Kadie Smith
“I swear I heard someone call you the QB whisperer the other day”
Lions head coach Jeff Tedford laughs that one off. He’s sitting in his office Friday afternoon, the day after signing Howard QB Greg McGhee.
“I’ve been fortunate to deal with quality quarterbacks my whole career,” he says of the reputation he’s gained for developing elite pivots. “Guys who have a lot of similar qualities: highly competitive, students of the game, obviously gifted as athletes, but all of them bring more to the table other than just being able to throw a football. From what I know of Greg, he shares those.”
McGhee, who wrapped up his carrer at Howard University as the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference’s all-time offensive leader with 10,169 yards, was first brought up to the Lion’s head coach at the Senior Bowl as a player who was flying under the radar but was well worth a look.
Tedford looked up the Pittsburgh, PA native on YouTube when he returned to Vancouver and after requesting his highlight tape, took a trip down to personally workout McGhee.
The 2014 MEAC passing yards leader joins the Lions quarterback corps of Travis Lulay, John Beck, Travis Partridge, and Jordan Rodgers, all of whom, Tedford says, possess the mental awareness of the game that he looks for in his pivots.
Both McGhee and Tedford agree that the new Lion’s intelligence of the game is his biggest strength. “Seeing how his knowledge of the
game manifests itself from conversations we’ve had to watching on film and in workout; you can see him going through the mechanics of protection,” said Tedford.
“Being able to manage the game, the mental aspects of the game, I think that’s my biggest strength,” McGhee responded in a telephone interview.
The opportunity to play for coach Tedford had a huge impact on McGhee’s decision to bypass the NFL combine last week and sign north of the border. “He’s one of the best quarterback coaches now,” he said. “With his history and the talent that he’s produced at Cal and Tampa Bay it was almost a no-brainer.”
The decision to stick with football wasn’t as much of a no-brainer though. Up until his junior year of high school, McGhee focused more on basketball until he was forced to think about where his chances of playing professionally really sat.
“I was getting more attention in football and really everyone thinks they can play professional basketball,” he said, laughing. “I was a “6’1 guard and there’s so many like me.”
As he turned his attention more to football, he also realized how much he really loved the game. “There was a point this season where Howard asked me to play basketball for them, but my heart’s in football.”
Of course, as with the majority of international players, the CFL game is entirely new to McGhee, but his former quarterback coach at Howard just happens to be Ted White, the former backup QB to Anthony Calvillo with the Alouettes.
“I’ve been studying the game a lot, watching tapes,” said McGhee. “As soon as I made this decision, we [he and White] started talking about CFL style, the different routes, farther throws, things like that, especially the rules. The rules I think will be the biggest difference for me.”
Given his proven commitment to studying the game, “a true student of football,” as coach Tedford puts it, expect McGhee to fully immerse himself in the CFL.