Steve Clarkson is one of the nation’s top quarterback coaches and runs the Steve Clarkson Dreammakers Camp, which routinely has some of the best high school quarterbacks in attendance. Clarkson has worked with numerous NFL and top college QBs throughout his career, so he’s an authority on the position.
Because it is Rivals Quarterback Week, here is a Q&A session with Clarkson where he address early recruiting, quarterback development and how the position and the game of football have changed in recent years.
RIVALS: Is early quarterback recruiting good or bad? Are there dangers built-in or is it good that colleges are recruiting players much younger especially at the quarterback position?
CLARKSON: It’s a hit and miss. I don’t see the advantages of offering kids early because history has shown kids don’t typically make it to the schools. We’re talking pre-high school? I don’t really see the advantages for the schools to do it.
When David Sills did it, when USC did it, it was sort of like an anomaly then. It’s happened a few times since even at other positions, like Dylan Moses or what have you and it just seems to be all about nothing.
I wish these football scholarships were a lot closer to what they do with basketball where they give the ability to have the early signing period. What that would do is eliminate a lot of these offers at these early ages because they wouldn’t really be offers.
If you hold the coach’s or the university’s feet to the fire and say now when you offer kids have the ability to sign, you would find less and less offers going out. It would be less disruptive to the kids getting recruited.
RIVALS: When is it too early to make a decision? Would you advise guys to wait as long as possible into their junior or senior years? You don’t want these situations where kids commit in their eighth grade or freshmen years and then there are coaching changes or offensive style changes, he de-commits and he could get a bad reputation doing that. What would be your advice?
CLARKSON: I think prior to their senior seasons is about right and even then, it might be too soon. I just think the whole recruiting process is out of whack.
If you wanted to have some stability in the whole process, ultimately what should happen is they should stop all of these offers early and wait until a kid actually finishes his junior season at least and then eliminate kids going to school early.
These kids are not being able to participate in their spring functions like their prom and walk through graduation for the purpose of entering as true freshmen.
The pressure of having these kids essentially go to summer school when they’re in high school every year and then immediately leave after their Christmas holiday to go to college, they’ve had no break. Then they go to college and they’re constantly in school. They’ll be in spring, then they’re in summer school, then it’s fall. Where is the break?
Ultimately, we’ve sold the idea that more is better when it is actually quite the opposite.
RIVALS: How have you seen the position change? Is it a trend or is it really going to start changing in college and into the NFL where you have these Aaron Rodgers- and Drew Brees-type quarterbacks who can be 6-foot, 6-1, guys that move around and prolong plays? Do you think that’s the future of the position or do you think you need to be 6-4 to be considered an NFL quarterback?
CLARKSON: I just think that you have to show that you’re productive. The size does matter to a certain degree, but not nearly as much as it once did.
The biggest issue is what these kids are actually running. Either one of two things are going to happen: The NFL is going to have to continue to adopt to what they’re getting in terms of the collegiate quarterback who is primarily running a lot of easy, non-sophisticated reads. That just doesn’t work at the National Football League level because they’re just too good at what they do on the defensive side of the ball.
Or they’re going to have to essentially create their own farm system. Let’s look at what we’re seeing this year: You have Jared Goff who came out of the Cal system where they’re throwing the ball 50 passes a game or fairly close to it. If anybody would be ready to play at the next level in terms of that, you think it would be him, yet because of the system that they ran and him sitting primarily in shotgun, it’s limited his ability for success early. There is such a high learning curve.
The other thing is the lack of hours the college programs are afforded their kids. You have some kids that don’t necessarily develop the way they should. Now you’re racing these guys in to go play because it’s essentially a war of attrition and you’re not having to be right. The salary cap allows you to guess wrong and if you don’t like what you see in two years, you just get rid of him.
What do I think the change is going to be? I fully suspect at some point you will see some sort of developmental league where the National Football League or pro football adopts some sort of training ground because the quarterback position has certainly suffered.
RIVALS: Do the spread offenses, constantly being in the shotgun, running as fast as possible, does that retard a quarterback’s development early on? From a quarterback coach’s perspective, why is it that when quarterbacks who run that system don’t seem as prepared on many occasions?
CLARKSON: It’s so watered down. The coaching they get is very watered down. It’s very simplistic for the most part. There are a lot of just line up and go. The uptempo offenses try to keep defenses in a certain look. By having those looks streamlined, they are able to operate with those basic plays based on those basic looks.
At the NFL level, the talent is so great you can’t get away with that because at any basic look, they just shut stuff down because of their knowledge and the amount of time they have to prepare for games is unlike any other level.
When a college kid is preparing, he’s got 20 hours and whatever he can muster on his own and he only sees an opponent once. The NFL, this is all they do and they see some of their opponents twice a year, year after year after year. All the little nuances that you get that you’re able to get away with at the lower levels because there’s not the familiarity of that opponent, you don’t get that in the National Football League. They’re able to channel in and lock down on things you don’t do well and exploit that to their advantage.
RIVALS: Everybody seems to agree accuracy is the most important thing when evaluating quarterbacks. Would you agree with that? Is arm strength 1B to accuracy? And can accuracy be taught or is it something you have when you throw the football or you just don’t have it?
CLARKSON: Accuracy is certainly different than arm strength. Accuracy, for the most part, is based on knowledge. I find kids who are knowledgeable about what they’re doing and have great anticipation, they become a lot more accurate. Those that don’t have that level of comfort tend to be less accurate because they try to muscle everything they do and with that comes an array of problems.
I look at guys like Joe Montana and Steve Young, you could go all the way back in time, those guys were not guys with big arms but they were extremely knowledgeable. John Elway was probably one of the rare guys who put all that together and had the super-sized arm to go with it.
