Old but good stuff from the master:
Walsh’s progression of teaching is the same one I have long used and advocated:
1. Before they can throw, quarterbacks have to learn to make good drops. I’ll make them take drops for 50 yards until they learn to do it and I’ll let them throw.
2. Then we work on 3-step concepts, hitch, slant, and the fade. Use the Airraid Pat And Go drill.
3. Then when you begin working on the five-step drops (three-steps from shotgun), the first routes you work on are the 10-12 yard speed out (6 vertical steps to 10 yards and then two “roll” or speed steps to the sideline at 12 yards), the five-step skinny post and the vertical “Go” route. Each is thrown off of 5-steps (or three from gun) on rhythm — i.e. once the fifth step hits it is “plant and throw” and there is no hitch up step. I do these first because it teaches the quarterback rhythm, timing, footwork, and how to transfer his weight on drops to his throw. And you quickly find out who can do it: If a quarterback can’t throw these routes on rhythm, he can’t be the quarterback in a pass first offense. In high school if a guy can’t make the 12 yard speed out throw to the wide side that’s okay, but he should be able to throw the skinny post to the wide side and the speed out to the boundary.
4. The five-steps and hitch step come in on the next set of routes, which in a quarterback’s progression should be the second read — the quarterback’s reads sync up with his feet. These routes are the 12-yard curl, snag routes, and so on.
Once these fundamentals are in, you keep working on them throughout the season as you pull him along Boise State’s Chris Petersen’s stages of quarterback development:
- Strict progression. Tell him to read first receiver, second receiver, and then third receiver — and then run like hell if they aren’t open. In Petersen’s view, if they don’t know anything else they can know, by rote memory, who they are supposed to throw to. This doesn’t require them to have any advance knowledge of the defense and it is where every quarterback begins.
- Progression with coverage keys. The same progression concept as above except that the progression and sequence of receivers is determined by what the defense is doing. How many safeties are there? What kind of leverage are you getting from the cornerbacks? Is it a blitz? Is it man or zone? Once you’ve determined that, it’s one-two-three.
- Coverage reads. This is the advanced NFL stuff: Tom Brady sees the defense doing X, so he looks one way and then rifles it back to the receiver he always knew he was going to because he understood the coverage, he understood the technique the defense was playing, and he understood the theory of the play he was running. There are few, if any, college quarterbacks who ever do this kind of thing.