The College Football Hall of Famer runs the Jim Ballard Quarterback Academy
On a recent Sunday afternoon, as a group of his players took a water break at midfield at Northwest’s Jim Schalmo Field, the founder of the Jim Ballard Quarterback Academy walked toward the sideline, spotted a few fathers and started telling a story about when he was in camp with the Miami Dolphins in the 1990s.
The Dolphins, you may have heard, had a pretty good quarterback at the time named Dan Marino, who had one of the quickest releases in NFL history.
Some men covet Porsches, others yachts.
Ballard wanted Marino’s arm.
“I’m watching Marino and I’m thinking, ‘Maybe I need to quicken up my release,’” said Ballard, a former Mount Union quarterback who is now in the College Football Hall of Fame. “So I started trying to snap the ball out quicker.”
As he mimicked flicking the ball, he added, “Horrible idea. It was not a good thing for me. I started to short-arm the ball and spray it all over.”
Oh, and he didn’t make the team.
“I went back to Mount to coach (soon afterward) and I was on the scout team for Coach (Larry) Kehres, who was like, ‘What are you doing? Your delivery is completely wrong,’” Ballard said. “When I told him what I was trying to do, he said, ‘Just do you.’”
Ballard can laugh about it now. He’s spent the better part of his adult life training quarterbacks, fixing everything from footwork to elbow slots to shoulder rotation to confidence. And he's learned two things: He can’t make you an NFL quarterback — only God can do that — but he can make you better.
“If you show up, you’re gonna get better,” he tells his group at the end of the Sunday session. “I won’t let you not get better.”
Busy man
Ballard started offering private lessons in 2007, just a few years after his professional football career ended with the Indiana Firebirds of the Arena Football League. About five years ago, he expanded to group training, mainly because he was running out of hours.
“It was just one kid after another after another,” Ballard said, praising Northwest athletic director Jason Hathaway for allowing him to use the school's stadium each week. “I wanted to give what I was doing a different dynamic.”
He now draws quarterbacks from all over northeast Ohio — a recent session had two quarterbacks from Walsh (former Mount Union and St. Vincent-St. Mary QB Dom Davis and former Mentor QB Tadas Tatarunas), a quarterback from Malone (Jaret Skaggs of Coventry), the reigning Mr. Football winner (Wadsworth’s Joey Baughman) as well as middle schoolers and high schoolers from as far north as Chardon to as far south as Dover. But he also has a core group from Stark County, including Jackson’s Jaret Pallotta (who is headed to UMass), Louisville’s Brody Hahn (who started as a true freshman at Muskingum last fall) and former Hoover QB Austin Appleby, who played at Purdue and Florida and was in training camp with the Dallas Cowboys last fall.
“Each kid is different,” Ballard said. “Some are a lot more polished and have less to correct. Some kids need to get better at a lot of things. I can’t fix it just seeing them once a week. At the end of the day, they have to take what they’re learning and work on it.”
Some problems are easier to fix than others. A quarterback might get lazy with his mechanics and start dropping his elbow. Or take too long to open his shoulder on a rollout throw. Or over-stride before a pass. All fixable.
But throwing motions? Those are tough.
“Some kids drop the ball down to their hip, then bring it back up to throw,” Ballard said. “You have to create whole new muscle memory. (Tim) Tebow never got that fixed and in the pros, it’s a real issue. He was taking too long to get the ball out. The higher the level, the less room for error.
“I’ve got some kids who short-arm a lot and throw like a catcher. I can’t really fix that — it’s REALLY hard to fix — so I just try to maximize their fundamentals from that standpoint.”
Ballard’s biggest emphasis is footwork, believing inaccurate throws start at the toes. He’ll often have his players throw in sand pits, believing if they can manage their footwork in the sand, they'll have fewer problems on the turf.
“You can have a great arm, a cannon, but if you can’t get your feet in position on your throws, you’re going to be very inaccurate,” he said. “Jay Cutler’s footwork was not very good and he was very, very inconsistent. Tom Brady doesn’t have a cannon, but he’s got great footwork and fundamentals when he throws. All great quarterbacks have great feet — Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, Peyton Manning, Ben Roethlisberger …”
Keeping it loose
A few days before a tryout with the Los Angeles Rams, Appleby was back in town to work with Ballard, who has been his personal coach since he was a junior at Hoover High School. These days, every big-time quarterback has a personal coach, just as every big-time golfer has a swing coach.
In golf, it doesn’t take long to get off plane. Pretty soon, your swing is off.
“It’s the same thing for quarterbacks,” Ballard said. “It starts so subtle and it doesn’t look like a big deal until a guy like me looks at it and says, ‘What happened?’”
Although he was a Ph.D candidate in a group of undergrads, Appleby was there to get better, not get his ego stroked. Ballard has the coaching chops — and the pro football background — to command everyone’s respect, but he keeps things simple and loose. After Ballard corrected him on one throw, Appleby laughed and said, “You’re like the devil on my shoulder.”
“Like in ‘Animal House?’” Ballard said.
Then, after showing good athleticism on a rollout, Appleby referenced the 4.81 40-yard dash he ran at Florida’s Pro Day last year and said, “Never again. The next time it was a 4.9.”
“I had a 4.97 at the Combine,” said Ballard, who then referenced “Caddyshack” by adding, “Thank you very little.”
Toward the end of the 2 ½-hour workout, Appleby shifted to the other side, lining up as a defensive back to help the receivers learn to handle press coverage.
“Club him,” Appleby tells one receiver, showing him how to use his forearm to swat away the defender’s hands. “His arm should be black and blue because you’ve been clubbing him. That’s how the game changes when you move up. It’s a fight (at the line).”
Sure enough, on the next rep, the receiver fought him off and caught the pass in the corner of the end zone.
"I love coming back here to work with these guys and try to pay it forward to them, to teach them anything I can," Appleby said afterward.
As Ballard added, “When a guy like Austin comes in, everyone’s game immediately elevates.”
Little things matter
Dom Davis has been working with Ballard since he was a freshman at St. Vincent-St. Mary. At that point, he was just an athlete playing quarterback.
“I wanted to be a quarterback who was an athlete,” Davis said. “He’s really good with mechanics and footwork and you get a lot of reps, so that helps a lot. He’s really simple and to the point and it’s really easy to understand how he explains things. He’ll do film sessions with guys in high school and even in college, to let you know what you’re doing wrong, what you missed and what to prepare for, so I think it’s really helpful.”
Davis ended up starting his final two years for the Irish, then threw for more than 2,000 yards as a true freshman in 2016, leading the Purple Raiders to the Division III national semifinals. But after seeing action in just two games in 2017, he opted to transfer to Walsh, where he will compete with Tatarunas for playing time.
“I want to earn the starting job, but he’s going to be my teammate and you want everyone to be really good,” Davis said. “We’re trying to develop this program into something special. I’ll push him and he’ll push me.”
For Tatarunas, that’s part of the fun. He can learn just as much watching others as he can from Ballard, especially during the offseason.
“It’s hard to fix things in season,” he said. “Different coaches are telling you different things and you don’t want to change much. If it’s not broke, why fix it? But the offseason is definitely the perfect time to fix little deficiencies.”
Which begs the question — what if Ballard gets a quarterback with a lot of deficiencies?
What if the kid stinks?
“I fix him,” he said.
Case in point: Ballard recently coached a player from Geauga County who couldn't hit the broad side of an Amish buggy.
"He ended up starting two years and in the last game of his senior year, he set the school record with six touchdowns in one game," Ballard said.
That, Ballard said, is the second-best part of his job — seeing players get better and more confident.
“I’ve literally watched kids grow up on the football field,” he said.
So, what’s the best part?
“There's no politics," he said. "I can keep it loose with the dads and I don't have to worry about who's playing or any of that.
"I can just coach."
To learn more, visit app.getupperhand.com and click on the Ballard Quarterback Academy icon.
Reach Joe at 330-580-8573 or
joe.scalzo@cantonrep.com
On Twitter: @jscalzoREP