A Single Pass

Robbie Bosco was Steve Young's backup at BYU (1982-83). He led to the Cougars to a #1 Championship season (1984) and is now the BYU Quarterback Coach under LaVell Edwards. Listen to Bosco describe what it's like for a quarterback to throw a single pass:

"After you break the huddle, you come to the line of scrimmage and the first thing you check is the pre-snap alignment. See if you have enough blockers at the line and in the backfield to block everybody who has the potential to blitz. After that, you check where the safeties are. Then you need to figure out, if they do this with this particular play we have called, these need to be my reads; if they change to this, then this is my read. Now, we talking nice and slow; but there are 15 seconds left on the play clock and it's ticking. You're not stopping the clock and saying, "Wait while I figure this out." You have guys yelling, "Hurry and run the play! Run it!"'

"Then, boom, the ball is snapped. All that's over.You're going now. As you're dropping back, you're checking out the coverage and what the defense is doing. Depending on the play that was called, you need to look for certain defensive players to see if they are blitzing or dropping into coverage. If the linebacker blitzes, for instance, against a particular play you've called, then you throw to a hot receiver. If he doesn't come, then you scan the field and see what coverages they're running in the secondary. What you do depends on the coverage. There could be six to eight coverages. Now you're thinking, "Because they're in this coverage, my throws are 1, 2, 3." If you don't like 1, then you go to 2. If this guy is covered, if the linebacker is moving this way, you go to No 3, or No. 4. Then at some point you have to decide if you're going to run it or throw it away."

"And don't forget, all this time, as you're dropping back, you have five or six guys who want to rip your head off. They're coming at you full go and you're in the middle of all this and you almost never have a pretty pocket. You have to throw with guys in your face, you're moving around, having to throw off balance and getting knocked around. Until you have played the position, you have no idea what it's like."

Keep in mind that the quarterback has about three seconds to make these decisions, or four, if he's very lucky.

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