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The making of J.J. McCarthy and the big business behind becoming an NFL quarterback:

https://www.startribune.com/minnesota-vi.../601450638

Going to need some posting help as its a paywall. Going to be lots of stories leading up to Monday night on what may be the NFL's biggest X factor. No pressure kid!

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Is the Vikings’ new QB a product of a booming coaching industry, or was he destined to thrive in it? Either way, he’s a beacon for hopeful Vikings fans and an archetype for aspiring young players.

They did it all: competitive dance and cheer tournaments for their daughters Caitlin and Morgan, thrice-weekly private quarterback coaching sessions and elite 7-on-7 tournaments in the Sun Belt for their son J.J. The 1,800-square foot ranch house with the one-car garage was good enough; paying for college might mean taking out loans.

But Jim and Megan McCarthy, of La Grange Park, Ill., had decided long ago their kids’ passions would get their investment.

“And if Mom and Dad have to work until eternity,” Jim McCarthy said, “so be it.”

J.J. had it all: the rambunctiousness that made on-field chaos feel serene; the pristine mechanics that led his QB coach to ask what Faustian bargain his parents struck to get them; the drive that would not be sated by a mere all-metro selection. After his parents asked about his goals following his first youth football championship, fifth-grader Jonathan James McCarthy said he wanted to be one of the best quarterbacks in the country. When told how much toil that would require, he simply replied, “Let’s go.”

“There’s nothing you can’t do if you’re willing to work for it,” he said. “The best engine fuel for that is the joy you have every day doing it.”

Did the system — the network of private instructors, prestigious camps and elite programs that now produce so many of the nation’s quarterback prodigies — make J.J. McCarthy? Or was he wired, innately and uniquely, for the decade-plus journey from La Grange Park to a national championship at Michigan and then to the top 10 of the NFL draft?

Whatever the case, the Vikings quarterback will make his NFL debut Monday night at Soldier Field, where he saw his first game at age 4. He is set to live out the childhood fantasy of millions, after successfully traversing the road that seems to have become both more complex and more essential for kids who dream of being NFL quarterbacks.

STRIB

The quarterback development industry has boomed, with families hiring private instructors for kids earlier than ever and high schoolers building offseason schedules on year-round training, regional and national camps and tournaments. Greg Holcomb, McCarthy’s QB coach at Next Level Athletix in the Chicago area, estimates he has about 75 clients; many ramp up in middle school, while some are as young as 6.

“Parents bring kids in earlier and earlier,” he said. “I used to turn them down, and then I’d watch my competition take them.”Former Augsburg quarterback Quinn Frisell founded 612 Quarterbacks in 2021 while he was student teaching at Southwest High School in Minneapolis and preparing to play in Europe.

He began with three QBs in St. Cloud, Jordan and Prior Lake, charging $10 a session and losing money on gas. This summer, he worked with more than 150 kids, either through $125-an-hour private sessions or small-group sessions that run $50 per hour per quarterback. He’s made it his full-time job, launching a second location in Arizona. This year, he worked with Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner. Even Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell’s 10-year-son Kaden, who’s started playing quarterback in flag football, has worked with Frisell several times.

“It’s trying to give quarterbacks an opportunity, outside of their short three-month [school] season,” Frisell said. “It’s not only QB recruiting in Minnesota — because we know it’s not a hotbed — but taking that JV quarterback to varsity. Little wins like that are huge."

There’s nothing new about gifted young QBs seeking extra training; O’Connell, now 40, remembered his father, Bill, driving him two hours from San Diego to Mission Viejo to work with Mark Sanchez and Jordan Palmer under coach Bob Johnson.

The Vikings coach has had a hand in every phase of quarterback development, from his days as a player to his work as a QB trainer and broadcaster before he started climbing the NFL coaching ranks. Asked where he’s seen it change, O’Connell pointed to social media, where quarterbacks post workout clips to attract college recruiters or line up name, image and likeness deals, and new coaches pop up all the time.

“Maybe it’s tied to the fact you can earn a real income now,” he said. “It’s not just about scholarships anymore, and that’s transferred even more into the private space.

There’s more opportunity financially for the player, and naturally more opportunity for people to help the player improve.

“The space is flooded now. Coast to coast, north to south, state to state, you can find somebody that will work with quarterbacks.”

It complicates the path for families, with proven instructors showing up in the same Google search as hucksters charging hundreds for a large-group session. Vikings QB coach Josh McCown and NFL Network draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah slow-played extra training for their own sons, unsure of its long-term benefit, especially if it discouraged multi-sport participation.

“Is it really a net win? It’s hard to say,” McCown said. “It’s hard to discourage anybody wanting to get extra work. It’s just who’s teaching them is critical.”

But with middle schoolers landing major scholarship offers (as McCarthy did from Iowa State and Indiana and Holcomb’s son Sam did from Michigan and Purdue), the QB development industry likely isn’t slowing down.

Its marks are all over McCarthy’s path to the Vikings.

He carried the ball lower after lessons with Mike Donato, the first coach the McCarthys hired when Jim realized he’d taught his fifth-grader as much as he could. The search for a coach in middle school taught McCarthy to trust his instinct about the fit with Holcomb, his private coach to this day. And his fall 2020 stint at IMG Academy in Florida, after Illinois’ pandemic-related postponement of the football season, meant he’d leave home for the first time at 17 to play with teammates from around the country and cope with the depression that crept in through boarding school isolation.

He estimates that “75 percent” of his lessons at IMG were off the field.“I learned a lot football wise, just because you’re doing it sunup to sundown,” he said. “But the dark place I was at, being able to dive into why I got there, and what I’m going to do to get out of it, that was the most profound lesson.”

Now McCarthy is a 22-year-old beyond his years: intellectually curious, emotionally intelligent, already comfortable living on his own and seemingly undeterred by the expectations that come with leading a team that went 14-3 last year or with becoming a father for the first time this month.

“It’s just part of his fabric: ‘I’m a quarterback in every single thing I do,’” Holcomb said. “There’s something different about his maturity level and preparation that matches his physical ability.”

As more young athletes seek extra training, Brosmer worries about the ones who are left behind because of cost. He’s proud to work with Avery, he said, because he is willing to support kids who don’t have the means to pay for training.

“It’s so expensive nowadays,” Brosmer, 24, said. “There are third-graders having private coaches. I’m not sure how people do it, and it shows the business of football at such an early age. But that’s the world we live in. You’re getting income now as a high schooler, which is insane.”

Indeed, the potential for a payoff is hard to ignore: Of the six first-round QBs in McCarthy’s 2024 class, five were picked in high school for the Elite 11 camp, which selects the country’s best prospects from a series of regional tournaments. People told Holcomb he should start pursuing NIL deals for his 14-year-old son after he received scholarship offers.

“I’m like, ‘I don’t want my son dealing with that right now,’” he said. “Go ride your bike and hang out with your friends; don’t worry about getting paid from a trading card deal.”

When McCarthy found out about Sam Holcomb’s Michigan offer, he texted, “Congratulations. I want you to understand this means nothing. You need to keep working your butt off. Just promise me you’ll never get complacent.”

In conversations with his own son, O’Connell keeps returning to the same principle: It’s not worth it if you don’t enjoy it.

“You’ve got to love chasing the feeling of the first time you throw without really thinking about it, and you put it right in a spot only you know you were aiming for,” he said. “It’s like, why do people hunt? Why do people fish? It’s got to be enjoyable from that standpoint.”

Independently, McCarthy offered a thesis that’s uncannily close to O’Connell’s.

“There’s got to be some purpose behind it, whether it’s football, painting, being a doctor,” he said. “If you love it, you’re going to be willing to sacrifice a lot for it.”
Perhaps that’s the secret for J.J. McCarthy, the NFL’s youngest starting quarterback, returning to both his hometown and the national spotlight on Monday night as the hope of a fanbase still looking for its successor to Fran Tarkenton.

Was he built into a quarterback? Maybe he was born to become one.

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Call it science or call it an art, but in the past decade — and especially since the pandemic — the practice of developing a quarterback has changed. Young QBs are seeking out private trainers before they finish elementary school, motivated by everything from the chance of an NFL career, a college scholarship or the competition they foresee in high school.

We talked to quarterbacks, trainers and coaches about the ways they teach certain QB skills: from balance and footwork to throwing mechanics and film study.

Feet
Anyone who's heard Kevin O'Connell talk about quarterback mechanics knows the Vikings coach begins with “base, balance and body position.” Those points of emphasis likely weren't new to J.J. McCarthy. Greg Holcomb, McCarthy's coach at Next Level Athletix since seventh grade, likens a quarterback's footwork and throwing platform to the foundation of a house, which he reminds his athletes is built from the bottom up.
“It's not how fast he can run; it's how he maintains his platform and his base,” Holcomb said.
Quinn Frisell, the founder of 612 Quarterbacks, starts with base and alignment and then moves quarterbacks through awkward positions, teaching them to find a strong throwing foundation while evading pressure. He'll work on dropback mechanics and pocket movement strategies, helping athletes learn when and where to escape pressure — and when not to bail.
“We talk about when we don't move because oftentimes, kids want to leave [the pocket] so early,” he said.

Eyes
The next area of emphasis sounds like another O'Connell coaching point: A quarterback's feet and eyes must move as one, with feet directed toward where the QB is looking.
“I tell our guys, ‘Your left eyeball is tied to your left shoelace; your right eyeball is tied to your right shoelace,'” Holcomb said. “If your eyes are down and there's turf underneath, then your feet aren't tied to your eyes.”
That's especially important when a quarterback is on the move; Jim McCarthy believes much of his son's success outside the pocket is a product of Holcomb's emphasis on keeping his eyes downfield when he's on the move.

Core
The phrase “arm talent” has become cliché, used as shorthand to describe a quarterback's throwing power, but those who teach the position are increasingly focused on the other parts of a QB's body that generate force. The rise in rotational throwing mechanics has been backed by sports science that's shown QBs can create more power, with less stress on the shoulder, by initiating throws from hip rotation and weight transfer. Max Brosmer said it was one of the most important things he learned from Quincy Avery, a Minneapolis native who coached him in Atlanta, and Frisell teaches it to all of his young QBs, whether they're leading teams that “throw it three times a game or 30.”
“Trying to create consistent, efficient, accurate passers through that movement can translate to any offense,” he added.

Mind
The last of the five pillars in Frisell's instructional method is situational awareness. During his 14-week passing academy in the winter, he spends 60 to 75 minutes a week on film study, working with young quarterbacks on diagnosing coverages and identifying routes to beat certain schemes. Much of the academy's film study concentrated on clips from Gophers games and around the Big Ten, with a night or two of NFL film study sprinkled in, said Benilde-St. Margaret's senior Peyton Meyers. During the season, Frisell incorporates film study into some of his individual sessions with quarterbacks, pulling up their Hudl page after a game to talk through a decision on a certain play.
“He'll go look at some stuff, or I'll send him some clips and we'll break it down,” Meyers said. “He'll put in his input, because he sees stuff differently than my head coach.”