Backup quarterback guru and The Athletic journalist Kalyn Kahler published an article about Josh Dobbs and the cadence backup quarterbacks must adopt as their own. The cadence, the color-number code quarterbacks recite before the play telling the center when to snap the ball, is the first and most important part of any play.
Recreating the starting quarterback’s cadence is the most important job a backup quarterback can do. Backup quarterbacks can match the rhythm of the starting quarterback far more easily than they can match the starters’ talent or brains. The same rhythm is needed to keep the other 11 players on the same beat that they’re used to.
Kevin Stefanski developed a method to help backup quarterbacks parrot the cadence of the starting quarterback during his time in Minnesota. Stefanski has every quarterback mimic the cadence during practice. Stefanski installed recorders in all of the quarterback helmets so the staff could go over each cadence in the meeting room later. This is what Josh Dobbs had to say about the experience last season, via The Athletic.
“They prepare us really well,” he said. “So in the QB meetings, we will listen to Deshaun, myself, Jacoby, go through a cadence, making sure that they sound the same. … In Pittsburgh, we didn’t do that. So at practice, you were behind (the starter) and you were saying the cadence as he went through it, to work on mimicking that.”
While fans thought the Browns’ quarterback carousel would end during the decade, fate has ruled otherwise. Kevin Stefanski has employed seven different quarterbacks as the starter after arriving in 2020. It’s good to know Stefanski keeps the backups ready to play with his innovative coaching methods.
