QB drills with Coach Tom Herman at Ohio State

I really like the drills shown here by Coach Herman.  A few points of emphasis I would like to make note of while doing individual QB drills :

In all drills, make sure your qb is keeping his eyes down the field and not looking down at his feet.   One of the benefits of this is for the qb to gain confidence in "feeling" his way around the pocket and not having to look where he is moving in the pocket.  I really like how Coach Herman holds up a number for the qb to shout out as he performs the "bag drill" or "shuffle drill", this ensures he is keeping his eyes down field. Another key word here is balance.  During qb drills you always want to focus on making the qb have a nice wide base with his feet and to take short choppy steps with the idea of gaining ground fast but keeping his stride short and without clicking his heels together.  Make sure that he keeps that wide base throughout the entire drill to develop muscle memory.  If you pay close attention to the video, Coach Herman puts a lot of emphasis on keeping a wide base and moving with the inside balls of the feet.  He does a great job of explaining this concept.  Make the quarterback aware that he only needs to move far enough to avoid pressure.  Scrambling does not mean running outside the pocket to make throws, scrambling is constant movement within the pocket in order to find throwing lanes and avoid sacks.  Lastly, I want to emphasize the concept of always providing a competitive environment for your quarterback drills.  Never just simply allow your qb's to go through the drills without some type of competitive idea being involved.  Athletes love to compete, provide them with that opportunity during individual drills and constantly verbalize with them what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong.  I rarely, allow a player to go through a drill without communicating some type of criticism to what they are doing. 

There are numerous individual drills for the qb position.  During my practices, I use a variety of drills, some shown on this videos but most are not.  I will continue to try and provide videos that incorporate a wide variety of qb drills in order to help you have better individual periods during practice.