Weinke high on Bradford

zn wrote:

Weinke says that taught him each quarterback must be treated differently, and he’s not interested in completely overhauling anyone’s mechanics.

I think this is crucial.

There is in sports a strong tendency to develop a theoretical consensus of the “right way” to perform an athletic task. Then, athletes are judged against that consensus. I think this can be counterproductive in two key ways.

1) A great deal of the evaluation of college QBs that we hear picks at their mechanics over and against a theoretical ideal. As I’ll explain later, I think is can be very misleading. I am not saying mechanics don’t matter. I am saying that personal idiosyncrasies lead to variation in mechanics among successful QBs. It would require a very shrewd eye to accurately perceive the difference between “incorrect” mechanics that impair performance and those that merely reflect the distinctive physical and kinesthetic package of a particular human athlete. The draft assessments we see, I think, are seldom really aware of that distinction. One would hope that a teams’ FOs are making more precise assessments, but league batting averages in drafting QBs are not generally reassuring.

2) Instruction and player development can go badly wrong when they force athletes to emulate a theoretical ideal. If such instruction disregards the athlete’s idiosyncratic athletic makeup, it can do more to destroy performance than to emulate it. I think this is what Weinke is referring to, and it rings true to me. It is surely possible to enhance performance through mechanical adjustments, but it is just as surely crucial to work within the scope of who the athlete is rather than trying to force him to emulate an ideal that doesn’t fit his package.

This is a tricky business, and one faced by performance coaches in various sports: hitting and pitching coaches in baseball, shooting coaches in basketball, etc. I don’t really know much about QBing. But I do know something about golf instruction, and I have to believe that QB evaluation and instruction will have instructive parallels.

Of course, in golf, there is no draft. Players declare themselves pros on their own judgment, and then they compete, succeeding or failing on the score card. Most turn to swing coaches at some point, with varying degrees of success. And it’s in the area of instruction that we can, I think, gain insight into the complex interplay between mechanical correctness and individual performance.

Golf instruction has evolved a theoretically correct swing, albeit with competing models. Talented young people today who are privileged to grow up with Country Club instruction often end up with nearly identical, ideal golf swings, each stage of which has drawn approval from swing coaches. Today, the swings of lots and lots of young guns look pretty much like that of Adam Scott, the pro that the TV announcers advise us all to emulate.

But wait. Consider these names. Bubba Watson. Jim Furyk. Dustin Johnson. Freddie Couples. Ken Green. Nancy Lopez. Raymond Floyd. Lee Trevino. Arnold Palmer. Miller Barber. Walter Hagen. Gene Sarazen. What do they all have in common? Swings that are “wrong” according to the theoretical consensus. All pros, most of them great champions. And all of them “guilty” of habits that most swing coaches attempt to “correct” when they see them in amateur students. Zinger had an impossibly strong grip. Cory Pavin had a remarkably weak one. Many of them take the club back “wrong,” outside or inside the “correct plane.” Hell, Bubba hits the ball falling backward, which is something I cannot even imagine doing well.

They have something else in common. At impact, their hands and club heads are in virtually the same place. They just have different ways of getting there. So what gives? Is the consensus theory “wrong” in talking about the problems that arise from swinging into “incorrect” positions?

Well, it’s tricky. Swinging back and through purely on plane requires minimal adjustments and allows for effective results with the simplest motions. The adjustments necessary due to deviations from the pane are inherently complex and can be devilishly hard to make consistently. A hacker who comes to a pro swinging back excessively to the inside and swinging down across the line will get poor results forever if something doesn’t change. There’s a reason that the pro tries to change the mechanics of that back swing.

And yet, there are pros who swing back to the inside. They then compensate. And the compensation works for a couple of reasons. Properly paired deviations from the ideal can be effective. The pros are immensely talented. And, oh yeah, one other point. The pair of compensations FIT the golfer’s kinesthetic personality. They work for THAT GUY’S (or gal’s) body.

Generic golf instruction preaches the gospel of the ideal swing. But effective golf instruction adapts those principles to the individual. Martin Hall recently had a School of Golf segment which was a rare example of acknowledging that golfers differ. He looked at idiosyncratic swings of great golfers and discussed the compensation that made them work. Take the club back inside, and you need to compensate with a dipping lead shoulder. Take it outside and your outside shoulder must rise. The solution is not about matching the ideal. It’s about making 2 deviations from the ideal that match each other. And Hall has, of late, increasingly been acknowledging that golfers must work with their physical makeups. Each golfer’s swing draws on a wide array of variables–strength, flexibility, mass, height, hands (strength, dexterity). I would argue that each golfer has a particular kinesthetic formula is a factor almost never discussed. “Feel is not real,” and all golfers work within their widely differing feels for the game.

All of this means that generic golf instruction lies … in a key sense. It offers the ideal swing as a universal solution that will make the game easier. But if my body/mind dynamic simply doesn’t work that way—it doesn’t!–trying to tear down my mechanics to emulate Adam Scott will be, quite simply, impossible. If a golfer is to have any success, s/he must work with his/her natural instincts. An effective teaching pro (good luck finding one) will understand what to work with, what can be changed, and the compensations that can work. The goal is to deliver the club head into the ball, and different human beings find different ways to do that. Ask the Natural Golf guys who keep Moe Norman’s legacy alive.

Furyk says that, when he was young, he experimented with a more conventional backswing. It was never natural, something he could trust. So he kept his strange backswing (which feels correct to him) and built in the compensations that allow him to hit balls so well and consistently that he won a U. S. Open. And a good golf coach must work with the individual. Zinger is emphatic: if you meet with a pro and don’t instantly see improvement, quit him or her and go find someone else whose instruction works FOR YOU!

OK, back to football. As with golf, one can formulate a theoretical ideal of passing mechanics. And surely there is merit to this. Bad footwork or hand habits can impair performance. Lots of great QBs probably do display similar techniques. But we can all think of effective QBs who deviated from the ideal. I have hazy memories of Johnny Unitas flicking the ball from a low trajectory. Kenny Stabler tossed darts. etc. etc. Like golfers, QBs are human beings who must perform drawing on a particular kinesthetic package. The test of the QB is getting the ball to a point in time and space, not looking like Aaron Rogers in doing it. There will inevitably be a range of mechanical options for doing that, although, again as in golf, any discipline will likely be needed in making adjustments and compensations.

The point is that, ultimately, a QB must perform out of who he is. And an effective QB coach has to be sensitive to the essence of what made the QB good in the first place. There will be room for adjustments. But, as Weinke says, you don’t tear down a QB’s mechanics for the sake of a theoretical ideal. I am heartened to hear our new QB coach voluntarily display awareness of all of this.

And I hope that the Rams’ assessment of college QBs this year is able to see beyond the theoretical ideal and to evaluate the actual athlete. I have a feeling Weinke will help there as well.

Weinke says that taught him each quarterback must be treated differently, and he’s not interested in completely overhauling anyone’s mechanics.

The goal is to deliver the club head into the ball, and different human beings find different ways to do that. Ask the Natural Golf guys who keep Moe Norman’s legacy alive.

Good post, RFL. I enjoyed reading that.

I can personally attest to the success of using the Moe Norman swing. Many years ago, out of sheer frustration at my inability to play consistent golf, I sent away for a video and training guide for the “Jerry Heard Super Swing”.

Prior to using this, I could easily go from a start of par, par, bird, to 3 or 4 triple bogeys in a row. Or, worse yet, totally whiff on a tee shot, and then send another straight down the center. Up and down, up and down.

The premise of the super swing made sense. The weight transfer and wrist rotation, common tripfalls for the average weekend golfer, were taken out of the equation, resulting in a return of the club face to the exact same position as it was at address. I went as far as checking the ball strike with impact tape on the club head, and sure enough, multiple, repeatable hits in the sweet spot.

I agree that trying to force someone into a preferred swing, or QB throw, is probably not going to get good results. Hopefully, Bradford will be allowed to continue with what he does well, the FO addresses the OL line issue(s) to protect those 2 toothpicks that Bradford runs around on, and we get to see what he can do with a receiving corps that seems like its starting to gel.