Speaker 1: Tuts do whoa It's time for the Happy half Hour,
Speaker 1: presented by Southern Star, an official bourbon of the Carolina Panthers.
Speaker 2: A good quarterback can thrive in chaos. A great quarterback
Speaker 2: can slow down time to negate the chaos altogether. There's
Speaker 2: a moment before the ball is snapped, when everything is still.
Speaker 2: That's when the quarterback assesses everything around him, who is where,
Speaker 2: who is rushing? Who is his best matchup. When the
Speaker 2: ball is snapped, twenty two pieces are thrown into the
Speaker 2: air and the passer has a finite amount of time
Speaker 2: to put it back together. Dave ca Analysis made a
Speaker 2: career out of helping a quarterback slow down that time,
Speaker 2: put the pieces back together with ease, and make the
Speaker 2: best decisions in the quickest window possible. Throughout his career,
Speaker 2: he's analyzed film and practices and the best of the
Speaker 2: best in the game to determine if a quarterback can
Speaker 2: get the ball out in two point seven seconds, he
Speaker 2: has the best chance of making the right decision and
Speaker 2: lowering the risk of turnovers. Canalys has spent this off
Speaker 2: season thus far helping quarterback Bryce Shawn get his throwing
Speaker 2: time down to that two point seven seconds, but of
Speaker 2: course it's easier said than done. To understand the intricacies
Speaker 2: of the challenge, The Happy half Hour spoke to one
Speaker 2: of the best passers in Panther's history, Jake DeLong, to
Speaker 2: find out what it takes to lower a throwing time,
Speaker 2: what the timeline looks like, and just how much of
Speaker 2: a difference it really makes in a win versus a loss.
Speaker 2: Here's that conversation with Jake Dolom Dave Canals has mentioned
Speaker 2: several times now, he's he mentioned it in his open
Speaker 2: prefice conferences combine he's I think he's mentioned it every
Speaker 2: week for the past three weeks. Like Karen Darren OTAs
Speaker 2: about getting Bryce's throwing time down to two point seven seconds,
Speaker 2: and obviously that means, like I would assume, get it
Speaker 2: down to two point seven in practice, so that three
Speaker 2: point one three point two in a game feels like
Speaker 2: all the time in the world. But it's not easier
Speaker 2: said than done, I guess. Is the first question, just
Speaker 2: off the bat is what is the process to actually
Speaker 2: get a quarterbacks rowing time whittled down?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, listen, I love it. I love hearing
Speaker 1: that because there's something about kind of getting out your
Speaker 1: hand quick. One. It helps the offensive lineman and it
Speaker 1: helps the offense in general when you're going against the
Speaker 1: defense when you can just kind of get the ball
Speaker 1: out quick. And that's something that you know you can anticipate.
Speaker 1: To me, if I hear two point seven, I'm deading
Speaker 1: at least through my first and second read and do
Speaker 1: I maneuver around to get to my third. Yes, we'd
Speaker 1: love to have the three and a half four second coffee,
Speaker 1: but that's not the case. But you know, two point
Speaker 1: seven to me is, hey, make the quick read, make
Speaker 1: the pre snap read, the post snap read, and go
Speaker 1: through one and two and then you can make your
Speaker 1: way to three and or four being the checkdown. So
Speaker 1: I think that's something and I truly believe that. I
Speaker 1: think that's why Baker played so well last year in Tampa.
Speaker 1: The ball got out quick. If I went back in
Speaker 1: my notes from the games when I was preparing for Tampa,
Speaker 1: both games, that was my thing. Baker got the ball
Speaker 1: out of his hand quick. When he didn't hold on
Speaker 1: to the ball longer. When he got it out quick,
Speaker 1: they were really fishing when he held on to it longer.
Speaker 1: That's when some of the bat had passes might have
Speaker 1: happened or more favorable outcome. I guess you could say
Speaker 1: for the defense. And that's something I know offensively, if
Speaker 1: you can get it out, and I thought Tom did
Speaker 1: a great going to Tom Brady, he did a great
Speaker 1: job of that because he always would get into the
Speaker 1: right play in essence and getting the ball out and
Speaker 1: just kind of taking what they give you. And I
Speaker 1: truly believe there's something to that and what Dave is
Speaker 1: saying you mentioned Baker.
Speaker 2: I think actually if you look at Baker's numbers two
Speaker 2: this past season under Canalist, that was his shortest throwing
Speaker 2: time in his whole NFL career, and so it definitely
Speaker 2: stood out. But when fans here two point seven, you know,
Speaker 2: of course they're thinking, like, okay, somebody's gonna be out
Speaker 2: there with a stopwatch and it has to be out
Speaker 2: of the three seconds. What is the balance between wanting
Speaker 2: to get it out quick versus letting a play develop?
Speaker 2: And is that going to what you were saying about
Speaker 2: first and second reads and do you just have to
Speaker 2: know about if I'm all the way on my third,
Speaker 2: it's time to let do something different and maybe scramble.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's just that's trust and a lot
Speaker 1: of times you have to marry your feet with your
Speaker 1: eyes and your arms. I mean you your feet kind
Speaker 1: of tell you where to go, and and that's that's
Speaker 1: kind of how you marry it up. And and when
Speaker 1: you start. Okay, let's say it's a five step drop.
Speaker 1: You know it's one, two three, Usually it's three big
Speaker 1: and two little, so one two, three, four five. I
Speaker 1: mean you're back there immediately, but you're reading. You got
Speaker 1: a pre snap read and a post snap read, so
Speaker 1: as you're dropping back, you have a pretty good inclination
Speaker 1: of Okay, I just confirmed what I thought the coverage
Speaker 1: might be. Are okay, this is something different we had.
Speaker 1: We had a weak side of rotation, a strong side
Speaker 1: of rotation. They went from post safety to split safety.
Speaker 1: You confirm those things on those first three steps, and
Speaker 1: then you want to get it four and five. You're
Speaker 1: setting your feet up to get rid of the football,
Speaker 1: meaning like, I'm transitioning my body how I'm gonna set
Speaker 1: my feet to be able to get rid of the football.
Speaker 1: So I'm going one to two and then you understand
Speaker 1: when you can make it go a little bit longer,
Speaker 1: being like, hey, they show pressure I think I haven't protected,
Speaker 1: but you know everybody's accounted for. Okay, they dropped, it's
Speaker 1: only a four man rush. I'm gonna get an extra
Speaker 1: help on a D line and a D N whatever
Speaker 1: it may be. And that's when your mind can say,
Speaker 1: I gotta make sure I solidify everything where it's one
Speaker 1: to two, and then you know I can let me
Speaker 1: keep going because you saw it as the play went.
Speaker 1: It's it's kind of hard to explain. I think it's
Speaker 1: something you feel. But I just think that's something that
Speaker 1: it's ingrained in you. And if you practice it at
Speaker 1: two point seven seconds and you don't take longer in practice,
Speaker 1: you get comfortable knowing, hey it's one, it's two, it's three,
Speaker 1: I gotta get moving, i gotta get my check down.
Speaker 1: What's the next best thing as a quarterback that's got
Speaker 1: to go through your mind.
Speaker 2: So basically, you train the clock in your head, think okay,
Speaker 2: well and now I'm out, Like a decision has to
Speaker 2: be made.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. And that's something that I know. In Carolina,
Speaker 1: Gosh ages ago, when we were there, Dan Henning loved
Speaker 1: to take shots down the field. He didn't care about
Speaker 1: completion percentage. That He used to say, that makes no
Speaker 1: sense to me. He said, you take shots down the field,
Speaker 1: throw outside the numbers. He goes, there's too many big
Speaker 1: people inside the numbers. And we had a lot of
Speaker 1: success doing that, and it was a lot of shots.
Speaker 1: And so sometimes were they pressing Steve or Moose or
Speaker 1: was the defense off of Steve or Moose? And so
Speaker 1: I had to make that determination as I'm going back,
Speaker 1: as I'm dropping back, and if they're pressing them, did
Speaker 1: they get a good press on the line of scrimmage
Speaker 1: or did Steven Moose beat him real fast? Just to
Speaker 1: know how you want to throw the football, those are
Speaker 1: just things that that's just that comes into play. That's
Speaker 1: that's just how you work it and do it. But
Speaker 1: it all comes back to the premise that, hey, don't
Speaker 1: turn it over, get it out your hand. And usually
Speaker 1: if you're getting it out of your hand faster, really
Speaker 1: and truly, you're not turning it over. Yes, you might
Speaker 1: make a bad read or there's a hand that gets
Speaker 1: up and it bats a ball, but if the longer
Speaker 1: you hold on to it. Sometimes quarterbacks have a tendency
Speaker 1: to I'm gonna try to force it in there, or
Speaker 1: you're just kind of you're a little fuzzy in your
Speaker 1: read and you want to make sure that you can
Speaker 1: kind of, I guess, prove to yourself, yes, that's exactly
Speaker 1: what I saw, And sometimes that's not the best thing.
Speaker 2: As more and more offenses over the years have gone
Speaker 2: to like let me rephrase this, as the spread has
Speaker 2: kind of trickled up into the NFL, and you see
Speaker 2: more and more quarterbacks like in the gun for the
Speaker 2: majority of snaps. Has the throwing time gone down in
Speaker 2: your opinion or that and is a defensive ends and
Speaker 2: pass rushers have gotten even better. Has that time gone
Speaker 2: down from what maybe it used to be.
Speaker 1: That's a great question, because you know everything was maybe
Speaker 1: it was just more condensed. You know, as the spread,
Speaker 1: everything's so spread out. But when it used to be
Speaker 1: more condensed, the tight end was attached and you had
Speaker 1: a full back or you had two tight ends, whatever
Speaker 1: it may be. So things were maybe a little more condensed,
Speaker 1: so it took a little more time for someone to
Speaker 1: come free, so to speak. I think it's we've moved
Speaker 1: our rules in the NFL to one side, and it's
Speaker 1: to help the offense. I think we all know that
Speaker 1: we can all admit that, and so they went more
Speaker 1: scoring and things like that. So the spread is get
Speaker 1: the ball out your hand, kind of a basketball on
Speaker 1: grass type of situation, whereas maybe back when it was
Speaker 1: more of a still the run, the play action, the boots,
Speaker 1: and the things of that nature, that maybe took a
Speaker 1: little more time that added to the two point seven.
Speaker 1: So I just think a lot of it. I think
Speaker 1: the evolution has. Yes, the spread has come in, some
Speaker 1: of this RPOs things have come in, but also just
Speaker 1: the rules have kind of started to tilt and favor
Speaker 1: the offense. To be quite honest, looking at.
Speaker 2: Bryce specifically, I'm sure this is a guy you've watched
Speaker 2: a lot of Is is there's something to the idea
Speaker 2: of like maybe getting him out of the pocket a
Speaker 2: little bit more, And how does that kind of affect
Speaker 2: Pying back to this two point seven, I would think,
Speaker 2: if you're moving him out of the pocket that takes
Speaker 2: a little bit more time, is it worth that extra
Speaker 2: half a second to maybe move him around, which is
Speaker 2: what they seem to do a lot more with him
Speaker 2: in college.
Speaker 1: Well, when you're moving him around more out of the pocket,
Speaker 1: that means there's a play action fake. Well, you got
Speaker 1: to run the ball effectively. First. I mean, that's what
Speaker 1: it comes down to. If we have a running game,
Speaker 1: and listen, we invested in two big time guards, and
Speaker 1: so we want to run the football, and I think
Speaker 1: that's the most consistent way to win in the NFL. So, yes,
Speaker 1: if we are running it effectively, especially when he's going
Speaker 1: to do the boots and things of that nature, where
Speaker 1: there is the play action and you can get full
Speaker 1: flow from linebackers and things like that, it's going to
Speaker 1: add to it. But I always felt even last year
Speaker 1: during the games, I thought Brian, in my opinion, and
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong, year one was very difficult, but
Speaker 1: I just thought he was so deadly accurate, especially in
Speaker 1: the intermediate type passes and especially kind of inside the
Speaker 1: you know, inside the number, so to speak. And I
Speaker 1: was like, I wish we did a little more of
Speaker 1: these for him, because I just I just felt he
Speaker 1: was his feet, he could get himself in balance really
Speaker 1: really quick, and he could kind of get the ball
Speaker 1: out fast. But his accuracy in those in those areas
Speaker 1: I thought, I just thought it was great and I
Speaker 1: wish we would maybe done a little bit more of
Speaker 1: that last year. But now, yeah, we're probably in my opinion,
Speaker 1: I think we're going to get him out more because
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna run the ball better, at least
Speaker 1: I hope we can. I mean, we spend a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of money, a lot of capital in
Speaker 1: the offensive line, and we have a lot of running backs,
Speaker 1: and so that's what we want to If we're can
Speaker 1: establish that, then that's only going to help. And hopefully
Speaker 1: it's more than two point seven segments, because if it's
Speaker 1: more than two point seven, it's because we're running the
Speaker 1: ball better.
Speaker 2: This is just an assign But you mentioned like Kim
Speaker 2: throwing those intermediate passes. I feel like people look so
Speaker 2: much for the big arm nowadays that they don't realize
Speaker 2: how accurate you have to be to throw an eight
Speaker 2: yard hitch in the middle of all that traffic.
Speaker 1: Listen, listen, listen. I understand the big arm. I get it.
Speaker 1: And the certainly there's some big armed quarterbacks, you know,
Speaker 1: Josh Allen certainly comes to mind. There's no doubt he
Speaker 1: has the big arm. But I just go back to
Speaker 1: the Peyton Mannings, the Drew Breeses, those guys, even the
Speaker 1: Kurt Warner. How accurate Kurt was the Steve Young. The
Speaker 1: arm is plenty big enough, but it's the accuracy and
Speaker 1: where's the ball placement. Are we throwing somebody that's running
Speaker 1: a shallow cross or or a mess route. Are we
Speaker 1: throwing it and they're catching it and their feet get
Speaker 1: kind of turned, or are we throwing it on the
Speaker 1: run and you're speaking to them with the football. What
Speaker 1: I mean by that is that you're hitting them and
Speaker 1: you're you're giving them a direction. If it is a
Speaker 1: kind of a stationary route where somebody runs in and
Speaker 1: they sit in a hole, a zone hole, are you
Speaker 1: throwing it to the opposite shoulder where the defender's coming
Speaker 1: from to let the receiver know, hey, I'm sending you
Speaker 1: this way, this is where you need a turn. I
Speaker 1: think those are the things that's I just think accuracy
Speaker 1: in the NFL is paaramount. I just you can either
Speaker 1: pass the football or you throw the football. A lot
Speaker 1: of guys with big arms they throw the football. They're
Speaker 1: just throwing it to a spot. When you pass the football,
Speaker 1: you're kind of layering it and you're talking to the receiver,
Speaker 1: and it's just it's aesthetically it's more pleasing and it
Speaker 1: helps your team to be quite honest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like that. The difference between throwing and passing.
Speaker 2: I've never thought about it like that.
Speaker 1: That's a big I mean, that's what it is. I mean,
Speaker 1: are they a thrower? Are they're a passer? And the
Speaker 1: great quarterbacks they're all passes of the football. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Going back to something you said earlier too about like
Speaker 2: the footwork being so paramount to whatever you're going to do,
Speaker 2: but especially if you're lowering your throwing time. That's been
Speaker 2: a huge focus for Bryce this all season rotis in
Speaker 2: mini camp so far? Is it a one off season project?
Speaker 2: Like can you change your quarterback's footwork to make to
Speaker 2: change him from the bottom up? Can you do that
Speaker 2: in an off season or is this one of those things.
Speaker 1: As listen, it will require time, but one percent you
Speaker 1: can And I was a prime example of it my
Speaker 1: first three years in New Orleans. You know, kind of
Speaker 1: a situation where we weren't a good football team. Two
Speaker 1: six and ten teams and a three and thirteen team,
Speaker 1: so really weren't a good team. And then new regime
Speaker 1: came in. Mike McCarthy comes in as our office of
Speaker 1: coordinator and we started with Quarterbacks School in March, and
Speaker 1: it started from the base, and the base is your footwork.
Speaker 1: And everything we did was done with rhythm and timing,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly how you went through your progressions. You
Speaker 1: trusted your feet. And I believe our QB coach Will
Speaker 1: has come from Dallas. And so that is some of
Speaker 1: the teaching that I know that I was taught. That
Speaker 1: I know Joe Montana was taught, that Steve Young was taught,
Speaker 1: that rich Gannon was taught, all those guys that go
Speaker 1: down the Bill Walsh line, so to speak. And it's
Speaker 1: how it's kind of made its way in the NFL.
Speaker 1: I know for a fact that you can because your
Speaker 1: feet tell you so much. When you get all these
Speaker 1: repetitions and you learn your plays, your feet, you marry
Speaker 1: once again, you marry your feet with your arm, and
Speaker 1: you got to trust your feet. And that's just through repetition.
Speaker 1: But absolutely it can be changed in the off season.
Speaker 2: How much is it feasible to cut off a whole second,
Speaker 2: so to speak in an off season? Though, Like, how
Speaker 2: much of a difference is that book making?
Speaker 1: Oh listen, I think you can. I truly believe you
Speaker 1: can reinvent yourself from one year to the next and
Speaker 1: it's specifically less talk Rice. You're talking about the number
Speaker 1: one overall pick with a team that struggled last year. Listen,
Speaker 1: we struggled and we had a ton of what fifteen
Speaker 1: different combinations that played the guard position for us. Last
Speaker 1: year we struggled something, and we struggled receiver wise and
Speaker 1: getting some continent and things like that, and it just
Speaker 1: and he went from Frank calling the plays to Thomas,
Speaker 1: back to Frank back to Thomas. So I think we
Speaker 1: have to take that with a grain of salt. Went
Speaker 1: on last year. He lost his quarterback coach also, Josh
Speaker 1: mccowndur in the course of the season, so there was
Speaker 1: a lot of things that were happening. So I think
Speaker 1: it was a great learning experience for Bryce. Sacks sixty
Speaker 1: two times he got out of numerous other sacks that
Speaker 1: the number could have been a lot higher. So I
Speaker 1: just think this will be a different approach, this will
Speaker 1: be a different feel, this will be a different quarterback
Speaker 1: that we're gonna see. Just the confidence wise, what we're
Speaker 1: doing schematically and how we want to run the football
Speaker 1: to be able to help open up the passing game.
Speaker 1: That makes all the difference.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so too. It's going to be fun
Speaker 2: to watch too. Thank you to Jake for his time
Speaker 2: and insight. Over the next few months, the Happy half
Speaker 2: Hour and Painthers dot Com will continue to dive into
Speaker 2: every facet of this idea of two point seven seconds.
Speaker 2: We'll talk to former players at different positions, experts in
Speaker 2: the field, and those who bring an outside academic perspective
Speaker 2: ought to better understand what it takes to change a
Speaker 2: quarterback's throwing time. Stay tuned to Panthers dot Com and
Speaker 2: Happy half Hour for more as we strive to understand
Speaker 2: what it takes to slow down time