Brian Billick - The Q Factor: The Elusive Search for the Next Great NFL Quarterback

A s we finished the hardcover edition of this book, we offered our answer to the ubiquitous question of the game: the favorite columnist-talk-radio-pundit-blogger-ESPN-Bleacher-Report-SI-barstool-tailgater questionIs the game changing? We said, loud and clear, yes! In lots of ways. Style. Scoring. Philosophy. Innovation. Ideas. Aggressiveness. Even politics and social values. We thought wed answered the question once and for all. But we were wrong. When we wrote that, we had no idea how much more it would change in the following twelve months. The next change, the change we could never have anticipated, had nothing to do with pocket passers vs. mobile QBs, or an evolution to the college game, or taking a knee as a social statement. It was more. Way more and way bigger. Everything changed overnight. COVID-19 altered everything. It upended the world, all continents, all cities, all homes, all businesses, schools, travel, every activity on earth, every aspect of life. And of course, that includes sports. All sports. Everything. Every. Thing.

It seems, more than a year later, we are only just now beginning to see the slow return to relatively normal life.

But when it hit in full force, somehow, amazingly, persistently, sports and other forms of entertainment survived. In particular, in many ways, football even thrived. Fans couldnt fill stadiums, but we could watch on television, on streaming devices, on smartphones; we could all follow on social media; we could call in to talk shows; we could view replays; we could play fantasy football and fans did, in record numbers. Perhaps proving how hungry we were for diversion in the face of upheaval. Football, from backyard games to high school to Division I to the NFL, adapted. Fast. The last normal event on the NFL calendar was the Combine. From then on came masks, sanitizers, and social distancing, canceled college pro days, the first-ever virtual draft, distanced team meetings, altered locker rooms, minimized contact on the practice field, more individual workouts, no in-person pressers, closed facilities, Zoom calls, wrist trackers, daily testing, quarantined players, a canceled preseason, and, to say the least, very fluid rescheduling of games.

Each team adjusted in their own ways, some better than others, some not so good. The Browns played the Jets with six players quarantined, including all of its wide receivers; the Broncos faced the Saints with exactly zero quarterbacks, all four out with COVID, putting a wideout who played QB in college in charge; and the Ravens hit a league high of thirteen players out, plus a coach, resulting in their Steelers Thanksgiving game getting rescheduled from Thursday to Sunday, then Tuesday, then Wednesday (yes, the Browns, Broncos, and Ravens lost those games).

But one team handled the pandemic remarkably wellthe Seattle Seahawks, perhaps a model for teams in other sports, and even for businesses, schools, you name it. How? Pete Carroll, whose philosophy is always compete or, as he says, do things better than they have ever been done before, turned following the protocols into a contest. He deputized Sam Ramsden, their director of player health and performance, to lead the team compliance and internal competition. Each position group worked as a team, measuring their adherence to the guidelines weekly, against the other position groups. Ramsden himself wore a T-shirt that said: Stay Negative or Stay Home. Everyone had N95 masks. Sanitizer was everywhere. The players were equipped with devices that kept tabs on how close players and other personnel were to each other and for what length of timeno less than six feet apart for no more than five to fifteen minutes. And every twelve minutes, throughout the facility, a bell rang signaling time to move on. Food was ordered by app from a delivery company. Travel to and from airports and games, usually in four buses, was spread out to seven. The team tapped nationally recognized health expert Dr. Vin Gupta, who was a regular on the cable news circuit and happened to work nearby at the University of Washington. Gupta hooked them up with a rapid virus testunder an hour. He said he could tell immediately that from Carroll to Ramsden to the whole organization, there were no virus deniers; they embraced the science and every tool to stay ahead of the disease. Since it was a competition, what was the final score? The league encountered more than seven hundred positive tests for COVID. The Seahawks had zero. Pretty good metrics for any game, especially one that serious. And by the way, the wide receivers won the intrateam contest.

Remarkably, despite the pandemic, the NFL completed its season, including playoffs and the Super Bowl. And Super Bowl LV was a world-class matchup. A battle of styles and generations. A showdown between ageless pocket passer Tom Brady and young maestro of mobility Patrick Mahomes. Brady was now a Tampa Bay Buccaneer, for the first time in his career not a New England Patriot, not being coached by the genius of Bill Belichick. Perhaps this would settle the career-long argument: Was the Patriots success due to Brady or Belichick? Mahomes, leading Kansas City to their second straight Super Bowl, was coming off a blazing 14-2 season of scrambling, dodging, ducking, side-arm passing, running, finding a way no matter what. It was to be the classic battle of drop back and execute vs. innovate on the fly. Different styles. Different abilities. Different play calling. And yes, even different generations. The quarterbacks were separated by nearly two decades. But both were ringing endorsements for the Q Factor.