ROAD TO GLORY
RTG-01 · Underdog Run · Week 0
ROAD TO GLORY
RTG-01 · Underdog Run · Week 0
Outbox · Second wave, August 22–26
FBS · Mid-American Conference. Sent Saturday, August 22, 9:12 a.m., to Craig Harmon, Offensive Pass Game Coordinator and Quarterbacks Coach. The program's general recruiting address had been emailed on August 3 and never opened it.
Coach Harmon,
My name is Nick Mansour and I'm a 2027 quarterback at Fenton High School in Michigan. I sent something to your program's recruiting address three weeks ago and I'm fairly sure it went straight into a folder, which is fine. I'd like to try it a different way.
I've watched four of your games from last season and I want to ask you about something specific rather than tell you about myself, because you have read a thousand emails that tell you about somebody.
You run a lot of quick game with a built-in tag to the single-receiver side. Against two-high teams it looks like the quarterback is taking the backside hitch or slant almost pre-snap, and the trigger looks like the leverage of that corner rather than anything the safety does. But against the teams that played quarters and squatted him, the ball went to the three-receiver surface instead, into the seam window behind the second-level defender.
My question is whether that's the quarterback's decision at the line or whether it's tagged from the sideline based on what that corner did the series before.
I'm asking because we run something structurally similar and we do it the second way, from the sideline, and I've been trying to build a case to my coordinator that I could handle it at the line. I'd rather learn how a college staff actually does it than keep arguing from nothing.
Film is below if you want it. Last year: 35 touchdowns, 0 interceptions, 75 percent, 850 rushing yards, 9–0. I'm 6-0 and 155 pounds, I have never been to a camp, I play in a league nobody scouts, and I got hurt before the playoffs so there is no postseason tape. I'd rather you hear all of that from me than find it out and wonder why I left it out.
Thank you for reading this far.
Nick,
Good question, and the honest answer is both, which is the least satisfying answer available.
It's tagged from the sideline on first and second down because I want the rep filed the same way every time. On third down it's his, entirely, and if he takes the hitch against a squatted corner I'll live with it once and we'll talk about it Sunday. What you noticed on the quarters teams is real. You're the first person outside this building to ask me about it.
I watched twelve minutes. Two things.
One: there's a throw on your tape at roughly 6:40, rolling to your left, ball across your body to the far hash. I can't teach that. Nobody taught you that. I'd like to know where it came from and I suspect the answer is nowhere.
Two: send me a full game. Not a cutup. The cutup is doing you a favour and I don't want the favour.
I'm not going to pretend this is more than it is. I have no idea what your league is, you have no numbers, and you weigh 155 pounds, and any one of those is a reason a staff moves to the next name. But I read a lot of these and this one was worth answering.
Send the game.
FBS · Big Ten · sixty-five miles from his house. Sent Monday, August 24, 4:02 p.m. — the recruiting questionnaire, plus a follow-up email to the program's football recruiting address.
To whoever reads these,
I filled in the questionnaire. I'm sending this as well because I assume the questionnaire goes into a database and I would rather a person saw it.
I am a 2027 quarterback at Fenton High School, sixty-five miles and about an hour and five minutes from where you are sitting. Last season I threw for 35 touchdowns with no interceptions at 75 percent, ran for 850 yards, and we went 9–0. I'm 6-0 and 155 pounds. I've never been to a camp, my league does not get scouted, and I know exactly how all of that reads next to the quarterbacks you are actually recruiting.
I'm not going to pretend I think you're going to offer me anything. I'd like somebody on your staff to watch eight minutes, and if the answer is no then I would genuinely rather have a no than nothing. A no is information. I could use some information.
Film below. Thank you.
FBS · Mountain West · thirteen hundred miles away. Sent Monday, August 24, 8:55 p.m., to Christian Taylor, Offensive Coordinator and Quarterbacks Coach.
Coach Taylor,
I'm a 2027 quarterback at Fenton High School in Michigan and I'm aware that isn't where you recruit. I'm writing anyway, because of what I saw on your third-down tape.
You ask your quarterback to solve more at the line than almost anybody I watched this summer. The protection identification is clearly his, and there were at least six snaps where the front moved late and the ball still came out on time to the correct side. Whatever school it turns out to be, that is the job I want. It's the part of playing quarterback I'm best at, and I'd rather go somewhere that demands it than somewhere that protects me from it.
Last year: 35 touchdowns, 0 interceptions, 75 percent, 850 rushing, 9–0. That was the first season of organised football I have ever played — the year before it I was an unpaid student personnel assistant on my own team, printing the practice scripts.
6-0, 155. Zero camps, zero verified measurements, zero postseason film. All of that is true and I'm putting it in the third paragraph instead of burying it in the last one.
Film below.
Nick,
Watched it. You're right that it's the job here. Now let me find out whether you actually want it or whether you just like the sound of it.
Five questions. Don't look anything up, don't ask your coordinator, and don't send me an answer you're not sure of — I would rather read "I don't know" than a guess in a nice suit. Reply tonight.
1. Third and seven. They mug both A-gaps, six on the line, you have five linemen and a back. Who do you declare, and where is your football if all six come?
2. Cover 2 to the field, smash out there — corner route over a hitch. Who is your read and what exactly is he telling you?
3. As a passer, what is the difference between Tampa 2 and ordinary Cover 2?
4. Two-high shell, ball on the left hash. On the snap the boundary safety sinks his hips and rotates down late. What is that coverage becoming, and what does it do to your backside?
5. Easiest one. Why zero interceptions? And do not tell me you were careful.
I declare the more dangerous of the two inside backers, to the side I want to slide away from. In practice I'm setting the Mike toward the extra hat so the slide accounts for the four likeliest rushers and my back takes the fifth on the other side.
If all six come, somebody is unblocked no matter what I do. That isn't a protection problem, that's arithmetic, and pretending otherwise is how quarterbacks get hurt.
So the ball is hot, and it goes away from the slide, into the space vacated by whichever mugged backer actually comes. If both come, one of them left a hole where he was standing and my hot is the inside receiver breaking into it — realistically a slant or a stick on three-step rhythm, and it's gone before I feel anything.
The thing I'd add is that against a good team the first answer is to not be in that down and distance, and the second is to make them prove they'll bring six. Most of them are bluffing. If one of them bails, my protection is fine and I have a linebacker running out of the box with his back to me, which is the best thing that can happen to me on third and seven.
The corner. He is the entire play. In Cover 2 he's a flat defender with help behind him, which puts him in a bind between the hitch in front of his face and the corner route over his head.
If he sinks or carries with any depth, the hitch is open underneath him and I take it. That is not settling. That is the concept working the way it is supposed to.
If he squats on the hitch, the corner route is behind him and the ball goes over his outside shoulder toward the sideline, away from the safety, and it has to leave early because I'm throwing to a spot before the receiver has come out of his break.
The part people skip is that the safety sets the size of the window, not the read. If he's playing narrow because of something inside, the corner route has room. If he's already widening, I'd rather take the hitch and live to play the next down. The corner is the read. The safety is the volume knob.
The middle of the field, and nothing else.
In straight Cover 2 the hole between the safeties at about fifteen to eighteen yards is genuinely open, and that is where I want to live — a dig, a deep over, a seam sitting right in it.
In Tampa 2 the Mike runs to exactly that spot. It isn't open any more; it's just late. So the throw I want is gone and what replaces it is the honest Cover 2 menu: the corner route outside, the flats, and the intermediate stuff underneath the Mike but behind the other two as they widen.
The trap is that Tampa 2 looks identical to Cover 2 for about a second and a half. If I decide before the snap that the hole is there and then stop looking, I have thrown a football at a linebacker who is sprinting to the precise place I aimed. That is one of the two or three ways I would expect to get intercepted in college.
Almost certainly single-high — a three-deep rotation with the boundary safety coming down as an underneath or robber player and the other safety rotating to the middle of the field. It might equally be a quarters check that converts to man to the boundary. Either way, the two-high picture was a lie by the time the ball moved.
What it does to my backside is that my boundary receiver has just lost his help. If it's Cover 3, that corner owns the deep third alone with nothing over the top and outside leverage problems on anything toward the sideline — a fade or a back-shoulder is live. If it rolled to man, my boundary guy is on an island with nobody inside, and any inside-breaking route from a reduced split is available.
The ball is on the left hash, so the boundary is short, so the throw is shorter and the window shuts faster. And the dangerous version is that the safety who came down is a robber sitting on the exact dig I want.
So the rule I'd give myself is: if he rolls down late, go outside or go over the top. Don't throw into the space he just moved into.
I wasn't careful. I threw into places I probably had no business throwing into. Three real reasons.
One, my league, and I'm putting it first because it's the biggest one. Most of the defences I faced ran one coverage and did not disguise it. I was reading pictures that were already labelled. I don't think a single one of those thirty-five touchdowns proves anything about what happens when somebody shows me two things and then does a third.
Two, I get the ball out. Interceptions at my level are mostly late throws — the receiver is covered by the time it arrives because the ball left half a beat after it should have. I throw on time or I don't throw, and my arm isn't good enough to rescue me if I'm late, so being on time isn't a virtue, it's the only option I have.
Three, I would rather take the sack. I took six last year where a scramble lane was open and I know that because Coach Shaffer counted them for me. Some of those should have been throwaways and one or two should have been runs. But the throw that gets picked is the one you make because you're embarrassed about the down, and I'd rather be embarrassed.
The honest version of the answer is that zero is a number that happened to me as much as one I earned. If I play nine more games in that league I'd expect two or three. If I played nine games against your defence I have no idea what the number is and neither does anybody else, and that's the actual problem I'm writing to you about.
Five for five, and number five is the one that got me, because you argued against yourself and you were right to.
So here's the part you're not going to like, and I'm giving it to you straight because you gave me straight.
I can't do anything with this. I don't have a verified height on you. I don't have a time. Nobody in my building has ever been within five hundred miles of your football team. If I walk into our staff meeting tomorrow and say I want to talk about a 155-pound quarterback from a league in Michigan that none of us can name, with no camp numbers and no postseason film, I am telling you honestly that I would be laughed out of the room, and I'd probably deserve it.
That is not about how good you are. I think the processing is real. I have coached quarterbacks at three levels and I would put those five answers up against most of the people currently in my quarterback room.
It is about the fact that my job requires me to be able to show somebody a piece of paper, and you don't have one.
So: get to a camp. Any camp, anywhere, run by anybody with a stopwatch and a wall to stand you against. I don't care whose logo is on the tent. I need a number I did not make up.
And send me games. Including the ones you lose, when you lose one. Especially those.
Keep writing to people. You're better at it than most of the adults who do it for a living.
Two men read a good email and answered it honestly. That is the entire event, and it is simultaneously the biggest thing that has happened to this recruitment and almost nothing at all.
| What he now has | What he still does not have |
|---|---|
| Two FBS position coaches who know his name and believe the processing is real | Two FBS programs that know his name. Neither coach has told anybody in his own building. |
| A standing request for full-game film from Ball State | A file, a board, an evaluation, or a single institutional decision anywhere |
| A precise instruction from Wyoming: get measured and timed by anybody | A camp. There isn't one. The calendar ran June 1 to July 25 and he is a senior. |
| Written confirmation, from a professional, that the football brain is not imaginary | Anything he can put on a piece of paper |
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