What does it take to be an elite college football player? Jayden Daniels QB coach explains

The quarterback position is perhaps the toughest to evaluate in all of sports. When NFL executives and college coaches try to select their quarterback of the future, it often feels like throwing darts at a board.

But for Ryan Porter, the answer is straightforward.

“If you’re a first-round draft pick, or a five-star/four-star quarterback, I should be able to turn on the film and know you’re the reason your team is in the game every single time,” Porter said. “You’re never the reason your team is not in the game or lost the game. It’s that simple.”

Porter, the head coach, offensive coordinator and quarterback coach of CA Power — a non-profit organization that coaches 7-on-7 and 5-on-5 teams — has taught highly regarded players such as Jayden Daniels, Nico Iamaleava and Jaden Rashada how to play the quarterback position.

While there isn’t one trait that separates elite quarterbacks in the college and professional ranks, Porter relayed that players must have a love for training if they want to be competitive at the higher levels.

“The one common thing that I see [from elite quarterbacks] is they never turn down an opportunity to get better or train right,” Porter said. “For example if they’re scheduled to have a session with me at 10 a.m. on a Monday and they can’t make that session for whatever reason, they’re scheduling a session at 8 p.m. on that Monday. They will not go that day without getting that work in.”

A difficulty that arises in developing quarterbacks is finding a way to adjust their mechanics while ensuring they still feel comfortable. Porter resolves this issue by primarily focusing on footwork rather than changing the throw release of his client.

“The minute I make throwing a football an unnatural thing for them, I fail them as a coach,” Porter said. “I go back to pitchers in baseball or boxers. Nobody throws a punch in the exact same way. Baseball pitchers don’t all have the same release.”

“Your eyes control your arm, [and] your feet control your arm. So what your feet do your arm does,” Porter said. “Going down to the youth level everyone wants to throw everything off schedule. I think where I differ is that I’m on repeat with the basic fundamentals. We’re creating a foundation from the ground up: it’s just footwork, footwork, footwork. I believe that if you get your feet right, it polishes what God intended your natural release to be.”

Similar to quarterback, offensive line is another position that requires years of skill development and training to excel. CA Power’s offensive line coach Ray McNeil — a former offensive lineman at Fort Valley State in Georgia — has taught some of the nation’s most highly-regarded prospects how to master and perfect their craft.

McNeil emphasized the importance of film study, noting that many coaches don’t teach their players how to analyze their tape.

“I teach them how to watch film,” McNeil said. “We have a checklist of things we look for in a play, including tendencies and things of that nature. What I tend to do during game week, when I’m training kids during the season, is that I’ll give them a blank scouting report and have them fill it out first. Then we review it with the notes I’ve taken and we go from there.”

Particularly for lineman, positional fit can be significant in regards to the number of offers a player receives. Take 2025 Oregon offensive tackle commit Ziyare Addison as an example. Addison was originally a defensive lineman, but McNeil encouraged him to switch to offensive tackle so that he could have an athletic advantage at his position.

“I went up to him and said, ‘Do you want to be the most athletic at your position?’ Right now, you are an athletically average defensive line but you could be an overly athletic offensive tackle and shine into the position.”

Addison trusted McNeil and now ranks as the composite No. 160 player in the 2025 high school class according to 247, receiving offers from many blue-blood programs.

But Porter and McNeil go beyond teaching technique or scheme. With the evolving landscape of college sports, the allure of the transfer portal and NIL can often put athletes in a bind when they need to make difficult decisions.

But both believe that transparent thinking is the number one way that a recruit can eventually land on a decision.

“I sit down with the family and have them come up with a list of ten things that are important to them— whether that’s playing time, weather, location, education, NIL,” McNeil said. “I never tell them to go somewhere based on what I feel is right. We rank those ten important things and then we go to the colleges and see how many boxes those schools check off.”

“Everyone says that same thing, ‘I just want an opportunity!’” Porter said. “But I always tell [my players] to define an opportunity. To some people it’s a scholarship offer, to some it’s the mathematics in the quarterback room and for others it’s playing as a freshman. But I want them to really sit down and identify what an opportunity means to them.”