To you, what pops with his game now? When you’re watching Jordan deliver on the field everything you’ve been working on behind the scenes, where has he had his breakthrough?

Calhoun: I think the familiarity with the offense. The confidence that coaches give him that, “Hey, it’s OK. If you make a decision and you see it, we’re going to stand behind you. As long as you can explain why you did it and what you saw, if you’re good with it then we’re good with it.” That confidence right there is giving Jordan what you see on the field. That’s a big part of it.

The incompletions were even more impressive than the completions.

Calhoun: Those were some incredible footballs he threw. Playing quarterback, they either love you or hate you. He had a couple rough throws against San Francisco and that’s stuff that we worked on: “If you’re going to throw the ball outside of the numbers, make sure you miss outside and put your body in the correct position to throw guys open. So, if it’s not on the money, it’s going out of bounds. It’s out of harm’s way of that defender.” I shot him a text after that game and said, “Hey, we have to go back to the fundamentals.” Whether it’s Jordan or any other quarterback I train — during the offseason, during our workouts — we build ourselves a mental checklist of things you need to think about right before you throw. In our sessions, it’s not a high-pressure (situation) with pass rushers running at you and defenses rotating so you can think about those things on your checklist that I want you to execute while you’re dropping, while you’re making that throw. Things that are not muscle memory, you have to think about it in order for your body to do it. That’s the time to do it. That’s when you actually have time to think about it and go, “OK, man. Coach Calhoun wants me to make sure I get my shoulders out in front of this receiver to the sideline to make sure I can throw him open.” So you create that muscle memory during the offseason. And that’s when you see it translate into games. Sometimes, you need a reminder of that. It was good to see him come back that next week and make some really nice throws.

A mental checklist as you step up to the line of scrimmage? That type of thing?

Calhoun: When you’re in the game, your checklist is different: “OK, where are the safeties at? Where are the outside linebackers? Is it an ‘over’ front? Is it an ‘under’ front? Is it a 3-4?” It’s a different checklist in the game vs. when we’re in our sessions. But when we’re in our sessions, we can really focus on our little details. Like, “OK, make sure our shoulders are outside the numbers and really in front,” and I’ve talked to Jordan about, “If you look at the receiver and you throw the ball, by the time the ball gets there, it’s going to be behind him. So, I talked to him about using full-field vision. And one point was if I’m throwing the ball to the sideline — I want to give you this visual — if I’m throwing to my left sideline, I talked to him about, “With my left eye I’m looking to where I want to throw the ball and with my right eye I’m just tracking that receiver into that window.” Because if I turn my head to look at that receiver, by the time I throw the ball and the ball gets there? It’s behind him. So if I just throw the ball to where my left eye’s looking, by the time the ball gets there the whole mesh point with the ball and where the receiver’s going to be, it all matches up. So, we really worked a lot of that. Because if you look at the receiver, your shoulder is turned back to the receiver and it ends up being behind him.

And the other thing — I talked to Coach LaFleur about it at the Combine a year ago — was Jordan’s balance as he’s delivering the football. One of the things we both noticed was when he plants his left foot, his left heel doesn’t come down on the ground. So he’s throwing the ball on the ball of his foot. It’s hard to have balance on your delivery when you’re transferring weight to your front foot if your left foot’s not flat on the ground. That causes balance issues. And if there’s no balance, there’s no accuracy. So my whole thing was always — through this offseason and last year — “Hey, flat left foot. Flat left foot. Flat left foot.”

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