Former NFL head coach and current football analyst Jon Gruden is, allegedly, a quarterback guru, working with young signal-callers through various camps and doing that whole Gruden QB Camp thing before each of the past several NFL drafts.
“@_jacobfischer: Great to see an old friend. @3rd_Goal pic.twitter.com/lgCuCB6WKj” Good seeing you Jake! Always great training at Fischer Sports
— Brady Quinn (@Brady_Quinn) March 23, 2015
And, back in 2007 when then Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn was a projected first-rounder, Gruden had some choice words for the jacked up passer—stop being so fucking strong.
Here’s what Quinn said while recounting the story on The Dan Patrick Show the other day:
“We were sitting in Charlie Weis’ office, and he’s going through and he put up a picture of me from the combine and obviously, my dad was a Marine, right, so he had me working out at a young age,” Quinn said. “So, yeah, I liked to work out. And I worked hard. So I think it was part genetics and part — the fact I ate a pretty decent diet. So I tend to look a little bit muscle-bound in my photo. And he’s kind of looking at me like, ‘What are you trying to do here, man?”
“‘I don’t want my quarterbacks to look like this!'” Quinn recalled. “Then he flipped to a picture of JaMarcus Russell from the combine and told me, ‘I don’t want you to look like this either.'”
In order to show Quinn what he wanted a quarterback to look like, Gruden showed him a photo of the guy he’d replace in Cleveland: Charlie Frye.
“Ironically enough, he flipped to a picture of Charlie Frye, who at the time was a quarterback for the Cleveland Browns,” Quinn said. “And [Gruden] said ‘This is what a quarterback is supposed to look like. You know, a guy you see every day, you’d like to go out and have a beer with. You need to look more like this guy.'”
Quinn was selected by the Browns with the No. 22 overall pick that year, ultimately supplanting Charlie Frye as the team’s starter—but, really, it didn’t matter because both guys sucked anyway.
Still, the fact that Gruden would rather go have a beer with his starting quarterback than have the guy be ripped is one of the best scouting report comments I’ve ever heard in my life.