It can’t be said enough that Coach Vince Marrow on media day back in August said Darin Hinshaw is the greatest hire he has ever seen. “Just sit back and watch him do his thing,” Marrow said. At the University of Tennessee Hinshaw guided Tyler Bray and Matt Simms to a high level of play, in some areas Tennessee record setting.
Unlike the NFL you can’t draft players in college and high school. Which makes the job of molding quarterbacks a specialty that some coaches have and some don’t. Drew Barker and Stephen Johnson were he pupils and out of necessity Johnson became a pupil like none other because he was unexpectedly thrown into the SEC fire unlike any other live bullets he had ever seen. He started his career at Grambling University under legendary Doug Williams. Hinshaw is UK’s first quarterback coach since 2008 whose main responsibility was coaching and molding quarterbacks.
How did Johnson get to be his highly dependent upon pupil? “As soon as I got here I said we’ve got to find somebody with experience and it is hard because there’s not that many out there,” Hinshaw said. “We had to have that right guy that could come in and compete with Drew (Barker) the starter and push Drew. That’s what he came in here to do “but I told him that doesn’t mean you are not going to be a starter. You’ve got to go get it and take it. He went and did it and it’s paid off here at the end of the year.”
Hinshaw was asked whether he thought Johnson was capable of doing what he did Saturday. He said – “Well, the way he played against New Mexico State, yes. Then he had to go and play against Alabama and play through his mistakes. He has gotten better game by game with eliminating turnovers and the interception he had today wasn’t his fault.
“His character is unbelievable. It’s off the charts. Sure he is a college kid and all that stuff but he is very nature. Again that is the kind of guy you want leading your team.
How did he find Johnson? “His quarterback trainer in California sent me all of the film off the field,” Hinshaw explained. “Not game stuff but his footwork and got to see him practicing. I said I can work with this kid. I can mold him into what we need who can come in and compete.”
Hinshaw said now he’s starting to hit those short throws because they were 10 of eighteen on third down against U of L. “And that’s what you have to do to win games,” the proud coach said.
What make Johnson good on the deep balls? “We work on it a lot,” the coach wanted to make clear. “To get the angle of the receiver and to be able to throw to a spot and to know where that intersection point is. And that is the key to throwing the deep ball. It’s so hard because a lot of quarterbacks can’t figure that out and causes the receiver to sway back and forth.”
The coach said Johnson is even keel and he’s been like that all the time and there’s no change from week five to now. “Now we’ve got to do more plus’s on the grade sheet and the target balls were a lot better today. We are starting to see that consistency.”
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