The Quarterback Whisperer Read online

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2017 by Bruce Arians

  Cover design by Amanda Kain

  Cover copyright © 2017 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  First Edition: July 2017

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  Photo credits (here): (top left) B.A. and Peyton Manning © Associated Press; (top right) B.A and Ben Roethlisberger © George Gojkovich / Contributor / Getty Images; (bottom left) B.A. and Andrew Luck © MCT / Contributor / Getty Images; (bottom right) B.A. and Carson Palmer © Associated Press

  Print book interior design by Timothy Shaner, NightandDayDesign.biz

  LCCN: 2017938896

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-43226-9 (hardcover), 978-0-316-43225-2 (ebook)

  E3-20170601-JV-PC

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: THE PERFECT QB

  Chapter 2: PEYTON MANNING

  Chapter 3: WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN A QB

  Chapter 4: KELLY HOLCOMB

  Chapter 5: PLAY CALLING

  Chapter 6: BEN ROETHLISBERGER

  Chapter 7: ANDREW LUCK

  Chapter 8: THE YEAR FOOTBALL BEAT CANCER

  Chapter 9: CARSON PALMER

  Chapter 10: THE FUTURE

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Newsletters

  To everyone I’ve looked up to in my life named Coach, especially Charlie Robertson, John Devlin, and Jimmy Sharpe. But more than anyone, this book is dedicated to my first coach: My dad.

  Peyton Manning with the Indianapolis Colts Ben Roethlisberger of the Pittsburgh Steelers

  Andrew Luck of the Indianapolis Colts Carson Palmer of the Arizona Cardinals

  Bruce is a gambler at heart, and he’s always thinking about how he can set up the defense to deliver that knockout punch. That’s why quarterbacks love playing for him: He takes as many shots down the field as any coach in the NFL. And he never—never—plays scared.

  –BEN ROETHLISBERGER

  CHAPTER 1

  THE PERFECT QB

  I’ve always had a bit of a wild streak.

  When I was five, living in the one-stoplight town of Marlowe, West Virginia, I would press my face close to the glow of the black-and-white TV screen and quickly be mesmerized by the Adventures of Superman. Every day, I closely studied his every move. I just knew I could be him—do what he did. So one summer afternoon I took my favorite red towel out of the bathroom closet, tied it around my neck, and climbed out my second-story bedroom window onto our porch roof.

  My dad was then working as a mechanic at a garage across Highway 11 in front of our house. One of his coworkers saw me up on the roof and yelled, “Hey, Bert, is that your kid? I think he’s about to jump!”

  My dad sprinted across the road, pumping his legs like he was running a 100-yard dash. But I jumped, man, leaping into the sky with my arms outstretched, fully believing that I was going to take flight like Superman. Unfortunately, Newton’s laws applied to me just as they do to every human being. Bam! I crashed onto the grass, lucky I didn’t break my neck. My dad reached me and quickly knelt down. “Are you okay, Bruce?” he asked, hovering over me. “Are you okay, boy?”

  “I can’t fly, I can’t fly!” I cried, more embarrassed than hurt.

  When I was younger I wasn’t allowed to drink milk, because I was allergic to it. Was that going to stop me from drinking something that was surely going to make my bones stronger? Hell no. So I drank paint. Sure, I had to get my stomach pumped twice, but I had to try to put something down my throat that looked like milk and might make me harder to tackle when playing in our neighborhood football games.

  At high school parties I’d rip the caps off beer bottles with my teeth just to get wide-eyed looks from the girls. I could be a little rough on the basketball court, sometimes playing like I was in shoulder pads and a helmet. I got booted from a game after I took out a player on the other team with a hard foul. I thought he deserved it—he’d been lippy for about three quarters—but the referee believed otherwise.

  When I was seventeen I got kicked out of York Catholic High School in York, Pennsylvania, after I was caught drinking beer with my football buddies during a school retreat. We had a hell of a time that night out in the wilds of Maryland—a suitcase full of booze made sure of that—but nothing was worth the look of disappointment on my father’s face when he learned I was no longer welcome at my high school.

  “One of the boys on the retreat got really drunk and broke a bottle and cut himself really badly,” says my wife, Chris, who I started dating in high school. “Bruce went to find the priest to say that the kid really needed help. All the boys got in trouble, but only Bruce got expelled. It turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to him. At this point, Bruce didn’t have big dreams. He knew he didn’t want to be a welder because he’d had a part-time job doing that and he didn’t like it. But he wasn’t driven to succeed. Getting kicked out of school gave him that drive. He wanted—needed—to prove everybody wrong.”

  Chris is right: I now had my mission in life. But this was a very difficult situation, especially for my dad. He was a working man; he ended up toiling on the factory lines at Caterpillar Inc. in York for more than twenty-five years, taking every overtime shift he could to support his wife and five kids. When my dad and I were told I had been dismissed from my school, I knew I had failed him. We thought all the scholarships I had worked so hard to earn were now going to be gone. Worse, I had brought shame to the name he had labored so hard to uplift and honor.

  I’ve been haunted by that heartbreaking look he gave me back then. I’ve seen it in my mind at every stop of my coaching career. When the day finally came, in 2006, when I was a Super Bowl winner—I was the wide receivers coach for the Steelers—I remember so vividly looking up into the stands after we had defeated the Seahawks and spotting my dad. With confetti on my shoulders, I saw that the look of abject disappointment on my father’s face of so many years earlier had finally turned into a portrait of joy and pride. Talk about the redemptive power of sports.

  I bartended my way through college at Virginia Tech—sometimes I had to hustle from football practice to be on time for my shift—and I loved working late nights so I could listen to boozy old-timers share their stories. They all told me variations of a single theme, a lesson I carried with me long after I quit slinging cocktails. “In life,” the old-timers said time and again, “you must take chances.”

  You do in football as well. During my senior season at Virginia Tech I was a wishbone quarterback, one with hair that fell be
low my shoulders and a mustache that would have made Jimmy Buffett jealous. I looked like a rebel. And I sure as hell tried to play like one.

  If we had the ball at the one-yard line and the defensive backs were playing at the line of scrimmage in press coverage, our coach, Jimmy Sharpe, would tell me, “We’re calling the ‘Go’ route.” And sure enough, I was going to take my shot—even though we might have 99 yards to go for a score. You can’t play or coach in fear, ever, and if there’s one word that’s not in my vocabulary it starts with the letters c-o-n-s-e-r and ends with v-a-t-i-v-e.

  That’s always been my coaching philosophy: No risk it, no biscuit. I’ve been calling plays for nearly forty years. I’ll always give my quarterback at least two options based on how the defense lines up. One option will give us a chance to make a first down; the other option will give us a chance to score a touchdown, no matter where we are on the field. My quarterback must always have in the very forefront of his mind, If I have the right matchup and the opportunity is there to take a shot at the deep ball, take it. I don’t care if it’s third-and-three; if our best receiver is in single coverage and he’s running a deep post route, throw him the goddamn ball.

  Veteran NFL quarterbacks are often hesitant to do this. They want to take the easy completion. When I began working with Carson Palmer in Arizona in 2013 I told him, “Have fun. Throw it deep. This is what we do.”

  He looked at me like I had three eyes. “Really, B.A.?” he asked me. “I can look at the deep ball like that on virtually every play?”

  “Hell yes,” I replied. I wanted Carson to look down the field as often as he could. It was like he had a restrictor plate on him his entire career, and I was the coach who was going to pull it out of his engine and let him rev his arm at as many RPMs as possible. Of course, if the deep routes were covered, then I would want him to check down to a shorter throw.

  With the young quarterbacks it’s always been easier to teach this go-for-broke approach to offensive football. I remember telling Andrew Luck when he was a rookie with the Colts, “Andrew, this is easy. I don’t care if it’s third-and-one. If you got T. Y. Hilton matched up one-on-one, throw it to him. It’s that simple.”

  Andrew smiled at me like he had just won the lottery. “I can do that?” he asked. “Really?”

  “You bet, kid,” I said. “Let ’er rip.”

  Andrew bought in right away to the old but true saw that you have to play smart, not scared. And playing smart means exploiting the matchups you have on the field, especially when it comes to launching the deep ball, which is always the most enjoyable thing to do on the football field.

  One of my favorite play calls of all time came when I was the offensive coordinator for the Steelers and we were playing in the AFC Championship Game against the Jets in January 2010. We were leading 24–19 in the fourth quarter and facing a third-and-six at the Jets’ 40-yard line when the scoreboard showed two minutes remaining in the fourth quarter.

  Ben Roethlisberger came over to the sideline and we began talking. The Jets were out of timeouts. Right away I told him we were going for the kill shot; screw running the ball to take time off the clock. This is always the most important call of the game—the play that can get you a first down to end the game by taking kneeldowns.

  I pulled Ben close. I told him that Rex Ryan, the Jets’ head coach and defensive mastermind, was going to have his guys line up in their Bear defense with nine players close to the line of scrimmage. Rex had been doing that all year in this situation and I knew he wasn’t about to change. Hell, his dad, Buddy, who invented the “46 defense,” did the exact same thing when he was a defensive coordinator and head coach in the league. Like his father, Rex is an aggressive coach and he was going to do everything he could to stop the run and force us to punt.

  I told Ben, “We’re going for the fucking throat.” Ben just flashed a sly little smile at me, a veteran’s shit-eating grin. Right then I knew it was our ball game.

  Ben approached the line of scrimmage. Sure enough, the Jets were in their Bear package—nine defenders so close to Ben he could practically feel the heat of their breath as he called out the signals. He took the snap and rolled the right. We had wide receiver Antonio Brown running from the left side of the field to the right. Ben fired a great pass for a 14-yard gain.

  First down, kneeldown, ball game.

  I can’t stand it when coaches play not to lose, like when a head coach with a five-point lead will run the ball three straight times with two minutes to play and kick it and ask the defense to win him the game. That’s not my way, brother. I’ll never be too afraid to throw it and take the heat if it’s incomplete. My job as an offensive coach is not to allow our defense to retake the field. Run out the clock and kneel down—that’s my job.

  And there is no feeling in football that is better than watching those final seconds tick off the clock and knowing the guy on the other sideline is utterly helpless to do anything about it. It’s delicious, almost as satisfying as sex—almost.

  I’ll never forget the day I became a quarterback.

  I was eight years old and playing on my local Pee Wee team. I began the season as our center. But one afternoon at practice after our first game, I intercepted a pass. Then I threw the ball to our coach. It was a perfect spiral, and the coach liked what he saw.

  “You’ve got a nice arm, Bruce, so I’m going to make you our quarterback,” he said to me. “You’re smart enough to know what to do out there. You’re running the show now.”

  Oh man, I loved being in charge—loved calling the plays in the huddle, loved taking the snap, loved chucking the ball around the field. It was so invigorating. I immediately knew that this was what I wanted to do with my life. Somehow, some way, I was determined to be a quarterback for as long as I could.

  I played both quarterback and defensive back in high school, and I actually began my college career at Virginia Tech as a safety. But then one day at practice during my freshman year I intercepted a pass and threw the ball forty yards back to the head coach. He too liked what he saw. From that day forward I was a quarterback.

  In my five seasons at Virginia Tech I had five different offensive coordinators who ran four different offenses. This exposed me to hundreds and hundreds of different plays. By the time I was an upperclassman I’d sit in meetings and a coach would see that I was lost in my own world. “Arians, are you on drugs?” the coach would ask.

  “No sir,” I’d say. “Just thinking about different plays.”

  And I was—always. Football was a giant chess game that I played in my head. I could think for hours about certain plays and how I could get them to work against any defense. Nothing in life other than my wife occupied my imagination like the strategy of football. The coaches saw my passion, and they let me call the offensive plays for our junior varsity team when I was a fourth-year junior.

  Before my senior year, Jimmy Sharpe became the Hokies’ head coach. I had no intention of playing for him. I interviewed at a junior high school in northern Virginia for a teaching and coaching position, but I didn’t get the job. Who knows how my life would have turned out if I had done better in that interview? With no other really good options, I agreed to meet with Coach Sharpe.

  I looked like hell. I had injured my ankle playing pickup basketball, so I limped into his office with a cane. My weight was up 225 pounds—I had played at 190 the previous year—and I had a grizzly blond beard. Coach Sharpe looked me up and down as I shuffled into his office and said, “You gotta be shitting me. I hope to God you’re not my starting quarterback.”

  I laughed and told him that I just needed to get into shape. Then I spent three hours describing to him what changes needed to be made to turn the program into a winner. He was going to install a wishbone attack, and I had run the wishbone as our scout-team quarterback the previous fall as we prepared for Alabama (who beat us 77–6). I told him I could be his quarterback and I would help him win.

  He knew that I bartended at Carl
isle’s and that a lot of the players hung out there. This gave me some status with my teammates, and Coach Sharpe figured if he could win me over then I could help him win the rest of the team over. He was a very smart cat.

  Coach Sharpe and I quickly became attached at the hip. He treated me like an extra coach on the field. We talked plays and strategy and players at all hours. I only played for him for one year, but he became my mentor—someone I would trust for the rest of my life.

  He let me coach the quarterbacks even as I was our starting quarterback. I just loved helping those young guys maximize their talent. And that was when I knew I had found my life’s calling—I knew I wanted to become a quarterback whisperer.

  What does the perfect NFL quarterback look like?

  It begins with something you can’t see. He must have heart—a big heart, a lion’s heart, a heart that beats for an entire franchise. Heart is exhibited when a quarterback plays through pain, when he smashes into a 320-pound defensive lineman on third down to try to gain those extra six inches for the first down, or when he throws an interception and then runs forty yards down the field to make a tackle. Whenever a quarterback puts the team above himself, that’s an expression of heart. If a quarterback doesn’t have this, his teammates will see it—and he won’t have a chance to make it in the league because his teammates won’t believe in him. The quarterback doesn’t have to be the most popular player in the locker room, but he sure better have the respect of every man on the roster. And that level of respect is possible—it’s achievable—through displays of heart.

  Another trait he must have is what I call “grit.” This is the ability to handle success and failure equally. A quarterback has about twenty-five seconds from the moment he walks to the line of scrimmage and scans the defense to when the play is over. Dozens of decisions need to be made by the quarterback in those twenty-five seconds: Do I change the play based on how the defense is lined up? If so, what should I change it to? If the play is a pass, what receiver will be my hot receiver—the one that should be open—if there’s a blitz? Is my offensive line in the right protection? Does my running back know where to pick up the potential blitzing linebacker? Are the defensive backs playing zone or man coverage? Are the safeties creeping toward the line of scrimmage or are they hanging back? Where is the most vulnerable spot in the defense that I can exploit? Where are the strongest spots in the defense that I need to avoid?