Although a lot of Browns fans are excited by the possibility that Colt McCoy could finally be The Guy,a lot of analysts have agreed that there’s a dark shadow hovering over him. People love his leadership. They love his work ethic. They love his intelligence and the way he performed under pressure. But from Tony Grossi onward, the word is that McCoy’s arm strength is “a concern” moving forward.
This notion irritates the hell out of me. Not because I’m blindly onboard with Colt McCoy, but because one of my pet peeves in sports is the tendency for people to believe that as soon as an athlete begins his second year, his strengths and weaknesses are frozen in place. He will never become significantly better at anything than what he already is. It’s as if a timer gets started on the day the athlete is drafted, and as soon as it goes off a couple of years later, the cement has set.
I’ll admit that by and large, huge improvements are not the norm. (Holland, feel free to jump in and drop some knowledge on the remarkable year-to-year consistency in NBA players’ stats.) However, if you’re looking at the right types of athletes, you can find plenty of examples of major strides being made.
For instance, let’s switch sports briefly. Steve Nash’s FT% for 2 of his first 3 years in the NBA was ~82.5%. In year 4, he improved to 88.2% and has never dropped below that rate in the succeeding 11 years. In fact, he’s shot 90% or better in 8 of those 11 years.
Returning to the NFL, Drew Brees showed similarly significant statistical improvement a few years into his professional career. In his first three seasons in the league, Brees’ completion percentages were 55.6%, 60.8%, and 57.6% respectively. In his fourth year, his completion percentage jumped to 65.5%. From year 4 to the present, his average annual completion percentage is 66.5%, and his worst year in that span is a still-impressive 64.3%.
What do these two athletes share in common? They were both undersized. Neither was born with the type of overwhelming athleticism that you’d see in, say, LeBron or Mike Vick. And both are renowned for their incredible hard work and dedication to the game.
All of these characteristics are (supposedly) true of Colt McCoy as well.
However, people may look at FT% in basketball and completion % in the NFL and say that those are somehow different than arm strength. They’re about skill and precision, not brute force. Learned, not innate qualities.
Somehow, arm strength is just regarded as being different.
But this past Monday, NFL correspondent Michael Lombardi wrote a column praising Aaron Rodgers. This, in itself, is not special, as the sports media has now universally agreed that Rodgers is The Next Great Quarterback. Even casual NFL fans have elevated him to elite status. In fact, I’m fairly certain that there are babies all over Wisconsin who have delayed trying to crawl so that they can learn to do Rodgers’s “championship belt” gesture instead.
What makes Lombardi’s column worth mentioning in this context is the following passage:
The one noticeable area of improvement from his time in college to now is his arm strength. He never displayed this type of rocket or the ability to throw the ball from every angle. He had a good arm, now he has a powerful arm. Part of the reason for the increased velocity is that in college he…appeared as if the weight room was for linemen, not quarterbacks. Now he looks like he enjoys the weight room and has made his meek body into one that can take a hit and drive the football.
This officially marks the first time that I have ever seen a respectable NFL analyst make the argument that a quarterback’s arm strength can be significantly improved once he reaches the pro ranks. In other words, thanks to Lombardi, I can now point to a highly regarded expert who shares my opinion that this arm strength conundrum is garbage.
Does this mean that I believe a 90 lb chess champ could transform himself into a guy who can throw a football through a bank vault the way Rodgers can? Not necessarily, no. I think there’s some level of proficiency in a specialized field like this that can’t be acquired artificially. But I do believe that it means a pro athlete can go from being decent at something to being very good to great at that same thing—provided he really, truly goes after it.
Clearly, McCoy has some arm strength already. He wouldn’t have been a 4 year starter at Texas and a third round pick in the NFL (Holmgren’s quarterback-induced hard-on aside) if he didn’t. The question becomes, will he have the dedication and work ethic to make the same types of serious improvements that players like Nash, Brees, and Rodgers have made? If so, the Browns may truly have a solution at the QB spot. If not, then it’s back to the drawing board again.
But for now, take some comfort in the fact that Aaron Rodgers has shown that the arm strength issue is not, in fact, genetic-or-bust.
-T
