Quote:
Originally Posted by mdchiefsfan
An interesting tidbit in regards to his footwork, I thought, was in the Gruden's Camp video. He was discussing his throw off his back foot, while running to his left, to the back left of the end zone, and said something along the lines of," That is the Short Stop coming out of me." I found that interesting, and that throw is much like a SS throwing to first after a slow-roller.
Now, I am sure Mahomes isn't the first baseball/football player to play QB, but it may actucally give him so leeway on his footwork in the sense of consistency. If that is the case, the footwork is actually intentional and developed, and doesn't appear to affect his accuracy.
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Russell Wilson and John Elway spring immediately to mind. Then some busts like Drew Henson, Kaepernick, Chad Hutchison and Brandon Weedon.
But most were pitchers. Elway was an OFer, IIRC so he wouldn't have had that flick release that infielders learn. Wilson's the only other infielder I can think of but I'm certain all those premier athletes also played something on their off days growing up. Most of the time your best pitcher will also play some OF or 3b; SS isn't as common.
He's absolutely right, though. I played SS as a kid and to this day I can throw a ball nearly as accurately from damn near underhand as I can straight over the top. And from a bunch of different arm angles. It's just what you get used to because your body can take you in a bunch of different angles and you need to be able to throw quickly from all of them.
So that's a pretty genuine comment, IMO. If a guy's spent a lot of time on the infield, he's gonna have a variable arm. That said, I disagree with the idea that he doesn't need to fix his feet or even some of his release. That kind of stuff is fine as a necessary option, but there's less margin for error on those throws. If your release point is off by much at all, you've gone completely heywire whereas a normal release is usually only off in a single direction.
Mahomes absolutely has to realize that any time he CAN set his feet and fire conventionally, he should. He doesn't seem to understand that right now or at least consistently practice it. He does some things that are just a little lazy and if he does them often enough, that's trouble. He can't just take a sidearm flip if coming over the top with a solid base is available to him. And no, his feet aren't right nearly as often as some are saying - they're really really bad. Like, arguably the worst in the draft bad. He has to fix that and quickly because if your platform isn't sound, you can never be confident where the ball is going, especially under duress.
But that's okay - if the dude has the right footwork already, he'd have gone #1 overall. The warts are why we were able to get him. It's just important that we not ignore them because we want this guy to succeed. The only way he WILL succeed is if the coaching staff fixes those faults.