The QB: The Making of Modern Quarterbacks (15 page)

Jones was stunned when he learned that Tom Brady wasn’t ESTP (a #5) but rather an ENFP (a #9). ENFPs typically are too smart and empathetic to thrive as quarterbacks, because they have so much exuberance and passion. They, too, like ESTPs, are right-brain dominant, meaning perceiving and not judging. Translation: He was less likely to dwell on things and freeze at crunch time. The left brain has
a more methodical bent, Niednagel said. “It is self-critical, and when it makes a mistake, it dwells on it.” Drew Brees also is an ENFP.

“Brady and Brees are very atypical for their wiring,” Niednagel said. “Most #9s end up as major busts. Brady was as good as anybody Belichick could ever coach as a #9. He’s a team guy who wants to please, whereas Peyton [Manning], because of the way he’s been raised, wants to please, too, but his inborn nature is more tough-minded in the moment, and he wouldn’t be as apt to not toe the line [the way] Favre was. That’s why when [then-Packers Coach Mike] Holmgren said in Super Bowl XXXI, ‘Don’t you dare mess with the plays,’ and then on the second play, Favre audibled, and they scored a touchdown. That’s just the nature of #5s. It’s how they function in the moment. They have incredible vision. They don’t script anything. They just can improvise. That’s why Peyton Manning is so superior at the line of scrimmage. Peyton Manning just has that tactical mind-set that is off the charts. #5s are not super-cerebral typically. Peyton is regarded as that, but of course he was taught by his dad, an NFL player who is a #13.”

Niednagel’s example of Favre’s Super Bowl audible proved to be one of the biggest moments in a Hall of Fame career. Favre, then twenty-seven, uncorked a 54-yard touchdown pass on the game’s second offensive play to torch Bill Parcells’s New England Patriots defense in what would become a 35–21 Packer win.

The play was supposed to be 322 “Y” Stick, a pass designed to go to tight end Mark Chmura on a short, sideline pattern, but instead Favre opted for “74 Razor,” which enabled him to connect with receiver Andre Rison on a deep post pattern.

“As I came to the line, I saw the safeties cheating up, and the linebacker over [Chmura] looked like he was coming,” Favre told
Sports Illustrated.
“I figured they had seven guys rushing me. Incredible. We had never seen this from the Patriots on film, and if I couldn’t get out of the play, we’d be in trouble. I checked to see that we had enough time on the clock to audible—you need at least seven seconds to change a play and get everybody to hear you—and we did. I knew I had to check to something with great protection and something that attacked the area the safeties were leaving open.

“It’s not like I have a Rolodex in my head and just flip through plays till I get to one I like. After you’ve been in a system for a while—boom—the right play just comes to you. And 74 Razor just came. [Chmura] and both backs stayed in [to block]. And the second I took the snap, both of the safeties charged to cover a back and [Chmura]. The linebackers came. They had seven guys rushing and only two corners covering deep. That second, I thought to myself, ‘Yeah! Just what I expected!’ ”

Even more curious about Favre’s audible was, according to Packers assistant coach Gil Haskell, the team hadn’t even practiced 74 Razor one time all season.

Jones actually was the Falcons’ offensive coordinator when the team drafted Favre in the second round in 1991, years before he’d ever heard of Jonathan Niednagel. Favre lasted one season in Atlanta before he was traded to Green Bay for a first-round pick. He attempted four passes, had two of them intercepted, and the other two went incomplete.

“I thought Favre was inaccurate and drunk for eighteen straight months. [Atlanta starting QB] Chris Miller was in the Pro Bowl, and we needed help on defense,” recalled Jones, who wasn’t surprised to learn that Favre was wired to thrive under pressure. “If you go back in college, he won so many games on the last drive. In two years, I think he had thirteen wins, like, ten of them came on the last drive.”

Jones said if he knew then what he knows now, the Falcons never would have traded Favre to Green Bay. “I[t] would’ve been different if I knew and I knew how to coach him,” he said. “In two-minute situations, let him call his own plays. In those heated situations, Kelly went no-huddle; Favre, Elway, Marino—they all called their own plays. Let them lead.”

Jones has never had an ESTP in college. He admitted he tried to type guys all the time, especially quarterbacks, and he always ended up wrong. “They all end up my brain type, ENTPs. I’ve looked for ’em. I tried to find ’em, but I haven’t had one, but what Jon [Niednagel] does, which is really important for coaches, is he can tell you how to say things to a particular brain type that will be received better, and they will respond better. Basically he teaches you how to coach
them better. He’ll tell you, ‘For him to play at the highest level under pressure, this is what you need to say and how you need to say it as a coach. Don’t tell him what to do. Ask him what he thinks, even if you don’t want to do that; then you trigger it this way to get him to see it in a timely fashion.’ I did that with [NCAA career passing leader] Timmy Chang, and it really changed him.”

“Type #13s are typically the ace on baseball pitching staffs, but their wiring isn’t optimum for quarterbacks,” Niednagel said. Still, it seemed that as the NFL was becoming more open to mobile QBs, more and more #13s were thriving. Aaron Rodgers was a #13, and so were Andrew Luck, Russell Wilson, Colin Kaepernick, and Robert Griffin III.

“Most of those #13s have squirrelly mechanics, because they don’t have dominant motor skills,” Niednagel said. “They’re so loosey-goosey. They can get a whip [motion]. They have the biggest serves in tennis, the longest drives in golf. When they learn, with a lot of practice, how to use their whole bodies, they can get a whip in terms of club-head speed or arm speed—that’s why they can get their fastballs to move a lot.”

According to Niednagel, Johnny Manziel—despite Jones’s suspicions—was a #13, too. So was touted UCF quarterback Blake Bortles.

Niednagel said he wasn’t surprised that Tim Tebow struggled in his NFL career: “He’s a #1, which is what a lot of great running backs are. Walter Payton and Emmitt Smith are #1s. Randall Cunningham and Donovan McNabb are #1s, too, but most #1s are busts, because they don’t think the game real well. That type needs to be really relaxed to loosen up the big muscles. They need to be in the flow. Quarterback is not the consummate spot for Tebow, because he won’t see the game the way the Mannings and Favres and Marinos do. When [#1s] get nervous and uptight, the feelings take over, and they can go haywire. With Tebow being left-handed—when you use the left side of the body, the right hemisphere is triggering so much of that; it’s one thing to be a right-handed #1, but it’s another thing to be a left-handed #1—it made him much more cumbersome in his delivery.”

Jones was perplexed that he couldn’t find ESTP quarterbacks
anymore. He asked Niednagel, who offered up a theory. “He said, ‘June, if you and I went to the juvenile-detention home, 50 to 60 percent of the kids are ESTP.’ ” Jones at first thought Niednagel was joking but found out he wasn’t. Niednagel explained that ESTPs often hate school and recoil at structure. Jones thought back to many of the great quarterbacks he knew and was convinced.

“Even look at Joe Montana’s career at Notre Dame with [head coach] Dan Devine,” said Jones. “That’s why he didn’t play for a while there.”

Even if, as Niednagel said, ESTPs do recoil at structure, many of them have proven to be some of the world’s greatest leaders. Winston Churchill, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, George S. Patton, Douglas MacArthur—all were ESTPs. So were Malcolm X, Dale Carnegie, L. Ron Hubbard, and Ernest Hemingway. Studies estimate that somewhere between 4 and 10 percent of the population are ESTPs.

Jones thought Neal Burcham was an ESTP, “because every time I put him in a live setting, he completes every ball,” Jones said a few months before the QB’s freshman season. “I’m very anxious to see him play.” Turns out, the young quarterback was actually ENTP, another right-brain dominant profile and the most common of all the personality types. Burcham ended up starting the Mustangs’ final two games of the 2013 season, both losses, throwing 1 touchdown pass and 3 interceptions.

“I made a mistake in how I handled him,” Jones said. “I should’ve slowed the game and talked to him between plays and nurtured him. I didn’t do that, and he failed miserably. Against UCF, I told [SMU QB coach] Dan [Morrison], I’ll go back to what I know works. He completed over 70 percent of his passes. I’m convinced if he didn’t have a concussion with eight minutes to go, we[’d have] beat[en] UCF, and we’d be talking about him a lot more. I know he would’ve made a couple of plays for us.”

But Jones has another quarterback on his roster, who he now thinks is an ESTP, a freshman named Kolney Cassel.

“He reminds me, with how he acts in the huddle, of Jim Kelly [whom Jones coached with the USFL’s Houston Gamblers]. Jim was
[an] ESTP,” Jones said. He said by the fourth day of training camp in 2013, he turned to his QB coach, and both of them started believing Cassel might be an ESTP. “He didn’t have any idea of what we were doing but still completed all the balls when we ran no-huddle. Even though I’m frustrated that he’s not picking it up as fast, and he’s not where he should be, he has something about him. He doesn’t care. He thinks he’s the best. Same thing Jim Kelly had.”

Jones said if he finds out that Cassel’s an ESTP, he’ll let the kid call his own plays.

Usually by this stage, Jones (who has since resigned from the SMU job) would already know a player’s type, but for the past three years Niednagel has been unavailable, battling Stage IV melanoma. The cancer started out on his arm, then jumped to his back, and then to his chest. He’s had to battle two bouts of pneumonia and arsenic poisoning that he got, he said, from eating so much wild rice.

“I’d seen top experts in the field but ended up creating my own protocols,” Niednagel said. “I was two weeks from death, but I’ve come back a long way.”

His recovery comes at a time when he believed he, along with some help from a company in Orange County, was on the brink of a scientific breakthrough, that through DNA analysis he had four of the sixteen personality types defined. “The neat thing is, we’re bringing out the science now in a way that is irrefutable,” he said. “But, hey, anything that has been noteworthy over the ages has been scoffed at. I’m looking at this as a way to change mankind, not change NFL teams. It’s far bigger.”

ESTP OR ENTP
,
TRENT
Dilfer was rooting for Neal Burcham. If the kid blossomed into a college star and made it to the NFL, it would help validate his model and his evaluation savvy. But his connection to the young quarterback ran deeper than that, just as it did with all the quarterbacks he had bonded with, whether they made it to the Elite 11 finals or not. He’s told the kids who don’t get selected that nothing would make him happier than “if you prove me wrong,”
and it doesn’t seem like mere coach-speak when you see how choked up or moved to tears he sometimes gets around the high school quarterbacks.

“I’m always aware that some kids are gonna leave very disappointed. I don’t want them to be crushed. I want them to be motivated,” he said, adding that he often ends up texting back and forth with some of these kids more than with the ones he does invite to the finals. Walk into the office at his home, and you begin to understand why. The room is jammed with books, trophies, game balls, photos, and hard drives. There is also one of those giant cardboard checks, the kind contest-winners get. Dilfer’s was a $25,000-prize check for winning the 2001 Stan Humphries Celebrity Golf Classic. Dilfer shot a course-record 62 to beat former Major League pitcher Rick Rhoden, the guy who was dominating the celebrity-golf circuit, who shot 67 the final day. On the wall facing Dilfer’s chair is an antique dresser with a marble top covered with a half dozen trophies, including a two-foot replica of the Super Bowl trophy next to a game ball commemorating the Baltimore Ravens’ Super Bowl XXXV win over the New York Giants. Above the dresser is a large flat-screen TV mounted to a built-in wall unit, and above that are three more game balls. The ball in the middle, directly above the Super Bowl trophy, commemorates the Ravens’ 24–23 road win over the Titans in Week Eleven from mid-November 2000, which handed Tennessee its first loss in the thirteen-game history of Adelphia Coliseum.

The game was tied at 17 late in the fourth quarter. The Ravens just got a turnover and had the ball deep in the Titans’ territory. In good position for the go-ahead field goal on a third-and-7 from the Tennessee 19-yard-line, Dilfer tried to force a slant intended for Patrick Johnson, but Titans defensive back Perry Phenix stepped in front and returned it 87 yards for a touchdown. Dilfer gathered himself on the sideline, said a prayer, and returned to the field to start a game-winning drive from his own 30 with 2:19 remaining after Tennessee’s kicker missed the point after. Faced with another third down, Dilfer relied on some of his old athleticism after being flushed out of the pocket to his right, and he found Shannon Sharpe along the sideline
for a 36-yard gain. On the ninth play of the drive—with 25 seconds left—Dilfer looked to Johnson again. This time, he connected on a 2-yard touchdown pass for the win.

“What I’ve learned from playing this game is that you never let circumstances around you affect what you do,” Dilfer told reporters after the game. “You have to keep fighting. I’m from the old school. You play as hard as you can until you die out there. You leave everything on the field. I can’t believe something this good happened to me. It’s been such a long time.”

The Ravens won the next nine games in a row to win the Super Bowl. That game proved to his new teammates in Baltimore that the guy who was run out of Tampa Bay could win big games and that he could shine in the spotlight after being slammed with adversity.

“I threw the worst pick of my life,” he said, staring at the game ball. “Came right back and made a big play to Shannon Sharpe on third and long and then threw the game-winning touchdown pass in the two-minute drive.
That’s
my career. Some good and some epic failure.”