The Quarterback Whisperer Read online

  My family life would never be the same either.

  One of the main reasons why I took the job in Tuscaloosa was because I wanted my daughter, Kristi, to be in a college town. I had moved my family sixteen times and I wanted Kristi, who was a junior in high school when we moved to Alabama, to be able to finish high school in T-Town, as natives call Tuscaloosa. I genuinely thought I’d be the Crimson Tide’s offensive coordinator for years.

  It always was hard selling the moves to my kids, especially Kristi. Before each move I would usually walk into her bedroom and we’d sit on the bed together for a father-daughter talk. I’d tell Kristi that she was now going to have the chance to make more friends in a new city. “Some people grow up on the same street and never move,” I said. “They only have two friends. Now you get to have a whole new set of friends. You’ll have more friends than any young girl in America.”

  But the first days of school always terrified my daughter, and that always broke my heart into a million little pieces. It’s tough to make friends when you’re the outsider. I told her to be herself and that she’d have no problem winning over others. And she always would, but then we would move again the next year. And she’d be right back in the same boat and have to endure the trauma of another first day at school.

  There were tears on every first day, but after about a week Kristi would usually find her comfort zone in the new school. Yet when we went to Alabama I promised her that this would be different. I swore to her she would finish high school in Tuscaloosa. So my wife and Kristi ended up staying in Alabama and I moved to Indianapolis by myself—the only time in my career I wasn’t with my family. That, in a word, sucked. Big time.

  But Kristi graduated from high school and then went to Alabama on a Bear Bryant Scholarship, which is a scholarship fund for the children of Alabama players and coaches. So all those years after I sat in Coach Bryant’s office and said goodbye to him a final time, he was back in my life, paying for my daughter’s education.

  Talk about a legacy.

  But these really hard times strengthened her character and made her the strong woman she is today. My bond with my little girl remains as powerful as ever.

  In the NFL, if we have a game on Sunday, then Monday will be evaluation day. The entire team will be in the facility watching the just-over game with their position coaches. We’ll review, in painstaking detail, what went right, what went wrong, and how we can improve.

  The players have Tuesday off. But for the coaches, it’s game plan day for our upcoming opponent. We’ll arrive in the office early and brainstorm for hours. By the end of this marathon meeting, we’ll have a clear idea of what we want to do on offense, defense, and special teams. We have a big whiteboard covering an entire wall in our coaches’ conference room, and we’ll write every play of the game plan on that board. But the plays on the whiteboard are always works in progress during the week—the board seems to contain dozens and dozens of living, breathing organisms—because we’ll constantly tweak the game plan, adding and subtracting a few plays as we get closer to kickoff.

  The quarterbacks only get most of Tuesday off. By 8 p.m. that night we’ll email the quarterbacks the game plan, which will pop up on their tablets. Carson Palmer loves to devour the game plan that very evening. A longtime NFL veteran, Carson understands that he needs to know our plan of attack better than anyone who’s not a coach. So during the 2016 season, after reading a bedtime story to his seven-year-old twins, Fletch and Ellie, he’d plop down in his office at home that sits in the shadow of Camelback Mountain and begin his work for the week. It can’t be stressed enough: Physical ability, which Carson has in spades, means very little in the NFL if your mental skills aren’t as robust and as finely tuned. Carson usually spends about two hours studying every Tuesday night before Sunday games.

  There is a lot for the quarterbacks to learn. Sometimes I’ll include as many as 150 plays in the game plan. Not only does the QB need to know the precise contours of each play, but he needs to know the formation for each play, the personnel combination for each play, and what defensive formations he’s likely to see for each play. Then he needs to think about what he would change to if the defense lines up in a formation we’re not expecting. If that change is to a pass, he needs to know the progressions for the new pass play. And if the change is to a run, he needs to know the proper call based on what he views as the most vulnerable point of that defensive alignment that we weren’t anticipating in the first place. No, it ain’t easy being an NFL quarterback.

  Wednesdays are installation days. We’ll review the game plan in position meetings in the morning. Then, in the afternoon, out on the practice field, we’ll methodically go through the twenty-five third-down plays and the thirty-five first-down plays that we plan to run in the game.

  On Thursdays we’ll practice red-zone plays and the two-minute drill. We’ll show the players what has occurred to our upcoming opponent in the red zone and in two-minute situations in their previous few games—both the good and the bad—so we can learn them and hopefully exploit their weaknesses on game day.

  The most important part of my week happens on Thursday mornings. Alone in my office, I’ll analyze every morsel, every bit of information at my disposal. This can take hours, but I think games can be won and lost during this time. I’ll come up with my top thirty offensive plays that I’ll want to run in the game. I’ll then write them on our big whiteboard in the main coaches’ conference room. I’ll always get this done by late afternoon. Why? Because Thursday nights are also key for me: That’s date night with Chris. It’s basically the only time of the week it’s just the two of us, which is why it’s so special.

  Friday practices are dedicated to short-yardage situations and goal-line plays with blitzes. After practice the quarterbacks and I will head back into our conference room with the whiteboard. I pick the first fifteen running plays we’ll call in the game, but I leave it to our starting quarterback to select the first fifteen pass plays.

  I want my quarterback to feel—to believe—he’s got a key role in shaping the game plan. I also want to raise his level of accountability. So once we’re in the meeting room, Carson will walk up to the whiteboard and mark his favorite fifteen pass plays. I never want to call a pass a quarterback is not comfortable with. After we discuss those plays, Carson will circle his four favorites. These will be our first four pass plays of the game. This entire process takes about an hour.

  Coaches have been scripting the opening plays of games since Bill Walsh started doing that in the late 1970s. Bill’s sheet had fifteen plays on it. I script my first thirty. In those plays I try to get each guy involved. I want our running backs to have a few carries and begin to get a feel for the game. I want all of our wide receivers to have a chance to make a catch or two. The earlier your best players are engaged in the game, the better they’ll generally play for the remainder of it. That’s why the first thirty offensive plays are so extremely important.

  I always try to put each player on my team in the best possible position to be successful. This is what coaching is all about, but it’s not always easy. When I arrived in Arizona in 2013, Larry Fitzgerald—the most popular player in franchise history and a first-ballot Hall of Famer—was struggling playing our X position, which is split end (the receiver who is usually lined up farthest to the outside). He had lost a little speed and I thought he needed to learn how to play the slot position, the inside receiving spot. Plus, if he moved inside, it would be much more difficult for opponents to double-team Larry and basically take him out of the game.

  I explained to Larry that I helped Reggie Wayne make a position transition in Indianapolis and Hines Ward do the same in Pittsburgh. It extended both of their careers. Let’s face it: Larry was thirty years old, and thirty-year-old wide receivers tend to lose a step. If he wanted to keep producing at a high level, I believed his best position was the slot. But when I told Larry this he looked at me like a kid who had only eaten ice cream all his life an
d was now being forced to try spinach. “Just call Reggie and Hines and ask them how their position changes worked out,” I said to him. “You’re going to still get the football if you move inside. You can do it.”

  At first Larry really was lost. He slowed down pass patterns because, after years of playing outside, he wasn’t totally comfortable and certain where to go. He struggled reading the middle of the field—he had trouble figuring out whether the defenses were in man or zone coverage—and often didn’t know if he should hook in or cut to the outside. I told him, “You should have seen Reggie Wayne when I flipped him over to the right side. The guy couldn’t stop tripping over his feet, because Reggie had played left wide receiver his entire career. But he worked at it and he got better. You can do the same thing.”

  Larry bought in—he’s a pro’s pro—and gradually improved. But then in 2015, I had a new idea for him: Let’s make him our Z. The Z is the wide receiver who lines up outside but motions inside before the ball is snapped. “I want you on the move,” I told him. “You won’t get pressed man-to-man and you’ll get more balls thrown your way. You’ll have to block more, but if you do that, I’ll reward you with red-zone plays.”

  Man, now Larry really bought in. In 2015 I think he was the best blocking receiver in the NFL. That was why our running game got so much better. In ’14 we were thirty-first in the league in rushing; the next year, with Larry blocking from the Z position, we jumped to eighth in the NFL in rushing and our average rush went from 3.3 yards per play to 4.2.

  Plus, it became harder for the defense to keep track of Larry and focus their coverage on him. He could line up all over the field, and if we wanted, he could motion back and forth as Carson called out the cadence.

  It worked just as I had hoped: At age thirty-two in 2015, Larry caught a career-high 109 passes. And just as I had promised him, he was our first look in the red zone on play-action passes. He wound up with nine touchdown receptions. We had put him, I believe, in the best position possible to flourish—and he sure did.

  He was brilliant in 2016 as well. He caught 107 balls for 1,023 yards. At age thirty-three, my man Fitz led the NFL in receptions and was selected to his tenth Pro Bowl—among wide receivers, only Jerry Rice has been to more.

  On Saturday nights I meet one final time with my quarterbacks in the team hotel. We usually have chapel at 7:30 and then I’ll sit down with my guys at 8 p.m. for about thirty minutes. This is the chance for my starting QB to tell me his preferences for all the different types of situations and scenarios we’ll be in during the game. I listen very closely to his every word and pay close attention to his demeanor. If I sense that he feels overwhelmed or has some lingering doubts in his mind, I extend the meeting.

  “I always want more time with B.A. on Saturday nights,” Carson says. “I’ll usually come up with about fifteen questions ahead of our meeting, and then I’ll try to figure out which of those are the dumbest and get rid of them. I’ll usually ask like three or four questions that I really need answers to. This is a very important time in our game week.”

  Game day is showtime—the best day of the week. If we’re playing at home here in Arizona, we usually have a house full of family and friends staying with us and we’ll get up early for breakfast. I’ll shower, kiss my wife, and then my assistant, Wesley Goodwin, will pick me up. We’ll arrive at the stadium about three hours before kickoff.

  I’ll greet the stadium workers, which is so much fun. There are usually military personnel around our locker room and out on the field, so I’ll thank them for their service and take a bunch of pictures with them. This is a very relaxing time for me, because I know I’ve done everything I can to be prepared for the game. We may not win, but it sure as hell won’t be for lack of effort.

  I’ll then head into my office in the stadium for a little quiet time. I’ll flip on a few of the East Coast NFL games and watch for a few minutes. That’s one of the great things about being in the Southwest—the NFL action east of the Mississippi starts hours before our games. As a fan and as a coach, I love it. We get football virtually all day in the desert.

  Then one of my assistants will give me a warning that the officials are about to come talk to me. I’ll put a fake smile on my face and try to sweet-talk them for as long as they’ll listen.

  After that I’ll walk into the locker room to look into the eyes of my players. Our Cardinals teams have always had very loose, loud locker rooms. I let our guys listen to music and they love it.

  I’ll wander out onto the field and watch our quarterbacks throw their warm-up tosses. I always pay very close attention to Carson, making sure his tempo and balance are proper. If he struggles with a particular throw, I’ll make him repeat it until he and I are comfortable with it. You want to get everything right just before the game, and I certainly don’t want Carson questioning himself when he has to make that throw in the game.

  As kickoff nears, we’ll gather in the locker room. I’ll have one of the players say a prayer. Then I’ll tell the team in a confident, steady voice something challenging like, “Let’s play the best thirty minutes of football we’ve ever played.”

  I’ll then walk at the head of the mass of my players toward the tunnel. They’ll wait at its mouth while I’ll go stand near the 50-yard line. The players will charge out onto the field and I’ll look up into the head coach’s box and see Chris, the love of my life. I always blow her a kiss; she blows one, sometimes two, back.

  Game time is anxiously close now. We’ll stand on the sideline as the national anthem is played. After all these years, after literally hearing those notes thousands of times, I still get a tear in my eye when I hear “the rockets’ red glare.”

  The anthem, the roar of the crowd, the rising excitement in the stadium signal the approaching time—the time for a football game. It’s the greatest three hours in sports, a span of time when a bunch of grown-up kids get to play a game for a living.

  God, America really is great!

  Bruce is definitely like a cool uncle to his quarterbacks. He’s all work on the field, but away from football you can play a round of golf with and just hang out with him. He’s easy to talk to and he truly cares about his quarterbacks. .

  —BEN ROETHLISBERGER

  CHAPTER 6

  BEN ROETHLISBERGER

  Before the 2004 draft, when I was the wide receivers coach with the Steelers, I ranked the prominent quarterbacks who were about to come out of the collegiate ranks, from Eli Manning to Philip Rivers to Ben Roethlisberger. In my judgment it was a no-brainer who the best NFL player of the three was going to be—Big Ben.

  At Miami (Ohio) University he was a very special player, showing that rare twin trait of avoiding onrushing linemen while simultaneously keeping his eyes downfield. Too often the so-called draft experts who have never coached or played a down in the NFL just focus on the physical traits of college quarterbacks. They ask questions such as: Does he have the prototypical size? Can he make all the necessary throws? Is he agile, quick afoot, fast? But I like to see if the guy can keep his eyes down the field in the midst of mounting chaos. Is he a leader and winner? In short, does he have grit? Ben checked off those boxes.

  We had Tommy Maddox as our starting QB and we were all set to draft Shawn Andrews, a mountain of an offensive tackle out of Arkansas. We held the eleventh overall pick and we thought all the top quarterbacks—Ben, Eli, and Philip—would be off the board when it came time for us to make a selection.

  But then we couldn’t believe our luck. While Eli had gone first to the Chargers and Rivers fourth to the Giants (they would soon be traded for each other), Ben had slid down the draft board because teams had needs other than quarterback, and he was available when it was our pick. When asked, I weighed in with my two cents, telling everyone in our windowless war room in Pittsburgh that Ben had all the tools—mental and physical—to be a star.

  We selected Big Ben. The Steelers franchise would have its face for the next decade-plus. But man, I had no
idea what a royal pain in the posterior Ben would briefly become for me.

  The plan for Ben’s rookie season was for him to hold a clipboard on the sideline and study, play by play, how our starter, Tommy Maddox, managed and played each game. In a perfect world, it’s best not to play rookie quarterbacks. The NFL game is so much faster than the college game, and the NFL’s defensive schemes are so much more complex than those faced by college QBs. I tell my young quarterbacks to take mental reps during games—visualize that they are out on the field and react to everything the opposing defense throws at our starter. Still, there is no substitute for being out on the field in live action, in the line of withering fire.

  In our second game of Ben’s rookie year we faced the Baltimore Ravens. Again, our plan for the year was to keep Ben on the bench or only play sparingly. We knew he was our future franchise quarterback—we’d already seen in preseason that he had the potential to be very, very special—and we didn’t want to hamper his development by throwing him into the cauldron before he was ready. I’ve seen several young QBs forced to play before they were ready—Akili Smith in Cincinnati and David Carr in Houston, for example—and had their confidence obliterated, killing their careers. We wanted to save Ben from that potential fate. But in the third quarter against the Ravens, Tommy sprained his elbow when Baltimore defensive end Terrell Suggs hit him. Big Ben trotted out onto the field for his first regular-season action.

  Using a relatively simple game plan against the Ravens, Ben led us on a mini-comeback. He threw fourth-quarter touchdown passes to Antwaan Randle El and Hines Ward. But he also threw two interceptions; Chris McAlister returned one 51 yards for a touchdown late in the game. We lost 30–13.

  But I loved what Ben said to the media after the game. “I’m not Tommy Maddox,” he told reporters. “Can’t be Tommy Maddox. I’m just going to do the best that I can.”