SPARTANBURG, S.C. – A month after being hired as the Carolina Panthers quarterback coach, Rip Scherer decided to take a trip to Breaux Bridge, La., the hometown of his newly acquired understudy Jake Delhomme. It was meant to be a meet-and-greet session, a chance for Scherer to get to know the guy he’d be working with throughout the 2009 season.

It turned into much more.

After a few hours of entertaining Scherer at his horse stables and introducing him to his family, Delhomme took Scherer out to dinner at a local restaurant and eagerly got down to business, telling him flatly, “OK coach, what do I got to do? What are we going to do to help me get better?”

   Scherer was a bit taken aback.

   After all, even though he’d broken down tape on Delhomme for the past month, he hadn’t planned on breaking down the quarterback’s flaws over some Cajun seafood at a restaurant in Breaux Bridge.

   “No, let’s get into it,” Delhomme insisted.

   “He started pulling it out of me. He wanted to know every little thing," Scherer said.

   Then he laughed, adding, “Fortunately I had made a lot of notes.”

   So Scherer broke it down, with Delhomme hanging on each word, taking it for what it was -- constructive criticism.

   Scherer talked about wanting to work on Delhomme’s fundamentals, specifically his footwork.

   “Being a good passer starts with your feet and your base, and I told him my focus is going to be with his base, his feet, his balance and adjusting his feet,” Scherer said.

   Since then, the two have been working together to make Delhomme a better, more fundamentally sound quarterback. It's not that former quarterbacks coach Mike McCoy didn't do that, it's just that sometimes different coaches have different approaches.

   Any good quarterbacks coach will tell you it’s difficult to throw the ball when your base is too wide because you rely too much on arm strength, which often means your passes come up short. (Ever seen Jake do that?) And, he’ll also tell you it’s also important to keep your back foot “loaded,” meaning keeping the weight shifted there so you aren’t throwing off your front foot.

   “Your lower body is what really drives the explosiveness of the ball,” Scherer explained.

   In training camp, Scherer is stressing footwork drills to all four of his quarterbacks.

   “We do a lot with movement, quickness drills and re-shifting your weight,” Scherer said. “In this league, it’s never just go back seven steps, put your foot in the ground and step and throw. You’re always sliding the pocket and there’s usually somebody falling at your feet and you have adjust and slide. At the same time you have to maintain your base and balance.”

   Despite the fact Delhomme has been in the league for 11 years and has played in a Super Bowl, Scherer said he’s been “incredibly receptive” to change.

   “He’s totally embraced it and wants to be coached every play,” Scherer said. “It’s hard to imagine there being a better guy to coach in terms of his disposition and his willingness to learn.”

   Said Delhomme: “I think the older you get, by nature you have a tendency to get away from fundamentals. But that’s something we’re honing back in on, and that’s something I try to strive and work on and get better at we’re just trying to get better with footwork, things like that. That’s something I embrace. I wanted that. I think if you get complacent it’s time to give it up, and I haven’t gotten to that point yet.”

   Scherer believes there are three aspects of the development of a quarterback – the psychological, the mental development and the physical.

   As for Delhomme’s gunslinger approach, Scherer said he’s not about to change that even though it’s a style that makes some fans and football analysts cringe.

   “There is a fine line there. I have talked to Jake and I’m not going to handcuff him,” Scherer said. “I think part of his game is his personality and that’s part of his success. I don’t want to say he’s a freelancer, but you can’t make a guy robotic either.”

   In Scherer’s eyes, the bottom line is if a quarterback is making plays and good decisions.

   As for Delhomme’s struggles in the NFC Divisional playoffs against Arizona in which he turned the ball over six times, Scherer said it’s tough to pinpoint one thing that went wrong. He didn’t break down that particular game down, but looked at Delhomme’s throwing motion as a whole from a number of cutups from the 2008 season.

   As for Delhomme’s psychological well-being in the wake of that six-turnover performance, Scherer believes he and the Panthers will be just fine.

   He said Delhomme has plenty of mental toughness.

   “If anything I think it will serve to enhance his performance,” Scherer said. “One of his great characteristics is his competitiveness. He’s a prideful competitor and I think he uses that to motivate himself and will use it to motivate himself.”

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