Welcome to Quarterbacking 101. Meet your professor, Phil Earley.

Don’t mind the obscure Monday-Wednesday-Friday-Saturday schedule. It’s still your typical entry-level course. There’s nothing flashy; you just learn the essentials: five-step drops. Quarterback-center exchanges. Footwork.

Here, the professor makes the difference. At times he can become tedious. But Earley won’t let anyone fall asleep. There will be movies. He’ll ask you to draw on the board, maybe even act out a skit or two. It can be a grind, so he’s always trying to motivate you.

Because before anyone is eligible for Earley’s QB 543 class in the fall – Wyoming’s third-down defense – he must pass Earley’s four-week fundamentals seminar in the spring.

Most of his students have received high grades. The names may be obscure – Idaho’s John Welsh and Nevada’s Zack Threadgill are two of his apprentices who rewrote school record books – but success has been consistent for Earley, who was hired as Syracuse’s new quarterbacks coach on Feb. 13.

At his ninth school in 20 years working as either offensive coordinator, quarterbacks coach or both, Earley’s latest project is to solve a position that has been unsettled since Donovan McNabb graduated in 1999 and in disarray after last season. Like all his previous stops, fundamentals will take precedence over everything else.

Though SU head coach Greg Robinson hasn’t named a starting quarterback for the regular season, Perry Patterson is the frontrunner. Last year – his first in the West Coast Offense – Patterson said he was lost at times; he completed less than half his passes and threw six touchdowns and 11 interceptions.

But the style of offense is secondary. It’s Earley’s second year in the West Coast as well – he spent 2005 as an volunteer offensive assistant at Auburn – and the basics are at the heart of any system.

‘People are enamored with the West Coast Offense because they think it’s an offense of X’s and O’s, where the reality is what makes it special is the way it’s taught,’ Auburn offensive coordinator Al Borges said. ‘What Phil brings to the table is the ability to teach all of those details.’

Most coaches ignore them.

Take the dropback. Most teachers, Borges said, don’t specify beyond a five-step drop. But when it comes to Earley, Borges – after apologizing – launched into a brief symposium on plant steps, drop depths and hitch steps.

‘I could go on and on,’ Borges said.

There’s also the snap. It has to be done Earley’s way. He demands the quarterback already be moving backward a split second before the center snaps the ball. He doesn’t want any legs entangled.

His personal favorite is footwork. Earley said a throw comes more from the lower half of the body than the upper half. He said a quarterback’s feet must be precisely trained to eventually go on autopilot for any situation.

‘Right away it became obvious to me he was a guy who would cross all his T’s and dot all his I’s,’ Borges said.

Earley, who called his work thus far in spring football a lesson in Quarterbacking 101, isn’t just offering his course because it’s his first year at Syracuse and the quarterbacks on the roster have a combined seven wins in two seasons. He truly believes those little details make the biggest difference.

That represents a change in philosophy for Patterson and the other SU quarterbacks – juniors Joe Fields and Matt Hale and redshirt freshman Cameron Dantley. At the start of spring practice, Patterson said it would’ve taken several years to learn from former quarterbacks coach Major Applewhite. The former Texas signal-caller gave Patterson too much to learn too quickly.

Patterson’s fundamentals declined in the middle of last season as a result. He failed to hit wide-open receivers on multiple occasions. Earley said he did not maintain the proper passing stance because he was eager to scramble if pressure came.

Earley ensures everything will fall into place if the basics are correct.

‘You can take a good hitter in baseball and he gets in a groove, but all of a sudden he stops hitting for a while,’ Earley said. ‘What’s he doing differently? If you talk to managers and coaches, they all say don’t change. Just keep doing what you’re doing.’

With that approach, lecturing doesn’t work. Earley needs to see and hear from his quarterbacks that his lessons are making sense. So he calls on them even when they aren’t raising their hands. That’s motivation enough for someone to come to a meeting with all the answers.

Welsh, the Idaho quarterback, was one of Earley’s victims. He started the last several games during Earley’s first season as offensive coordinator at Idaho in 1998, leading the Vandals to a Big West title and a win in the Humanitarian Bowl – the team’s best season in school history.

A year later as the established starter in 1999, Welsh was called up to the dry-erase board one day to diagram a play. But Welsh hadn’t done the assigned reading. He stood red in the face in front of his backups because he didn’t know what to write. When Earley left for the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach jobs at Nevada in 2000, Welsh said none of his other quarterbacks coaches would put him on the spot like Earley.

‘I’m standing up there wondering what is going on,’ Welsh said. ‘It woke me up. He’s calling you out in front of your peers. It made me a lot more prepared.’

Then when Welsh was prepared, Earley wasn’t always satisfied. The professor’s style can wear thin at times. There were practices where Welsh was sure he had mastered a particular play when Earley would make him run it again. And again.

‘There were times he’d make me do something more times than I thought I needed it,’ Welsh said. ‘Practice could get boring. I would be thinking, ‘Haven’t we worked on this enough?”

Apparently not. There is no other way for Earley, especially when entering a situation where a lot of teaching is required. Syracuse isn’t his first stop where that is the case.

In 2004, Ohio head coach Brian Knorr – now the defensive backs coach at Air Force – was desperate. He hadn’t won in four years with the Bobcats and decided to revamp the offense from the triple option to a more conventional system – a switch similar to Syracuse’s last season.

Earley accepted the challenge, even though he knew he was walking into a job on a short leash. Ohio had a senior quarterback in Ryan Hawk, but there were too many pieces missing. After a 4-7 season, Knorr and his entire staff were fired.

‘We thought we’d get at least two years when you make a fundamental change like that,’ Knorr said. ‘But hey, a new president came in, and that’s the rest of the story.’

Knorr said Earley wasn’t at fault. Earley realized his strict fundamental approach with a group of players who had been recruited for a different system could be an issue, so he tried other motivational tactics.

In his first meeting with the offense, Earley showed a clip of prisoners in ‘Cool Hand Luke’ to demonstrate what could be accomplished by working together. On Fridays he frequently had his players act out a skit of a particular play. He’d have the room roaring.

‘He’s very creative at ways to motivate players,’ Knorr said. ‘He tailored it to the opponent, to the situation in need. It was very humorous if the team was tight or serious if the team wasn’t focused.’

Syracuse hasn’t been exposed to much of that excitement yet. Quarterbacking 101 was in session for the past four weeks. And that’s a boring class. Patterson, though, already sees a difference in his play.

‘My whole perspective of the offense is different,’ Patterson said. ‘The reads are lot easier. I’m focusing on a couple of things instead of a whole lot of things.’

While Patterson passed Earley’s QB 101 class this spring, he didn’t ace it. Actually, under Earley, he probably never will receive an A. He’s a professor that is never content.

‘I’m pleased with where he is,’ Earley said. ‘But I’m not satisfied with where he is.’

It will take several years to find out if Earley’s demands for clean fundamentals from Patterson and other quarterbacks will translate into a dynamic West Coast Offense.

One thing is for sure. Next spring – regardless of how SU performs this season – Earley is slated to teach QB 101 again. The curriculum will be the same. And so will the professor.

‘I’m not anal, at least I’d like to think I’m not,’ Earley said. ‘You look at my desk and you see I don’t have all my pencils in a row. You know what? You wonder. Everybody’s different. I’ve heard heavily detailed, anal guys are not creative. I don’t know whether that’s true or not.

‘I kind of fall down the middle. I like to be detailed in teaching and game planning. But if I was doing it this way my whole day at home, I think I’d go nuts.’

Published on April 12, 2006 at 12:00 pm