How a California QB guru turned LSU football's Jayden Daniels into a Heisman finalist

BATON ROUGE – Taylor Kelly likes to challenge Jayden Daniels.

"Hey, make this throw with your eyes closed," he would say to Daniels during a training session. If the throw was just off the mark, trash talking would ensue.

"Ah, I told you you couldn't make that," Kelly would say.

That's all Daniels would need to get him going. His next blind throw would be right on the money.

"He's a very driven person and competitive person," Kelly, Daniels' person quarterback coach, said. "So me trying to get under his skin or say he can't do something in a way on certain throws or a movement, he'll be like 'No, I can do that.'"

The past five years of Daniels' life have been filled with people who've told him that he can't do things.

He can't gain enough weight. He can't push the ball down field. He can't excel in the SEC. He can't win the Heisman Trophy.

But Daniels has proven that he can do all of those things. LSU football's star quarterback is a Heisman finalist, the winner of the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award and was the FBS leader in total yards, total touchdowns, QBR and plays of 20-plus yards by the end of the 2023 regular season.

Much of the reason why Daniels is where he is today – after three years at Arizona State and two at LSU – isn't just the extra hours he's put in at LSU's facility or the experience he's accumulated as a five-year starter.

It's also the work he's done away from LSU and his coaches, when he's home in Southern California during the offseason.

That's where Kelly comes in.

"Taylor knows how to make it work for guys who are these college-age kids," said John Beck, who works with Kelly as director of combine preparation/NFL development at the quarterback training company 3DQB. "'Here's how I, who came in from the outside, learned it (and) applied it. Here's how I can help you pick this up quickly. And I can speak to you in a language that you're going to know I get it.' "

How Jayden Daniels has improved under Taylor Kelly's watch

Kelly and Daniels have a lot in common.

They both love football, are quarterbacks (Kelly a former one) and attended Arizona State. Kelly spent five seasons in Tempe from 2010-2014. And, like Daniels, he served as the Sun Devils' starter for three years.

ASU is also where Daniels and Kelly met. Kelly, who was a graduate assistant at ASU before he started working with 3DQB in 2016, was introduced to Daniels while visiting his alma mater for games. The two got to know each other through their connection as Sun Devils, but they didn't start working together until Daniels entered the transfer portal heading into his senior year.

The first offseason of workouts between Daniels and Kelly lasered in on Daniels developing a consistent stroke with his throwing motion and crafting the right kind of footwork for him within the structure of LSU's offense.

To master these improvements, Daniels' drills were aimed around his pre-throwing work – throwing weighted balls into a net and making dry throws with a towel, instead of a football. By going through these simple drills, Daniels was able to concentrate on the fundamentals with his footwork.

"It's just focusing on where your feet (are) and what they're doing," Kelly said.

The initial results of Kelly and Daniels' work paid off. Daniels threw for 2,913 yards, 17 touchdowns and posted a career-best 68.6% completion percentage in his first year at LSU. It was big step forward from his career-worst junior season at ASU, when he had as many touchdown passes (10) as interceptions.

But Year 2 is when Kelly started to see major improvements in Daniels' play.

His workout sessions went from two to three per week in his first offseason with Kelly to four or five per week in the second offseason. Instead of just showing up to train, Daniels came to workouts with a plan for what he wanted to improve upon.

He took "ownership" in what his weaknesses were.

"The ownership of that really took into effect and made our workouts a lot more engaging for him," Kelly said.

He began working on his ability to make off-platform throws, also improving his quickness within the pocket while still maintaining sound footwork. He also enhanced his quickness and accuracy when it came to trying to fit balls into tight throwing windows.

"Once he knew where his body was, and how to be repeatable there, now it's, 'All right, now we're going to throw bullets at you and move you and have defenders underneath the routes and make sure you can fit (throws) into windows, layer (throws to) guys,'" Kelly said. "So it was just a lot of those different trainings every single day."

Beck and Kelly believe that it often takes a second offseason (18 months) for a quarterback to fully grasp, physically and mentally, what he's being trained to work on and improve. With Daniels, they think his year of experience working with Kelly for an offseason and having played a year in LSU's offensive system were strong springboards for the leap he made in 2023.

The moment where Kelly could see it all come together was during a training session in California last July. While throwing with an NFL football, Kelly watched Daniels throw with great accuracy, velocity and spin on every pass despite working with receivers with whom he had little to no on-field rapport.

Even with pass-rushers flying around and working within a crowded pocket, Daniels blew Kelly away. Kelly knows a great quarterback when he sees one. He is also personal quarterbacks coach to NFL starters Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud.

"After that workout, I was like, 'This fool could potentially win the Heisman,'" Kelly said.

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Kelly's relationship with LSU quarterbacks coach Joe Sloan

Kelly first met Joe Sloan when he was Luke Anthony's personal quarterbacks coach.

Anthony was a quarterback at Louisiana Tech, and Sloan was his quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator for two season. So when Sloan decided to come to LSU during the same offseason as Daniels, Kelly was already familiar with the Virginia native.

"(That familiarity) speeds up the learning process, where it's like, 'Hey, I know Joe and this is the footwork that he likes to use.' He knows, he's familiar with how we teach this," Kelly said.

The relationship between a personal coach and his player's staff is crucial to a quarterback's development. But the key to a successful one goes beyond just a familiarity between the two sides.

Some quarterbacks get stuck playing for coaching staffs that have strict beliefs when it comes to quarterback mechanics, Beck says, making it difficult for their personal coaches to make adjustments and improvements.

"That's when it makes it difficult for a quarterback, because instead of doing what's best for his body, he's constantly having to do just, 'Well, I've just got to make it work, because that's what the coach says,'" Beck said. "We've been down that road a ton."

To LSU's credit, Beck and Kelly say that the staff was not restrictive with Daniels' methods of improvement. Beck says that Daniels' coaches at LSU told him what he needed to improve on, but how he went about it was up to him and Kelly.

"They just wanted it there on time and completed," Kelly said.

But for all of it to work there had to be a strong line of communication between Kelly and Sloan.

"The past two years, it's been one voice," Kelly said. "I've been in full communication with Joe. It's like, 'Hey, these are some things that, you know, we worked on, and these are some of his cues and little reminders that help him.' Then he would in practice, he would be using those (same tips to help him)."

Together, Kelly and Sloan have helped mold Daniels into the potential first-round NFL draft pick he is today.

But as much as they and many others have helped Daniels get to New York this weekend, it's been his drive to prove those who have told him what he can't do wrong.

"There's no question that he's a first-round quarterback," Kelly said. "And, you know, I saw that in the summer; and a lot of people, they weren't talking about him. They didn't have him in any mock drafts or any of that stuff. And (they) were probably talking about him being a late-round pick. And so now he's shown the country and everybody what he's capable of doing.

"... I mean, the kid's special."

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Koki Riley covers LSU sports for The Daily Advertiser. Email him at kriley@theadvertiser.com and follow him on Twitter at @KokiRiley