Q&A: Matt Hasselbeck on Jordan Love's young 'Tom Brady' quality, 2024 MVP race, Mahomes' ankle, Drake Maye, Caleb Williams red flags
For an hour-plus, one of the best quarterbacks of the 2000s dishes on how a team reaches true quarterback bliss. Here's the full conversation in words.
On our latest episode of “How the NFL Works,” former Pro Bowler Matt Hasselbeck takes us all inside the brain of a quarterback.
So much goes into achieving true bliss at the most critical position in sports.
It takes a special individual under center. It takes a coach willing to give that player freedom.
Hasselbeck supplied fascinating insight for an hour-plus. In addition to the video and audio, the written transcript of our conversation is below.
Thanks, all.
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What a pleasure to welcome back, friend of the show, Pro Bowl quarterback, one of the absolute best analysts: Matt Hasselbeck. But we have to add high school football coaching legend. We’ll call you a legend with the work you did this past fall.
Hasselbeck: There you go. Put it on my LinkedIn. There you go.
Fill everybody in on what we just talked about a little bit. It’s thrilling to get back into coaching and be around kids and to have an undefeated regular season like you guys had.
Hasselbeck: Yeah, listen, it was a blessing in disguise. A couple of years ago, I got laid off by ESPN. Totally blindsided by it. Didn’t expect it. And I was kind of upset, but it ended up being the absolute best thing that could have ever happened to me. I basically was freed up to coach at my high school, to coach my son his senior year. He was committed to go play lacrosse in college and we really thought that was it for him. He wanted to play football. No one really recruited him and I was able to spend a lot of time with him. We commuted to school together. It was amazing family time that I never would’ve had with him otherwise. And got to coach him at my high school. The head coach there now was coaching there when I was playing in high school. So I mean, it was really, really cool. And we had a great run and they won the state championship. He won Gatorade Player of the Year and all these awards. And then he started getting recruited for football. And so now he’s playing college football. He’s a quarterback at UCLA and it just was this incredible thing for not only for him. For me, for our whole family. And my brother Tim, who lives in Nashville, Tenn., he got approached by the place where his kids go to school — and where my kids went to school when I played for the Tennessee Titans — and they said, ‘Hey, would you ever consider coaching? We know you work at ESPN.’ And I think Tim saw what an amazing opportunity and what an experience it was for us. Basically for me, ESPN laid me off, so they did for me what I didn’t have the courage to do.
I didn't have the courage to quit a dream job to spend more time with family. But it was absolutely the right thing to do. So they did it for me — so thank you to them. But I think my brother saw how valuable it was. And so he went to ESPN and was like, ‘Hey, listen, I’d like to basically take half of my job, which is college football’s half and the NFL is half, and I would like to consider not doing the college part and just do the NFL part so that I could give back like my brother did and maybe coach high school football.’ And by the way, his son is also at the time a sophomore quarterback who’d never played varsity, was going to be a junior.
Fast forward to the end of the story. This year, my brother takes that job, He’s the head coach at Ensworth in Nashville, and it is big-time football. I got a little nervous. As the older brother, I was like, ‘Oh boy, you don’t even know what you’re getting into.’ I saw firsthand for a couple of years how hard these high school football coaches work. It’s not just show up on Friday nights. That’s the tiniest part of the job. And so I said, ‘Hey, I’m a volunteer. I’ve got one more year where I can do this and I’m going to come be your offensive coordinator.’ My dad was like, ‘Hey, I’ll help coach the tight ends.’ My nephew’s the quarterback. My brother’s the head coach. It was absolutely incredible. So much fun.
And yeah, we had an undefeated season. It was super great. We ended up losing in the semifinal to McCallie who won the state championship there last year, won it again this year. They have an incredible program.
But we’re building something there. And Tim did an awesome job and what I’ve told my wife — what my wife and I have talked about — is this is really a character-development program disguised as a football program. And I think the winning, while it’s awesome because you work so hard and you want to win in everything you do, the winning is really cool because I think the kids buy into what you’re selling life-lesson wise. Because you’re winning. For us, we’re trying to win obviously because we’re trying to be the best that we can and do the best that we can do at everything that we’re doing. But that’s probably the coolest part. And Tim did an awesome job of putting together an awesome coaching staff with people that used to play or just used to coach, but it was definitely a team effort and a ton of fun.
The NFL throws around the “Football is family” commercials and then they tear families apart on Christmas with all these games and gouge people’s wallets with streaming services: “Oh, you can only watch this game on Paramount or Netflix!” That is Football is Family — you’re coaching with your brother and your Dad’s around and your kids. That’s the dream. We’d think sitting around on an ESPN panel is the dream — talking about the news of the day — but this has to be so unbelievably fulfilling.
Hasselbeck: Well, they’re both awesome opportunities. I’m going to steal this line from Trent Dilfer, who I worked with at ESPN before he became a high school coach and now he’s a college coach at University of Alabama-Birmingham, UAB. (Note: Our Q&A with Trent Dilfer, icymi.) Ironically, he got laid off at ESPN, too, and he went into high school coaching and I said, “If you could say it in one sentence, how would you describe this?” And I’ll screw it up because he’s better at these things than I am. But he said something like, “That job was a paycheck and I feel like this job is a purpose.” And I thought, “That’s interesting, but I don’t fully know what that means.” And I think I learned what that means through this process. We’ve coached some great players over the years. We’ve got players that are now at Liberty and Tennessee and TCU and Boston College and all the places. But that’s a small percentage of those kids. I would say that 100 percent of those kids though, are going to grow up to be adults. Probably Dads, husbands, leaders in their business, whatever. So you get an opportunity to pour into these young men who quite honestly need more of it, and you do it together with a collection of people that have basically given their lives to coaching high school sports or teaching high school math or English or history or science. And you lock arms with those guys and it takes an army, it takes a village to strengthen those guys. And then honestly, just having a ton of pride at doing it at the place that meant so much to you as a high school kid. My high school, I went to this school called Xaverian. It’s in Boston. We were the Hawks. There’s a saying: “Hawks for four, brothers for life.” And at the time it was kind of like, “yeah, yeah, yeah,” these guys are my brothers. The four-year guys. But it’s bigger than that. It’s literally anybody that went to school there. It’s a bond and a brotherhood. It all kind of makes sense. And so I’ve learned a lot from veteran quarterbacks that were just a little bit older than me in my career. When Doug Pederson taught me what an under front was instead of an over front — usually that’s what they're talking about. And that’s true. But no, it’s actually been much more than that. So I’m grateful for those guys that have been in my life that have kind of paved the way and are continuing to do that, too.
There’s so many just life lessons organically baked into the sport. I can just remember playing Quarterback: 22, Jet Pass. You ride the fullback, you take one step back and all you had to do was pull the trigger and know you’re going to get hit and just trust that it’s going to be there. Throughout practice, throughout camp, no problem hitting this deep ball. Get into the first game junior year and he’s wide open and I see it and I just didn’t do it. There’s a little hesitancy. I don’t know if it’s anxiety, whatever it is. You get yelled at by your coach, and then you do it next time and you don’t look back — whether it’s like that or you’re in the trenches in the fourth quarter. A couple minutes left. Football teaches you so much about life. You can directly apply things you learn in high school football to anything you do in life.
Hasselbeck: And at least for me in my career — high school, Pop Warner, wherever you want to go. Pros. I don’t think I learned nearly as much from the good things. I don’t remember throwing five touchdown passes against the New York Giants. I don’t remember that stuff. I remember the missed opportunities: the incompletions, the sacks, the fumbled snaps, the interceptions, that kind of stuff. But you learn so much from those. I forget who I heard say this. It could have been Brett Favre. He was talking about there’s this moment as a quarterback, right as you let the ball go — the ball’s literally in your hand and you just have this feeling: “Something’s off, something’s not right.” And you just let it go a little high and right and it’s a fastball. And I think it was Brett because he’s the guy that I remember in my career that threw the ball so stinking hard that defenders dropped a lot of interceptions. I don’t know if anyone could catch that ball, it was such a fastball. And he probably told this story with humor, but then he got a little serious and it was kind of like, “No, there’s this moment right before you let the ball go. You’re like, ‘No, I’ve done that one before. I’m not doing it again.’” And I think in my career, you definitely have those moments where it’s like, “Something’s not right” or “I’m going to let this one go.” It’s like half throw away, half, “I don’t know.” I guess the point is you definitely learn from the downs more than the ups.
I guess this is the segue. The joy of the sport and everything that football can give you at a young age — you watch the Green Bay Packers and what they did, this is a bunch of 24- and 25-year-olds. You don’t know what you don’t know. Ignorance is bliss. They had the one playoff loss, so there’s some scar tissue there. But what do you see in this team? This was the Matt Hasselbeck Bowl out there in Seattle.
Hasselbeck: I got a few of those. But yeah, that’s the original for me. In fact, Mike Holmgren did the intro for Sunday Night Football. He was talking about the Packers as “we,” and it was so funny because when he was my head coach with the Green Bay Packers, he would always — always — he was just a different guy when we played the 49ers. Because that was his old team, and he coached Joe Montana and he coached Steve Young and he had all these years with Bill Walsh and all this stuff and he grew up in the Bay Area. And so everyone in the entire organization, it’d be like Gil Haskell and Nolan Cromwell and all the guys would be like, “Hey, careful around Mike this week. It’s Niners week.” So whenever it was Niners-Packers, Mike Holmgren and the rest of ‘em — and even Andy (Reid), he was from San Fran — it was different. It was a different week. I was drafted in ‘98 kind, the draft class of Peyton Manning Ryan Leaf that year. The year before, the Packers had lost the Super Bowl to the Denver Broncos.
I come in as a rookie. I’m thinking this is awesome. Brett Favre is the MVP. You guys have been to two Super Bowls in a row. You guys are afraid of nothing. And when it was Niners Week, it was like, “Oh boy, the ball better not touch the ground.” Mike Holmgren’s going to be on edge.
So when he did that Sunday Night Football promo and he was like, “These are my two teams: Packers-Seahawks,” it was weird not hearing the Niners in there because that was what built him. It built him and made him the great Hall of Fame coach of the Green Bay Packers. And then when you get to Seattle, what built him to everyone there was the Packers. But I think I got that glimpse that year of knowing all the Joe Montana stories. And basically, not to go too deep in it, there were a lot of plays in that Packers offense that only Joe Montana ran because he was right-handed. And then there were some that only, for example, Q8 was to the right — evens to the right, odds to the left. Q8 was always Joe Montana. Q9 was always Steve Young because he was a lefty. And Brett wanted to run Q9 sometimes. And Mike was like, “No, you’re a righty. We’re going Q8.” And then finally, he was like, “Alright, let’s try Q9.” And then when Brett had a designed run to his left, that’s when sometimes crazy stuff would happen. He’d spin around or throw it lefty. Something crazy. And that would blow a gasket on Mike Holmgren.
Anyway, the moral of the story is that he would always come back to in his coaching points like, “Alright, listen. Joe Montana did it this way. Steve Young did it this way.” So we learned that Packers offense in large part because of how Mike Holmgren taught it and he would teach it exactly the way that he taught it to Joe Montana and those guys. And then in Seattle, I bet you if you asked the people that were in Seattle with me, he taught it basically the way Brett did it. And very little did he mention Joe or Steve, unless he was really, really mad at me. Then he would always mention Steve Young. That was a common thread. And then I worked with Steve Young for a while at ESPN and I’m like, “I get it.” When he would yell at me sometimes, he’d be like, “Ugh! You’re acting like Steve Young right now!” And I would be like, “I’m totally good with that. He’s great.” And then I work with Steve and it’s so funny. Our bosses at ESPN would be getting on him and he’d be over there doodling and then they’d be ripping him about like, “Hey, can you make sure that your tie is tied for TV?” And he’d be just doodling or something and he’d be like, “Sorry, what were you saying? I wasn’t listening to anything you just said.” He was very funny.
But I think for the Packers — if you’re super young — there is this naiveness and youthful joy that you really don’t understand the pressure. I think that’s a great thing by the way. I think it’s a great thing. It reminds me of 2001 when Tom Brady is out there playing on a two-minute drive in the Super Bowl. I’m not sure he fully, fully felt the pressure of that the way that he felt the pressure in later Super Bowls. I remember for me, when people talk Packers-Seahawks, they probably think first of the interception that I threw to Al Harris in the 2003 Wild Card game. That was our first wild card. But there’s actually some awesome stuff for me in that game. We didn’t expect to be in the playoffs. It was our first one. No one believed in us. I don’t think we believed in us. And we had played the Packers earlier that year and it was all tense. It was like, “Oh my gosh, you’re going back to play your old team, you better control your emotions and don’t get too high and don’t have too much fun. This is really important.” And that’s how I played and that’s how we played in that first matchup. And in the second matchup —the wild card — it was this free gift. I didn’t know I was going to get to go back to Lambeau in the winter. It was so cool. And I just remember one of the lessons that I learned from being there with Brett, it was like, “Don’t make this a job. Make this super fun. Cut it loose. Do what got you here.” And what got you here? What got you here was balling out with your friends on Thanksgiving in cold weather, having fun, cutting it loose and that’s the best way to play. That’s how he played. And there’s a fine line there where you got to engulf “cut it loose, have no fear,” and yet also use your brain a little bit. So there’s a fine line. But I think that was one of the games for me in my career where I learned — and that was in the ‘03 season playoff — where I learned to actually do it. The next year we lost in the wild card on the last play of the game on a pass in the end zone. But I think it was those two losses that at least in Seattle for us, and we went on a run, those two losses help propel us to the Super Bowl the next year in ’05.
Sitting in all these meetings with NFL coaches as a player over the course of 18 years, you see that these coaches are trying to get the team to have something really unique and special in terms of camaraderie, in terms of “cut it loose, play fast,” and teams like the Packers — these young teams — you can have it naturally. They have it naturally. So if you can get it, take advantage of it while you have it. And I see that in them recently. I see that in this young Packers team. They are the youngest team in the league and they don’t play like it. But they do in the sense that they’re just out there cutting it loose, having fun, and they don’t even… “Oh, wait. What? Seattle’s a really hard place to play. Yeah, we’re going to open the game with two passes. Oh, we’re going to audible at the line of scrimmage. We’re going to use a hard count. We don’t care.” And it’s a contagious thing. And it was cool to see if you like rooting for underdog situations. I thought it was really cool to see.
That 2014 NFC championship Game that has scarred the fan base to this day. They’re 13 or 14 years old watching that thing.
Hasselbeck: Is that the game in Seattle? The Jon Ryan fake field goal?
Oh yeah.
Hasselbeck: And listen, there’s a lot of those games that I do think that you learn from. I learned from the Al Harris pick. It wasn’t like, “Oh my God.” It’s a bigger deal now than it was then. I learned from that. I think the very next week, the Packers learned from the fourth and 20-and-whatever. The Eagles game. The Packers probably also learned from that NFC Championship Game. Even to me that season: Aaron Rodgers, Brett Favre those were two guys that were best at using the hard count. Free play. Everyone go long. That is a weapon that a lot of teams — even to this day — it’s crazy to me how remedial some offenses are. They get you to jump and the teams literally coach their offensive linemen to stand up, touch the guy, and now it’s first and 5. I don’t get it. Take the free play. The touchdowns that Brett Favre, Aaron Rodgers, and then eventually when Darrell Bevell went to Seattle, then eventually Russell Wilson. The amount of free play touchdowns, big plays, pass interference, all that stuff that those quarterbacks got on those kinds of plays. That same year, I don’t know if it was that game or that same season, the Seahawks basically got to the Super Bowl because they were so good at taking advantage of the free play. And now even in 2024, going into 2025, I literally see teams where somebody jumps offsides and they don’t snap it. They don’t go deep. They literally coach their tackle to stand up and act like the guy drew you offsides. And they get the five yards and it’s like, “Yeah.”
It’s a big-play league. Get the big play.
Hasselbeck: It’s the difference between good and great. Literally.
This concept of Green Bay just not knowing what they don’t know. I think there are a lot of coaches who would love to instill that feeling into their players and they’re probably studying speeches at all hours of the night trying to figure out how to get my team to play loose and play free. But it’s almost like telling one of your friends who’s stressing out over something, “quit stressing out, just relax!” It’s not going to do anything. You either have it or you don’t — most of the time. And Green Bay’s in this great spot where they do have that playoff loss to learn from: San Francisco last year, Jordan Love throwing it across his body. They gave that game away. Yet they’re still so young that you can just kind of get on a roll and play freely.
Hasselbeck: And there’s confidence that comes with focus and preparation. In quarterbacking, a lot of times, they use golf analogies: Fight fear with focus. If you get nerves at all, just focus in more. And for me anyway, I always appreciated repping things in practice. The muscle memory of it. And a lot of times — even the first time in Seattle that we went to the Super Bowl — I think that we had no idea that that was going to be our year. There were years where people picked us to go to the Super Bowl, win the Super Bowl, and we had to talk about it the whole year. And then the first year that Seattle went, for us, we didn’t talk about it one time and it was all about the football. And I think that’s an interesting thing about this Packers team. That’s not a question that they’re asking. What’s everyone talking about? They’re talking about Detroit, they’re talking about Minnesota. That’s just in that division. They’re talking about Philly. Everyone always talks about Dallas. They’re talking all about Chicago and their quarterback and whose fault is it? And they’re running out of people to blame. So that’s what they’re talking about. And so for the Packers, I feel like they’ve talked about mostly football. Injuries, sure. But mostly football. Not a ton of drama. And that’s why I think you can go into a hostile situation where it’s hard to hear the play call. It’s hard to know exactly what we’re doing. Are we all on the same page and they’ve weathered the storms and they’re getting healthy and hot at the right time. And it’s something that Mike Holmgren said in that Sunday Night Football intro. He said, “All you have to do is get in the tournament.” And then, get hot at the right time. And now with seven teams in each conference getting into the tournament, yeah, you all got a shot. Only one team gets that first round bye and that could be bad for some people. They get a little rusty. We’ll see. I’m impressed with what I’ve seen and there’s individual things that I’m impressed with. But just globally, I think these guys have the makings of what it takes to be special.
What’s it really like with Mike Holmgren when — I can’t imagine what his expectations are, his demands. You go Joe Montana to Steve Young to Brett Favre, and now you’re the handpicked one to be the quarterback to lead the Seattle Seahawks. Day to day, I’d imagine the standard is fairly high and maybe unrealistic at times when Mike is kind of riding you?
Hasselbeck: It was great for me because I had gotten this glimpse of seeing him rip Brett Favre to shreds and rip Andy Reid every day. Literally, we had a rule: The ball was not allowed to touch the ground. The ball’s not allowed to touch the ground. Now, he would script practice in such a way that if we were going to run a certain play — if we were going to run Red Right 22 Texas — he was hoping it would Cover 2 in the game. We would get Cover 2 in practice. Like, “Hey, if we’re going to run 22 Z in, we’re Cover 3 weak. Because that’s what he was hoping to get in practice. If we were going to get Cover 1, he’s going to run Z Drive or 72 X Shell Across. So he was scripting a little bit for success because he was saying, “Hey, I’m going to call the right play at the right time, and if I don’t, just bail me out. Get me to second and 4.” That was the mindset.
But the rule was “You are not allowed to have the ball hit the ground in practice. You can’t.” Now, the other rule was “Do it my way. Do it exactly how I’m telling you to do it and if it doesn’t work, then that’s on me. It’s not on you. You’re doing what I asked you to do.” And so as a player, you’re trying to cut it loose and play free and have fun. And yet you’re also trying to do exactly what the coach wants on the sideline. You’re trying to be the coach on the field. You’ve got to check your ego at the door.
Brett, where he would get in trouble and where he would get yelled at is mostly there’s usually a guy on a “Love of the Game” route: LOG. Love of the game. You’re just running. I’m thinking of Bill Schroeder. Someone really fast who’s not making a ton of money. He’s running straight down the field as fast as he can and we’re looking at him, but we’re really not throwing it to him. We’re throwing it to Antonio Freeman or Robert Brooks on an 18-yard in route. A dagger route. And so we’ve got the “love of the game” route — we’re just looking there — and then all of a sudden here comes the guy that’s making all the money that we’re trying to throw the ball to. And Brett would look there and something in him would be like, “Ah, I can make this completion.” And he’d launch it as far as he could. The love of the game. And it was actually a good throw and it’s off his fingertips. Incomplete. Second and 10. And Mike would lose his mind: “Ball’s not allowed to be on the ground. What are you doing?” And instead of yelling at Brett, he would yell at Andy Reid, the quarterback coach who’s standing next to Brett. And it was way more effective. Because if he had yelled at Brett, Brett would’ve been like, “Well, it was open.” But he’s yelling at Andy. So Brett’s like, “Oh shoot, man. I feel bad now. Andy’s getting yelled at for something I did.” It was this weird dynamic, but it was also awesome. So anyway, long story short, when I was in Seattle and Mike would yell at me even when I felt like I was completely right, like, “Dude, the ball hit the guy in the hands, he should have caught it. What are you talking about? That was actually a good idea.” He’d yell at me and I’d feel like I was 100 percent right. In my head I was kind of like, “Well, he yelled at Brett way worse than that. So if he can yell at Brett, he could definitely yell at me.” So maybe it’s a good thing.
I can remember Bill Schroeder being in his doghouse, too, for an extended period of time.
Hasselbeck: I thought Packer fans felt that way because he grabbed him one time on Monday Night Football or some game before I got there. But I’ll tell you, Green Bay had some great receivers. Billy Schroeder is one of the best athletes I ever played with. Ever. And he did have a little bit of that track-and-field mindset about him that isn’t maybe exactly what the football mindset is sometimes in terms of, I could see him getting a flag on special teams or something like that. Donald Driver was a late-round draft pick. Corey Bradford was one of the fastest guys I ever played with. Derek Mayes had incredible hands. The Packers did well at the wide receiver position for years. People like to say, “Oh, they’re amazing with quarterbacks.” They are. But I think they’ve done a pretty good job with wide receivers as well.
It’s such a balance, too. And it seems like Mike Holmgren understood that in terms of how he would coach you guys day to day. You want your quarterback playing free and liberated and taking chances. Yet you also have all of these rules in your head of how the position should be played and the play that you’re calling and how you want it executed. We see it here in Buffalo. Last year, Sean McDermott is talking about limiting risk-taking. Let’s not throw it in the double coverage. Let’s slide. Let’s step out of bounds. And I was fairly critical of that because I feel like a quarterback is an artist. Get out of his way. Let him create. You don’t tell Dave Chappelle to tone it down. You don’t tell Josh Allen to tone it down. And it seems like this year, he’s the MVP of the league right now. Sean is saying all of the right things for the most part. Coaching, he believes in his team and his quarterback — fourth and two, Kansas City, we’re going for the two-score lead. What is that balance? I remember Brett telling us on this show that Mike Holmgren stopped putting that deep route in the play if he didn’t want him throwing it deep in that situation. Because Brett said, “I’m going to take that every time.”
Hasselbeck: Listen, there’s a lot that goes into it. I remember a game, we were playing the New York Giants and we put in this play — “22 Texas Halfback Burst” — the Y, the tight end, is on a post. Mike Holmgren is installing the play and he’s like, “Quarterback, where are you? Take your pen out. Scratch this guy out. I want you looking there. Under no circumstances are you allowed to throw it here to the tight end. We’re just looking there. You’re a decoy.” And he says it to the tight end: “Tight end, sorry, I’ll get another play for you.” Anyway, we run the play, I drop back and he’s open. And I throw it. And it’s a touchdown. And I’m like, “Oh, crud.” I come running off the sidelines right by Mike and I’m like, “He’s going to rip me.” And he was like, “Great job.” So, he’s human. We’re on the same team. He wants the right thing. Basically, he’s giving you parental instructions: “But obviously I want you to do what the right thing to do is.” He is a pretty wise coach. That’s the reason why I think he’s going to be into the Hall of Fame. He deserves that. But I think you can also coach — and I saw this with Brett, I saw this when I was with Andrew Luck, I saw this myself even. You can coach that “cut it loose” mentality that you’re seeing from Josh Allen, and yet we want to protect your body. We want to protect the football. There’s ways to do it.
And some phrases that I’ve heard from some of the great coaches are things like — this was one from Clyde Christensen, a great quarterback coach to Andrew Luck: “OK, here's our goal for the next month. For four games, for four weeks, let’s see if this can be our goal. We’re going to start with this. Write this on your bathroom mirror and look at it when you brush your teeth: Less adventure on our throwaways.” So to Josh Allen as an example, you’re going to do all this stuff, all this craziness, be “Superman,” put your cape on, but you don’t have to throw the ball away with three guys dragging on you as you’re letting it go. The ball goes four yards. You take another hit in the face, your ankle’s getting twisted. Just throw it away with less adventure. Just a little bit. Give up on the play a little bit, maybe after 3.9 seconds instead of 4.2 seconds. That’s it, if that’s our goal. You can see that you still get to be Superman, you still get to save the day when you play — we’re probably talking about 4 to 6 plays a game that you’re not getting all Gumby’d, playing Twister because you’re just like, “You know what? Let’s live to play another day.” A mindset like that. Or even in the designed run game that I think the Bills are doing such a good job of right now, they’re not just running him to run him. They don’t call in the first quarter: “Let’s call zone read, power left, quarterback right.” They wait and see until they’ve got three quarters in. They fully can say, as an offensive staff, “This is the front we’re getting. This is the coverage. This is how they’re doing it versus this look, this run.” And then they absolutely put the nail in the coffin, put the pedal down, finish, close the door, slam it shut, finish games with Josh Allen as a runner in the second half. But they're not coming out in their first 15 on purpose, putting him in harm's way the same way.
And then they give him the freedom. You’ve seen it. You give him the freedom to sometimes not hand the ball off. There was a game this year where it was like a toss to the right and he saw the front and he saw the defensive lineman who had contain and he was just like, “I’m faster than that guy.” And he literally faked the pitch. The running back was expecting the ball. He didn’t get the ball and he was just like, “Oh, that’s just Josh being Josh. I’m just going to keep on going.” He’s Superman and he just did his own thing. Or you saw the play where the wide receiver has the ball and he’s like, “Oh, there’s Josh. Lateral it. We’re out at recess. And you go score.” There is some freedom. You can let the guy play free and let his teammates feel like he’s Superman, not Clark Kent. But there are some ways to study how do quarterbacks get hurt? When do they get hurt? And how do we protect you and how do we protect the ball? And I think that’s probably the biggest thing is that he has protected the ball much better this year as well.
You can see it. He has that part of his brain where that fourth-and-2 play, Steve Spagnuolo had an incredible call. They were showing man, and then it becomes zone, and there’s that split-second where Josh Allen’s looking at it like, “Oh shit, OK, I’m going to smash all the buttons and take this game over.” And that’s what he does. So he has that in him.
Hasselbeck: One of the great things that quarterback coaches can do… I hear it on TV all the time: “He knows it’s man. He knows it’s zone.” I thought Brett did a great job of this. My second year in Green Bay, Mike McCarthy was the quarterback coach. He was a really good coach. He worked so hard. He had every analytic. He was doing analytics before anybody was doing analytics. He had every stat. And Brett was like, I just remember we’d go through this big stat meeting about blitz and Brett would be like, “So what? OK, great. 67 percent of the time, fine. So what? That doesn’t mean they’re going to do it this time.” Sixty-seven percent, which is a very high number. Anything over 35 percent is in football quarterbacking is like, “Oh man, they’re 35% blitz?! Whoa, antenna up! Red alert, red alert, 35%!” And Brett was just like, “So?”
But I think what ended up happening that year, and what happens with the best quarterback coaches, is they get into this mode of instead of caring exactly what the defense is — is it two-man? Is it two? Is it Cover 1? Is it Cover 3?” You get into this mode of like, “OK, here’s the play call. What would be my problem?” What if it’s man? I don’t care. What if it’s zone? I don’t care. What if it’s a corner blitz? Ooh, that would be a major problem. Or what if it’s a cloud corner? Ooh, that would be a major problem.
So much like a baseball hitter, you’re not up at bat waiting for every pitch that could come. You’re kind of sitting in there and like, “I just hope it’s not that one pitch. If it’s anything besides that one pitch, I’m good.” So just take this mindset of on every single play, what would be the kryptonite here? And it could be for me, the quarterback, but it could also be for our center who’s playing Aaron Donald or JJ Watt. If we have Aaron Donald as a 3-technique on this run, there’s no chance our center’s going to block it. Get out of this play. And so that’s where I think the quarterbacking 101 goes to graduate level, where you’re understanding the problem — not only of you but of everybody else. And that’s where I see some of the guys who are just doing it at a ridiculously high level. To use a couple examples, Josh Allen would be one. Matthew Stafford recently would be another. These guys are doing so much at the line of scrimmage, getting their team into the perfect play. And I think that was one of the sort of the blessings of what I had in Seattle with Mike Holmgren as my head coach. We were getting into the perfect play against the perfect front against the perfect coverage so often because of his game-planning, his playcalling, his simplification. I had coaches after him say, “We’re going to motion the tight end so we know if it’s man or zone on this play.” And he’d be like, “I don’t care if it’s man or zone.” Brett would actually say this a lot as just being funny. He’d be like, “I love that play. It’s good vs. man and zone.” There’s nothing else. Or if he hated a play, that’s probably more how he'd say it. He’d be like, “I don’t really like this play. It’s not good vs. man or zone.”
Who is the MVP of the league? I’m making it seem like it’s a done deal. Is it to you?
Hasselbeck: Everyone’s making it seem like it’s a done deal. I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s a done deal. I think Lamar Jackson is going to have something to say about it. Lamar gets to play Pittsburgh on a Saturday game, national TV. A standalone game. There’s only two games that day. The other one’s Houston-Kansas City. If Mahomes doesn’t play, I doubt people really watch that game the same way they’re going to watch Lamar vs. Russell Wilson. They’re going to watch Baltimore-Pittsburgh. It’s going to be an epic matchup. He could go off. Everyone thinks of the Steelers because they’re leading the division right now. They think like, “Oh, the Steelers are up here and Baltimore is down here. I don’t see it that way. I think Baltimore is a legit force. I think Lamar, he’s going to have three weeks here to show that he’s been ridiculous lately. And I think he’s been ridiculous under the radar. So not to take anything away from Josh, he's probably my favorite quarterback to watch. But I think that there’s more football to be played. And if for whatever reason Josh Allen regresses and throws a couple head-scratcher interceptions in the red zone in this last part of the season, and Lamar does what Lamar has been doing? Throwing more touchdowns than incompletions and then he has a crazy highlight reel run? Yeah, look out. I mean it could be a split vote. They could share it. Lamar could come. The tortoise and the hare. We’ll see. You never know. But it’s definitely fun to talk about. And right now, no doubt, it’s Josh Allen, but it’s not a 15-game season.
Quarterback to quarterback, what do you love most about Lamar Jackson’s game? He is kind of doing it all.
Hasselbeck: I think what I love the most is that, and I don’t understand it. He doesn’t get credit for what he is as a pocket passer, as a full-field pocket passer. A lot of quarterback coaches will cut the field in half and they’ll say, “OK, if it’s zone, play over here. If it’s man, play over here.” So it’s like 1-2 is your progression, 3. Or on this side, 1-2, checkdown three. I don’t really love the paint by numbers. I think it limits what you can be. It’s painting in black and white. Sure, it can be awesome. But it’s limiting. Lamar has a huge portion of his passing game that is a full-field, pure progression passing game. He’ll literally start way to the left and end up way to the right. Or vice versa. Because he’s such an amazing runner, probably the most explosive runner that’s ever played, you don’t give him the credit he deserves for some of that other stuff. So I do love watching that part of his game.
It is fascinating, though. Mike Tomlin’s had his number. I think he’s more terrified of a Joe Burrow than a Lamar Jackson. We’ll see what happens this time around, but he’s had his way with Lamar.
Hasselbeck: Yeah, you’re right. It’s a team sport, it’s not a one-person thing. When Baltimore plays people, they’re usually the more athletic team and the more physical team. They take the fight to you. People are a little intimidated by Lamar as the runner. His speed, athleticism. Now they’ve got Derrick Henry. But Pittsburgh — at least the last time they played — Pittsburgh was more physical. Pittsburgh was more athletic. They’ve got guys that can set an edge. It was a wide receiver in the last game. I think it was maybe a two-point play or a goal-line play. And they tried to run basically Lamar on a quarterback toss sweep. And they had a wide receiver, Baltimore did, had a wide receiver trying to block a linebacker type. And there’s a saying: “No edge, no chance.” If you can’t set the edge as a blocker or as a defender, you have no chance to be successful. And it's really just that physicality that Pittsburgh… they’re not intimidated by it. And there’s an intangible when you play a guy like Lamar Jackson. A lot of teams, most teams, they get intimidated. Pass rushers don’t pass rush. They pass rush, and they’re like: “OK, don’t lose contain.” It’s just different. The Steelers understand Lamar. They just understand it all. And they don’t have big, slow typical defensive end types. Like the Michael Strahan type to use a guy from my generation. He was like the perfect defensive end, but he would struggle if you left him in space with a zone-read quarterback. That wasn’t his game. Even like a DeMarcus Ware, that wasn’t his game. TJ Watt, that style of guy, he’s more linebacker than he is D-End. And so I think it gives you a little bit of an athleticism bump.
I know we keep coming back to football being this human game, especially at the quarterback position. And what do we see Patrick Mahomes do? It doesn't matter if he’s got one good leg, it doesn’t really matter if his receivers are dropping everything. All he does is win games, win Super Bowls. So maybe he should just play and everybody should quit freaking out. But I don’t know if you’ve had high ankle sprains. When he did it two years ago, he had to play with it for 2 ½ games and you had that bye before the Super Bowl. It’s a little different now to hoist another Lombardi at six games. To me, I feel like a healthy Mahomes supercharged for a postseason run is probably more important than locking up the No. 1 seed at Arrowhead because you could have both. Who knows? Maybe Carson Wentz wins you a game or two. He could have a whole month off before they play a playoff game. What do you think he’s going through as a competitor? And you know Andy Reid, what’s his role in this all?
Hasselbeck: A lot of layers to this one. I think that people are learning that an athletic training room can be the difference in a team winning or losing. You go back to that Super Bowl and, look, one of the very first things that Patrick Mahomes said is he was like, “I’d like to thank the athletic trainer. I’d like to thank her because without her I wouldn’t have been out here.” And they have a great athletic training staff in Kansas City. A lot of the people that came from Philly with Andy Reid, it was the first thing he did. He was like, “No, I’m bringing Rick Burkholder. I’m bringing the team. They’re important to winning.” And I think winning organizations understand that there’s other people in the organization that contribute greatly to winning that don’t wear a helmet on game day. And so I think that’s one thing.
The unique thing here is they’ve got a short week. They’ve got that other nationally televised standalone game. So they’ve got a game in six days. But if you look beyond that, they play on Christmas Day. So they play basically two games in five days. So there is something to talk about here with this. My experience though, dealing with Mike Holmgren and injuries that I had or coaches and injuries that I had, and watching in my time in Green Bay watching Andy Reid talk to Brett Favre about injuries that he had. They would usually say something like this, “OK, you want to play.” Because Mahomes is going to want to play. That’s the competitor he is. He wants to send a message to his team like, “Hey, we’re all sucking it up with injuries. I’m with you. I’m one of you. I’m not leading from behind. I’m kind of charging ahead with you.” So I think the coaching talk usually goes like this: “OK, we’ll let you play, but you need to play differently. You need to protect yourself. You need to throw the ball on time.” And the way that I usually talk about it — and this is how I talked about it with Andrew Luck when I was with teammates with him when he was battling injuries: “OK, if you’re going to play in this game, you need to play like you’re 40 years old. You need to not rely on scrambling for 15 yards and juking people out. You literally need to try to play like you’re a pocket passer with no mobility and see if you can slice and dice a defense from the pocket.”
And if you almost approach it like that — like it’s a challenge, see if you can use that superpower in this game to get us a win — I think it works with these thoroughbred type quarterbacks that are not normal. They’re like race horses that need to be trained and thought of differently, spoken to differently, fed differently, all of it. If you say, “OK, this is a foreshadow into the later years of your career. Let’s just see if you can go win us one on one leg slicing and dicing.” There’s no doubt that he’s talented enough to do that.
But there also needs to be a threat and there also needs to be consequences. There aren’t a whole lot of people that could stand up to a Patrick Mahomes. I think Andy Reid certainly can. And the threat is “Alright, if you take unnecessary hits, if you pump fake at any point, or whatever, you’re coming out. You’re going to watch from the sideline with me. You’re going to watch someone else run your offense. You’re going to watch someone else quarterback your team.” And it’s literally parenting. It’s like, “Oh no, I don’t want that to happen.” That’s a little bit of what will actually be said in the quarterback room. And it’ll be a meeting where it’ll be driven by doctors, athletic trainers, the athlete, but then the coach is going to come in and be the principal so to speak.
You’re also dealing with Danielle Hunter, Will Anderson Jr., TJ Watt, Alex Highsmith — a lot of edge rushers.
Hasselbeck: Never, ever, ever was I ever in a medical meeting going into a game about an injury where that conversation happened. That’s not true. One time it did happen. One time a team doctor was dealing with an injury that I had and he said in a meeting with the athletic trainers and the head coach liaison. He was like, “I don’t know if you should play this game because” and then he mentioned a football player on the other team, or a defensive coordinator. “I don’t know if you should play in this game. They got Ray Lewis and Rex Ryan as the D-coordinator.” It was a blow-up. I think it might’ve been the athletic trainer who was kind of like, “Hey, that’s not your job. You worry about the MCL. You tell us about the MCL. We’ll tell you about the football player and the movements. You let the coaches worry about, ‘Are we going to naked bootleg to the right or to the left?’” Everyone stay in their area of expertise in a sense. So I really don't think — contrary to what people might think — I don’t think that comes up in the conversation. I don't think it's like, “Oh, the Steelers blitz a lot and Houston doesn’t.” That’s not something I’ve ever really heard. Or I guess I heard it once, and it didn’t go over well.
But an ankle can get worse. And worse. We did see it two years ago. He reinjured the thing. If they had to play another game or two or three, who the hell knows if he would’ve been able to?
Hasselbeck: And that’s the real question. That’s the expertise that comes in with the medical staff, particularly the doctors where they’ll say, “OK, if he plays on this injury, this type of injury, tell us, doc, is this something that’s just going to be a pain management thing or is this something where he could make the injury worse?” And usually it's been my experience where the doctors will tend to say more, “No, this won’t make the injury worse. This is just a pain management thing.” And me as the athlete, I sort of make this joke. I felt like they said that all the time. I remember I had a broken wrist and they were like, “Oh, he can play. He can’t make it worse. It’s just a pain management thing.” And I was like, “Wow, you guys have a really high tolerance for my pain.” Geesh. And the truth of it is, for me, I felt like you have a broken wrist, this is a 4- to 6-week injury if you let it heal. But if I’m getting it hurt every week, is it still a 4- to 6-week injury? It’s definitely a team effort that way. But I think those conversations might be slightly different than people realize.
And Mahomes. The Chiefs. Their bid for a three-peat. How realistic is it once we get to the dance?
Hasselbeck: It's realistic, but it’s not guaranteed. One of the lessons that I’ve learned in my career is that it really does not matter — besides homefield advantage — it does not matter what your record was during the regular season. And I think that’s why you heard Mike Holmgren talk about it in that Sunday night intro. Once you get in the tournament, anything can happen. We’re all 0-0. In 2010, Pete Carroll came to the Seahawks as head coach. We were 7-9 that year. We won the division, had a lot of adversity, but we won the division. So we make the playoffs and we host a playoff game. We host the defending world champs, the New Orleans Saints. They were really hot at the time. Drew Brees, Sean Payton, all the stars. They had all kinds of weapons and everyone was like, “The Saints shouldn’t have to go out to Seattle to play them. They’re 7-9.” But Pete Carroll did a great job of getting us to believe that it didn’t matter. We were 0-0 and so were they. They were not 12 and whatever. No, doesn’t matter. It’s like a Little Giants speech.
Great pull. One time.
Hasselbeck: Yeah, and that’s legit. That is legit. Take a team like the Cincinnati Bengals late in the year. There’s a playoff team that has to play the Cincinnati Bengals late in the year: Pittsburgh. No one wants to play Cincinnati. Like you had mentioned it earlier. Mike Tomlin’s more afraid of Joe Burrow than he is of Lamar Jackson. Yeah! And he should be. That offense is crazy. There’s an offensive coordinator there named Dan Pitcher of Cincinnati, and I was around him in Indy. D-Coordinators don’t want to go up against that dude. And he’s got Joe Burrow. And JaMarr Chase. And Tee Higgins. Look out, man. That’s a team you don’t want to play. And what’s their record? Their record is so bad, I didn’t even write their record down.
So if you’re going to tell me that a team couldn’t knock off the one seed, even if it is Kansas City. It could happen. It’s not college football, it’s pro football. It’s why they say, ‘any given Sunday.’ But I do believe in Kansas City globally. I think that they’re really special. But has it been their best year? No, it hasn’t. It really hasn’t. So they’ve got to get hot at the right time, just like everybody else.
Love the Dan Pitcher reference, too. We’ve chatted with him several times. The pride of SUNY Cortland. He has done a hell of a job this year. It’s overshadowed by how bad the defense has been. They are humming on offense. It’s going to be tough for them to sneak in.
Hasselbeck: No, they’re not sneaking in. and they're not getting in. … And it’s a week-to-week thing. Two weeks ago, people said “Oh, the Chargers.” Then the Chargers get spanked by Tampa. But what’s interesting about Denver is that they really didn’t play that well offensively, and they still got the win. Like Bo Nix didn’t carry the team. Their defense scored. Special teams was incredible. And then Bo Nix played well enough. So if you’re looking to bet on a team, the teams that have a young developing quarterback who’s improving while the team is still able to win games on the way to developing your quarterback, that’s what’s been so impressive about Sean Payton. A lot of people just like, “Oh, we can’t win this year. We have a young quarterback. We’ve got to rebuild.” Well, no. The Hall of Fame caliber coaches, they find a way to win games as you’re developing.
Is there a young quarterback — maybe it is Bo Nix — is there a quarterback that you find yourself wanting to watch each week that's impressing you?
Hasselbeck: I think Jayden Daniels is really impressive. He’s kind of been under the radar lately because their team hasn’t played quite as good as they did early on. But Jayden’s great. It’s kind of obvious to everybody. He’s breaking records in terms of completion percentage in that Kliff Kingsbury offense and doing a good job running the ball, protecting himself after the rib injury. But a guy that nobody’s talking about, and I actually thought that he probably should have been the first pick overall in the draft is Drake Maye. Either Drake or Jayden, those two guys to me should have been the first pick in the draft. And Drake Maye is on a team that, I mean, they’re on the struggle bus. They’re not doing much of anything well right now.
A first-time head coach. A first-time quarterback who didn’t start the season. They don’t have a lot of weapons. Expectations are stupid high here in New England. But I think Drake Maye is probably the bright spot for that team. And if you want to watch a guy — a buy low, sell high kind of situation — he is that guy. And so much of being a quarterback, yes, it’s like what you do as a player, but I think almost more of it is who you are as a leader and things that come with that. Body language during a game. Who you are at the podium. If you really listen to how people talk at the podium — quarterbacks — they say, “We got to do better.” A lot of ‘em say, “We got to do better. We can’t turn the ball over,” when the quarterback turned the ball over. And then they take the credit like, “Oh, I had a good game today. I was able to.” So it’s that “I” vs. “We” thing. And I think having spent time with a lot of these quarterbacks, Drake is just off the charts at that leadership side of it, which to me matters just as much. Just as much as, “Can you make the throws?” There’s a lot of guys in the NFL who can make the throws. Most of ‘em are backups. It’s the guys who can do it at the moment of truth, do it while injured and have that intangible leadership quality where you’re the guy that everyone wants to go into “battle” with. That’s what the difference is between, again, good versus great.
Because he’s got legitimate excuses all over the place. All over the field. Look at this roster that Bill Belichick left him. Greatest coach ever. Some of those draft selections leave a little bit to be desired, but I haven’t been as locked into Drake Maye’s pressers. That’s interesting that he just knows what to say.
Hasselbeck: What’s fun to watch more than watching a press conference, what’s fun to watch is how they play. The Bills finish up with… because you’re going to want to watch Josh Allen. The Bills finish up with the Patriots twice and the Jets once. And I think that would be an interesting, if you’re going to pick a team to watch the rest of the way, you watch the Bills and you get to watch different styles of quarterback play. But the Patriots will be done once the playoffs come, and then it’ll be your only chance to watch a young playoff quarterback would be a Bo Nix who plays a lot like Drew Brees to me, but probably a better runner. And then you’re going to get to watch Jayden Daniels. And I don't have a good comp for Jayden Daniels. He is a little bit of a unicorn. What he looks like to me is he looks like a quarterback in college playing in the NFL. And it almost never translates where a Heisman Trophy winner plays as well in the NFL as he does in college right away. But for Jayden Daniels, it’s just been simple. It’s almost like the Jordan Love thing early with the Packers. They’re so young they don’t even know what they’re doing. I feel that way about Jayden Daniels. He’s been really impressive.
What’s your advice for Caleb Williams then?
Hasselbeck: I’ve had red flags for the whole, yeah, I think my advice for him is to, you need to really look in the mirror. Everyone’s making excuses for you because of the “wow” plays that you’re capable of. But just even just starting this season — they brought in all this great talent around him offensively. Far more than Justin Fields had. Justin Fields got blamed for everything in Chicago last year. And now on the flip side, you’ve got a different young quarterback who everyone’s making excuses for everything. If I’m Justin Fields, I’m like, “What the heck, man? What’s going on?” But basically he takes all these sacks and everyone’s like, “The O-Line stinks.” Turn on the tape. It’s not the O-Line. Not usually. And then they blame the offensive coordinator. So they got rid of the offensive coordinator and they blame the head coach because the quarterback screwed up the time management thing at the end of that game. So they blame the head coach. So he got fired and now they have a new interim OC and a new interim head coach. And it’s just excuse after excuse. The body language I mentioned earlier that I think is so important, I think he gets a failing grade with body language. I feel bad. The beauty for a young quarterback is if you come into a great organization who understands top to bottom how to train up a quarterback — and there’s teams that know how to do that well — and there are teams who don’t know how to do that well: Jets, Carolina, Chicago. There’s teams that have just been failing at that for years. So that part’s not all on him. But I guess my advice to him would be, “Hey, take a long look in the mirror and don’t listen to everyone else making excuses, and let’s fix what you can fix. And being allergic to throwing the ball away isn’t fixing the problem. Taking more sacks isn’t going to help anybody.” Congratulations. Yes, you’re not throwing interceptions, but you’re also a wait-and-see thrower. You’re waiting to see if people are open instead of cutting it loose and anticipating, helping out the team. Maybe hitting a checkdown when a checkdown is kind of that Mike Holmgren thing. Like second and four is good for the team.
I feel like I’m throwing rocks or being a hater. I’m just sort of saying, if I was in a closed-door meeting with the quarterbacks and I’m coaching the quarterbacks and he’s my quarterback, I’d have to get him to, on a path to success for himself and also for the team and for the guys around him. And it’s going to take hard coaching. Let’s look in the mirror. We can’t worry about other stuff. For me, what translates to the NFL game is consistency in some of this other stuff that helps the people around you more so than the “wow” scramble play.
So, you had those red flags coming in?
Hasselbeck: And honestly, I had some of the same red flags for Drake Maye when he went to New England, because it's not fertile soil for success right now. If you could do what Bo Nix is doing, then go to Denver, a team with a really good defense, a coach who’s been there, done it, trained up a Hall of Fame quarterback, coached under some really amazing head coaches. He’s an icon. That soil’s more fertile for success. But again, you could say to me, “Well, what about Jayden Daniels? How is that working so well?” And I think that’s just why I’m so impressed. But I also think there's something to the college game bleeding into the NFL game. Kliff Kingsbury, learning what he learned as a head coach, taking a year off, coming in and running, kind of like — and I don’t mean this negatively, I mean this complimentary — a college offense for a young quarterback and, boom, we got answers. We’re not trying to prove how smart we are. We’re just trying to prove that we have an answer. Here’s our answer. Do we have 12 answers? No, we have two answers, but we’re getting to the first one in the first half and we’re getting to the second one in the second half and we’re proving that we have an answer. You’re not going to catch us off-guard. And so right or wrong, fair or unfair, the No. 1 pick in the draft at quarterback is going to get compared to the other guys in his draft class that are having success, that are playing well, that are in line for sustained success.
We’re all a lot smarter for listening to you, Matt Hasselbeck, for an hour-plus.
Hasselbeck: I feel bad when I criticize anybody.
Well, hey, it’s not all flowers and puppies and rainbows. Football’s a hard game. Not everybody wins.
Hasselbeck: It’s true. Although we have more ties now, but it’s good to talk to you. It’s almost like a therapy session.
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Full Video:
How the NFL Works, S1 E8: Quarterback Bliss with Matt Hasselbeck
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Surprised there's no other comments. That was a phenomenal post!! Matt's a great interview!! (Great questions too...btw)