-
Stephania Bell, ESPN Senior WriterNov 2, 2024, 06:00 AM ET
- Senior writer for ESPN.com
- Certified orthopedic clinical specialist and strength and conditioning specialist
- Clinician, author and teacher
Brock Purdy is one of the NFL’s feel-good stories of his era, the quarterback who went from the final pick in the draft to a Super Bowl starter as both fans and league insiders looked on with wonder. But Purdy says he believes without Tom Gormely and his team, he would have been somehow less relevant than “Mr. Irrelevant.”
“If I hadn’t come to Tom, I would have already topped out,” Purdy said.
It was in preparation for his 2022 pro day and the combine that Purdy sought the services of Gormely, a physical therapist who works with athletes at CORTX Sports Performance, the facility he founded in Jacksonville, Florida. Gormely said Purdy was eager for feedback that would help optimize his chances of reaching the NFL.
“He told me, ‘I want to be able to have more arm velocity, I want to be able to throw better on the move,'” Gormely said. “‘I want to know what I’m good at and what I’m bad at so I can improve. Tell me everything.'”
From left, Nathan Peterman, Brock Purdy, Tom Gormely and Caleb Williams at a workout last spring. Shawn Hubbard for ESPN
Using biomechanical analysis and visual cueing via high-speed cameras, Gormely and his CORTX team saw the issues that would hold back Purdy if not resolved. His throwing shoulder was tight with limited external rotation compared to other quarterbacks. Purdy needed the ability to create separation between his shoulder and his hips that would allow him to access increased rotational motion to create stronger throws.
Purdy described himself as “very stiff” when he first arrived at Gormely’s facility to train in advance of the NFL combine.
“I was more of a box,” Purdy said. “I felt like a block from college.”
Gormely gave Purdy a plan to address deficits specific to his delivery. It involved physical therapy to address joint stiffness and soft tissue mobility, exercises in the gym to target specific muscle groups that would assist in his throwing delivery and movement patterns and work on the field with CORTX’s quarterbacks coach, Will Hewlett, to turn those neuromuscular developments into actual football skills.
“These guys broke me up, loosened me up and got me throwing like I needed to,” he said.
Editor’s Picks
2 Related
The changes were visible almost immediately. At Purdy’s pro day, several scouts recognized more explosiveness and pop in his throwing than they’d seen during his final season at Iowa State or on tape. The 49ers were impressed enough to use the final pick of the draft pick on him, and during his first training camp and NFL preseason reps the evolution continued. Purdy was amazed by how quickly the work he’d done at CORTX during the spring and summer began to have practical applications.
“There are a lot of plays where the pocket starts closing in on you. You’ve got offensive linemen getting pushed back into your lap,” Purdy said. “And you’re thinking, ‘How do I get this ball off with a lot of velocity and zip on it?’ And when I would watch back the [practice] film it’s like, ‘Oh shoot, that looks like the drills that we were doing.’ Warming up with the balls against the wall or exercises in the weight room. And I’m like that’s that.”
Within months, Purdy was the 49ers’ unlikely starting quarterback.
Two years later, Purdy’s legend has grown — along with Gormely and CORTX’s business. More quarterbacks, including 2024 top pick Caleb Williams, have traveled to Jacksonville in search of the secret weapon that might launch or improve their career. As it turns out, the key to unlocking the arsenal requires a return to each individual’s fundamental base: the athlete’s biomechanical fingerprint.
Purdy and Williams work side by side on their throwing motion. Shawn Hubbard for ESPNWilliams arrived at CORTX in the spring of 2024 with a reputation as a one-man cheat code at the quarterback position. It would have been understandable if the presumed No. 1 pick in the draft, a Heisman Trophy winner at USC who had earned raves from NFL scouts as a generational talent, would have considered himself a finished product lacking only experience at the professional level.
But Williams sought improvement. He came to Gormely via Hewlett, who had worked with Williams since he was in seventh grade. When Carl Williams, Caleb’s father, called Hewlett in December 2023 asking him to train his son in advance of the NFL draft, Hewlett said he believed Gormely’s system would be a perfect fit.
“Caleb was the most pro-ready quarterback I’ve ever worked with,” Hewlett said, “in terms of his readiness as a professional to handle the pressure, his athleticism and just raw ability. It was just going to be transitioning to a different type of pocket presence at the pro level, meaning you’re going to have to play from the pocket through progressions.”
But Williams’ elite talent presented a unique challenge for CORTX. His explosiveness and technical skills were at such a high level, they could mask minor deficits while still allowing him to succeed in college football. Gormely and his team, knowing that the NFL could expose even the smallest weaknesses, focused on identifying things Williams had been previously able to overcome as an elite “compensator.”
“Mechanically he did some things the best we’ve ever seen on any quarterback,” said Hewlett, noting “we didn’t want to take away from that but it was giving him a framework of things he needed to be aware of with his base to build consistency.”
Williams stretches under the watchful eye of Gormely, a physical therapist. Shawn Hubbard for ESPN
Gormely observed a bit of an excessive forward lean during Williams’ delivery that ultimately affected the trajectory of the ball. Chris Hess, founder of Biometrek and another key member of the CORTX team, used his collection of high-speed cameras to confirm via motion capture analysis where Williams was losing velocity as a result of the lean. Hewlett saw the intermittent lack of accuracy that accompanied this body position when Williams threw to receivers on the practice field.
“I was leaning forward and it would cause different paths for the ball,” Williams acknowledged.
After visual feedback sessions to assist Williams in recognizing where and how these deficits were showing up, Gormely crafted a plan to focus on reinforcing stability through Williams’ legs while enhancing rotation through his hips and torso to generate power.
Williams said the exercises and hands-on treatments Gormely did with him affected his technique within the first month of working together.
“I can feel the change,” Williams said. “Being stable, slamming into the ground basically with my front leg and rotating with my hips and staying connected through the ground with both feet, then letting the arm come flying through. [The ball] is gonna be right where you want it.”
Despite all the accolades he had received as a prospect, Williams was eager to grow.
“Caleb never wanted a pat on the back,” Gormely said. “In fact, it was the opposite. He only wanted to know how he could get better.”
Chris Hess used his collection of high-speed cameras to confirm via motion capture where Williams was losing velocity as a result of his lean. Shawn Hubbard for ESPNNumerous NFL quarterbacks including Josh Allen and Sam Darnold are familiar with Hess, who arrived at CORTX as an already established figure in the motion capture space. Hess, who captures three-dimensional footage of quarterbacks as a means of identifying deficits and poor habits along with strengths and efficiencies in their throwing motion, says he believes not enough has been done to develop young quarterbacks.
“In baseball, we expect a thrower to continue to evolve after they’re drafted,” he said. “In golf, we talk about perfecting a swing over the life of your golf career. Why is it different in football?” In Gormely, Hess found a like-minded specialist with a medical background who could merge the data and visual feedback with his biomechanical findings.
“We’re trying to identify: [Is] this inefficiency physical, something we’re able to address through work on the soft tissues?” Hess said. “Is this structurally how they’re built, or is it just a pattern that’s been trained over and over?”
Hess works in the classroom with quarterbacks breaking down motion capture data. Shawn Hubbard for ESPN
Gormely, whose background is in baseball, stresses efficiency of movement as a means of improving performance, especially for elite athletes who have developed bad on-field habits because of their physical gifts. Metrics more frequently tied to baseball analytics than football — such as velocity and spin rate — are part of Gormely’s analysis.
“What you’re trying to do is explain to them, hey, better movement, more efficient movement, makes things easier,” Gormely said. “Understanding how we want you to generate power and torque allows you to then access those different arm positions, arm patterns, hip positions more easily in the game and hopefully makes you a more dynamic athlete.”
Purdy, who returned to CORTX after injuring his elbow in the 2022 playoffs, has seen results from this approach.
“They’ve got me into different positions and movements that have helped me within my hips and my shoulder capsule to be able to make throws around defenders and the different windows and the different arm slots on the move,” Purdy said. “There’s a bunch of plays on the run that I’ve made where my arm slot has been like a middle infielder, where it’s like, ‘OK, that’s all the training we’ve done with these guys.'”
After spending the 2020 offseason working with Gormely, Peterman called him midway through the next season and told him it was the best his arm had ever felt. Shawn Hubbard for ESPNNathan Peterman is best known — perhaps famously — for his NFL debut.
On Nov. 17, 2017 in his first start after being selected in the fifth round of the draft that spring, Peterman threw five interceptions against the Los Angeles Chargers before being benched at halftime. Peterman, who has since played for the Raiders, Bears and now the Atlanta Falcons as a member of the practice squad, has stayed in the league — despite his debut — thanks in part to Gormely.
Peterman sprained the ulnar collateral ligament in his throwing elbow in 2019 and rehabbed the injury throughout the season. Then, at the suggestion of a high school friend who was a minor league baseball player, he decided to reach out to Gormely. Peterman said his friend raved that Gormely not only understood rehab, but as a former baseball player himself, specifically understood throwers. Peterman wondered if Gormely could design an offseason throwing program that would get his elbow ready for football.
Gormely started by asking Peterman what a normal offseason program for a quarterback looked like when it came to throwing-specific warmups, interval throwing protocols and sequencing. He was surprised by the answer. Gormely learned quarterbacks often prepared for the season primarily by gathering receivers for throwing sessions. Even for those who had a more structured program in place, the focus was largely on building the volume of work, not throwing preparedness, skill acquisition or fine-tuning. Gormely’s approach would be markedly different.
Best of NFL Nation
• Winston breathing new life into Browns
• Who will win the NFC West?
• Pederson ushered in Sirianni to Philly
• Can Bills defeat AFC East rival, Dolphins again?
• 32 NFL teams, 32 midseason evaluations
“One of the biggest differences I noticed right away,” Peterman said, “was the throwing regimen. I had never done throwing-specific warmup drills or strengthening exercises after a throwing workout, designed to get the soreness out of my arm.
“Before working with Tom, I had never tracked throws per day, or the entirety of throws in a preseason.”
After spending the 2020 offseason working with Gormely, Peterman called him midway through the next season and told him it was the best his arm had ever felt.
“It was the first time I had never felt a sore arm or a fatigued, weak arm during the season,” Peterman said. “And I knew I was going to keep coming back every offseason.”
Gormely knew he was onto something.
“From there it was like, let’s keep this going,” Gormely said. “And from that point forward it’s been a snowball effect.”
Purdy’s case illustrates how quarterback development with Gormely is viewed as a continual process. Along with Williams and Peterman, Purdy plans to return to Jacksonville this offseason to continue a progression that shouldn’t end until he retires.
“I come in here with a purpose every day. Not just coming in and throwing, but actually working on your mechanics,” Purdy said. “It’s always going to be a thing with my career. I’m not going to perfect it this season or next season. I can get closer and closer but that’s the beauty of this sport … the science is off the field. Once I step on, I let it rip and those habits take over.”
