How Smyrna and UD QB Nolan Henderson became a go-to mechanics coach in Delaware

Austin Troyer catches an underhand toss, takes three steps back and feathers a pass from the center of the field 25 yards down the left sideline over a 10-foot-high red net.

A group of quarterbacks waiting their turn, sitting against the fence of Red Lion Christian's practice field this Sunday morning compliment Troyer's separation. His hips started generating power before his arm whipped around. Where a lesser passer might clench and reach back for extra might to make the long throw, Troyer is at his best when his motion looks as close to effortless as possible.

It's not a perfect day. When the net flips to the other side of the field, Troyer's first ball comes out flat and wobbles. The receiver retrieves the ball and tosses it back. Before Troyer walks to the back of the line he tries to find his path again, shaking his hips back and forth with a slight upper-body twist, the quarterback's version of a boxer working an imaginary bag.

Consistency is what Troyer and the high school quarterbacks that share the turf with him are after and why they all wake up early on weekends to learn from the same tutor. At the center of it all, offering mechanical tweaks, shooting video for later diagnosis and running back and forth as a faux pass rusher is the former Smyrna and University of Delaware quarterback Nolan Henderson.

Henderson started training quarterbacks at the tail end of his UD career. The COVID-19 pandemic and the NCAA's loosening of name, image, likeness regulations conspired to create the perfect side job for someone quarterback-obsessed like Henderson.

Since committing more time to training after his Delaware tenure and a brief NFL training camp stint, Henderson has become a go-to instructional coach for Delaware high school signal callers, as well as high schoolers and college students in Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey.

Smyrna's Jacob Tiberi and Drew Marks and Red Lion's Evan Budinger took cracks at the red net after Troyer. Another group session followed. Henderson's roster goes about 50 deep and includes quarterbacks from Appoquinimink, Middletown, William Penn, Salesianum, Saint Mark's, Caesar Rodney, Howard and Tatnall.

The practices serve not as a substitute to team drills and workouts, but a supplement to hone the finer details of quarterbacking that can be glossed over when programs focus on game planning week to week. Terms like "separation," "rotational," and "violent hips" are tossed around here as much as the pigskin. Everything is hyper-specific so that it requires little thought on game day.

Two weeks after his senior football season at Middletown ended with a semifinal loss to Salesianum, Troyer found himself back at practice with a new voice in his ear. Troyer and Henderson had connected on Instagram midway through the season and talked about Troyer's eventual decision to commit to UD as a walk-on.

Once the season ended, Troyer came in to reset his mechanics, which had been scuffed like a dress shoe through the wear of 12 football games. The changes Henderson implements can be as small as working to close Troyer's front foot, a tweak intended to help him keep his weight back and put more velocity on the ball when it's finally time to uncoil.

"He's really knowledgeable about mechanics," Troyer said. "More than I thought he would be honestly."

The clearest giveaway that Henderson is coach not player is the green team-issued UD football hoodie he sports on this Sunday. But the clean shaven 25-year-old sometimes blends in anyways. He's not the whistle-toting, direction-barking type. Any feedback is given in a modest tone.

It wasn't long ago that Henderson was on the other side. He led Smyrna to three consecutive state championships from 2015 to 2017 then became the first Blue Hen starting quarterback from Delaware since Caesar Rodney's Sam Postlewait in 2001. He played in parts of five seasons, leaving UD second in school history in touchdown passes and fifth in passing yards. The dream that many of the high schoolers he coaches share, he just finished living out.

Who better to help them get there.

"It's a weight and a mantel that he gladly took on," said Jared Ambrose, Henderson's offensive coordinator at Delaware from 2019 to 2021.

'He started to play the position'

Henderson's football career was not preordained. He had the numbers and success at Smyrna and grew into a prolific producer at Delaware, but questions about his small stature and playing style have always trailed him.

When the quarterbacks first met in Henderson's freshman year at UD, they had to find extra chairs to pull into the meeting room. There were 11 quarterbacks.

Henderson began the year as the nominal fourth string, but head coach Danny Rocco planned on redshirting him and assigned him to run the scout team. He touched the ball more than other QBs in practice, but he was never running Delaware's plays.

By the regular season finale against Villanova, Henderson had slid up the depth chart, but he wasn't seriously prepared. Wearing a headset on the sideline when starter Pat Kehoe left the game with a concussion he heard, "Let's see what Nolan's got."

"I'm just like, 'uh oh,'" Henderson recalls.

He hadn't taken any practice reps that week. He realized standing on the sideline he didn't even have his ankles taped.

Henderson tried to survive the game on his athleticism. He completed 12 of 20 passes for 152 yards, ran 10 times and was sacked on four occasions. There was little structure to the offense. He too left the game with an ankle injury.

"That scared me into feeling like I was never unprepared again," Henderson said.

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He fell deeper in love with the intricacies of playing quarterback, studying greats like Aaron Rodgers, Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes. Although they all possess a high degree of natural talent, couldn't he find details in their games to emulate?

It was an extension of the work he'd done with his high school offensive coordinator Michael Marks, whose spread offense and detailed-oriented coaching style required more mental rigor than is typically asked of a high school QB. Marks described becoming a "student of the game" as a "necessity," especially for a smaller quarterback without a natural big arm like Henderson.

By the time Sean Goldrich came on board as Henderson's quarterback coach in his final UD season in 2022, Henderson had become one of the most diligent note takers in film sessions Goldrich had ever seen. His intensity didn't waver late in the season when reviewing concepts the team had already installed.

"He was very intentional when he showed up to the meeting room," Goldrich said. "At his position, you have to process information fast and he did that at the highest level."

In year two, Delaware lost four of its final five games and missed the playoffs. At season's end, Ambrose, the offensive coordinator, delivered a stinging critique.

"You were running around like you were playing a Turkey Bowl game," he told Henderson. "You were playing backyard football."

In the moment, Henderson took offense to Ambrose's evaluation, but the coach was right. Henderson was the fastest player on the team that year, according to Kehoe. His speed and elusiveness allowed him to break several 60-plus-yard runs in spring practice, Kehoe said. But when the "bullets were flying" in games Henderson's tendency to lean on his legs limited the Blue Hens' offense. His preparation in the film room didn't yet match the on-field results.

Henderson took Ambrose's critique and emerged from an offseason extended by COVID-19 as a new quarterback. In the spring season of 2021, Henderson set a single-season record, completing 70.7% of his passes for a 7-1 Delaware team that reached the semifinals.

"He stopped trying to rely on the gifts that God gave him and he started to play the position," Ambrose said.

'I wish I threw this way my whole life'

Ambrose had introduced to Henderson a new way of throwing. The method focused on rotation, creating force with torque instead of standing tall and moving in a "linear" plane. Ambrose says throwing a football is closer to hitting a baseball than it is to pitching one, but for years quarterbacks were taught to step and throw like mound dwellers.

In the summers, Henderson continued to work with Marks, his high school coach. As he researched the rotational idea, Henderson brought the concept to Marks. It had already become a popular topic in coaching clinics and talks.

"It allows the smaller, undersized kid to create more velocity and pop on the football by using more core and hips than anything else and allowing your arm to kind of be along for the ride," Marks said.

Henderson felt the method take hold ahead of his final season in 2022. The intervening years were spent slowly unlearning the way he had thrown the ball all of his life. Today, he looks back at videos from his solo training during the pandemic and doesn't recognize the quarterback he sees.

"I wish I threw this way my whole life," Henderson said.

Playing for his third offensive coach in five seasons, Henderson flourished in 2022. He set a single-season school record for passing touchdowns, accumulated the third-most passing yards in a single season in school history and earned second team all conference honors.

His instruction to high schoolers now revolves around the rotational tactic that helped him elevate his own game that final year at UD. When someone comes to him for the first time, Henderson asks them to warm up like they would if he wasn't there. He'll watch and take video. Then they'll put down the football and start learning the basics of rotational throwing with a towel before progressing to short passes.

"My favorite thing is seeing a kid for the first time, it clicks for them and they use their hips and their weight sits back," Henderson said. "It's like, 'woah, they felt it.' "

Perhaps Henderson's greatest success stories are Budinger, Red Lion's sophomore starter, and a Salesianum freshman named Brady Nabb.

Budinger came to Henderson as a lanky, unrefined athlete who'd throw his weight "all over the place." Now, the ball jumps out of his hand. Last fall, he had the third most passing yards in the state. The challenge now is to become more consistent with his footwork and improve his "football IQ," Henderson says.

"He can critique himself at this point," Red Lion Assistant Offensive Coordinator Steve Quindeln said of Budinger. "He knows when something is wrong."

Nabb, the Salesianum freshman, was Henderson's first client almost three years ago as a middle schooler. He's gone from an over strider who threw the ball from above his head to a passer with a consistent base and a compact motion. Nabb is waiting for a chance to play at the varsity level. Henderson expects a "take over" once he does.

Although Henderson's instruction focuses most on the physical mechanics of becoming a stronger passer, lessons gathered through his playing experience on the cerebral and interpersonal sides of playing quarterback seep in. As much as he's a coach to his athletes, he strives to be a mentor.

Lessons for Tiberi, the Smyrna quarterback on his way to Millersville in the fall, have at times drifted away from mechanics. Henderson described him as an outgoing kid and a passionate player. Sometimes, as a team leader, Tiberi needed to temper those emotions and be on to the next play, Henderson told him.

"He's been there," Tiberi said. "It's good to learn from a younger guy."

'He still has a lot of football left in him'

Henderson's Instagram account, @hendersonqbtraining, is typically a milieu of high school and college passers going through drills, but in the past few weeks Henderson's blue and gold UD helmet has popped up.

He's been going through workouts with Marks in preparation for the United Football League season, which begins March 30. The new spring football league formed last year after a merger of the XFL and USFL. Henderson will leave Delaware to join the Houston Roughnecks in preseason workouts Feb. 23.

His quarterback training will go on hiatus and resume ahead of the next football season once he returns.

Henderson signed with the Baltimore Ravens as an undrafted free agent last May. The team released him a month later. He tried out for a few NFL clubs before the season and had a few offers from the Canadian Football League, but was unsure once the fall rolled around whether he wanted to keep playing.

He eventually decided Houston, where he'll reunite with former Delaware teammate wide receiver Gene Coleman, was a good fit.

Henderson's college career was hampered by multiple injuries, including a broken fibula in the first quarter of UD's semifinal game at South Dakota State in 2022 that ended his time at Delaware. More than a year removed from the injury, Henderson says he feels as good as he ever has throwing the football.

"He still has a lot of football left in him," said Goldrich, Delaware's quarterbacks coach.

However the spring season shakes out, Henderson has found an outlet for his football passion in coaching. Recently, perhaps no one has been the recipient more than Drew Marks, the son of Smyrna coach Michael Marks who inhabits the path Henderson once walked.

Henderson coached Drew and Tiberi as a member of Smyrna's staff during the season. Drew is also a student of the weekend sessions and has hung around Henderson's practices in his ramp up to the UFL season.

The son of a coach, Drew gravitated to football and quarterbacking at a young age and split snaps with Tiberi as a freshman. He has significantly modified his throwing motion with Henderson. He used to take a big step and lean to the left as he delivered the ball. Now, he has a cleaner and more consistent flight path and can make throws off-platform "not many people in the country can make," Henderson said.

In describing the progress Drew has made and recounting memories of Henderson as a player, Marks said Henderson is who he would "hand select" to be a role model for his son.

"I couldn't be more proud of the kid," Marks said of Henderson. "... for wanting to give back to the game that's been really, really good to him. Because of that, there's a large group of quarterbacks that are going to really improve."

Contact Brandon Holveck at bholveck@delawareonline.com. Follow him on X and Instagram @holveck_brandon. Follow him on TikTok @bholveck.

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Nolan Henderson coaches dozens of Delaware high school football stars