The Quarterback Whisperer Read online

  When Peyton was a teenager, he’d come home from school and begin reviewing tape of his own play, of other quarterbacks, and, if he could find it, of upcoming opponents. Concerned about his son’s football single-mindedness, Archie would implore him to enjoy his teenage years. “Get a girlfriend,” he said. “Go to a movie. You need to get out more.”

  Peyton’s reply was always the same. “Daddy,” he would say, “I’ve got to watch more film.”

  When Peyton started studying game film, Archie had just one request: “If you’re going to watch film, do it the right way,” he said. By that he meant, Don’t watch the ball, watch the defense; fans watch the ball. To Peyton, every snap was like viewing a gripping blockbuster movie, full of nuance, mini-plotlines, and layers of complexity. After practice, after games, during the weekends, he’d watch tape of his own games, opponents’ games, and NFL games. By the time he started high school, he knew more about defenses than some rookie NFL quarterbacks.

  Archie didn’t share much football advice with Peyton—he always wanted to be a dad first and foremost; he left the coaching to Peyton’s coaches—but he did offer him one lesson in high school that Archie had learned the hard way. “You’ve got to know what you’re doing out there because then you can get rid of the ball,” Archie said, “and when you get rid of the ball you don’t get hit.” This nugget of wisdom further fueled Peyton’s obsession with preparation.

  I knew that Peyton was a highly competitive kid—he believed he would never lose and his temper would flare when he did, which was a good thing from my perspective. When Peyton was eleven his youth basketball team lost for the first time. Archie had been in the stands, as usual, watching intently. After the game the volunteer coach spoke to his players. “The reason you lost,” he said, “was that you didn’t have your minds ready to play.”

  Without missing a beat, Peyton piped up. Even then, he couldn’t hold his tongue. “The reason we lost,” the eleven-year-old declared, “is that you don’t know what you are doing.”

  Archie, who’d been standing out of earshot, saw that Peyton and his coach had exchanged some heated words. On the car ride home he asked Peyton what he had said to his coach. As soon as Peyton told him, Archie pulled a U-turn, and minutes later Peyton was standing alone on the front porch of the coach’s house. He rang the doorbell and, in tears, apologized.

  Archie constantly told his boys the importance of respecting authority. He wanted them to be independent thinkers—especially when they were on the field of play and were forced to improvise, which was Archie’s hallmark athletic skill—but they also needed to understand that their coach was ultimately in charge. Peyton was always respectful to me, even though I loved the fact that his temper could flare. You want a quarterback with fire in his eyes and in his belly, and Peyton certainly had both. That fire was the wellspring of his competitiveness.

  When Peyton was a teenager, he came upon old films of Archie’s college games. He asked Archie to put them in the TV. He watched Archie dart around linemen, outrun linebackers down the sideline, scramble in the backfield for what seemed like minutes at a time. At one point he turned to Archie. “Why aren’t I fast like that?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, but it might be a blessing,” Archie said. The father knew his sons would have to play the game differently than he did. Quarterbacks weren’t relying on their legs as much anymore. They played with multiple wide receivers and they stayed in the pocket more now. Archie also insisted that throwing the ball down the field was the best way for an inferior team to beat a superior one, because if a throwing quarterback was special, he could carry the other ten players on his offense much easier than could a running quarterback. I couldn’t have said that any better myself.

  Peyton also learned from his dad that it was important to acknowledge the work of his offensive linemen. When Archie was in Houston he took his O-line to dinner one evening at Ruth’s Chris Steak House and ran up a tab of over $1,000. When Peyton was in high school he wanted to pay for lunch for his offensive linemen, but sophomores like Peyton weren’t allowed to leave campus. So instead he bought a pair of Isotoner gloves for each of them. Geez, just think about that: Peyton wasn’t old enough to legally drive a car—he wouldn’t be sixteen until the spring of his high school sophomore year—but he already had a keen understanding of how offensive linemen should be treated.

  Peyton learned at a young age to avoid four common fundamental mistakes that young quarterbacks frequently commit: Never look behind you when you make your drop in the pocket; don’t stutter-step after receiving the snap; don’t pat the ball before you throw, because it will disrupt your timing with the receiver; and be perfectly balanced when you take the snap. Archie preached that like Old Testament truths to his sons.

  As I watched high school tape of Peyton, I was stunned to see that by the time he was a senior he already had a pre-snap routine. After calling the play in the huddle, he would walk to the line of scrimmage. Before putting his hands under center, he would look at how the defense was lined up, his eyes darting from one side of the field to the other, then back, then back again. Then, on the film of his memory, he would quickly replay all of the tape he had watched of that opposing defense, trying to recall when he had seen this particular alignment. Once he pulled up the alignment from his mental catalog, he would remember what the defenders had done once the ball was snapped. Based on that, he had a good idea of where the defenders were about to move once the ball touched his hands. Now that’s an accomplished QB—and Peyton was barely shaving once a week!

  In the film room at Tennessee, where Peyton went to college, he filled up notebook after notebook with the details of offensive coordinator David Cutcliffe’s offense. The strategy of football always fired Peyton’s imagination, which was really the bedrock of all his success—and why NFL scouts fell in love with his play as far back as his freshman season in Knoxville.

  The Volunteer coaches called Peyton “the Computer” and “R2D2” because of the way he studied. I also learned that Peyton would call out Cutcliffe when he believed he had made a mistake. If Cutcliffe told his quarterbacks to do one thing on a certain play, Peyton would check his notes to make sure that he had given the same instructions for that particular play weeks earlier. When Cutcliffe contradicted himself, his freshman signal caller would raise his hand and tell his coach that he was either making a mistake now or had committed a blunder weeks earlier. Peyton just wanted to know what his coach really intended on every play. Talk about preparation, preciseness, and mutual trust, for godsakes.

  The Colts held the top pick in the 1998 draft. In our war room we debated selecting two players: Peyton or quarterback Ryan Leaf of Washington State.

  I researched the hell out of both guys. The first time our group of decision makers met with Peyton was at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis. Four of us—general manager Bill Polian, coach Jim Mora, offensive coordinator Tom Moore, and myself—were sitting in a hotel room on the first floor of the Crowne Plaza when Peyton opened the door. Almost immediately, I could sense he had that “it” factor you’re looking for in a quarterback.

  He commanded the room; it was as if his presence just filled up every nook and cranny of the space. I asked him one question—I think it was about what style of offense he wanted to play in the NFL—and then he took over the interview, totally dominating the scene. We didn’t ask another question. He fired queries, rat-a-tat-tat, at us. He wanted to know everything about our offense and how we planned to evolve it in the coming seasons. He asked about the receivers on the roster—he wanted to know their strengths and weaknesses—and who we planned to draft to upgrade the position. He asked about the running backs, the tight ends, the offensive linemen, even the defense. It was clear he had had a coach’s mind. It almost felt like we were under the bright lamp and Peyton was an FBI investigator interrogating us.

  The next night we had a meeting scheduled with Ryan Leaf. The four of us were back in the same hotel room. We waited. And
waited. And waited.

  Ryan Leaf didn’t show. The dude blew us off.

  We could see the difference between Peyton and Ryan even when the two were just getting measured and weighed at the Combine. When strength coaches finished poking and prodding Peyton, he asked how his body fat compared to other quarterbacks. He then reminded the coaches that one of his knees was swollen. I loved that: Peyton was competitive even about his body fat. Everything in life, to him, was a contest that he had to win.

  Then Ryan Leaf stepped onto the scale at the Combine. He looked like crap; he was twenty pounds overweight. Yet Ryan, with the camera flashes popping in his face, proceeded to flex his biceps as though he was some goddamn Mr. America. It wasn’t a good look.

  Then the number on the digital scale popped up: 261. So it was clear that Ryan hadn’t prepared for the Combine, even though he should have viewed it as one of the most important events, and opportunities, of his life. I’ve got to trust my quarterback. Shit, my livelihood and the livelihoods of the entire coaching staff are in the hands of the quarterback that you select with the top overall pick. Face it, if you whiff on that player, you won’t be employed for long. Ryan couldn’t have made a worse first impression.

  But we tried to keep an open mind after the Combine. Bill Polian loved Ryan’s physical skill. He could make every throw and he reminded Polian of a young Jim Kelly with the toughness he had displayed at Washington State, leading the Huskies to the Rose Bowl that January.

  We then held individual workouts with the two quarterbacks, starting with Peyton in Knoxville at the University of Tennessee campus. Peyton brought one receiver out to the field and he would have thrown for us all day—just throw after throw after throw. He grunted like a tennis player after each pass, and Bill thought he was straining. But I told Bill, “Hey, it’s just one of those things that some quarterbacks do.”

  That evening I did my own detective work, like I always do when scouting a quarterback. I acted like I was a Tennessee alum and asked a softball player about Peyton; she had nothing but great things to say. I quizzed a secretary in the athletic department and an offensive lineman on the team. Both backed up the softball player, telling me that Peyton was a down-to-earth, rock-solid guy.

  The next day we flew to Pullman, Washington, to work out Ryan. It was important for us to immediately spend time with him after we’d been with Peyton, because we wanted to compare the two back-to-back to maximize the validity of our memories and notes.

  When we arrived, Washington State coach Mike Price had scheduled a workout on the stadium field for all his players who were hoping to play in the NFL. He also invited other NFL teams, so it wasn’t really a private workout and we didn’t get the one-on-one comparison we wanted.

  Ryan then walked out onto the field and started going through a scripted workout that he had been preparing for. I went over to Coach Price and told him, “Look, we want him to throw the types of passes that we’re going to ask him to make, not just the ones in the script.”

  “I don’t think he’ll do that,” Mike told me.

  “Well, he ain’t getting drafted by us if he doesn’t,” I said. “We came here to see specific throws.”

  Eventually Ryan agreed to let us take over the workout, but we shouldn’t have had to ask multiple times in the first place. It seemed like nothing was easy with him. But when he started making the throws we asked of him, man, did he ever light it up. What an arm. There wasn’t a single throw he couldn’t make. He had power, accuracy, and, when he needed it, a feathery touch. To me, his throws were artwork to be admired.

  Then I became a detective again. I walked around Pullman the following day and talked equipment managers, janitors, and members of the women’s volleyball team. No one had a nice thing to say about Ryan. I stopped at a 7-Eleven and spoke to the clerk behind the counter. He told me that Ryan had been banned from the store because of his boorish behavior.

  I wrote up a report for the staff. You couldn’t deny that he was 6'5'', 250 pounds (on a good day), and could move and had a big, powerful arm. But there were so many red flags about his character and leadership ability. Peyton, conversely, didn’t have as strong an arm as Ryan, but he was a natural-born leader who just couldn’t get enough football. It was his oxygen, the sun in his solar system. I wrote that he was the type of young man you wanted leading your franchise.

  Back at Indy, GM Bill Polian and Jim Irsay, the owner of the Colts, interviewed Peyton again. They asked him if he would be willing to come to mini-camp shortly after the draft if we selected him. “Oh, I’ll be there,” Peyton said. “Of course I’ll be there.”

  They asked the same question to Ryan when they interviewed him. His answer was a little different. “Oh, I can’t be there for that,” he said. “I’ve got a deal set up during that time that I have to attend.”

  Still, there were people in our scouting department who really wanted to draft Ryan. I argued vigorously for Peyton. Two days before the draft, Bill called a meeting and informed us of his decision. He told us, “Peyton is our guy.”

  Peyton said the perfect thing to me right after we drafted him. “I’m ready to get to work,” he said. “I mean, like right now.”

  We had those old Beta video machines and I immediately shipped mine down to New Orleans, where Peyton was staying. I sent him video clips of all our plays along with our playbook. He received the shipment on a Thursday.

  I flew to New Orleans that Friday. The Beta machine was in his bedroom. I couldn’t believe it, but Peyton already had a pretty high level of familiarity with our offense. He must have stayed up all night Thursday studying. We spent all day Friday in his room. I couldn’t give him enough information.

  A few weeks later, at our mini-camp for rookies and veterans, Peyton immediately took charge. We put the Beta machine in his hotel room, and the night before camp began we met from 6 p.m. until 2 a.m. going over plays. Six hours later Peyton stepped into the huddle on the first play and called, “Dice right, scat right, 92 X.” The veterans just looked at him in astonishment. He seemed to know the whole damn playbook!

  For the rest of camp Peyton rattled off play after play in the huddle like he’d been running the offense for a decade. The older players quickly realized that we had a very special guy under center.

  But it wasn’t just his mind that was impressive. If the defense was on the field and the offense was off on the side, he’d grab a few veteran receivers and tight ends and head to another field to throw. Peyton just wore them out. Marvin Harrison, Marcus Pollard, and Ken Dilger would be running up and down the field while Peyton uncorked pass after pass. I’d never seen a rookie quarterback win over a team so fast. And it wasn’t anything that Peyton said; it was all in his actions and the fact that he was so prepared.

  Peyton had been in an NFL locker room since he was five years old, literally the majority of his life. Nothing fazed him. He had been watching how an NFL quarterback with great character—his dad—interacted with his teammates, how he ribbed them if it was appropriate, or put his arm around a teammate if he was feeling down. Peyton instinctively knew how to act, even though he was only a rookie. I’d argue that no rookie quarterback in the history of the NFL was more prepared to walk into the locker room than Peyton. The other young guys would come into the locker room and you could see the fear in their faces; they were like, Oh shit, what the hell do I do now? But not Peyton; he was as cool and composed as any young person I’ve come across.

  But of all the quarterbacks I’ve ever coached, Peyton was the most taxing on me. If we had a one-hour meeting, I needed to prepare three hours of material. He picked up concepts and plays and defensive tendencies so fast. I started calling him “the Piranha” because he devoured information. I had never seen—and haven’t seen since—anything like that in a quarterback.

  When Peyton moved from the Big Easy to Indianapolis he installed a projector with a Beta deck in his apartment. There were times I worried about him, because he spent hour after hour
watching film. I mean, he had no social life. He watched every play from every practice, usually multiple times. Peyton was so obsessive that he even watched how to perform quarterback kneeldowns at the end of games. No detail was too minute. He put everything about football under the microscope. He needed to be the master of mastery.

  But when it came to his personal life, well, Peyton needed a little help. I found out that he once arrived for a date with his future wife, Ashley, decked out head to toe in denim—and thought he looked ready for the red carpet. Another evening, as Peyton spoke to Ashley over the phone when he was at Tennessee and she was at the University of Virginia, he said that he was in the mood for Chinese food and was going to have it delivered. After he hung up Peyton then fumbled around trying to figure out how to place an order. He finally gave up, called Ashley back, and convinced her to phone a Chinese restaurant in Knoxville and order dinner for him.

  In Indianapolis he was infamous for not being able to properly use a can opener. One time I visited him at his place and saw that he had pictures that his mom had given him on a closet door, showing what shirts went with what pants and shoes; she had picked out his outfits as if he was still in grade school. He kind of struggled with the basics of life, and it was a source of great comedy for his coaches and teammates. But he took all the jokes in stride. One thing and one thing only was important to him when he arrived in Indy: to become a great NFL quarterback.

  That’s what made it so easy to establish trust with Peyton—everything mattered so much to him. He was a football junkie and he loved working on his fundamentals of footwork and balance and arm position.

  The first thing we really stressed with Peyton as a rookie was improving his arm strength. The only way to do that is to just throw and throw and throw, like a baseball pitcher does. So every day we would have him run a bootleg from about the 20-yard line, drop back to about the 30, have him set his feet, and then throw the ball as high as he could into the kicking net behind the goalpost. Peyton was dogged about this. And in every practice we could see his arm getting stronger. The release point of his passes got higher and the ball would end up higher and higher in the net. Mechanics were as important to him as his assignment on every play. And his footwork improved just as steadily as his arm strength.