Pryor, Tressel, and Mike Leach

I don't care about either team but I should point out that TT has no QBs in the NFL while Ohio State has one.

I can say more later, but phantom hits on a definite point, at least from a psychology point of view. If all a HS kid wanted was to have a phenomenally successful college experience, then yes, TTech looks like a good bet. If the goal is to make it to the NFL, then less so. My sense is that most kids think of college as a stepping stone to the NFL.

Now, that's not entirely fair because a lot of it is luck and small sample size. Purdue had excellent QB coaching under Joe Tiller and also happen to have two starting (and undefeated) graduates in Kyle Orton and Drew Brees. But if you also examine the off years for the program they had a couple clunker kids at the position, so it's not just the coaching. Indeed, I don't know what you think of Mark Richt (I like him), but Matthew Stafford came out of HS the #1 overall rated player and left college the #1 overall rated player (1st overall draft choice).

Anyway I don't want to rag on coaches too much, so my question is this: How does Leach do such a good job plugging in backups without much of a dropoff? I.e. preparing his backups, even if they haven't seen much playing time? I think this is one of the most impressive things he's done. Even June Jones's quarterbacks tend to take just about a full season to come around.

My sense is that it is how he organizes his practices, be it those Airraid drills or whatever else. Contra that to some programs or NFL teams, where the backup gets a small percentage of the "snaps" and after that, only limited individual work. Leach's backups clearly come in with a lot of "rep experience," with the only question being how they adjust to being in games. Thoughts on that?

i will default to whatever assertion you have planned, as I trust you have a great deal of experience in this recruiting milieu.

However, my guess? EXPOSURE for the big tyme, boi!

They aren't looking to be coached

Which leads to another question, are these coaches actually looking to coach these kids, or are they betting that their athleticism will just win them games?

I don't mean to make such codified generalities, just raising questions. Do we want to win based on doing a lot of work, or doing the least amount of work? You can't win without a disciplined team, but so long as you have the basic structure, football players will make football plays.

Also, you could make an argument that when your athletic acumen (just out-athleting the competition) begins to fail you, "natural selection" kicks in and you have to adapt to what WILL work (start thinking smarter) to survive and avoid extinction. If you COULD be successful just by 'slinging it' ("just making a play") versus making cold-calculated decisions, which would you rely upon? The former comes easier and more natural than the former, because it is just sheer physical talent. The point being, the Kingsburys, Harrells, Huepels.....ran out of that "sheer physical skill" rather quickly and had to adapt the other way.

I don't think you can use the NFL as a measure. The NFL's metrics for assessing QBs are notoriously bad. The NFL writes off Mike Leach's and June Jones' kids under the auspice that they are system QBs and then proceeds to draft people like Vince Young, Michael Vick who have received average to mediocre coaching at best.

What I'm suggesting is that the NFL should begin to reassess its system of evaluation and look more at production and position preparation than simply raw ability. Spreadattack's point about Orton and Brees is excellent. They both received good preparation at Purdue. Both excel in offenses that demand that they understand how to manipulate the system in order to make it work for them. The same with Leach at Tech. His kids have an innate sense of what their offense is designed to achieve. Compare this to Pryor the other day versus Purdue or any other week. I coached college QBs long enough and worked for enough QB gurus (Terry Shea) to know that Pryor when he gets under center does not even look at the defense - at either the front, the linebacker structure, or the coverage shell. That tells you a lot about the kid as well as the coaching he receives. It was was the same exact thing with Michael Vick when he was at VTech.

Yes, I understand Brophy's point about exposure and he's right, but I believe that is part of the job of the high school coach. That is, to stear his kid to a program that will serve his needs the best. Leach's kids have by and large been shutout because of the media (I have this from a former QB coach in the NFL) even when its evident that they have the arm strength to make all the throws they need to. You cannot say that the Corner route to the field in 92 (the Mesh) from the opposite hash is not a big time throw - it is. If I were a high school coach I would see it as my responsibility to sit with the kid and talk long and hard with him about the need to pick a program that is going to teach him how to do things the right way - that is, play the game the right way and play his position the right way.

Back to Brophy's point. I know for a fact that Mack Brown hoped that Young's athleticism would win. I was at the game a few years ago against Kansas when they suddenly put Young in the shotgun. The reason was very simple: for two years they had tried to teach the kid how to dropback, but they were never able to calibrate his feet to the drops. They simply gave up coaching him, which was probably the right thing to do at the time, but the fact that they were never able to do it successfully in two years tells you something about how they were coaching him and what they were demanding of him. The problem for Young however was that when he got to the NFL he had and still has dreadful footwork.

But again, I think it is imperative to demonstrate to kids, especially those that have the potential to play on Sundays, the need to view their college years as a type of apprenticeship where they will learn the ins and outs of their craft.

I think Terrell Pryor is missing Joe Daniels. Joe Daniels was the qb coach at ohio state. however he is dying of cancer and no longer is in the position of qb coach.

I do agree with hemlock that Ohio St is clueless when it comes to the benefits of the spread offense. some times i think they line up in it and think they are going to scare the defense.

As for Coach Leach I think he recruits a certain kind of kid to play qb. if you look at his qbs most are shorter and by that i mean 6-1 to 6-3 and lean kind of guys. they are very smart and they look more like a shortstop in baseball then they do a football qb.

Yeah, and who is more likely to lead SportsCenter that night?

In response to Brophy's question:
In regards to player coachability, I think that it is critical to establish what your expectations are right from the beginning. Especially with johnny bluechip it is vital to make your expectations clear. This is especially important at the QB position. I've been in this situation myself where I had a kid that was stud, but did wish to develop his skills, and a kid who was a worker-bee. From my perspective it was obvious: I started the worker-bee and had tremendous results. The stud transferred and had Michael Vick type career, but never put it all together. The worker-bee threw for 3,000 yards, the Michael Vick type less that 1,000. I made it very clear to the stud: you either accept coaching or you do not play - very simple. was a non-negotiable position. The point being that I really did not care what he thought. In many ways it was sort of like the choice that McDaniels faced Cutler. He knew that Cutler was not a fit for what he wanted, but Orton was and that in his system Orton would thrive. Sure, the bluechip will say that "I've done it this way for god knows how long," but my response is simply that it is irrelevant to this situation and to playing for me. PERIOD. If you refuse to accept coaching (and I am the one who determines what that means) then you simply will not play.

I agree with much of what spreadattack says, but all the skills one needs to play in the AirRaid are the same as those use in any NFL offense. The Patriots are barely under center, so the maxim that you must operate from under center is no longer law. Play action reads are very simple compared to the full-field reads that Leach's kids have to make.

I'm going to merge the views of two QB coaches that I'm close with in the NFL about AirRaid QBs and why they are not drafted. Both guys over the years have worked out a number of AirRaid QBs. Both said that they have in incredible sense of what is going on on the field and that they comprehend things at the conceptual level very easily. By this, I mean that they translate what they learn at TTech to what NFL teams do in their systems without much difficulty. What was interesting was that both believed that the NFL's evaluation process is held hostage by the media. That is, the media creates hype around a group of players, which then fosters an impression which soon becomes a fact. Both guys I spoke with said that they would have been comfortable drafting Harrel and not Stafford or Freeman, but that their front-offices would not risk the wrath of media scrutiny since ESPN and Mel Kiper had already determined that Harrel was a "system quarterback."

Spreadattack notes that Brees had to learn different things when he got to the NFL. This is true, but to anybody who knows quarterbacking the reason he was special at Purdue, even when operating out of the gun, was his footwork, the near perfect weight distribution that he demonstrates as he sits in the pocket. Tech QBs also demonstrate this.

More later...

Don't mean to hijack this thread with my below genius IQ but I would guess that being an 18 year old kid and standing on the sidelines with 100,000 plus people in the stands for a team that has played in a few nat. champ. games and is ranked in the top most years would be reason enough for me. Compared to a 50,000 seat stadium for a team that occasionally breaks the top 25. Not to mention the hatchet job the media has done on TT qb's the last few years the choice seems pretty clear to me.

Pantherpride: I respect Joe Daniels immensely and have great empathy for him; however, what he did with Troy Smith is relatively minor. Smith won the Heisman because he got exposure, which is what the Heisman is about anyway.

Let's not inflate the loss of Daniels. Daniels track record is hardly akin to that of Leach, Jones, etc.

For what its worth, I don't think that Pryor would have gotten great coaching at Michigan. RichRod's system does not develop great passers - that's not the focal point. However, Pryor probably would have been better served overall if he had chosen Michigan because their system is much more conceptually unified than Tressel's. Tressel runs a grab-bag offense; always has, most likely always will. They do not do any one thing particularly well and this is most evident when they play teams that have equal or better talent than they do.

Wingtol, I appreciate that sentiment, but that is where the HS head coach comes in. It is his job to tutor his apprentice so that such things as stadium size, national exposure, etc are no longer important. Moreover, a coach should also use this as a test of his kid's character: its easy to go to a place that's in front, but it's also boring. Going the path less traveled tells much more about the person and is also much more fun.

Like Brophy, I thank you for sharing your expertise with us. It's very much appreciated by clueless amateurs such as myself.

Also, this post went really long and I don't mean to hijack the thread. Apologies in advance if it comes across that way.

Hemlock, I agree with all you're writing here about the NFL bias against the Air Raid, but I don't understand why the NFL's refusal to spend a high draft choice on Harrell vs. a Stafford or Freeman means that Leach's QBs like Harrell can't find their way into the league as a late round pick or undrafted free agent. If they were truly NFL calibre QBs with true NFL potential, wouldn't teams want to keep them around for (relative) peanuts to evaluate and develop for a couple of years as 3rd or even 4th stringers ala Jared Lorenzen? As except for Tim Couch, none of them have even held down a spot on the active roster for more than a week or two at a time (more on that below).

I understand that the sheer amount of money invested in a high draft choice means he's going to stick around and get numerous opportunities to prove himself, crowding out other talent at the position, but the NFL is still a QB hungry league and depth at the position is expensive. If anything, it seems to me like a QB who's gotten a bum rep from media "experts" but has impresed scouts and NFL position coaches would be that much more attractive to them as a low risk/high reward developmental type of player.

Are they really so worried about the PR backlash of spending a 7th round pick on a "system" QB like Harrell and keeping him around for a couple of years on the bench when they gleefully throw millions of dollars at PR nightmares like Michael Vick or the latest wife beating, pot smoking college kid?

Also, it's not like the NFL just flatly ignores all of Leach's proteges. All of Leach's starters going back to his days as QB coach at Kentucky have gotten a shot at making an NFL roster, which is a credit to him as a coach considering where most of these players ranked coming out of HS. It's just that none of them have distinguished themselves as pros, or even proven themselves as servicable journeymen types:

'98 Tim Couch (#1 overall, short up and down career derailed by injuries)

'99 Josh Heupel (6th round. 1 season on IR before retiring)

'00-02 Kliff Kingsbury (6th round, 4 yrs on 5 NFL practice squads)

'03 B.J. Symons (7th round, 2 yrs on 2 practice squads)

'04 Sonny Cumbie (Undrafted FA. Cut by 2 NFL teams in 2 years. Never played in a game.)

'05 Cody Hodges (Undrafted FA. Briefly in Titans camp alongside Vince Young but released before season started.)

'06-'08 Graham Harrell (Undrafted. Tried out with Browns but didn't make cut. Now pursuing CFL career.)

So for 11 years, Leach has gotten every single starting QB he's had a shot with an NFL team, but except for Couch, the nation's former #1 HS recruit and a #1 overall pick, none ever even got a serious look as an NFL starter or backup. Further, the history shows NFL teams becoming less and less enamored or patient with the QBs he's tutored despite all of them getting a look.

Now, is this a knock on Leach? No. He's paid to win games for Texas Tech, not to groom QBs for NFL rosters, and none of these guys except for Couch (and Harrell, to an extent) were ranked highly coming out of HS. You could even argue that he was the ONLY reason so many of those QBs listed above ever even got to set foot in an NFL camp.

Leach's sin is that he's so good at what he does that he makes it look easy. Because he makes it look easy, he (and his QBs) get taken for granted. Until he recruits a great natural athlete who fits the NFL scouts' ideal of what a QB should be physically, none of that will ever change. Even if he wins National Championships.

However, a big HS recruit who plans on a future in the NFL (which would be all of them) looks around and sees that Pete Carroll has 5 QBs on NFL Rosters (with 3 starting), Tressel has 1 or 2 hanging on as backups, and Leach currently has none. Carroll has 2 Heisman winners. Tressel and Urban Meyer have 1 each. Leach has none. Instead, a stud kid hears all the media blathering about "system QBs" and how Leach's system "inflates" stats and "doesn't prepare players for the next level."

So the kid and the others like him go to Powerhouse U, leaving Leach to continue getting the most out of what is relatively middling, unimpressive talent by NFL standards. Leach turns these kids into great college players and prepares them mentally to the best of his ability, but at the end of the day the NFL wants stud athletes who fit certain physical specifications, not overachievers who get the most out of "limited ability." It becomes a vicious cycle for Leach.

Now personally, as much as I worship Mike Leach, if I had a stud HS QB with his choice of schools and a legit shot at an NFL future, I'd still steer him to USC (the modern QBU), Notre Dame, LSU, Alabama or any other such high-exposure school that's proven to be "acceptable" to the NFL scouts.

Would Leach give my QB better coaching than Tressell's staff at OSU is doing with Pryor? Of course! But will that get him on national TV every week, put him in the Heisman race, or get him drafted with a rookie contract that sets him up for life before he even sets foot in an NFL training camp? Probably not.

You say these things are unimportant, but which is likely to make more difference to a kid? If you had the choice, which would you choose?

A.) You go to Texas Tech. If you win the starting spot, you get excellent fundamental coaching as you throw for 6,000 yards, make it onto ESPN, and play in the Cotton Bowl in front of 50,000. You're part of an underdog program in the Big 12, so you get some national exposure when you play the elite teams in that conference and you have a blast doing it. You even get some cool Mike Leach stories to tell everybody back home.

However, when you're done playing in college, you go immediately into a career selling insurance (or whatever your chosen field is) as you watch your replacement do everything you did last year. The pros ignore you. The fans forget about you. You were just a cog in Mike Leach's well-oiled machine.

OR

B.) You go to OSU. If you start, you maybe throw for 2500-3000 yards and your coaching doesn't really make you to a better player, but you get by. Best of all, you're playing in front of 100,000 live fans in nationally televised games every week. You're also up for major awards and expect to be playing for the national championship every year.

Many of your teammates/friends will start in the NFL and a few will become big stars (maybe even you!). When you're done, if you played well, you have a realistic shot at signing a lucrative pro contract that sets you up for life (or at least a few years) by the age of 24.

As a former starting QB at OSU (or Notre Dame, or Michigan, etc.) you have also etched your place in a nationwide fanbase's memories. If the NFL doesn't work out, there's a fanboy somewhere who will find a surprisingly cushy entry-level job in his company for the former OSU starting QB he once lived vicariously through. You'll get to marry just about any woman you want and you'll watch your best (or worst) moments replayed on TV for the rest of your life.

Of course, all of this is contingent on you beating out the 3-4 other All World studs on the roster who have their sights set on the same things. But you know that'll be a piece of cake since you're so totally awesome and a once-in-a-lifetime-game-changer who's never even lain as much as a single buttcheek on a bench in his life. Afterall, you're the #3 "Dual Threat" QB recruit in the nation!

So...

If you were that kid, which would you choose? Both will get you on TV and pit you against some of the best teams in college football. One gives you a shot at honing your skills to an incredibly high level as a faceless cog in Mike Leach's machine. The other gives you a shot at football immortality and a realistic shot at lifelong financial security in your early 20s. Which is it?

Personally, I'd go for the glory.

In response to coachinghopeful's second response, I was not questioning the QB coaching of option based coaches. For example, I think Paul Johnson, as Chris noted earlier, is a fabulous QB coach who truly teaches his kid to play the position the right way. The difference is that nothing that has ever happened at OSU in general on offense and more specifically with their QBs, even with Troy Smith, makes me marvel. They seem very mediocre at just about everything they do. Troy Smith got exposure, has a lot of physical ability, but was a never a truly special QB. Also, I would not suggest that OSU is an option based offense. They frankly don't seem to have much of an identity. They try to run a little bit of everything, from power and some limited option, to spread and five hot. As a result they are not very good at anything, and it shows when they play excelllent competition.

Your comments as to why TTech QBs get shots but don't stick around has merit, but I've asked that same question and here is the general response I got. I used Tony Romo as an example when I dished it to my friends. Both said that for a kid to make it like Romo did in the NFL the stars really have to align within the organization at that time in just the right way. Romo benefitted immensely from having a guy like Parcells at first who does not place a lot of cred in the draft anyway. He also had people like Anthony Wright (drugs) and Drew Bledsoe (age) in front of him who were not going to last. Most of the time, such a low pick, unless he is drafted by the right organization, that is, an organization whose operating culture is different from most, will be buried so far down that he will simply not have a chance. His only opportunity will be to knock around and hope that a few things break his way. For example, Kliff Kingsbury knocked around for a few years with the Jets and Patriots and by all accounts played well enough to move up the depthchart. Both also noted that the curve with them is just much shorter. By this I mean that when Josh Freeman makes a bad throw, he's given a pat and another rep, the minute a Harrell or a Kingsbury throws a duck he's sent back to the hole. So the challenges are frequently just too much to overcome.

I understand you points about why a kid would choose the USC or similar type program. But understand, going to USC or Notre Dame makes sense if you are a QB and you wish to be developed. Both are excellent in that regard. However, Ohio State or Ole Miss are head scratchers. Yes, Ole Miss had Eli Manning, but that was when David Cutcliff was there and he is a QB guru to whom I would send my kid in an instant. Houston Nutt has absolutely no track record with QBs.

Earlier, a poster mentioned that Leach's QBs are more like short-stops that pitchers. Excellent observation. In fact, a QB should be a short-stop type. A QB is a ball distributor - PERIOD. His primary function is to disperse the ball around the field. That is exactly how Kevin Wilson described Zak Kustok to me when I spent a week with the Northwestern people a number of years ago.

One of the problems is with Pryor himself, in that he's trying to be a lot of things, and the coaches have to develop him for all of them. If he ran a 5.0 flat forty, I'm guessing he wouldn't have gotten recruited as a pure passer, or at least not at Ohio State. The running is part of what makes him good -- he's probably never destined to be a 50 time a game Drew Brees-esque passer.

Let's say that Terrelle Pryor is the most coachable kid in the world. That he's a total "I want to learn guy." He hadn't received much coaching in HS, but has the same athletic tools, and he chose Texas Tech. Are we sure that Mike Leach could turn him into one of his QBs? Are we sure he'd beat out the Sonny Cumbie's, etc who put in four years in the program and show up ready to throw (5-12 yard) strikes all game long? That's a difficult question.

But the answer indicates how much you can throw on these kids. I think Tressel's O has always been kinda grab bag, but I think this Pryor business is even more confusing for them. There's not a single thing that Pryor does exceptionally well, other than when he's in the open field. Maybe he can develop but he's not Dan Marino, and I don't take your message to be that Tressel should start running Paul Johnson's or even Rich Rodriguez's offense all the time, no? That would take time and work too, and it would be time not spent on passing skills.

I don't have an answer. Just a thought that you kind of have a bit of a grab bag offense at OSU being made worse by a grab bag quarterback. It's an eternal debate because you can either end up being a genius or short selling your player. Maybe he can develop, or maybe he can't, maybe there are things to do, or that you can't. I agree with dcohio's point that you need to do what you do. Maybe the answer is that Pryor was such a strange pick for Tressel because he never used the QB in his running schemes before; his QB was a game manager who could throw it enough to keep the D honest, run the 2 minute drill, etc. I mean the key guy in that offense has always been the tailback.

Anyway going forward for Tressel I would go out and try to find a guy like Saban got at Alabama out of Fresno or maybe a pro-guy like Mark Whipple. Someone who could bring some teaching to the offense as well as a better coherent whole, though within a more power framework. More H-back/2TE sets, put Pryor on the move a bit but not so obviously.

The other alternative is to completely change the offense and go to a Florida-esque run-first offense, but not I'm convinced that would be any better for them. Right now they are kind of inbetween and it isn't real good for them.

this would make a deliciously good discussion outside of the crticism of OSU development of Pryor. (and does it have a HS-to-NCAA parallel?)

There are so many factors at work as to why he is not living up to his billing, though do we really know what his actual potential should be?

OSU, not just Pryor, routinely is a victim of its own attention-who-aring hype.....