and coach yourself. I want to get to the point where that guy doesn’t need me. I want to give them the principles now, as I see it.
“The science is readily available and has been so for quite a long time. All that was required was to research the appropriate academic disciplines related to each of the four domains of learning, extrapolate said research and apply it to the position.”
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