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What may turn out to be the most important offseason of Andy Dalton's career is going on right now, and he's not sitting back and idly watching.
Dalton has enlisted the help of former major league pitcher and quarterback tutor Tom House this offseason.
"The motion is still mine. It’s not like it’s completely changed," Dalton said, via Bengals.com. "We tweaked a few things just to make sure all of your momentum, all your force, everything you have is going toward the target of where you’re trying to throw. We tweaked it a little bit. It happens so quickly, I don’t think the average person will notice it. There was stuff that was new to me. It’s science-based and applying it. But once I got used to it, it was fine."
House has worked with the likes of Drew Brees, Tom Brady, Dan Marino, Joe Montana, Carson Palmer, Matt Cassel and Alex Smith among others over his 20 years of tutoring NFL QBs.
It seems odd a former MLB pitcher would know so much about NFL mechanics, but he says they're actually two very similar motions:
"Rotational athletes all have the same timing and, believe it or not, almost the same bio mechanics," House says. "The only thing different is that a quarterback has to get into his foot strike faster than a pitcher does. Once the front foot gets down, throwing a football and baseball is pretty similar."
Dalton know the biggest knock on him is arm strength, but he's more concerned with working on his accuracy and mechanics more fine-tuned:
"Arm strength isn’t the issue," Dalton says. "I just wanted to fine tune the accuracy and get the most out of every throw and when you’re doing it right, it just becomes effortless when the ball comes out of your hand.
"One of the big things is getting all your momentum and all your force of throwing the ball right at the target, rather than having any kind of swinging motion that can make you inaccurate. A lot of that stuff is making sure my shoulders, hips and everything else are going at the right time."
As for the latest on his ongoing contract discussions with the Bengals, there's nothing new to report:
"Hopefully we can get something that works out for both of us. Hopefully sooner rather than later. We’ll see how it goes," Dalton says. "Whenever the time is right…It’s all going to happen at the right time. I’m not worried about it right now."
It's unclear as to how close the Bengals really are to signing Dalton to a long-term deal. It could be as close as any day now, or it may not be until training camp has already started until Dalton's signature is on the dotted line.