When Mike McCarthy began M2 Quarterback Academy a bit over 5 years in the past, he had a small, however loyal, shopper base of 15-20 gamers who needed to get higher.
Now? Those gamers nonetheless wish to get higher, however McCarthy is working with a means greater pool of sign callers.
“This year we worked with over 250 kids from all different states, all throughout New England and outside of New England,” McCarthy stated.
But pure numbers don’t do justice for simply how deep McCarthy’s footprint is right here. If you’re speaking about quarterbacks in Massachusetts, the variety of scholarship presents has exploded in recent times, and McCarthy has performed an enormous function in that. Actually, it may be more durable to search out quarterbacks who haven’t labored with McCarthy in recent times.
“My passion is seeing these guys develop, and seeing these guys grow, and then getting an opportunity to play at the next level,” McCarthy stated.
He’s succeeding in that. McCarthy hails from Martha’s Vineyard, the place he was on a group that made the Super Bowl. He briefly stopped at Merrimack earlier than going to Bridgewater State, the place he later coached. He finally went with quarterback coaching full time, and began M2.
More and extra, you started to see McCarthy’s movies pop up with gamers throwing. Then, when COVID struck, McCarthy’s providers grew to become important to native quarterbacks.
“Marketing thing kind of happened naturally,” McCarthy stated. “With COVID, it was a necessity. That’s when things started to pick up for us, during that COVID area, because a lot of kids were around, and they were hungry, and they couldn’t play football. So we were able to still get on the field and train, do it the right way, do it safe. But the marketing piece was so important at that time, because that’s all that college coaches had to evaluate.”
More and extra children needed to be part of it. And they started going to McCarthy with the blessings of their highschool coaches. Then faculty gamers and even execs — like Brian Hoyer — started to participate.
The complete factor snowballed, and the athletes swear by McCarthy’s tutelage.
“It just happened naturally,” McCarthy stated. “We’ve just been going and going since we started. It’s continued to grow. I said to the kids, and I try to live by this motto, ‘Stay in your three-foot world, what’s right in front of you.’ We just focus on today. Focus on what we did yesterday, how we can improve on it. Focus on how we can do better tomorrow. If we just stick with that motto and do things the right way, it’s elevated through that.”
McCarthy is at all times attempting to enhance his craft. He spends numerous hours researching, choosing the brains of different quarterback coaches, and discussing strategies on podcasts.
The drills McCarthy makes use of will be modern, attempting to finest simulate what gamers see in a sport.
“Drills that are game-like experience,” McCarthy stated. “The ultimate is 11-on-11. You can’t replicate that through quarterback drills and quarterback training, but what you can do is create reaction stimulus where these guys have layered decision-making that they need to make in a drill. Whether it’s different movements, different pressures, different distractions, we try to layer our drills to get them in scenarios where they’re comfortable moving inside the pocket, outside the pocket. Making different reads, getting their eyes and feet in the right place.”
And even with a a lot larger group of gamers to work with, McCarthy takes delight in fostering the bond between them.
“I think it’s the community (that is special),” McCarthy stated. “The neighborhood of quarterbacks that now we have and the coaches that now we have round. Our teaching workers does a very good job of relationship constructing, and exhibiting that we actually care about these children and their growth. The camaraderie that comes with working in a small group setting, these guys are all high-level quarterbacks, and so they’re competing in opposition to one another for scholarships, however they’re genuinely blissful when one has success. I believe it’s the household ambiance we’ve created and the fellows I’ve surrounded myself with.
“I don’t really credit myself. I credit New England and the kids’ hunger to succeed. Really, what we try to do is give them a blueprint: ‘If you want to have success, you have to do A, B, C, and D.’ You have to do it consistently, and you have to be motivated by it. Quarterback is the hardest position in all of sports, but it’s also the most rewarding. It’s more of a lifestyle than a position, and you need to live it year round.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com