Quarterback Review: Featuring the stories of three NFL quarterback athletes Marcus Mariota, Kirk Cousins and Patrick Mahomes, this docuseries is executive produced by Keith Cossrow, Pat Kelleher, Ross Ketover, Peyton Manning and Chris Weaver. Along with these athletes, their family was also featured in the documentary including Kiyomi Cook, Mariota’s partner; Julie Hampton, Cousins’ partner and Brittany Mahomes. There were some coaches present in the series, like Andy Reid and Kevin O’Connell.
– The Quarterback Review Does Not Contain Spoilers –
I came in with the assumption that I would be seeing grown men throwing themselves at each other, and I was delivered exactly that. But there is so much more to this series than the surface level that goes into it. Apart from taking us on a deep dive into the nitty gritties of these athlete’s lives, the series managed to increase our general awareness of the sport beyond its superficiality. It was interesting to see that the narrative structure was still a very important part of the sport.
We may not have been going through the season in chronology, but we were able to get an insight into the separate channels of what makes their sport so enticing and exciting. We start off by seeing a very normal game showcasing every athlete’s ability when it comes to the sport. Kirk Cousins was trying to make it through their play-off, Marcus Mariota was trying to prove themselves to their community, and finally, Patrik Mahomes was trying to make sure that everything they did was in service to make their dream work one more time.
For most of the time, it felt like the documentary was fly-on-the-wall, observing everyone in their space as they tried to call out plays in the field and took beatings left, right and centre. However, there were moments when the camera crew’s intervention was quite evident and prominent. The interviews were intercut well with the videos, and the footage was of extremely good quality. Not to mention, it was enlightening to hear what was happening in the field as the game went on.
Clearly, this documentary didn’t hold anything back. It wasn’t just incredibly personal but took us inside the game, making viewers feel like they had the same stake in the game as the players had. Add that to the brilliant editing techniques, it raised and ebbed the pressure with strategic highlighting. We had an episode that would be self-contained on its own. Every episode added to the growing lore of these athletes, but they were also self-standing in their own way.
Additionally, the thing that really drove the story from the camera to the screen was the brilliant referencing. We were taken back in time through archival footage and given some explanatory context for what was about to happen. It may have been spoon-feeding, but for someone who has never watched American football, these references were a great place to understand what the documentors were trying to convince their viewers of.
Moreover, the music, the energy, and the tension created through the non-diegetic music have definitely made the series feel cemented in the cinematic space. It doesn’t view as a docuseries per se. While there may be certain strategic and statistical elements, the series is definitely made for entertainment. The cuts are precise, intentional and driven in a way to provide the most dramatised rendition to their sport. Even their workout regimens look like popular montages from sports movies.
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Quarterback Review: Final Thoughts
For anyone trying to get into watching American Football, this show works perfectly well. As mentioned above, dramaticism and sport work so well hand in hand that the connection between the players and the strategy becomes deeper. Even people who have a foot in the pond can enjoy this docuseries because there are a lot of technicalities to understand in this, and it truly is a love letter to the best athletes in the sport currently.
Additionally, most people cannot pass up the opportunity to pull back the curtain into their process. Just for that reason as well, viewers should definitely check out the docuseries. This kind of exploration gives us a chance to understand anecdotal experience and objective experience really well. The only thing that made the documentary a little patchy for me was not including Cousins and Mariota’s stories well in the end. Granted, there were major hiccups, but there were better storytelling tools to handle that.
Quarterback is currently streaming on Netflix.
What did you think of the series? Were you able to get on board with American Football after this? Let us know in the comments below.