Florida State’s streak of first-round quarterbacks is because of Jimbo Fisher
Ponder seemed the unlikeliest to start anything when Fisher arrived in 2007 as offensive coordinator. The depth chart had highly touted prep prospects Drew Weatherford and Xavier Lee at the top. Ponder, a three-star recruit in the middle of his redshirt freshman year, was behind them.
Ponder recalls his first meeting with Fisher in the lunch room at the Florida State facility. It went something like this:
Ponder: Hi, Coach Fisher. I’m Christian Ponder.
Fisher: (Blank stare)
Ponder: I’m a quarterback.
“He obviously knew who Drew and Xavier were, but I don’t think he had any clue that I was a quarterback,” Ponder recalled recently with a laugh. “I told him.”
Once spring practice rolled around a few months later, Fisher knew exactly who Ponder was. On one of the first drills, Ponder made the wrong check. Fisher was in his face yelling immediately.
“It started from the very beginning,” Ponder said. “There was no leeway with him.”
There never has been, and that is part of the reason Fisher has been so good at developing NFL-ready quarterbacks. Fisher puts more pressure on his quarterbacks than anybody else on the roster, barking at them, testing them, pushing them and making them uncomfortable — all on purpose — as a way to make practices harder than the actual games.
There are countless clips showing Fisher in a rage, yelling at his quarterback on the sideline. The most famous, perhaps, happened in the College Football Playoff semifinal against Oregon, when Fisher told Jameis Winston to calm down or head to the bench.
“People ask me all the time, ‘Why do you coach them so hard?'” Fisher said recently. “If they can’t handle me, how are they going to handle 90,000 people when it goes bad and they start booing?”
By the time Fisher became head coach in 2010, Ponder was the senior starter. In 2011, the Minnesota Vikings made Ponder a first-round pick. EJ Manuel followed after him in 2013.
If Winston goes in Round 1 of the NFL draft as expected Thursday in Chicago, Fisher will have produced three first-round NFL quarterbacks over a five-year span — the first time that has happened since the common draft era began in 1967.
Fisher refuses to take credit, but his former quarterbacks cite his approach as a big reason they succeeded. Winston, in an interview before the BCS National Championship against Auburn in 2014, described his reaction when he won the starting quarterback job over Jacob Coker and Clint Trickett.
“Coach Fisher trusted me with his team,” Winston said. “Someone else I look up to, EJ, just had this team and Coach Fisher just gave this prize to me.”
Earning that trust from a man so hard on his players means more than a pat on the back.
When Fisher got into coaching, he knew he would be demanding, because that is how his father, John, was with him. When he made a good play, his father let him know. When he made a bad play, well, his father let him know pretty plainly that he could do better.
“If you were wrong, he told you that you were wrong, and if you didn’t want to hear it his answer was, ‘Go talk to your mama and grandma, they’ll tell you how great you are. If you can’t self-evaluate and be coached and deal with people being critical, then quit playing,'” Fisher recalled.
“My old man always said, ‘I don’t want to hear it, get it done,’ whether it was work on the farm, not just ball. If I said, ‘Dad, I’m too little,’ he’d say, ‘Then figure it out with your head.’ When you’re the leader, they’re looking to you. You have to answer up or you have to have a plan to figure it out.”
Though Fisher speaks with conviction and confidence now, he admits he had no idea whether his sometimes abrasive coaching style would actually work.
Ben Wiggins got to be the test case.
Fisher first took a job as a graduate assistant at Samford, his alma mater, working with the quarterbacks. In 1991, he became offensive coordinator. Wiggins was his quarterback, only a few years younger than Fisher. But Fisher was relentless. Nothing was ever good enough.
“He was always looking at every little detail,” Wiggins recalled. “He was very specific about the mechanics, footwork and ball placement. If it was third-and-5 and you threw a pass behind the receiver, and he had to slow down to catch it instead of throwing it in front of him where he could catch it and run for another 5 yards for a first down — that was a big deal. Taking sacks was a big deal. He had us so prepared mentally that the games were easy, they really were.”
Paramount to his coaching is teaching. He always wants to know why his quarterbacks made the decisions they made. During meetings, Fisher makes his quarterbacks get on the whiteboard and explain more than just the plays they are running. They have to explain the defensive alignment, what the safeties plan to do and who is going to drop where in coverage — just for starters.
While he coached his players hard, Fisher also started to learn he had to be different off the practice field. He goes to great lengths to make sure his players know nothing he says is personal. He tells them, “Between these lines I have to make you somebody you can be, not who you are right now.” Fisher coaches hard, but he loves his players hard too, and that in turn makes his quarterbacks want to play even harder.
“Some people may see him on TV and they may not understand what’s going on. He’s not just fussing,” Wiggins said. “He’s coaching and he’s teaching and correcting. One of the things that stuck with me as I began coaching and teaching was he always wanted to know why. He was trying to peel that onion to get down to the root cause of what made you make that decision so you didn’t make it again.”
Wiggins ended up throwing for over 5,000 yards and 33 touchdowns, helping Samford to the playoffs in 1991 and 1992.
Fisher moved on to Auburn, Cincinnati and LSU before going to Florida State. At each stop, his quarterbacks flourished. But it was at LSU where he really hit his stride in developing NFL-ready quarterbacks. Not only did his style work, but his offenses showed an NFL complexity that prepared his players for the next level.
Winston is set to become the ninth Fisher-coached quarterback to be drafted.
Round 1: April 30, 8 p.m. ET (ESPN)
Rds. 2-3: May 1, 7 p.m. ET (ESPN2)
Rds. 4-7: May 2, noon ET (ESPN)
Where: Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University, Chicago
NFL draft home page
• 2015 NFL draft order
• Mel Kiper Jr.: Mock 5.0
• Todd McShay: Final mock
• Todd McShay’s Top 32 players
• Mel Kiper Jr.’s Big Board
• Top 10 prospects by position
• NFL draft player rankings
Impressive, yes. But critics point to the way his quarterbacks have stumbled in the NFL. JaMarcus Russell, whom he coached at LSU, is considered one of the biggest busts in NFL draft history. Ponder and Manuel have yet to pan out. Though Winston is the most NFL-ready quarterback to play for Fisher, some have drawn unfair comparisons between him and Russell because Fisher coached them both.
When asked to explain where the disconnect has been for his former quarterbacks, Fisher hesitates.
“Until I coach them or see how they’ve been coached, I don’t know that,” Fisher said. “People say to me, ‘Evaluate that quarterback,’ and I say, ‘I can’t. I can tell you if he can throw the ball or he’s athletic, or tough.’ They say, ‘Why not?’ I’m not coaching him. I don’t know what he’s being told. …
“They’ve all had the physical talent, they’ve all had the mental capacity. Those guys say we did more here than some of their NFL teams. Now you have to go up physical levels and different things, but I can’t answer that because I don’t know how they’ve been coached.”
That is the key difference. Quarterbacks in the NFL cannot choose their coaches, and their fate sometimes depends on whether their new teams have the right players around them and the right schemes to help them thrive.
Players signing with Florida State know exactly how they will be coached.
They know, too, there is a good chance they will land in the NFL. Maybe even the first round.