The art of developing the modern QB: How Kenny Dillingham

• David Hale, ESPN Staff WriterJul 26, 2023, 07:30 AM ET

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  • ACC reporter.
  • Joined ESPN in 2012.
  • Graduate of the University of Delaware.

TEMPE, Ariz. — Kenny Dillingham’s time in the Arizona State QB meeting room is a whirlwind. He’s built his career on mentoring players like Jordan Travis and Bo Nix, but as the first-year head coach of the Sun Devils, his time with the QBs has to be short and sweet. He’s there maybe 10 minutes, and he flicks through a dozen or so clips of film, peppering his quarterbacks with questions.

Where’s the safety?

Where’s the free rusher?

Which direction should you shift protection?

Football knowledge is almost ancillary to the discussion. It’s all a math problem, really — a pretty simple one, at that.

“There’s a lot of people who want to sound smart, and they think if other people don’t know what they know, then they remain powerful,” Dillingham said. “My goal is if we have a freshman here, by the time he’s a senior, he should know everything I know.”

Here’s Dillingham’s “Quarterbacking for Dummies” speech: Six offensive players line up in the same spot on every snap. Four defensive players do, too. That leaves 12 guys — five on offense, seven on D — who the QB is responsible for maneuvering, and the way Dillingham sees it, that leaves a pretty limited set of options. The quarterback’s job then is to solve that math problem in a way that gives the offense an advantage.

Of course, playing quarterback isn’t really that simple, but the other stuff — arm slots, footwork, eye movement — is akin to postgraduate work when Dillingham and other coaches around the country barely have enough time with their students to review the A-B-Cs.

“With all the hour rules, guys have to be willing to put in a lot of their own time,” USC head coach Lincoln Riley said. “You’re not going to get it done at an elite level in eight or 20 hours a week. It’s not going to happen.”

If that time crunch isn’t difficult enough to manage, the transfer portal has added another ticking clock to the job of QB development. Coaches move on from struggling quarterbacks quickly, and players who aren’t getting their desired reps look for a new home the next time the portal opens. All of that leads to a big question: How does a quarterback in today’s landscape actually grow?

“We live in a microwave world,” Dillingham said. “People want quick fixes. But in a microwave world, the food’s not as good.”

College football history is littered with coaches pegged as quarterback whisperers, brilliant tacticians or technical geniuses who possess a Midas touch when it comes to turning raw players into superstars, but Dillingham has distilled QB development to its bare essentials for the QB of 2023. At the heart of his work with late-blooming stars Travis and Nix is a simple reality: The blueprint looks different for everyone, and the key isn’t knowing quarterbacks, it’s knowing the players who play the position.

“I pride myself on understanding people,” said Dillingham, who parlayed his success with Travis and Nix into the head-coaching job at his alma mater, Arizona State, at just 32 years old. “If there’s one thing that got me to this point, it’s not X’s and O’s or recruiting. It’s understanding people.”

Bo Nix threw 29 touchdowns in his first season at Oregon. Justin Fine/Icon Sportswire

CONSIDER DILLINGHAM’S TWO prized pupils.

Travis was broken when he first met Dillingham, and he was desperate for someone to believe in him. He’d begun his career at Louisville, where he endured Bobby Petrino’s tumultuous final year with the Cardinals, before transferring to Florida State — his dream school, the place where his older brother, Devon, had been a baseball star — with a plan to restart his career. Instead, Willie Taggart and his staff convinced Travis he wasn’t cut out for quarterback, exiling the sophomore to the fringes of the depth chart.

Dillingham, then just 29, was in his first days as Florida State’s new offensive coordinator under recently hired head coach Mike Norvell in 2020 when he first met Travis, who promptly suggested he switch positions.

“I had zero confidence,” Travis said. “The previous staff didn’t believe in me, and I didn’t think this staff would either. But I was wrong.”

Confidence was not Nix’s problem. He was a heralded recruit with an unquestioned skill set when he first met Dillingham, who coached QBs at Auburn in Nix’s freshman season. That elite skill set was a double-edged sword, however. During three up-and-down seasons on The Plains, Nix consistently bewildered fans by following one spectacular play with a series of ill-fated decisions because he believed his talent made him capable of pretty much anything.

“Nobody is talking about your lack of talent,” Dillingham told Nix when they reunited at Oregon in the winter of 2022. “They’re talking about your lack of production.”

Two QBs, two distinctly different problems, with one coach trying to find a path to get them to the same place.

This is where the real QB whisperers thrive, when the job requires as much understanding of psychology as it does passing mechanics.

“Putting some drills together — there’s a lot of people who can do that well,” Riley said. “But the key is, can you mentally help get them in the right spot? These guys just have a lot of different experiences now coming out and not all of them are positive. It’s our job to get to know guys and what makes them tick, and it’s a difficult balance sometimes.”

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Jordan Travis opens up about his development at FSU

Florida State QB Jordan Travis discusses his leadership growth and expectations for the Seminoles in 2023.

Dillingham wasn’t sure what had happened inside Travis’ head, but he was convinced the arm was good enough after watching Travis’ tape from high school in West Palm Beach, Florida.

It was clear Travis needed time in the weight room (to add bulk) and film room (to better dissect defenses). But the biggest job, Dillingham said, was simply getting into Travis’ head and rewiring the circuits that were telling him he wasn’t cut out to play QB at Florida State.

Dillingham praised, prodded and often pleaded with Travis to believe in his own ability. There was a point in 2021 when Dillingham had become so frustrated with Travis’ lack of confidence that he decided to switch tactics. He’d been hyping the kid for months, and Travis’ performance on the practice field had convinced virtually everyone else around him that he was special. But Travis still wasn’t a believer.

So Dillingham started talking smack.

“He had this thing where he’d talk down to me every day,” Travis said. “He gave me so many negative thoughts that I just didn’t believe them anymore.”

It would take nearly three years before Travis fully embraced all his coach had promised. By the time Travis blossomed, with 31 touchdowns and just five interceptions in 2022, Dillingham had departed for the OC job at Oregon, where he’d begun rehabbing Nix’s career.

In Eugene, Dillingham wasn’t trying to build his quarterback’s confidence. He was trying to reel it in.

Dillingham didn’t want to undercut Nix’s bravado, which he viewed as an asset, but he needed to sell the QB on making the easy throws, too.

Rather than pull the reins on Nix, Dillingham offered his QB more autonomy. He gave Nix authority to check into another play at the line of scrimmage, to adjust protections as he saw fit. In essence, the offense was in Nix’s hands, which also had the intended effect of convincing Nix to take good care of it.

“Bo prides himself on being a coach [on the field],” Dillingham said. “He grew up playing quarterback. That’s who he is. So let’s empower this kid by getting him to believe in what we’re doing and teaching him that you don’t have to show off your talent every play.”

Nix jokes that Dillingham can’t throw a football. They’d go out to the practice field and toss the ball around and, because of some shoulder issues over the years, Dillingham just doesn’t get much zip on his passes these days.

“He can teach people to throw,” Nix said, “but he, himself, cannot throw.”

But that’s sort of the lesson Dillingham wanted to teach. The vast majority of the game can be played by someone with an arm like Dillingham’s. Then there are a handful of plays that require someone like Nix. The key is understanding the difference.

“Just make the correct play, over and over again,” Dillingham said, “then when something bad happens, be Bo Nix.”

Nix in three seasons at Auburn: 59% completions, 6.9 yards per pass with 39 touchdown throws and 16 picks.

Nix in his first season at Oregon: 72% completions, 8.8 yards per pass with 29 touchdown throws and seven picks.

The gambit worked perfectly.

“He helped me so much with my mindset,” Nix said. “He’d put me in great situations and just know I can get the job done — just repeating that over and over. He empowered me with a great sense of confidence and belief.”

The funny thing is, Nix’s assessment of Dillingham’s impact on his career doesn’t feel much different from Travis’ — empowerment, belief, confidence. But the formula for arriving at that solution was entirely different.

And if there’s some grand unified theory of quarterback development, that might be it, Riley said. The answers are always the same, but the path to finding them has to be tailor-made for every QB who puts on a helmet.

“You assess the player and design a plan to help,” Riley said. “There’s not a cookie-cutter approach that’s going to fix any guy. Once you’ve done it a few times, you might relate it back to other guys, but there’s never any two that are alike.”

Drake Maye has the potential to be the No. 1 overall NFL draft pick next spring. Justin Fine/Icon Sportswire

WHEN PHIL LONGO left North Carolina to take the OC job at Wisconsin this offseason, head coach Mack Brown was left with a dilemma. He had, arguably, the most talented quarterback in the country in Drake Maye. But Maye had his share of suitors, too, and if UNC didn’t land an offensive coordinator worthy of Maye’s immense talent, there were no guarantees he’d stick around.

So Brown did something rare in the college game: He essentially let Maye make the hire.

“Drake had opportunities to leave, and he stayed,” Brown said. “So I wanted to know what he felt like he needed to do to get better, so I brought him in and said, ‘What do you want?'”

Maye set out a list of things he wanted to learn in his second year as the Tar Heels’ starter: He wanted someone to talk more about mechanics; he wanted to improve his footwork; he needed a better understanding of how to maximize his time in the pocket; and he wanted UNC to be able to run the ball more successfully.

Brown did his homework and came up with a list, which he narrowed down to a few final options, then put them on the phone with Maye.

Maye clicked with Chip Lindsey.

“He wanted to push me hard,” Maye said. “Some guys, I think they kind of would just let QBs play and let me do my thing. Coach Lindsey does a nice job of being on me. I’m a 20-year-old kid. I don’t have all the answers.”

Maye’s situation is unique. He has the potential to be the No. 1 overall NFL draft pick next spring, and this year is as much about refining his game for the pros as it is about padding his stat line.

The NFL is the goal for most QBs, of course, but the more immediate concern for the vast majority is simply getting on the field, and that dynamic has changed coaching dramatically.

Lane Kiffin remembers working with Carson Palmer in his early years as an offensive assistant at USC. Palmer won a Heisman and became the No. 1 overall pick, but before all of that, he had to learn — protections, huddle calls, a playbook that reads like War and Peace.

These days, it’s all about simplicity.

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“The development isn’t the same because people leave if they’re not playing,” Kiffin said. “And offenses have simplified. You needed to wait back then. These days, freshmen play all the time.”

Kiffin, who served as Alabama’s OC from 2014 through 2016, said the Tide stripped down their playbook so Jalen Hurts could play as a freshman, and with most offenses running some version of a run-pass option scheme with the quarterback in shotgun formation, the intricacies of reading defenses and perfect footwork are simply less important in the modern age of quarterbacking.

Indeed, most of the finer points of the job are outsourced to private QB coaches, who often begin training players long before they arrive on campus.

Lindsey was serving as OC at UCF last year when he invited Will Hewlett, a coach who works with the development program QB Collective, to campus for an info session.

“They’re not teaching football, they’re teaching them the mechanics of throwing,” Lindsey said. “It’s all about the biomechanics of throwing, how to transition better, how to get everything sequenced up. It’s like going to a golf pro and getting them to figure out your swing.”

It’s not uncommon for QBs to return to the private coach they used in high school during any break from coursework in college, constantly refining technique and mechanics.

For Maye, UNC ensured he wouldn’t have to leave campus to have every tool he needed.

In addition to Lindsey, Brown also brought on former Cleveland Browns coach Freddy Kitchens, who worked with Baker Mayfield, and longtime NFL assistant Clyde Christensen, who has worked with Andrew Luck, Peyton Manning and Tom Brady, to serve as an offensive analyst.

“Drake got what he wanted,” Brown said. “And he’s got plenty of eyes on him to help him with every little thing he needs to get better.”

If it seems like a lot of investment in one player, well, that’s the game now. The development isn’t a one-man shop. It takes a village.

“Just because you don’t have a guy for four or five years, I still think the development is going on,” Riley said. “But they’re getting it in smaller spurts or from a couple different coaches.”

In 2022, Jordan Travis threw 31 touchdowns and just five interceptions. Peter Joneleit/Icon Sportswire

DILLINGHAM REMEMBERS A conversation he had with Travis’ dad, James, during that first year at Florida State.

“This kid can win the Heisman,” Dillingham said.

James Travis laughed — partly because of how ridiculous the notion seemed at the time and partly because he was so happy to finally find someone who truly believed in his son.

“I like you, Kenny D,” he replied.

It’s true that many others had somehow overlooked Travis’ talent, but Dillingham is the first to admit it didn’t take an advanced degree in quarterbacking to see something special in him. What was truly special about Dillingham’s work with Travis — and Norvell and current FSU QBs coach Tony Tokarz, Travis is quick to add — was getting Travis to see how high his ceiling was, too.

“It went from almost laughable,” Dillingham said, “to this.”

Yet, it easily could’ve gone a different way. Dillingham and Travis both think about that now — how delicate the process really was. Travis was surrounded by coaches who knew the X’s and O’s, but until Dillingham came along, he hadn’t found one capable of understanding him.

In that QB meeting at Arizona State, amid his pop quizzes on basic math, Dillingham explained the rationale behind shifting a protection on a given play when, almost as an aside, he delivered a tough but fair assessment of his QB depth chart.

“None of us are elite athletes in here,” he said. “It’s not your game. Don’t play that game.”

What he means is Arizona State’s QB room isn’t filled with Lamar Jackson-types, so when solving that math problem, the numbers shouldn’t add up to a play where the QB has to scramble.

It’s a blunt lesson: Know your strengths, understand how to put the defense at a disadvantage and be yourself.

This is quarterback development at the college level. A player’s skill set comes preloaded, but it’s often as unique as a fingerprint. The best QB coaches are the ones teaching players how to tailor the game to their own strengths.

“Every quarterback’s answer may be different because they have different skill sets,” Dillingham said. “Let the guys solve the problem with their skill set, not how you want to do it.”

That’s harder to do than ever, Riley said, but for all the portal movement, he still believes most quarterbacks want to learn, want to develop, want to invest in getting better. The process just looks a little different.

“There’s no magic system that you can just throw anybody in, and it’ll be successful,” Riley said. “Ultimately, it doesn’t come down to what I believe. It’s what does that quarterback believe on game day? Does he have confidence in the playbook and the people around him?”

That doesn’t mean there will be a wave of Jordan Travis-types, who rise from the bottoms of depth charts to become stars, or Bo Nix-types, who find a new life after hitting the transfer portal. And for all Riley’s success churning out Heisman contenders, even he knows there are only so many Caleb Williamses in the world.

But if the job of QB development has changed in recent years, the goal for most QBs hasn’t. They want to be great, to play at the next level, to walk out onto the field for every snap fully confident that they’ll be a star.

It’s a little like Dillingham’s math problems — there are a lot of ways to arrive at the same solution.

“I still think more than anything, it comes down to the individuals,” Riley said. “Why does Bo or Jordan succeed a little later? In some cases they’re with good coaches, but it’s also that those guys are tough-ass competitors, and they’re going to break through eventually because they’re that good of players. The cream is still going to rise to the top.”