John Beck’s quarterback guruhood is morphing into something else.
He is the go-to guy for quarterbacks.
He needs a booking agent for his media appearances.
Beck, who played for BYU before going to the Miami Dolphins in the second round of the 2007 NFL draft, also played for Washington, Baltimore and in the CFL. He is now training both potential college top-draft picks and NFL veterans.
You want to throw the football better? See Yoda John.
In recent months, Beck has found himself a media go-to guy, doing interviews nationally and locally about QB talent and workouts. NBC Sports Washington featured an in-depth piece on Beck this past week, chronicling his journey from BYU through three NFL teams, the CFL, to where he is now, a chief cog in a quarterback trading citadel called 3DQB in Southern California.
His tutoring of BYU’s Wilson in the offseason leading to his phenomenal 2020 season has become part of the media fabric of this draft and brought fame to his company.
“Within NFL players, coaching circles and agents, we have had attention for years,” said Beck on Friday.
“It was different because it wasn’t in the media. This year has been unique because Zach has been the player that has skyrocketed the most of any player in the draft. So that brings a lot of attention to himself and the things he has done.
“3DQB, has been one of those things (that received added attention). Being a part of that has opened others’ eyes to who we are that maybe didn’t know, just like everyone else now knows who Zach Wilson is, where maybe nine months ago, they didn’t.”
Beck said 3DQB has done pre-draft interviews in other years when guys they were working with mentioned their workouts before the draft.
“This year has been the most. With Zach being a top pick as well as some of the other QBs we train, it has definitely made a media impact,” said Beck.
In other words, 2020 and 2021 have been a marketing and advertising windfall for Beck and 3DQB. The stories have been organic, rising up from storylines through media attention a Madison Avenue public relations company would die for. It didn’t cost a dime.
When the San Francisco 49ers Kyle Shanahan finds a prospect they want to have their skills honed, they send them to Beck.
He’s created that line of cred.
Clemson’s predicted No. 1 pick Trevor Lawrence hasn’t hired Beck, but maybe he should, just for the trend. After all, college stars Zach Wilson, Justin Fields, Trey Lance, Kyle Trask, who mock drafts have going after Lawrence, have all sought Beck’s help.
NFL starters Matt Ryan, Drew Brees, Jameis Winston, Dak Prescott, Jared Goff, Matt Stafford and many others have come to train with the 39-year-old Beck. Justin Herbert, the 2020 Rookie of the Year who broke several NFL QB rookie passing records is also a Beck client.
The story of Wilson traveling from Provo to San Diego to work out with John Beck will easily become part of BYU folklore, repeated, teased, referenced and told over and over again because it was told over and over again.
It’s one of those stories that somehow found a buoyant lifeline every other week for the past year. It’s a story that could have hatched from a creative brainstorming session on the popular TV series “Mad Men.”
In his own right, Beck is also one of those made-for-movie stories, along the lines of “Jerry Maguire” and “Show me the Money” fame.
Beck’s hard-scrabble football career encompassed fighting for a starting job at BYU and then getting bushwhacked by extreme misfortune with the Miami Dolphin franchise with a carousel of leadership and coaching changes. Once he got to Washington in a trade with the Ravens, a player strike robbed him of valuable training camp experience. His career ended with a torn chest muscle in the CFL trying to get back to play in the NFL.
It’s a story of Beck turning his QB experience in college and the NFL into a deep background operative in the world of sports training and development, where physics, kinesiology and the science of motion mix with a little friendly advice.
A gifted people person, Beck is an astute teacher who is articulate and projects his ideas in almost perfect quotable harmony with media types. He can fill a TV or radio show with gobs of insight, filled with quotes and anecdotes from not only his own life, but a well-read library touting the experience of all the legends from Bill Parcells and Bill Walsh to George Allen and Don Shula.
An avid outdoorsman, hunter and devoted father, husband and man of faith, Beck is a man’s man, yet a kind of football apostle, a gentle man, who smiles easily, relates to people, a guy you love to listen to because through it all, he remains humble. He is a man without guile.
It’s been that way since I first talked to him out of Mesa’s Mountain View High in Arizona and through his college career.
“I wish that my story was one of success in the NFL,” Beck said to NBC Sports Washington. “I wish mine was, ‘Hey, I threw 150 touchdowns. Let me show you how to do that.’ Unfortunately, that was not my story. So much of what I help guys with is the mental side, the emotional side and just trying to face those challenges that are being an NFL quarterback in difficult circumstances.”
Beck has found his niche.
He has found a way to help quarterbacks maneuver out of adversity and face discouraging hurdles head-on.
Beck has been in the cave and he knows the path to the warmth of sunlight.
He’s studied what enables the human body to more effectively send a 16-ounce piece of cowhide hurling through air with both velocity and accuracy.
He can impart that knowledge. He effectively counsels QBs about rehabilitation from injuries, dealing with coaches and competing the right way with a positive attitude.
But most of all, he can preach perspective. He has become a master teacher.
And after all, is said and done, Beck is rubbing shoulders with the very best in the game.
He belongs.