ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — The future of the Indianapolis Colts takes his shirt off and walks toward a chain-link fence. “Do a few of these?” Anthony Richardson asks. A man standing nearby nods, so Richardson grabs a harness that is connected to the fence by a thick, elastic band. Richardson straps the harness around his waist. The band tightens. Constrained by the contraption, Richardson rotates his hips. “Arghhh,” he grunts. It all looks so unconventional.
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“Should I do more?” Richardson asks after a while.
The man standing nearby shakes his head.
“No, you’re good,” the man says. “But come over here.”
This is all unfolding on a soccer field in northern Florida surrounded by pine trees in the midst of an “excessive heat warning.” Cicadas buzz. Pickleballs dink off paddles on a nearby court. It’s late July, and training camp is on the horizon, so Richardson, selected fourth by the Colts in the 2023 draft, is putting the final touches on his preseason preparation.
He disconnects from the fence and heads over toward a cement wall. The man hands him a mint-green ball that weighs more than a football and has the feel of a lacrosse ball.
“Now, do a few of these,” the man says, raising the ball above his head, moving his body fluidly, then launching it at the wall.
Without hesitation, Richardson mimics the drill. He acts like this entire process is normal — a high-profile quarterback warming up to throw with strategic body movements and custom-tailored weighted-ball exercises — and that’s because he believes. He is convinced that to fulfill his ultimate potential as a quarterback in the National Football League, in order to reach his ceiling, he should be listening to the man who designed these exercises — even though this man didn’t play football past high school.
And Richardson is not alone.
“The first time I met him, I walked away from that conversation thinking, ‘This guy understands it better than anyone right now,’” Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback John Wolford says.
Brock Purdy, who is expected to be the San Francisco 49ers’ starting quarterback this season, adds, “Leaving college and going to the NFL, I needed to develop into a real, true professional quarterback, and those guys (in Florida) did that for me.”
The man they trust —the man standing nearby —is Dr. Tom Gormely, and he is the director of sports performance and head of sports science at Tork Sports Performance. His background is mostly in physical therapy and he has researched how athletes generate force, power and velocity.
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Gormely works in tandem with Will Hewlett, who orchestrates the on-field training. Hewlett did play quarterback in college, but even he is the antithesis of a traditionalist. Before his nearly two decades of experience training quarterbacks, Hewlett grew up in Australia. He entered the QB development space after a random conversation with a work colleague at a Ford dealership.
“The day I said, ‘I think I’m going to train quarterbacks,’ my high school coach said, ‘No offense, Will, but who the hell is Will Hewlett and why the hell would anyone want to train with you?’” Hewlett says.
So, how the hell did we get here? To a place where NFL quarterbacks such as Richardson, Purdy, Wolford and many others are adamant about the benefits of a new approach assembled so far from the football establishment? The answer is both absurdly complex and jarringly simple. It is a decades-long lesson on ego and evolution, technology and change. It is also a tale with vast implications that contextualizes the development of players such as Josh Allen and Jalen Hurts.
And if all of that sounds a bit out there, that’s because so much of this is at the moment — in football, at least.
Rookie quarterback Anthony Richardson is expected to compete for the Colts’ starting job this fall. (Courtesy of Val Voun)
Hewlett grew up in Australia, played quarterback and loved American football. Even as a teen in the 1990s, he buried himself in a library, flipping through books and learning everything he could about the sport.
He studied pictures of quarterbacks, their body positioning, where they held the ball. Ultimately, his obsession spurred a dream: Move to the U.S., learn from the people who knew most about the game and reach the NFL.
The first part of the dream happened. His parents supported his vision, and in high school, he moved across the world. The second part? Well …
“When I moved to the U.S., I felt like I was going to get this injection of knowledge,” Hewlett says. “I was, like, ‘They know how to teach this thing I want to learn about.’ I got here, and it was, like, ‘When am I going to start learning?’”
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Oftentimes, coaches suggested he lift his arm up high and hold it near his ear so that he could quickly throw the ball and loft it over the linemen. Others told him to angle his feet at the target when he finished his throw. They never talked about the hips or the pelvis. The words “rotational velocity” would have sounded like another language.
Once, after a couple of bad throws, one coach told Hewlett to “think harder.”
“It was, like, ‘What? What the f— am I supposed to think about?’” Hewlett says. “It pissed me off. (It’s) the country’s sport, and nobody could tell me why my football wobbled or why I couldn’t hit the target. I didn’t get it.”
Former NFL quarterback J.T. O’Sullivan, the host of “The QB School,” a widely successful YouTube channel that educates the masses on football, confirms that these clichés intended to improve a quarterback’s mechanics were used inside NFL quarterback rooms, too.
“I can remember being in meetings, and coaches saying, ‘Hey, you’ve got to work on throwing to your left,’” O’Sullivan says. “It was, like, ‘All right, but, uh, any guardrails would be helpful.’”
Backup Chicago Bears quarterback Nathan Peterman says current players still talk about the lack of coaching knowledge about throwing and, more specifically, the arm.
“It’s really kind of absurd,” Peterman says. “You think about the NFL being about a business worth billions.”
Even though quarterbacks move differently than other players on the field, Hewlett was tasked with working out alongside linemen in high school, then at Dodge City (Kan.) Community College, the University of Nevada and the University of Dubuque. Injuries kept him from consistent playing time and affected most of his career, he says.
Upon graduation, he came away somewhat bitter. About how little he had learned about playing quarterback, and about the lack of answers from coaches. So he left football and sold cars.
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One day, a colleague asked if he’d train her son to play quarterback. He attended one of the kid’s games to assess his skills. The first lesson lasted an hour, and afterward, Hewlett sat quietly in his car and couldn’t get one thought out of his head: “I don’t know anything about playing quarterback.”
Hewlett called his old high school coach, who first trolled him about the fact that he was training quarterbacks at all. Then he turned him on to a guy named Darin Slack.
Hewlett discovered a DVD series, produced by Slack, on quarterback mechanics. The videos hinted at non-negotiable traits required for a quarterback to throw accurately. The videos also explained why those non-negotiables exist.
Hewlett learned that Slack’s own foray into quarterback coaching mirrored his own. Slack starred at Central Florida from 1984-87 but threw three interceptions and fumbled in the semifinals of the Division II championship and was benched at the start of the third quarter.
“I had a cannon of an arm,” Slack says. “But a cannon is not always an accurate weapon. I wanted to help others to never be in the situation that I was.”
Slack organized a camp in December 1988, and kids flocked to it. “Quarterback training is recession proof,” Slack says. “There will never be a situation where the kid’s father doesn’t believe that his kid has the potential to be a great player.”
Through his own self-discovery, realizing he rarely could answer when kids asked him why he suggested a tweak, Slack did his own research and developed ideas about the importance of the arm slot in relation to throwing efficiently. What he did not know then was that if the body rotated efficiently, the quarterback could find that arm slot more consistently.
Hewlett was fascinated and reached out. Slack invited Hewlett to come and watch one of his camps. The meeting resulted in a partnership, and Hewlett began to travel to Slack’s camps as a coach. At one point, they even collaborated on a book titled “Cracking the Quarterback Code.”
“I met Darin, and it was, like, ‘Oh my gosh,’” Hewlett says. “He has some answers. Finally. That was when I finally found that next wave of passion as a coach. It was like I was getting revenge.”
Darin Slack sits at his kitchen table in a quaint house in an Orlando suburb. Between conversations about the evolution of quarterback development, he points at a gray couch in the living room.
“Right there,” Slack says. “That’s where Will told me he wanted to coach guys at the highest level. He never hid that.”
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Slack’s camps helped Hewlett develop relationships with kids and parents who wanted private training. One of them was a 9-year-old named Jake Haener, whose father paid for him to fly across the country to Tampa to visit Hewlett for one-on-one sessions. One day, while watching his two young kids scurry around the court at a local YMCA, Hewlett received a call from Haener’s father.
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“So, when are you coming to California?” Ryan Haener asked.
“I don’t have any plans,” Hewlett responded.
“No,” Haener said in a different, serious tone. “When are you going to move to California?”
“What?” Hewlett asked incredulously.
“Would you consider moving to California?” Haener asked.
Ryan Haener explained that he would take care of Hewlett and help him establish a facility. Hewlett was floored. He thought about his wife, who had a stable job, and their young kids. Then he considered the amount of QB talent in the Bay Area, where Haener lived. After some 48 hours of discussion with his wife, Hewlett decided to make the move.
They bought a 20,000-foot warehouse and split it between their two businesses. Hewlett’s side of the facility was covered with green turf, and more and more kids were showing up for one-on-one training every day. The younger Haener, who would go on to star at Fresno State and get drafted this past year by the New Orleans Saints, frequented the facility. So did dual-sport baseball and football players Brandon Mcllwain and Morgan Mahalak.
It was then, in the early 2010s, that Hewlett started to wonder: Why did baseball players throw footballs more fluidly? Furthermore, why was he trying to change those fluid passers?
During one session with Mcllwain, Hewlett caught himself. He was trying to help Mcllwain tighten up a portion of his release. He explains it now like he was trying to take a smooth circle and transform it into a jagged octagon.
“I realized, ‘Everyone says when they see this kid throw that it’s the best kid they’ve ever seen throw in person. And I’m trying to change it?’” Hewlett says. “It was like, ‘Stop.’ From then on, I doubled down on the individuality and fluidity that needs to be present in throwers.”
By then, Hewlett had studied well-known former major-leaguer and pitching coach Tom House’s impact on Drew Brees and Tom Brady and watched Patrick Mahomes perfect his off-platform throws with the help of performance coach Bobby Stroupe. And he had changed his mind about Slack’s non-negotiables. Rather than focus on the arm like Slack, Hewlett started to believe that the key to throwing efficiently and accurately was optimizing ground force. Generally speaking, when you push on the ground, the ground then pushes back on you in the opposite direction, which helps your body move.
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Essentially, Hewlett felt the magic in quarterback coaching lay in understanding how each passer’s body moves and helping the quarterback feel those movements in a fluid manner to build subconscious and consistent patterns. He credits Slack for his constant pursuit of trying to find a better way. His perspective has evolved considerably since writing the book with Slack.
“I don’t know if I’d ever write a book on throwing mechanics again,” Hewlett says. “Because I look through it, and it’s, ‘Oh my god, why would I say that? That’s so wrong.’ But again, I give Darin Slack credit. The only reason I’m able to have success is I took the long game because of him.”
Patrick Mahomes of the Chiefs is one of several NFL quarterbacks finding success with nontraditional throwing motions. (Bill Streicher / USA Today)
After a few years in the Bay Area, Hewlett moved to Texas. He continued to amass knowledge, even working with QB Collective, a training ground for young quarterbacks put together by a high-level agent for NFL coaches, Richmond Flowers III. Several years later, with his kids getting older, he and his wife decided to move to Jacksonville, Fla.
At the time, Hewlett’s son, Locklan, was a young quarterback himself. Hewlett wanted to find a strength and conditioning trainer in the area. One of his buddies suggested a place called Tork Sports Performance and a man named Tom Gormely. Hewlett did some research on him, then sent him an email.
Gormely invited him to visit his facility, and Hewlett was immediately taken aback at Gormely’s strategy for helping quarterbacks move more efficiently. Gormely, meanwhile, listened to Hewlett talk about what he looks for in a quarterback’s throwing motion and how he ties his training to what a player has to do on the field in his specific offense. Right then and there, Gormely was convinced.
They could help one another.
Without Nathan Peterman, we might not be here.
In 2019, Peterman suffered a partially torn ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow after taking a hit. His team at the time, the Las Vegas Raiders, cleared him to return to action, but Peterman still felt pain. Because the injury is common in baseball, he sought expertise from a trainer within the sport. A high school teammate who was a minor-league pitcher recommended Gormely.
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Peterman rehabbed inside the warehouse-like facility and constantly wondered: “Why are quarterbacks not taking their arms as seriously as pitchers are?”
“I was just like, ‘We don’t even talk about arm care at all,’” Peterman says. “Seriously. Sometimes teams will count throws (during practice). But then they don’t do anything (with that data).”
At the time, much of Gormely’s training expertise came from baseball. He had graduated from Nova Southeastern (Fla.) with a doctorate in physical therapy, which initially landed him a job treating more than 10 patients a day, many of whom were young athletes. From relationships developed in his day job, Gormely began training multiple baseball pitchers.
By that point, traditional baseball-focused training had been upended by new trends and studies. Driveline Baseball, for example, introduced weighted balls and the idea of biomechanical analysis. Forward-thinking teams like the Los Angeles Dodgers and Tampa Bay Rays followed their lead.
A new process for high-end development was formulated. Essentially, a physical therapist or performance-science staffer would assess the pitcher’s movement inefficiencies. Then, high-level motion-capture technology (which had become widespread years earlier in golf) would provide objective data on a pitcher’s sequencing. Organizations would then funnel that data to staffers who could interpret the information and create exercises for a pitcher to repattern their movements.
“The interpretation is essential,” says Kristen Nicholson, director of the Wake Forest Pitching Lab, which is widely regarded as one of the country’s premier baseball development hubs. “We have this team that includes multiple experts to provide feedback and interpret the data to come up with directives and drills for our pitchers.”
Having worked with multiple major-league pitchers, Gormely understood the process. With his physical therapy background, he also had experience working on athletes’ movement and motor control. Gormely had dabbled with quarterbacks through a connection with Colin Hurley, a two-time high school state championship-winning quarterback in Florida who is now committed to LSU. Hurley’s father, Charlie, had been seeking an individualized approach to quarterback training for his son integrating objective data and scientific principles that applied to Colin’s specific body movement profile. Gormely constructed a plan.
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“Quarterback training used to be one size fits all,” Charlie says. “Now, what we’ve adopted is one size fits none.”
Gormely did similar work with Peterman, who was blown away. Specifically, Gormely mapped out a pre- and post-throw exercise protocol.
“It was like, ‘Holy cow, why have I not done this before?’” Peterman says. “I noticed the difference in the soreness and strength of my arm the next day.”
At times, they argued.
“I have to stay short with my arm,” Peterman would say.
“Why?” Gormely would ask. “That makes no sense if you understand biomechanics.”
That Gormely does understand biomechanics is what allows him to make such an impact.
Once Hewlett and Gormely teamed up, hoping that their two sets of expertise would fuel the overall development package, the floodgates opened. They questioned each other about why they believed what they did about throwing. They collaborated on a developmental process they knew had to be customized.
“That’s what I really got from Will,” Peterman says. “He was, like, ‘We don’t just have to do things because that’s how they’ve always been done.”
Gormely and Hewlett formed a consistent plan of attack. Before any alterations occurred, they would observe a quarterback in a casual on-field throwing session. Then, Gormely would assess the athlete’s anatomy and make note of any limitations. A third step involved 3D motion-capture technology.
Gormely and Hewlett connected with Chris Hess, the owner of Biometrek, a Southern California company that measures human movement through high-end technology. Hess has used his mobile lab and cameras to analyze the throwing motions of Josh Allen, Sam Darnold and others. Hess has also worked with the Philadelphia Eagles and Indianapolis Colts. The Eagles brought Hess out multiple times to verify whether the exercises they had implemented (based on the initial capture) had aided a quarterback’s sequencing.
Once Gormely and Hewlett got the motion-capture data, they assembled a plan. Specific weighted-ball exercises helped repattern the quarterback’s movements. Certain medicine ball tosses in the gym enhanced his rotational bandwidth.
Prior to the 2022 NFL Draft, Gormely and Hewlett explained their process and results to Iowa State quarterback prospect Brock Purdy. Months later, having changed his hip-to-shoulder separation angle and increased his total rotational velocity — “he is like one of the most serious, intentional dudes,” Gormely says — his mechanics had been altered so drastically that at one point, Purdy’s college coach, Matt Campbell, called Hewlett and asked dumbfoundedly, “What did you do? Because we need that with all our quarterbacks.”
Gormely is talking to Richardson about Tom Brady. This is hours after Richardson has finished his throwing, and he’s breathing heavily inside Tork Performance, having just finished tossing medicine balls at a wall.
“Brady, who has a lot of external rotation, lands with his front foot closed,” Gormely says.
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Gormely mimics Brady’s throwing motion and lands with his left foot turned inside.
Richardson observes intently.
“Is he at the same angle if he’s throwing deep, too?” Richardson asks.
Gormely nods.
“You’re changing your shoulder angle and throwing a javelin at that point,” he says, keeping his feet the same but tilting his shoulders upward. “It’s, boom, and you’re just ripping it.”
These conversations are par for the course in modern-day quarterback development. Listen long enough and you’ll hear someone say “hip-shoulder separation,” which is shorthand for how the hips interact with the torso to create a coil-type effect that creates rotational velocity. The complexity of the current state of things raises questions about what’s next.
Rookie quarterback Anthony Richardson observes a throw on video taken by Tom Gormely. (Courtesy of Val Voun)
Some things are obvious. This offseason, for example, one NFL team reached out to Kyle Boddy, the founder of Driveline Baseball. The team invited Boddy to pitch the decision-makers on how he would help their quarterback throw harder. Minutes after his presentation, they said: “OK, we’re in. How much does it cost?” Another NFL team is already thinking about how biomechanical analysis may help to position its pass rushers in spots that are more suitable for their body’s movement profile.
Progress is happening outside the NFL, too. Wolford and Gormely are trying to develop an iPhone application that democratizes biomechanical analysis and schematic evaluation for quarterbacks at all levels. Greg Rose, the owner of the Titleist Performance Institute, is in the process of developing a certification for quarterback coaches built around optimizing ground force and rotational velocity. Dub Maddox, a six-time state championship-winning high school football coach in Oklahoma who, not coincidentally, learned from Darin Slack at the same time as Hewlett, is using virtual reality to increase the number of reps a quarterback can get away from the field.
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“If I could bet on the long-term stock market of QB play,” Wolford says, “I’d be wheeling and dealing trying to invest in that.”
O’Sullivan thinks the trajectory of coaching transcends the NFL space. He recently attended the Elite 11 camp and was blown away by the high school talent.
“There are so many more guys that I would classify as polished,” he says.
One guy who helps polish young quarterbacks is Michael Slack. Michael is Darin’s son. He coaches hundreds of kids a year in Orlando, and his technique involves “putting the emphasis on stability in the body, deceleration and control from the front side.”
Then there are Hewlett and Gormely, who at the moment are standing outside Tork Sports Performance and evaluating a young kid’s video on an iPhone.
While they discuss knee flexion and pectoral stretch, Hewlett’s son, Locklan, steps outside. He is now a high school junior who is committed to Wake Forest, on a path similar in some ways to his father.
Hewlett pauses the video.
“Are you going back home?” he asks his son.
“No,” Locklan says. “I’ve got a training at 2 p.m.”
“Ohhhhhh,” Hewlett says, teasing his son. “So you’re training young quarterbacks now?”
“Yeah,” Locklan says, smirking.
Once Locklan walks off, Hewlett then says softly: “I mean, he’s got a degree in the position already. Might as well put it to use.”
(Top illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photos courtesy of Val Voun and Chris Hess)
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