How a former Viking became the internet's QB coach
QB SCHOOL — On January 9, 2005, J.T. O’Sullivan had a perfect view of one of the most memorable plays in Minnesota Vikings playoff history. He was on the Green Bay Packers’ sideline standing at the 34-yard line at Lambeau Field when Daunte Culpepper heaved a go-ball up to Randy Moss. As you probably recall, Moss caught it for a touchdown and then waved his rear end at the Lambeau crowd. A disgusting act, Joe Buck proclaimed.
It was extra disgusting to O’Sullivan, who was one of Brett Favre’s backup quarterbacks, because he knew the game was likely over at 31-17 in the fourth quarter and he wasn’t going to land another paycheck for the playoff win.
“I can remember Culpepper leaning to his right and just pointing to Moss like, ‘Just go!’ I think it was supposed to be a run to the left but he just caught it, drifted to his right and threw it up and [Moss] pulled down his pants,” O’Sullivan said over the phone from his San Diego area home. “I remember thinking, ‘I’m going to lose a playoff check on THAT?’ He didn’t even run a play. Moss just blew by our corner on a homemade RPO before there were RPOs and I just remember being like, ‘There’s my playoff check, there it goes.’”
The following season, O’Sullivan found himself in the Vikings’ locker room at Winter Park. He was released by the Packers, signed to the practice squad by the Bears and then signed by the Vikings to their active roster after Culpepper got hurt. When he first arrived in Minnesota, O’Sullivan was a little perplexed. He was the only guy in the locker room during the time open to the media. Where was everybody else?
“I showed up like the week after The Boat. Right after,” O’Sullivan said. “I remember talking to the media at lunch during the first day and I was in the locker room by myself talking to every media in there. I’m like, they can’t be this interested in the fourth quarterback. Finally one of the receivers grabbed me and was like, ‘Hey we’re not talking to the media.’ I was like, oh my god, what did I walk into?”
It was a strange time to drop into Vikings land — and not just because of The Boat. Moss had been traded to Oakland the previous offseason and Red McCombs was selling the team to the Wilfs. The offense was weird because the team had let offensive coordinator Scott Linehan walk after 2004 and nobody seemed to be completely in command of it. They still had enough talent to finish above .500 but Culpepper’s injury left the franchise’s immediate future up in the air.
O’Sullivan didn’t see the field as a Viking but he became a fan of Brad Johnson, who threw the ball with tremendous anticipation on the field and told great stories and connected with young players in ways he hadn’t seen a quarterback do before off the field. At the end of the year, he was in an Eden Prairie tavern with some of the Vikings coaches when the ESPN ticker across the bottom of the TV flashed that Mike Tice had been fired. Brad Childress came in and cut him out of camp, so he was off to New England and later Carolina.
This is the life of a journeyman quarterback. O’Sullivan played for 13 different teams in three different leagues between 2002 and 2012. In total, he started eight NFL games, all of which came with the 2008 San Francisco 49ers and appeared in 17 in some capacity. He led the Frankfurt Galaxy to the World Bowl twice and won MVP of NFL Europe in 2007. Pretty damn good for a QB out of UC Davis.
JT O’Sullivan made a stop in Minnesota during his long NFL career.
© Bruce Kluckhohn-USA TODAY Sports
“I use the phrase: ‘I sucked the marrow out of my career,’” O’Sullivan said. “There’s not a lot of Division-II non-scholarship guys that get to play the length of time that I got to play and have the experiences that I got to have and the friendships while doing something that you love at the highest level for that long.”
If you watch O’Sullivan’s YouTube Channel, titled “QB School,” it doesn’t take long to pick up on the influence of having played for dozens of coaches and systems and having endless experiences at the highest level of the sport. He will routinely refer to concepts, coaching styles and different quarterbacks that he ran across along the way.
“[Having played for many teams] does make a big impact in how I look at the game and have the lexicon to talk about it but I also think one of the reasons I was able to do that is how I was taught the game,” O’Sullivan said. “I was taught the game at the league level in a very universal way where it was less about what we did and more about this is the play, this is the concept, you can overlay this to any system and they’re going to run something similar... I try to speak in universal football terms.”
Those universal football terms have helped him become stand out in the content creation world. Since launching his channel in September 2018, the former Viking has grown to around 193,000 subscribers, nearly 17 million views and has nearly 1,000 more supporters on his Patreon page where he provides additional content. He ranks in the top 100 of all NFL-related channels, including all NFL teams, major broadcast networks and players.
O’Sullivan’s over 1,000 videos in total, which usually range from 20-30 minutes, analyze everything from big games by NFL quarterbacks to the college tape of top prospects to X’s and O’s breakdowns of concepts, balance taking fans behind the curtain of the wildly complicated world of playing NFL quarterback without getting so deep in the weeds that viewers get lost.
How did Kirk Cousins come back from down 33 points against the Colts? Why did he check down on fourth-and-8? What makes Anthony Richardson so intriguing to the NFL despite is underwhelming stats? What is going on with Russell Wilson in Denver? Why is Brock Purdy succeeding? O’Sullivan turns on the All-22 film, gets his telestrator and starts breaking it all down.
“I think [being a journeyman] provided me a bunch of different lenses depending on what I’m watching and what we’re trying to get out of the film,” O’Sullivan said. “Are we projecting someone on Sundays, are we talking about someone struggling on Sundays, are we talking about someone thriving on Sundays. Those things allow me to pull from a bunch of different systems to realize, is it him, is it the system or is it a combination of both? The whole thing about making sense of what really happened because I’ve been taught basically every way to do everything on a football field.”
The simplicity of his approach is part of the appeal. Nobody is doing fancy editing for him. Inside an office in his San Diego home, all O’Sullivan uses are a few lights, a camera, a desk, book shelves and football tape. The videos are constructed of an intro with him on camera and then the film with his voiceover. The breakdowns are the good, bad, ugly and sometimes confusing. The conclusions factor in the things that anyone on the outside can’t know. The takes are educated, not hot.
For example, at the end of a breakdown of fourth overall pick Anthony Richardson against Tennessee, O’Sullivan summarizes the young quarterback like this:
“Some big plays, some big throws, some massive flashes. I love playmaking ability, he’s a dynamic athlete that can create and run and make all sorts of off-platform throws and shows some really good vision and — to put a bookend on it — there are some substantial and significant inconsistencies in his game, most noticeably about his accuracy and his ball control. The consistency of where he puts the ball when he wants to put the ball somewhere is a weakness in his game. That’s the most gentle way to put it. Are they unfixable? Absolutely not.”
Nope, he won’t be Skip Bayless’s next partner on Undisputed. That’s why so many football fans like QB School.
While many folks are trying to build brands and become influential by being outrageous, there’s an earnestness to O’Sullivan’s desire to simply talk and teach ball that gives viewers the feeling of being inside an NFL quarterback room. And those who watch feel like they are getting something the rest of the hot-take show world doesn’t know. There’s an element that’s like, “Oh, you watch QB School too? You get it then.”
That doesn’t mean he avoids opinions. He just avoids lazy, reactionary opinions.
“I do think it’s easy to blame one guy or blame the coach or whatever and it’s hard when you’re watching the broadcast version of the game,” O’Sullivan said. “Is this design? Is this technique? Is this what they’re asking him to do? Is there someone he’s relying on letting him down? When it’s multiple of those things and the guys on defense get paid too, it can be hard to make sense of.”
JT O’Sullivan’s QB School setup inside his San Diego home
J.T. O'Sullivan
In a matter of a few years O’Sullivan has found a second career for himself making sense of football tape and he’s happy about that. But he didn’t exactly push the Easy Button to make it happen. O’Sullivan’s journey to All-22 YouTube Zen took time and had some bumps en route to finding out who he was going to be after playing football for his entire life.
As his NFL career was winding down, O’Sullivan was also taking advantage of an NFL program that paid a stipend to non-scholarship players to go back to school. He took classes while he was still playing and discovered he liked school more the second time around.
“I liked school, I’m a little bit of, my wife says, a nerd,” O’Sullivan said. “I’ve got some nerd qualities. It’s enjoyable for me to be curious about things so that part of it I was like, I’m better at school when I’m not a student athlete.”
At that point he was certain that he did not want to chase NFL offensive coordinator or head coaching jobs because of the lifestyle. He already had enough apartments in NFL cities to fill a lifetime, continuing to move every two years was not an option. What about sports administration? O’Sullivan got accepted into a Ph.D. program in Leadership Studies and focused on that when he walked away from the game. He ultimately completed his degree in 2017.
Getting involved in the academic world right after playing helped him stave off the struggles that often come along with a football career ending. Many friends that O’Sullivan played alongside had trouble with their identities and directions once they were no longer looking forward to the next season. He was going to school. He was headed for a new industry.
“There was never really a gap or valley,” he said. “It was right into academia. It was super challenging and I really enjoyed that part of it. As I transitioned out of that, I got into this. There’s never been huge lulls that I had a lot of friends get into and struggle for different reasons. That part I’ve been really fortunate.”
He was also helped by being a journeyman quarterback. You might think it’s easy to hold the clipboard but every quarterback wants to be out there in the spotlight competing until the bitter end, not practicing all week just to watch from the sideline. Because he had been forced over the years to deal with the fact he wasn’t going to be Brett Favre or Daunte Culpepper, he began thinking about post career well before his time in the NFL was over.
“I was always the guy in my mind, I just wasn’t the guy playing,” O’Sullivan said. “When you deal with that for years it makes that transition easier as opposed to the guy who is a good football player for a long time in one city and then has to go sell something.”
But the sports administration route didn’t materialize as quickly as he wanted. An unwillingness to be a journeyman in his post career limited his options in that field as well. His brother, who is a cinematographer and had been involved in podcasting, suggested starting a YouTube channel.
“[My brother] was like, ‘It’s all about niche and you have a really unique niche potentially and your medium is visual, I think it could be a pretty cool little sector and see if you’re enjoying or use it to put your toe back into football,’” O’Sullivan explained.
So he gave it a shot. His brother helped him with the setup and he decided that he’d give it a year and see what happened.
“I think I liked it a lot faster than people liked it, which is probably a good sign,” O’Sullivan said. “It’s a frustrating sign but probably a sign that you’re onto something for yourself.”
What O’Sullivan’s QB School studio looks like from behind the camera
J.T. O'Sullivan
For O’Sullivan, creating content struck all the right chords. It was both a shade of academia and his nerd side combined the parts of his mental makeup allowed him to stay in the league despite never having the greatest natural physical gifts.
“It hits in the sweet spot for me as someone who as a player was never the most talented guy at the highest level but could take a lot of my strengths as a player from preparation to understanding to what I consider ‘vision’ and being able to see the game and be able to communicate multiple elements and layers of the game into something you can make your profession and make your livelihood is pretty sweet,” O’Sullivan said.
It may have taken more than a year for QB School to completely catch on but after a couple seasons of creating videos he knew it was something he could make into a career because he stopped looking for other jobs. During the first three years of his channel, O’Sullivan was also coaching at Patrick Henry High School in San Diego, an experience that made it even more clear that coaching wasn’t for him. He left the school in 2021 to focus solely on the channel.
“I was always like, ‘I want to work in sports, I want to work in athletics,’ and I was getting frustrated,” he said. “People would send me jobs like, ‘Oh, you’d be great at this, I know you’re trying to get into this, this is open,’ and I’d just be like, it’s more valuable for me to go create content than work on the resume for something that I don’t want because I’m already enjoying what I’m doing. There was a mind shift where I was like, I don’t do that anymore. That’s been pretty cool. When you’re always looking for whatever’s next there’s an element of overhanging anxiety and when you let that go it’s a nice feeling.”
O’Sullivan has sharpened his process over the years. He mostly only watches games on tape and spends his Sundays doing other things. He does a fast run through each game and grabs the plays that stand out and then gets to work putting together his video. He tries to make it all happen while his kids are in school.
As the channel grew, so did the feedback. On an internet where 2+2 would be debated, it’s impossible to have everyone agree with his conclusions but the root of the channel is his interpretations of the tape. He’s aware that it’s hard to always know a QB’s read or a wide receiver’s steps but O’Sullivan’s approach is to put all of his work on the table.
“It’s why I’m really proud of what the channel is,” he said. “It’s evidence-based football. Sometimes you’ll hear talking heads say, ‘I watched every clip of this guy throw and this is my take.’ Well, I’m showing you every clip that I watch. I will give you the video evidence. You might disagree and say, ‘You’re out of your mind,’ in the comments but the tape is the tape. I can misinterpret it and be wrong and that happens but it’s not just me coming out and flailing some ridiculous comment with no evidence.”
Once he got enough eyeballs on the channel, he began hearing from people who he was making videos about.
“Is it a little weird when you run into somebody where you didn’t have the nicest things to say all the time? Yeah. But don’t get mad at me. The film is the film,” he said. “You can disagree and we can talk about it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had guys or trainers come up to me and say, ‘Hey, we went through the video and this read was different than what you said but you’re right on with the footwork or timing or what the coach is asking him to do.”
Having a platform that allows him to show his work is vital to O’Sullivan existing in the commentary space. He couldn’t do two-minute TV takes. There’s too much nuance. And owning QB School himself is also important. He didn’t want to put himself through a version of QB competitions in TV or radio where another broadcaster was always gunning for his job and program directors could fire him on a whim. He had too much of that during his career. QB School just fits with who he is and where he’s come from. With every intro video you can see the smile on his face while he’s talking.
Who wouldn’t smile? It goes without saying that watching football for a living on his own terms is pretty sweet but he says that the fulfillment from QB School comes from something beyond that.
“Football was such a trampoline in my life. It gave me so much that I didn’t ever expect so to feel like I could give it back at any level — to fans, kids, coaches — to play a little cog in someone’s journey with ball is so rewarding,” he said.
With his follower count ever growing and interest in the NFL never waning, O’Sullivan’s analysis has more impact on the way fans see the game each season. You can bet there will be more and more people saying to each other: Oh, you watch QB School? You get it.
“The part that has been cool is when people will say, ‘I dig your stuff, you helped me understand this and we did this with our team or I really like watching football more now that I get a chance to see it this way,’” O’Sullivan said.
