Football became a passion of mine before my mom let me ride my bike to school. It was 1992, and I had recently shunned my dad’s silver and black for a noisy Dallas Cowboys windbreaker that swished obnoxiously while I practiced my Emmitt Smith juke moves on my buddies in two-hand touch. My parents had a rotary phone by their bed, a clock radio next to it, and quarterbacks were expected to stand in the pocket and sling it.
It has been 30 years since those days, but the classic drop-back field general quarterback hasn’t been entirely killed off of the NFL script. Zippy, dual-threat signal-callers are all the rage these days, but the game still demands accurate passes to the correct receiver at the optimal time. The incoming 2022 quarterback class has a lot of question marks around this attribute, but the one prospect who figures to ace that test is Carson Strong.
The imposing quarterback from Vacaville, California, is a throwback to the hulking gunslingers of yesteryear, such as Dan Marino, Drew Bledsoe, and fellow NorCal product Tom Brady. Strong also carries a Marino-esque medical history into the NFL, setting the Mountain West Conference ablaze over the last three seasons on virtually one leg.
