Mike13
I am a golden god
When McDaniel took over as Miami’s head coach two years later, he’d never considered what it would be like to coach a lefty — but he did know that Tagovailoa’s overall confidence was shot. The quarterback later revealed that during the depth of his struggles over his first two NFL seasons, he used to look at himself in the mirror and ask, “Do I suck?”
So McDaniel put together a reel that spanned hundreds of Tagovailoa’s plays from practices and games, clipping together throws and decisions he believed could help eliminate negative self-talk from his quarterback. “It was in the process of making the tape for Tua, to present to him ‘this isn’t just lip service,’ to present to him why he is extraordinary and what I’m excited about,” McDaniel told The Athletic this spring, that he noticed something. Tagovailoa’s handedness kept tripping him up.
As McDaniel cut together clip after clip, he began to focus on Tagovailoa’s mechanics instead of the result of the throws, and somewhere in the middle of the film he eventually presented to the quarterback, it clicked. It was as if he were watching Tagovailoa through a mirror — he could see him throw the way he could see right-handed quarterbacks throw.
McDaniel began to daydream. If the coach felt his own brain hesitate ever-so-slightly over the left-handed delivery, would defenders feel the same? Could play formations, blocking and route combinations all accentuate a lefty? Was there a way to turn a visual anomaly into a schematic advantage?
Great write up from The Athletic.
Edit: Never mind.