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It’s not a bad idea to go, but does it really help?
Jordan Palmer has a successful business as a QB guru.
The former NFL journeyman QB, who had stops with Washington, Cincinnati, Jacksonville, Chicago, Buffalo and Tennessee, runs a company called “Summit QB Journey.” His company helps tutors quarterbacks to take their game to the next level.
I called Palmer a “journeyman” but that isn’t meant as a negative.
Considering what he’s doing for a living now, it’s a positive.
Think about it. When you play for that many teams, it gives you access to a bunch of different offensive coordinators, quarterback coaches and offensive systems.
You throw that in with his time playing at UTEP, and the fact that he’s Carson Palmer’s brother, this is a guy who has absorbed a lot of information on the art of quarterbacking over the years.
Now he was an average QB in the NFL, but you don’t need to be a great player to be a good coach/tutor. Was Bill Parcells or Bill Belichick or Sean Payton or Pete Carroll great players? So that fact that Jordan Palmer wasn’t a great QB is irrelevant.
For several months leading up to the draft Sam Darnold and Josh Allen worked with Jordan Palmer out in California to improve their skill sets.
Darnold and Allen deserve credit for that.
We will see how much it helps.
But while I respect Jordan Palmer, I’m not going to quote him.
You see quotes from him all over about Darnold.
The reason I’m not going to quote him, is the same reason I will never quote the other QB gurus out there – they are paid tutors.
He’s not doing this for free. Players pay good money for Jordan Palmer’s services.
So I’m not going to quote a guy who is a paid consultant to the player I’m writing about.
Can he really be frank with you about a paying client?
But it will be interesting to see if Jordan Palmer’s work with Darnold on his fumble problem works.
Jordan Palmer worked long and hard with Darnold on the importance of keeping his left hand on the ball to help with ball security. He lost nine fumbles last season at USC.
But while I respect all the players who go to QB gurus or throwing coaches, like Tom House, sometimes I wonder how much they really help.
The problem is simple – yes they are drilling important fundamentals in the heads of these quarterbacks, but it’s not in a real football setting, with edge rushers coming at you, blitzes coming from different angles, and myriad disguised defenses.
So you can teach these guys great stuff, but when the real bullets are flying, will their muscle memory revert back to the bad habits in the heat of battle?
One of the real challenges in scouting college QB prospects is you have no idea how they will do in real NFL games against much more complex defenses than they faced in college with much better talent as well.
The work with QB tutors is kind of same. It’s not being done within the framework of an NFL game.
But I tip my hat to guys like Darnold that make the effort to put in his extra work, and pay for it, to boot.
May 16, 2018
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