The QB: The Making of Modern Quarterbacks (5 page)

Harris, though, hadn’t yet been awarded a golden Elite 11 ticket to the season-end event on the Nike campus in Oregon. Instead, DeShone Kizer, an honor student from Toledo, Ohio, got an invite with all the QBs gathered around Dilfer.

“I’m not concerned that I didn’t get picked yet,” Harris said twenty minutes after the announcement. “I’m pretty sure I’m gonna get invited. I worked hard. I came out here and got better, and that’s the only deal that I was focused on today.

“Trent and the staff know talent when they see it. They gave out one to DeShone. He had a great day, honestly. Trent’s got six more. I can name you about fifteen guys off the top of my head who were good out here today. They grade off different things. Maybe DeShone did better things after a bad throw or something like that. Give him all the credit. If I get invited, great. If I don’t, it’s not gonna make me or break me. It’s not gonna make it to where a school’s gonna say, ‘Hey, we’re not gonna take you because you didn’t get invited [to the Elite 11]. They don’t care about that stuff. Not bashing a camp. It’s just about you getting better and trying to get all this stuff together, and I know that’s what Trent and the [others] are trying to work on.”

Asked if he’d ever had any private coaching, Harris shook his head.

“None,” he said, smiling. “I don’t know about these other guys, but I haven’t at all.” Despite what the Elite 11 coaches had said about the matter, he seemed proud to admit it. As if the fact alluded to the idea that he had more “upside,” to borrow the clichéd scouting buzzword, more room to develop, than did other young QBs who had spent hundreds of hours being groomed. Harris pointed out that he also played basketball and ran track. “Four by two, four by one, and four by four,” he added, rattling off the names of the sprinting events he competed in for his high school.

“It’s just natural. That’s the deal with being raw. I wasn’t a starting quarterback till I got to eighth grade. A lot of these guys probably grew up playing quarterback in T-League. I didn’t.”

There would be a handful of other quarterbacks invited to the Elite 11 later in the evening. Dilfer had scheduled a “war room” back at the Hilton Garden Inn, where he and his staff would discuss the merits of all their candidates. George Whitfield, one of Brandon Harris’s bigger supporters among the staff, would not be able to participate in the war room. Whitfield had to leave Columbus to get to Texas, where he’d be training his prized pupil, Texas A&M phenom Johnny Manziel, and three other college QBs.

• • •

THE WAR ROOM FELT
like one big poker club. There was bickering, posturing, tasteless jokes, and overcooked Italian food. At the core, it was just a bunch of guys talking about something they truly loved—football. Actually, it went deeper than that. It was guys giving their opinions about various aspects of the game and debating their own insights. This was a chance to show Trent Dilfer and their peers what they knew. A dozen TDFB coaches sat around the hotel meeting room. Dilfer was flanked by Yogi Roth and Brian Stumpf, a former wide receiver at Cal and longtime Elite 11 staffer. Also around the rectangular table were Matt James, another former college wideout and longtime Elite 11 coach; Jordan Palmer; and Joey Roberts, Dilfer’s baby-faced protégé who also works for ESPN and was the Elite 11’s general manager. Lining a wall was another group of guys balancing paper plates full of food on their laps—the TDFB coaches, who were told they wouldn’t be part of the vote on which QBs got picked for the remaining slots in the Elite 11 but were free to offer opinions. In truth, such conversations often would reveal as much about the coaches as it would the high school quarterbacks.

Over the years, the Elite 11 staff based a lot of their invites off the high school tapes they evaluated. The footage still mattered a great deal to the TDFB guys, but in-person evaluation and “feel” seemed to count even more to Dilfer.

Before most of the coaches had even put the first forkful of food into their mouths, Palmer had already established the tone for the evening. He detailed a recent conversation he’d had with a highly touted “four-star” quarterback prospect’s high school coach. The kid was a player whom most in the football recruiting world outside that room figured would be a lock to make the Elite 11.

“I was honest with ’em,” Palmer said. “I told ’em the two biggest things he has to work on are coachability and likability.”

It was a blunt assessment. It was basically, “Here’s the problem with your kid. He’s an asshole.”

Palmer said the kid later followed up by saying, “I heard [you] guys thought I was a dick.” Palmer said the young QB got the message, but he wondered if he really
got
it. Players have to want to play for the QB. Want to be around him. It’s one thing to have an air
of confidence. It’s another to be unbearable. Maybe the kid would mature. The Dilfer group has had two vivid examples of high school quarterbacks who were deemed elite talents by the Internet recruiting folks and got invites to the Elite 11, and Dilfer couldn’t stand either kid. Both felt entitled. Both were so caught up in their own Internet reputations that they came across as insufferable, and both—one a year ago, the other two years ago—recoiled when faced with competition in the Elite 11 setting—the biggest red flag in Dilfer’s world.

Will Grier sounded like the opposite. The lanky 6′3″ quarterback from North Carolina once threw for 837 yards and 10 touchdowns in a 104–80 game at Charlotte’s Davidson Day School. He was the son of a football coach who once was (former NFL QB) Jeff Blake’s backup at East Carolina. On the day Grier worked out for the Elite 11 coaches at a Nike training camp in Charlotte in March, it was a sloppy, forty-degree afternoon with twenty-mile-per-hour gusts of wind.

“Those were probably the worst conditions we’ve had in thirteen years,” Brian Stumpf said. “And he didn’t flinch an inch or blink an eye.”

None of the QBs in North Carolina had looked very sharp trying to grip and throw a wet, heavy ball into howling winds. Paul Troth, a Dilfer protégé at TDFB seated behind Stumpf, chimed in. The onetime East Carolina QB and Elite 11 alum (Class of 2000) was from the same area as Grier.

“I worked him out,” Troth said of Grier, “and he told me, ‘I’ll throw a watermelon, Coach. It don’t matter.’ ”

“I think he’s got crazy confidence,” Palmer said. “The good kinda confidence.”

Translation: Will Grier was getting an invite to the Elite 11.

Within the first fifteen minutes of the night, it became apparent that the “intangibles” were vital to Dilfer’s group. Another candidate Dilfer was quick to move on was Stephen Collier, a 6′3″ Georgia product. “He’s got Dude Qualities,” Dilfer said. “I think he’s got a lot more in the tank than he’s shown.”

Dilfer’s blessing triggered a well of support for Collier, a prospect who’d received only modest praise from the online recruiting analysts.
Palmer said he had the ability to “dominate” at the college level. Roberts even noted that Collier was a 4.3 student.

Collier was invited, too.

Palmer, an aspiring broadcaster, was a quote machine.

On one dual-threat quarterback from the Eastern Seaboard: “I love that kid … he’s gonna be a really good safety.”

On undersized Arizona QB Luke Rubenzer: “I think he hates the fact that he’s 5′11″ so much that he loves it.”

On an imposing Midwestern quarterback with scholarship offers from most of the Big Ten: “I think he’s a mental midget, and he’s probably gonna end up as a defensive end.”

On the hardscrabble background of Manny Wilkins, a skinny 6′2″ QB who’d bounced from Texas to Colorado to the Bay Area after his father died from a drug addiction five years earlier and whose mom battled her own problem with addiction: “I grew up wealthy in Orange County, and at some point you’re at a serious disadvantage to the guys who have an edge. He’s already had to overcome so much. I’m standing on the table for Manny.”

“Standing on the table” is coach-speak for lobbying for a player or a recruit.

After almost ninety minutes, Dilfer’s process had whittled the candidates to eighteen QBs for the final seven spots at the Elite 11.

“OK, MJ, stand on the table for someone,” Dilfer said to James, the oldest coach in the room.

James brought up Sean White, a 6′1″, shaggy-haired QB from Fort Lauderdale, who, unlike many of the kids under consideration for the Elite 11, hadn’t committed to a college program yet. White had been one of the most determined quarterbacks, having come to two Elite 11 events in Atlanta and Columbus and also stayed for the Nike training camps the following day. White had not been anointed by the online recruiting experts as a highly ranked guy, and he didn’t have a bunch of big-name schools that had offered him scholarships, but he had shined on the summer 7-on-7 circuit while leading the powerful South Florida Express squad, a team loaded with elite players.

“I think it helped a lot, because going against the best in practice all the time and competing with them really makes you better,”
White said. “That’s why I think South Florida kids do so well in college—they are used to the competition level, because they already saw it in high school down [t]here.” White had been practicing with his Express teammates weekly from February until June, with some time off in May, when his high school team—the University School Suns—had its spring practice sessions.

“Besides [Arizona quarterback] Kyle Allen, Sean’s the most consistent passer we have had,” said James. “His steps are on time. He throws it nice. He looks a lot like [unheralded-recruit-turned-Cincinnati Bengals-starter] Andy [Dalton] but better.”

That comment triggered other comparisons. In the evaluation game, people love comparisons. Everyone good must look at least a little like someone else. There’s a measure of security of opinion in that. Stumpf remarks that Kentucky QB commitment Drew Barker “is probably what Ben Roethlisberger looked like in high school. Drew’s a chest-bumper. He’s a leader.”

Dilfer turned to Yogi Roth, seated to his left, and asked whom he’d like to fight for. Roth mentioned Brad Kaaya from the Los Angeles area.

Roth then invoked the name of another, taller QB who was one of the more talked-about prospects in the online recruiting world. “I don’t know that he’s a Dude.”

Brandon Harris was a hyped quarterback prospect, but the group seemed skeptical of his Dude capabilities. The coaches all were high on his arm “talent”—“He definitely has a hose.”

Dilfer said Harris was “twitchy,” which might not sound like a compliment, but in the 2013 scouting vernacular, it was. The term was a nod toward an athlete being amped up with fast-twitch muscle fibers that are often discussed in regard to an elite sprinter, jumper, or someone with rare, essential explosiveness. Still, the group didn’t have a great read on Harris. And perhaps the only TDFB staffer who’d be
willing to stand on the table for Brandon Harris was George Whitfield and he was en route to go see Johnny Manziel.

Throughout the night, the TDFB group also took to Twitter to share the drama in real time, not just with the hopeful young quarterbacks but also with the diehard recruiting fans who live down this widening rabbit hole. Many of the “recruitniks” root for a certain QB to get invited because it’ll reflect better if their favorite college team is involved. It’s a twisted version of fantasy sports for others who are looking for validation of their own evaluation skills when it comes to sizing up a seventeen-year-old prospect. Taylor Holiday, Palmer’s old high school buddy, who was handling the social media aspect for TDFB, was recording and tweeting out videos every time a coach notified the latest Elite 11 invitee. Dilfer and the coaches often sounded giddier about the breaking news than did the kid on the other end of the phone. Palmer reached one kid (Jacob Park) while he was working at an Italian restaurant chain. Another TDFB coach broke the news to Manny Wilkins while he was in the middle of playing
Call of Duty.

At one point, Dilfer sent out a tweet from his TDFB account with a picture of a poster board listing the seventeen names of the QBs remaining in consideration for the final six available spots and added, “It’s getting gnarly.”

One of the names listed in the photo was Darius Wade. A 6′1″, 185-pound left-hander from Middletown, Delaware, Wade was verbally committed to play football at Boston College and would become the first Delaware high school football prospect to sign with a Division I program in some forty years.

“He plays in Delaware,” said Palmer. “We can’t hold that against him. He had twenty-seven TDs and just one pick all season. He hasn’t been exposed to much coaching or much competition up there. I think his learning curve is as much as anybody’s. But he’s a guy who is going to walk into the room, and you’re gonna feel his presence.”

Palmer added that Wade, in his mind, was a more talented version of another kid who was selected to the Elite 11 a year ago who ended up signing on with one of the biggest football programs in the nation.

“Darius told me at breakfast that he wants to be an architect, if
that means anything,” former Green Bay Packers backup QB Craig Nall said from the back of the room.

It didn’t. Well, maybe it did a little, since it hinted at the kid’s maturity. And, as Dilfer said, everything mattered.

“Everybody’s gonna rally around Darius at Boston College,” predicted Palmer.

Another one of the names listed from Dilfer’s tweet was Cade Aspay, a 6′1″, 180-pounder from Southern California. “Cade can ‘tempo’ the throws with the best of ’em,” said Joey Roberts, also a Southern California guy. “He plays the ukulele, too.”

“He’s got tiny knees,” interjected one of the TDFB coaches, alluding to Aspay’s small frame. “But I think he’s super-talented.”

At issue: How did Aspay compare with Sean White, the 6′1″ quarterback from Fort Lauderdale? “Cade’s film is better, but Sean plays better people,” said Dilfer, who wasn’t ready to decide which QB got the next invite.