OXFORD – Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart winced as he scuffled into the locker room at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium last November, his ankle tweaked and an interception that led to a first-quarter Georgia touchdown still fresh in his mind.
As Dart’s ankle was tended to, Ole Miss offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr. contemplated an additional dilemma beyond the loss of his star quarterback:
How do you adjust a carefully curated game plan – one made for the right-handed Dart – when his left-handed backup is forced into action unexpectedly?
With the Rebels’ starting signal-caller sidelined, then-redshirt freshman quarterback Austin Simmons orchestrated a nearly flawless march downfield into the end zone despite just 24 career passing attempts to his name.
Dart would return that evening, but Simmons’ efforts helped the Rebels upset the No. 3-ranked Bulldogs, thrusting him into the national spotlight. But for as easy as Simmons made his 5-of-6 performance look, it required all hands on deck, including on the sideline before the Florida native stepped onto the field.
“Austin’s first play against Georgia was actually a play we had only practiced – it was (usually) a bootleg to the right,” Weis said. “Austin goes in first play, coach Kiffin wanted to give him an easy completion to get him started. So like, on the sideline, we’re coaching it all up. ‘Hey guys, we’re running this play, but we have to flip it … and run it to the left.’”
Just over 9% of the population is left-handed, per Psychology Today. Lefty quarterbacks are an accordingly rare breed – only five of the 131 qualified FBS passers a season ago in total passing yards were lefties. Simmons, now a redshirt sophomore, will be the first lefty to start a game for Ole Miss since Brent Schaeffer started the 2007 Egg Bowl.
The reasons for why lefty quarterbacks are limited at the highest levels of college football varies, but there are inherent scientific reasons as to why it changes the way an offense operates.
The ball veers differently off the hand of a lefty. Routes on the right side of the field are more difficult for lefties to throw and vice versa, though a powerful arm like Simmons’ can erase that. Receivers must track the ball differently off the fingers of a lefty, too.
“The first couple passes I ever … (got) from Austin, I dropped them. … Like, dropped,” Ole Miss junior wide receiver Cayden Lee – who has never dropped a pass in a college game – remembered with a smile. “Because the ball spins completely different.”
And then there’s the strategy part of the equation: How do you create a playbook when your starter is a lefty but all the backups are right-handed? And if your backup is the lefty, how much emphasis do you put on that part of the game plan?
The science of the left-handed quarterback is complex.
“It is definitely a different deal,” Weis said.
The ‘JUG machine’
Weis has seen his share of quarterbacks.
His father, Charlie Sr., was the offensive coordinator of the New England Patriots during the early Tom Brady era and the head coach at Notre Dame during their mid-2000s resurgence. The younger Weis was an offensive assistant under head coach Lane Kiffin when he was the offensive coordinator at Alabama, worked with the Atlanta Falcons and Patriots and has been the offensive coordinator at FAU, USF and Ole Miss.
After a brief moment of introspection, Weis answered confidently when asked about Simmons.
“He’s the strongest one that I’ve been around,” he said. “… Probably Jacob Coker at Alabama, he had a really strong arm. But I mean, probably outside of that, he’s probably got the strongest one that I’ve been around.”
Simmons’ arm talent isn’t a surprise to those familiar with his baseball background. He threw in the mid-90s out of the bullpen as a freshman on the Ole Miss baseball team before hanging up his spikes to focus on football.
That Simmons can flick a football with the speed and precision of which he’s capable is equal parts practice and natural ability. The biomechanics of throwing can be complex and are individualized; no two people throw the same. But the maxims of a powerful arm are much like any envied trait in sports.
“A couple of things to be a successful athlete is you have to have good mechanics, you have good conditioning, and you have to choose the right parents,” Dr. Glenn Fleisig, biomechanics research director at the American Sports Medical Institute, said with a laugh.
No matter how much an average person trains their arm, their threshold is only ever going to be so high. Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen is always going to be able to throw farther and harder than most, even with the same training. There is a scientific reason for this.
Throwing a ball isn’t just about the arm, Fleisig explains. It’s a kinetic chain of motion that starts in the legs and works its way up to the torso and the shoulder. Getting all those pieces moving in sync is the key to a strong throw, although shoulder flexibility is key.
Anyone’s throwing arm – athlete or not – will likely be able to externally rotate (imagine moving the backside of the hand toward the ground) more than the other. Elite throwers are able to externally rotate their arms farther back. A good throw requires both strength and power in the shoulder. Strength, Fleisig says, is the amount of force you can push or pull. Power, meanwhile, is how quickly you can do it.
“A quarterback, or a thrower, needs some fast twitch or explosiveness in their arm. So, that’s part of a ‘fast’ arm, it also means explosive or the ability to accelerate,” Fleisig said. “Then, the other part … you have to have strength in your shoulder, but you also have to have power. But you have to have power and strength in your trunk and in your legs.”
Simmons simply throws a ball in ways you can’t teach.
“The JUG machine out there?” Lee said with a laugh. “It feels like that. … Not a person you want to warm up with.”
A physics lesson
The modern football was designed to be thrown.
Dr. Timothy Gay, author of “Football Physics: The Science of the Game” and co-author of “The Paradox of the Tight Spiral Pass in American Football: A Simple Resolution,” has studied this phenomenon closely over the decades. A longtime Nebraska physics professor and Cornhuskers fan, football has long intrigued Gay. Understanding football’s science provides added appreciation.
“If you’ve listened to a lot of classical music and you understand it, you enjoy the concert more than if this is your first classical music experience,” Gay said. “ … The same is true – I think it’s true – of football.”
A football thrown by a right-handed quarterback naturally veers to the right. A football thrown by a lefty veers left. Pretty simple, right? In the words of one Lee Corso, “Not so fast, my friend!”
To understand this – why a football thrown deep with a perfect spiral at a perfect angle can never go perfectly straight – one needs to understand why a football must spiral in the first place.
When traveling through the air, a football (or anything, for that matter) runs into air molecules, largely nitrogen and oxygen. When a ball hits air molecules, it transfers its energy to those molecules and consequently slows down. That’s known as air drag. This is where the spiral comes in.
Throwing a tight spiral causes the football to rotate on one axis – lengthwise – and allows for the smallest amount of air drag. Think of a poorly thrown football, it’s tumbling over itself on multiple axes and, because of that, has much more air drag. There’s a reason a “duck” doesn’t go as far as a spiral.
“It’s easier to throw a modern football than it is to throw a rugby ball, mostly because you can get it spinning really fast. The reason you want it to spin when you throw it is that that helps it maintain its streamlined attitude,” Gay said. “ … The spinning football allows you to do that, because it maintains its streamlined axis so it moves faster (and) doesn’t slow down as fast.”
Now, about that spin.
When a quarterback releases the football from his hand, the ball is not only going forward; it’s also spinning due to its coming off the fingertips. That in itself creates another phenomenon, Gay said: gyroscopic torque.
Think about spinning a top on a table. When the top is simply placed on the table without being spun, it falls over. But given sufficient rotational speed, the top spins in place with its vertical axis, seemingly defying gravity. Gyroscopic spin allows the top to stay upright, according to Gay, aligned with the force of gravity. When throwing a spiral into the air, the spin allows the ball to keep traveling on its intended path far longer than, say, a duck would, as the spin gives the ball that same “gyroscopic stability” as the top had, Gay said.
A thrown football eventually starts to fall due to gravity. The spinning ball tries to keep traveling along its axis in space aligned with air drag in the same way a top stays spinning aligned with the force of gravity. The ball eventually turns downward, however, due to a combination of air drag and spin, Gay said, and the axis of the ball wants to follow that trajectory. Additionally, the spin of the ball “converts the effect of the (air) drag into a shove of the tip to the left or right” depending on the handedness of the quarterback.
Hence Jaxson Dart’s passes veer right while Simmons’ tilt left.
“It’s all about the direction the ball is spinning as it leaves the quarterback’s hand,” Gay said. “ … The amount of veer depends on how far the ball goes.”
Ole Miss senior wide receiver De’Zhaun Stribling described it simply: If he is running straight down the field on the left sideline, a deep ball thrown by a righty is going to eventually die inside toward the middle of field. A deep ball thrown by Simmons, however, is going to die over the opposite shoulder toward the sideline.
“It’s an adjustment, right?” Stribling said. “ … It’s just little things like that. Kind of seeing the tip of the ball, some throws you can’t really see it. … But ball is ball. See the ball, catch the ball at the end of the day.”
How do lefty physics impact a game?
So, back to that drive Simmons had against Georgia.
Ole Miss’ game plan was designed for Dart. That means throws to the right were preferable to those to the left. Why? Because it’s easier for a righty to throw to his right, as he doesn’t have to throw across his body, Gay said. There are fewer moving parts.
A right-handed quarterback is more likely to roll to the right because of this, and a lefty to the left. Simmons’ first play against Georgia was a play designed to go right and, while he practiced plays to the right as the No. 2 quarterback, that was not a preference. So Weis had to get creative.
A decision must be made, Weis said, when you have a lefty on the roster. Do you make the entire offense learn the left-handed version of the plays – most notably reversing the routes? You have to pick your battles.
“For a right-handed quarterback, you want (him) throwing to the right side of the field because it’s an easier throw to keep his shoulder open. So you’ve got to flip that in your head as a coordinator, and so you kind of have to make a decision: When your starter’s a righty and your backup’s lefty, are you going to mentally tax your players and flip those calls?” Weis said. “ … Or are you going to just leave it as ‘right’ and adjust on the fly?”
Ole Miss opted for the latter, and the results were more than satisfactory – Simmons’ first play, a bootleg pass to the left, was an 11-yard completion to Antwane “Juice” Wells, the first of five completions on the touchdown drive.
With Simmons now the starter, all the quarterbacks on the roster practice running plays to both sides.
Former UCLA quarterback and College Football Hall of Famer Cade McNown told the Daily Journal he felt the unfamiliarity of ball drift and spin from a lefty can present an advantage for an offense. While his Bruins teams focused heavily on running plays in both directions, defenses are generally built – including on the defensive line – to stop righties. That can cause confusion for defenders who aren’t used to seeing a ball move a certain way or a quarterback whose strength is moving to the left.
“The receivers that I threw to got used to it, because we practiced together,” said McNown, a first-round pick by the Chicago Bears in the 1999 NFL Draft. “ … The drift downfield up the right sideline and up the left sideline is just different, right? And so if you’re not used to that, as a cornerback or a safety, they would often misplay on both sides. So that was, I would say, an advantage.”
The ball spins counterclockwise off Simmons’ hand as opposed to clockwise for righties. That’s no small thing, either, even on shorter passes where the ball doesn’t have a chance to veer. Weis can’t help but laugh when remembering Wake Forest sophomore transfer receiver Deuce Alexander taking his first couple passes from Simmons off the face, perhaps unaware that his new quarterback was a lefty.
In order to get more comfortable with the new spin direction, receivers turned to actual JUGS machines.
“We would even switch the JUGS machine to the left,” said senior wide receiver Harrison Wallace III, a first-year transfer from Penn State.
There are also schematic differences along the offensive line when your starter is left-handed, Weis said. Typically, your left tackle is protecting the quarterback’s blindside and additional blocking from running backs will often be sent in that direction. There’s a reason left tackles in the NFL are paid so handsomely. With a left-handed quarterback, it’s the right tackle protecting the blindside.
Naturally, not everyone opts to adjust in that scenario.
“My freshman year at UCLA, I came in and the left tackle was (NFL Hall of Famer) Jonathan Ogden. And they’re not going to take Jonathan Ogden and move him to right tackle to be my blindside,” McNown said with a chuckle. “They’re like, ‘No, no, he’s going to be the blindside for whoever else he’s going to be playing with in the NFL, so that left tackle position is what he’s going to focus on.’”
Footwork for a lefty changes, as well. On quick passes in the shotgun, Weis notes the footwork is known as “left right.” Meaning, for most of the quarterbacks on the roster, the first step is a small “punch-step” back with the left foot, the right foot hits the ground and the ball is on its way. That flips for a lefty, where the punch-step is taken with the right foot and the left foot is in back.
Some of the best advice Weis got when it comes to teaching left-handed quarterbacks was to stand across from them rather than beside them. That way it’s a mirror image and looks the same.
“A lot of times I’ll still say ‘left right’ but for Austin, he’s got to know that means ‘right left,” Weis said.
Where have the lefty QBs gone?
Weis couldn’t help but have flashbacks of recruiting Tua Tagovailoa when he witnessed Simmons throw for the first time.
Tagovailoa, the current Miami Dolphins’ starter and former Alabama star, was a member of the Crimson Tide’s 2017 signing class. Weis was an Alabama analyst during those recruiting efforts and traveled to Hawaii to watch Tagovailoa throw. Simmons’ effortless arm talent and, of course, left-handedness, caused “memories of that to come back.”
Weis will be the first to tell you that a lefty throwing looks “unnatural” to the untrained eye. Even McNown used to think the throwing motion of a left-handed quarterback looked weird.
But does a lefty quarterback actually throw differently? Is the arm angle or windup different? Other than the ball rotating the opposite way, no, Fleisig said. The general motion, windups and throwing slots are the same on both sides – usually from a three-quarter platform. It just looks different because it’s uncommon.
“I remember watching Steve Young play when I was much younger, and following (Joe) Montana (who was a righty). And it looked like he just threw it differently, like it was just a different throw. Until I remember one day catching a game in a reflection and going, ‘Gosh, who’s that?’ And it was Steve Young just throwing righty in my view,” McNown said. “And it looked perfect as a righty, because you’re just used to that. … I would encourage to go try to watch Tom Brady in the mirror and watch him throw as a lefty and watch how weird it looks.”
Sports are inherently created for righties. Still, 25% of MLB pitchers are lefties, according to the Athletic. Why isn’t the number of quarterbacks similarly high and, in the case of recent college football, significantly lower than the population average? Five of 131 qualified quarterbacks is less than 4%.
There are always going to be more right-handed throwers than left, which will leave lefties at a numbers disadvantage. In baseball there are advantages to rostering lefties, Fleisig said. Lefty-on-lefty matchups are a key component to in-game strategy, as is having a lefty to help prevent runners on first base from stealing. Those advantages don’t exist in football and, if anything, a lefty complicates things. Even Weis concedes if two quarterbacks were on equal footing in recruiting, a program might opt for the righty because it’s “more natural.”
“I don’t see that for football,” Fleisig said. “I don’t see a team saying, or a league saying, ‘I want 25% of the quarterbacks I get to be lefty.,’”
But sometimes you find a quarterback worth changing things for. A golden arm solves all.
Ole Miss seemingly has that in Simmons.
“I think Austin was just so talented coming out of high school,” Weis said. “It was just such a no-brainer.”
