2023 NFL Draft: Heisman Trophy runner-up, TCU QB Max Duggan rebuilds his game ahead of jump to the pros

TCU quarterback and 2022 Heisman Trophy runner-up Max Duggan has achieved plenty of success in his football career by being himself, launching deep balls with his arm and running over defenders with his legs. He showed off an even sharper cannon for a right arm at TCU’s Pro Day on March 30, perfectly placing a throw from his own 20 into wide receiver Quentin Johnston’s arms near the goal line. 

Duggan credited working on altering his throwing mechanics for the first time since becoming a Horned Frog for the sharp, deep-passing display. He already excelled going deep before re-tooling his throwing motion, leading college football with nine touchdown passes of 50 or more yards in 2022. 

“Yeah, it helps me get through to guys like that, like Q [Quentin Johnston], DD [Derius Davis], Taye [Barber] and all those guys,” Duggan said. “But yeah, there’s definitely things that I think I’ve improved on. There’s other things that I need to continue to improve on and there’s things that I’m changing with my movements and mechanics and footwork and all those sorts of things. In my eyes, you want to be a perfectionist and there’s balls I want back. Can’t go back and change it anymore, that’s how it is. Getting over it, improving, and trying to get better [is the goal].

“I’m changing a lot, whether it’s stuff with my footwork mechanics, I think it takes a little bit. I’ve just been doing the same thing for the last four years and prior to that, so I think changing just movements in my body will take a little bit but I think there’s definitely areas that have been improved.”

Duggan partnered up with highly touted quarterback coach Jordan Palmer, a former NFL QB himself for the Cincinnati Bengals and Tennessee Titans who has coached Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Sam Darnold, Trevor Lawrence and Joe Burrow, before taking Duggan under his wing. He’s also been hired by the recently revived XFL to be their director of quarterback development. Palmer began working with Duggan in January, marking the first time Duggan has had a private quarterback coach outside of his team’s staff. In Palmer’s experience, that’s a rarity for a seasoned college passer like Duggan. He and Palmer met when Duggan was a four-star high school recruit at the Elite 11 showcase. 

“Got started in January, so we have been at it a couple of months, about 10 to 12 weeks of real work,” Palmer said. “He’s [Duggan] a great player with a lot of experience and you know, this season was pretty incredible [TCU went 13-2. and was the national runner-up]. The fact that he hadn’t really ever gotten things fine-tuned and worked with anybody before is unique at this time because everybody’s working with somebody. It was really fun to work with him.”

Despite Duggan only connecting with Palmer after TCU’s season ended in the College Football Playoff National Championship — a 65-7 defeat against the defending national champion Georgia Bulldogs — both the student and the teacher feel they’ve made significant progress in just a couple months. 

“I’ve learned a lot, and I have grown a lot,” Duggan said. “I think it’s a big change, whether it’s stuff on the field, whether it’s stuff in the classroom [film study], on the mental side of it. You know, obviously, it can’t be a finished product in two months or three months, whatever it is, so I’m just continuing to still work on it and improve in that way. But there’s been a lot of learning though, since that game.”

Duggan built a highlight reel that TCU fans will rewatch for decades in 2022, but he and Palmer are working to simplify some of his movements, both when passing and taking off to scramble. The goal: for the dual-threat dynamo to be able to continue making the same explosive plays with fewer steps taken. 

“I think just to generalize it, I think it’s just the movement side of the game is the part that very few people are addressing in all of football, college and pro,” Palmer said. “So that’s a big focus of what we did is we move and throw and removing inefficiencies from his game and removing momentum from his game. Getting him to just move and throw with the way we call it as a movement throw with connection. So, it’s new for a lot of guys and with Max because of his athleticism, because of his buy-in, there’s been meaningful change really quickly, and at the same time, it’s early in that process. It’s just going to continue to get better over the next couple of years”

As what Palmer means when he talks movement throws, he’s talking about having the upper and lower body working in symphony in one, fluid and compact motion. 

“It could just be the elimination of unnecessary movements or unnecessary steps,” Palmer explained. “Guys, when they lean to go somewhere and change direction or get out of the pocket, the first thing that goes is their upper body. It goes in the direction where they want to go. So, then they’ve got to add a step or two, just to get going, and then they change direction, and they lean into it, so they have to add a step or two just to change direction. So, we’re trying to remove that from people’s game. Somebody who is athletic as Max, that can make a big difference because if he gets out of a bad situation in the pocket because he’s really efficient, and then he’s able to get on the run, he’s a threat on the run. A lot of really, really explosive athletes, because of all the false steps and because of all their momentum, they limit the opportunities to get out of the pocket and make a play. I’m not a speed coach or anything like that in terms of making guys faster. The NFL game is played basically in a five yard circle [the pocket], and how efficiently you can move and manipulate that circle is going to give you the better opportunity at high-percentage throws.”

The steps Duggan needs to follow in order to continue trending the right direction with his passing refinement is simple, keep putting in the work. That’s not something Palmer is worried about with the Horned Frogs quarterback, given his insatiable love of the game.  

“Yeah, that’s a big thing, just constantly throwing and getting himself in a better position to be able to repeat that same throwing motion over and over again,” Palmer said. “It’s an all encompassing program, though. I mean, he’s learned a lot of football as well, just introducing the NFL stuff. And then just kind of speaking, speaking football more fluently, which is true of anybody who goes through the drafting process because they’re all college football players.”

“I got a chance to see just how intelligent he is from a recall perspective, memorizing things and just finding out what makes sense to him,” Palmer elaborated regarding Duggan’s mental makeup. “If you’ve been around him at all, you know he’s all ball. He doesn’t get fatigued from talking about football for too long or anything like that. I think he’s super intelligent, super interested in learning. And I just think everything that’s gonna happen to him in this next phase of actually getting on a team and going, I think it’s gonna happen really fast for him.”

Fast development for a fast player: Duggan ran a 4.52 40-yard dash at the NFL Scouting Combine, the second-fastest among all quarterbacks, trailing only Florida quarterback Anthony Richardson’s 4.4 40 time. Even though Duggan didn’t think his 40 time changes his draft stock too much in terms of being a Day 3 pick (rounds four-seven), Palmer said the feedback he’s heard from teams around the league on Duggan has improved greatly since the combine. 

“He’s an incredible athlete, obviously tested great in Indy to show how athletic he is and how that matches up with the game tape of him running around making plays,” Palmer said. “But he just has the arrow going up in a big way because he’s got the experience [as a four-year starter]. He’s got the athleticism, but there are elements of his game where it is a little bit more raw in terms of what he was asked to do. So moving forward, I think just from talking to different teams, I think people are really excited about the prospect, the prospect of working with him and getting him in their system.”

Specifically, the intangible component of Duggan’s profile, staying at TCU despite not being named the team’s Week 1 starter to begin the 2022 season after being the starter for his first three seasons resonated with the league’s 32 teams. Arguably almost as much as his clutch play during TCU’s College Football Playoff run. 

“There’s a lot of interest I’d say across the board, got a lot of friends that are coaches or scouts or front office guy, and people I’ve known for a long time, and I think there’s a lot of interest because of the athleticism,” Palmer said. “Because of the way he handled himself in the big moments, when the lights got bright, he plays his best ball. Then, the humility of when he didn’t win the job. A lot of schools called him. He had plenty of opportunities to leave TCU and go be the starter somewhere, and he wanted to stick it out with his boys, stay there and finish what he started. That’s a pretty cool gesture because it’s a life-changing decision, but I think it speaks a lot to just his character. and teams have a lot of respect for that. Especially in a day and age for kids to transfer to create better opportunities for themselves over and over again. So, he got opportunities to go and transfer to other places and he never even returned the calls. Most kids would’ve wanted to hear the offer.”

At his pro day, it became clear that some of the NFL teams that have expressed interest in Duggan are the Los Angeles Chargers, New York Jets, and Dallas Cowboys. Chargers quarterbacks coach Doug Nussmeier attended TCU’s Pro Day and pulled Duggan aside for a chat after his throwing session. All three of these teams have established starters with the Chargers’ Justin Herbert, the Jets expected to acquire Aaron Rodgers, and the Cowboys’ Dak Prescott. Palmer and Duggan have addressed the idea that he’ll be entering the league as a No. 2 quarterback, but Palmer is certain Duggan will be able to perform that role well in Year 1. 

“Every year there’s only about two or three, maybe four guys that are a true, backup quarterback as a rookie, not including the guys that are drafted high and are sitting,” Palmer said. “I think to do that you have to be able to do these three things: you got to be able to be mobile enough to get out of a bad situation. You got to be confident enough where the lights are not too bright, and then you have to be able to understand what we’re trying to do on offense and see the field. So, I think if he gets thrown into a bad situation as a rookie, tough game, tough situation, I think it’d be just fine.”

As for Duggan, he said he just wants “an opportunity to compete.” That opportunity may come with the Cowboys, whose home of AT&T Stadium is just about 25 minutes down the road from TCU. Dallas owner Jerry Jones gushed about Duggan’s performance at the Senior Bowl practices in February.

“He just looked comfortable,” Jones said, via Yahoo Sports. “He looked confident, and he was really throwing the ball around. He was certainly the most impressive quarterback in my mind.”  

For Duggan, staying in TCU’s backyard would also be “special.”

“It would be incredible to go there and learn under Dak [Prescott] on how to be a professional and how to be the quarterback that he is at that level,” Duggan said. “To play for that organization, that franchise would be special.”