The Quarterback Whisperer

by Bruce Arians

  “I wish I had thirty minutes a day with B.A., just so I could pick his brain,” Carson says. “I know he can’t do that because he’s the head coach and he’s got so many other responsibilities, but I really love the time I do get with him, because Bruce knows more about offensive football than anyone I’ve ever been around. He’s seen it all and certainly thought about it all. A defense won’t surprise him. It’s comforting as a quarterback to know that your coach has all the answers.”

  My success with Carson continued into our second season together in Arizona, 2014, when he threw 11 touchdowns and only three interceptions in our first six games. His 95.6 passer rating was the second-highest of his career. His season ended early when he tore his ACL, but he helped us to an 11–5 record and a berth in the playoffs. And without his stellar play in those first six games, there is no way I win my second AP NFL Coach of the Year award in three seasons.

  Then in 2015 Carson threw for another career-best 4,671 yards.

  Yes, I think he does all right in our offense.

  In 2014 our starters missed 160 games due to injury. Our roster was just ravaged. Carson went down. Our backup quarterback, Drew Stanton, went down. We were a M*A*S*H unit in red-and-white uniforms.

  But that team still was able to win eleven games. Why? Because our players cared for each other and held themselves accountable to the team—our family—as a whole. We started every meeting by reading what we called an “Accountability Sheet.” This listed all the mental errors and penalties committed during the previous practice.

  Guys were terrified to have their names on that sheet. If a rookie or a relative newcomer made the list too often, a veteran player would straighten him out in the locker room. This isn’t the coach’s job; it’s the job of the veterans to police the locker room and make sure everybody is mentally sharp every time we’re on the practice field or in games. You can’t create, much less tolerate, situations that pit players against players or players against coaches. If either occurs, you may as well throw in the towel on your season. But if you have strong veteran leadership and they are willing to keep guys in line, that can create an “us for us” dynamic in the locker room and on the field of battle. That environment is the one a head coach should try to build and sustain.

  A head coach must have the trust of the veteran leaders on the team. If the veterans don’t support their coach 100 percent, there is a danger of losing the locker room, losing the essence—the very foundation—of the meaning of “team.”

  I had only been the head coach of the Cardinals a few days when I reached out to defensive tackle Darnell Dockett. I didn’t know Darnell, but I knew his story. He was the Cardinals’ third-round draft pick in 2004 out of Florida State and quickly developed into one of the NFL’s top defensive linemen. He was a three-time Pro Bowl player (2007, ’09 and ’10), and in September 2010 Arizona signed him to a six-year, $56 million contract extension. By the time I arrived in Arizona, Darnell had been a longtime locker room leader.

  I knew I needed to speak to Darnell. I texted him, “Hey, hit me up. It’s B.A. Give me a call. I want to talk to you ASAP.”

  Darnell, though, didn’t recognize my number or my initials. I kept at it. The next time I texted him I wrote, “Hey, this is your coach. Give me a call. I want to check in with you.”

  Darnell had been in Ken Whisenhunt’s doghouse—he had upset the former Cardinals staff by not allowing the Jets to score a late touchdown in a game, as the staff had ordered, because it was the only way for our offense to get the ball back—but none of that was my concern. I told Darnell to come to New Orleans during Super Bowl week. I suggested we meet at a bar for a cocktail. We did.

  Sitting at a place just off the French Quarter, I explained to Darnell that I needed him to be a team leader and that his past problems with the old staff were just that—in the past. They didn’t mean anything to me. I told him I’d give him a chance if he would give me a chance. We ended the night by toasting our new beginning. Darnell didn’t drink, so I had one for him.

  And just like that, Darnell and I had made a connection. I now knew one of our key defensive veteran leaders would have my back, and he knew I’d have his. The next thing I needed to do was convince the rest of the team that we could win right away.

  When I meet with reporters at my daily press conference, I dress like I always do: a flat Kangol cap and a dress shirt with the top two buttons open. One of the players joked that I looked like I had just walked out of a 1970s nightclub, and didn’t look anything like the typical NFL coach. That was a great compliment, because I didn’t want to be the typical NFL head coach in any form or fashion.

  I’ve always loved nice clothes. When I went to a Catholic high school we had to wear a jacket and a tie. But I didn’t own a jacket. So my uncle gave me this really ugly plaid jacket. I wore that thing every day of my freshman year. All the other kids had like five different jackets in their wardrobe, but not me, because I didn’t have the cash to buy a nice jacket. I absolutely dreaded putting on that ratty old plaid jacket every morning. But I did.

  Until I got a job washing dishes at an Italian restaurant. The next year I had four suits and five different pairs of dress shoes. Every morning when I put on my new clothes I felt a sense of pride. I immediately began to love looking fresh and natty. You look good, you feel good.

  I want my players to know that I have a little bit of swagger. Remember, my first real nickname was given to me back in York, Pennsylvania, by a black kid named Eddie Berry—“S.Q. Smooth.” I’ve always had some flash, and wanted that kind of vibe to trickle down to my players. They needed to have an edge to them—just like I do—and I wanted them to play with the confidence that goes along with having swagger. I wanted that to become our identity, because my plan from day one was to create a culture where winning wasn’t a goal; it was an expectation.

  I never shy away from big expectations. As soon as I got the job I told anyone who would listen that this team had the talent to win a Super Bowl. I knew the Cardinals were coming off a 5–11 season, but after we acquired Carson, I believed we had the potential to do something out of the ordinary, to go the distance.

  I told the players as much when I talked to them before training camp. “I’ve been with a lot of good teams,” I said. “I have Super Bowl rings. This team has just as much talent as those teams. But this is your team. We won’t win unless you decide you want to, unless you decide you’re willing to make the sacrifices it takes to be great in this league.”

  Then I met individually with each player. I told each of them the same thing. “This is one of the most talented teams I’ve ever been a part of,” I said to each of the players. “We should go to the playoffs. It’s going to take work, but we can be special.”

  The difference between winning and losing in the NFL is paper thin. Every roster is populated with game-breaking players. But one of the key X factors in the sport is confidence. If a team truly believes in itself, man, that can be the winning touchdown on any given day. So I took it upon myself to try to pump up my players as much as I could.

  We didn’t win a Super Bowl in my first three years in Arizona, but we did get better each season—10–6 in 2013, 11–5 in 2014, and 13–3 in 2015.

  I truly believed we would hoist the Vince Lombardi Trophy last season. But football, like life itself, doesn’t always go as you draw it up.

  I’d venture to say that B.A. knows more about quarterbacking and play calling than any coach in the NFL. Good luck if you’re a defensive coordinator and you want to surprise him. B.A. has the answer to every question the defense throws at him. And if you’re his quarterback and you’re struggling with something in your mechanics, B.A. will know exactly what the problem is and what needs to be done to solve it.

  —CARSON PALMER

  CHAPTER 10

  THE FUTURE

  If I was a college coach I’d run the no-huddle spread offense. I’d scour the country for the best athlete I could find and I’d line him
up five yards behind center. I wouldn’t necessarily call him my “quarterback.” I’d probably refer to him as my “athlete playing quarterback.”

  At the high school level, athletes are so much easier to find than quarterbacks. Some high schools have full-field passing games, but not many do. Most just use half-field passing attacks, which means the quarterback only looks to one portion of the field in his reads. And if his first and second read options are covered, he’ll just tuck it and run.

  The rise of the spread offense in college football is decreasing the availability and hurting the development of potential NFL quarterbacks. The college spread quarterback gets the play call by looking at a sign that someone on the sideline holds up. He rarely uses a snap count—he just claps his hands or stomps his foot—and then he takes the snap in the shotgun position. He then chucks the ball about four yards downfield to a receiver slanting across the middle.

  To me, that damn sure ain’t what playing quarterback is all about. The most important trait needed to become a QB is leadership. But there is no leadership required of the quarterback in this version of the spread. He doesn’t talk to his teammates in the huddle, he doesn’t change the snap count—hell, he barely even reads the defense. The college spread quarterback doesn’t learn the mental and physical skills needed to execute the intricacies of the NFL game. That puts the college spread QBs who aspire to play and succeed in the NFL at a distinct disadvantage.

  The best college-level spread quarterback I’ve ever seen was Robert Griffin III. He was dynamite at Baylor, throwing for 37 touchdowns in 2011 on his way to winning the Heisman Trophy. But I didn’t want to pick him when I was the offensive coordinator with the Colts the year we had the top pick in the draft. Why? Because I thought he didn’t have a “feel” for the game—that he would struggle trying to run a traditional pro-style offense. Spread QBs don’t have a sense of reading coverage and knowing where to go with their hot reads. They don’t throw hot reads on sight adjustments in the spread, so they have to learn that. And they don’t really read blitzes—they have one protection, which is slide right or slide left—and so that skill has to be taught as well.

  If you draft a spread quarterback you can expect him to fail early in his career. That means he’s going to need really great mental toughness to deal with this failure. He’s definitely going to have to stay off social media, because no type of failure is accepted in that universe. Most rookie quarterbacks are going to suck anyway—it takes time and repetition to learn and adjust to the speed and the nuances of the NFL game—but he’ll really be at a disadvantage if he’s coming from a spread team and has no idea of the pro concepts.

  I’m also always astonished at how NFL teams overreach for quarterbacks in the first round. But coaches are desperate, and for good reason: If you don’t have a quality QB, your team probably won’t be very competitive, which means you won’t have a job for very long.

  In my book, gazing twenty years into the future, I think the prototypical NFL quarterback will look a lot like today’s Peyton, Ben, Carson, Andrew, and Tom Brady—guys who have heart and grit, big, strong, sturdy guys who have howitzers for arms and just enough athletic ability to scramble around in the pocket for an extra few seconds to allow their receivers to get open down the field. He’ll have to be a leader, be smart as hell, and be the first guy in the building each morning and the last one to leave at day’s end, just like all those guys.

  Every so often there will be outliers like Russell Wilson at Seattle. Russell, who is 5'11'', played in a pro-style offense at Wisconsin and is one of the smartest quarterbacks in the league. The Seahawk coaches have done a nice job devising a scheme for him that creates passing lanes. It’s not easy for a quarterback to be six feet or under in the NFL—the only other short guy who has really lit it up in the last two decades has been the Saints’ Drew Brees—but it can be done when the right player is with the right coaching staff.

  I knew our 2016 season wasn’t going to go as we’d hoped when we hosted the Seahawks on Sunday Night Football on October 23. After ending regulation play tied 3–3, we kicked a field goal on our opening drive of overtime. Then Seattle hit a field goal on its first offensive possession to knot the score 6–6.

  We then moved down the field to set up Chandler Catanzaro for a game-winning 24-yard field goal attempt. Shit, I thought we had this one in the bag. The kick bonked off the left upright. The game ended 6–6.

  I was so disappointed as I walked out of our home stadium that night. Our record fell to 3–3–1. Worse, we had had a chance to beat our division rival, and we didn’t get it done. After the game I was feeling really low when I made it out to my car to begin my usual tailgate. That was when I saw Presley, my college-aged granddaughter. She smiled and gave me a hug—an embrace that reminded me of what’s truly important in life. Presley is such a gifted young woman. She’s a sports communication major in college, and it’s so special to me to know that her grandfather’s career has influenced what she wants to do with her life. Once again, even in the shadow of that tie, I won that tailgate.

  But our season never really got on track after that tie to the Seahawks. I’ve got to do a better job at coaching in 2017. Carson and Larry Fitzgerald are coming back with me. The gunfighters are going to have at least one more shootout before we ride into the sunset.

  We finished 2016 by winning our last two games, at Seattle (34–31) and at Los Angeles (44–6). The victory over the Seahawks was particularly important. Seattle has only lost five games at home in the last five years, and three of them have been to us. That gave us confidence heading into the offseason. We finished 4–1–1 in the division and the team that captured the NFC West—the Seahawks—never beat us.

  Football is literally a game of inches and unpredictable bounces. We lost at least three games because of a bad snap, hold, or kick on special teams. The little things mean so much. I’ve got to do a better job with Carson in 2017. He played great in December but struggled early in the season because we practiced him too hard in August and September. His passes lost some velocity, which in turn caused him to lose some of his accuracy. But by midseason we learned to manage his practice reps—we limited his pitch count, so to speak—by resting him on Wednesdays and cutting the number of his throws in half on Thursdays. Again, by season’s end he was playing at an extremely high level. In December he threw for 300 yards in every game except against the Rams—and we pulled him late in that contest because we had such a huge lead.

  I talked to Carson at least once a week this past offseason, discussing his wife, his kids, and his golf game. He needed to decompress and get away from the game for a little while—this is good for all starting quarterbacks because it clears their minds—but now he’s as dedicated as ever to win that first Super Bowl. I’m sixty-four and very aware the clock is ticking on my coaching career.

  For a moment or two, in fact, I didn’t know if I’d even make it back to the sideline in 2017.

  The call came from the doctor on a Thursday night in December. I was on date night with Chris at a place called Steak 44. Our drinks had just arrived.

  A few days earlier I had visited the doctor to get a hernia checked. But the ultrasound revealed more than the hernia issue. It showed a small spot on a kidney. The diagnosis was renal cell carcinoma. I had cancer again.

  So I started 2017 with a different fight. My brother-in-law passed away from cancer of the esophagus in December. Shit, we had planned a wonderful golf trip together for this offseason and then, out of nowhere, he was told he had cancer and ten months later he was gone. He was going to bring his son on that golf trip, but my brother-in-law was too sick. I hate cancer.

  The doctor removed a small portion of my cancerous kidney in February, and now I feel great. My energy has returned. I’m told I’m cancer free again. I’m ready for at least one more season of NFL football—maybe more.

  I’m going to be missing a familiar face this season. A few days before I had my own cancer surgery in Febr
uary I was at home at the lake house on a Saturday night when the phone rang. It was Mike Brown, my agent, and Brownie was calling just to check on me. He was fighting pancreatic cancer, but his doctors were optimistic about his chances for beating it. So on the phone we talked about the upcoming season, getting together in Indianapolis at the scouting combine like we usually did, and the golf tournaments that we were going to play in. He sounded great. Just full of life. Before hanging up, he wished me luck in my own surgery and reassured me that everything was going to be okay.

  The next morning I received another call, this one from one of my assistants at the Cardinals, and the news literally brought me to my knees: Brownie was gone. He had died that night of an aneurysm. I told Chris and I hugged her so hard.

  Brownie was responsible for helping us start our foundation, which promotes advocacy for kids in the foster care system, and he helped us raise money. Chris has become the driving force behind the foundation—“I practiced family law and could remember so many times when I was representing crazy parents and thinking, ‘The person who needs a lawyer is the kid,’” Chris says—but Brownie was instrumental in making it happen. He could work a crowd at a fund-raiser like a seasoned politician, and his smile could light up a room like few others. He meant so much to Chris and me. Who knows? I may have never become an NFL head coach without him. Brownie will always be my one and only agent.

  Between the death of my brother-in-law, losing Brownie, and my own battles with cancer, I now realize more than ever that nothing is guaranteed in life. Every day needs to be enjoyed and celebrated to the fullest. Roses need to be smelled, sunsets savored, time with family cherished. Moving forward, I want to be a beacon of hope for others struggling with cancer. My fight is their fight. I’m not coaching for myself in 2017; I’m coaching for everyone who’s dealing with cancer. This is my charge.