Kevin Kolb Q&A

Quarterback Kevin Kolb was a four year starter at the University of Houston from 2003-2006. In 2007, he was a second round draft choice for the Philadelphia Eagles. Receiving his first start in early 2009, he became the first QB in NFL history throw for over 300 yards in each of his first two starts. PNL caught up with him earlier this year in Dallas at the Super Bowl:

PNL: What is your recruiting story?

Kevin Kolb: Well I went to a big high school, got recruited early, and committed to Oklahoma State University. Coach Gundy was the offensive coordinator there and I really liked him. I committed to them for a full year, and then after being committed to them for a year, actually my high school coach got the head-coaching job at the University of Houston. Right before signing day, I switched over and changed my commitment, which was obviously a hard thing to do. I went to the University of Houston and had a good career.

PNL: What was your decision-making strategy for recruitment?

Kevin Kolb: I went to the camps and when you go to the camps you’re really just trying to show your abilities to different coaches to get the offers, in my opinion. What I did is I tried to narrow it down to about five schools in the United States, and I wasn’t really heavily recruited but I had some offers. So here’s the only five schools I care about going to- so I went and put my time in at those schools. I narrowed that back to about two or three and then I made my decision from there. Those two or three were off of what kind of system they ran, what kind of quarterbacks they had there, what was my chance of playing early, what’s the school like, and then one thing that a lot of people don’t focus on that I thought was really important, my uncle told me this, career after football. So when I start weighing Houston and Stillwater- I said “I have a better chance of having a job in Houston building a network while I’m in school with people who are alumni and then having a chance for a successful job in Houston outside of football whenever I’m done. 

PNL: Do you think it is important to aggressively promote yourself coming out of high school?

Kevin Kolb: I think you have to. I think that if you don’t- there’s a lot of guys who I play with right now in the NFL, Saginaw Valley State, McNeese State, guys who are playing in the NFL that are multi-million dollar athletes that got passed up in high school. I said, “Man how do you get passed up? You were 6’7 and 285 lbs,” and he said, “I just went to a small high school.” A little bit of it is on you, to get yourself out there. You don’t want to come across as a cocky or arrogant person, but getting out there and doing a camp, putting yourself in a camp is not doing that at all.

PNL: How do you like to train in the offseason?

Kevin Kolb: Well I think a mistake a lot of people make is first, they over train. I think you can over train. You wear yourself out during the off-season, that’s really for rebuilding for the season, and I think another mistake that a lot of people make is that they don’t always train for the game of football. They train for the speed but they’re not track athletes. When you’re a quarterback, don’t practice with your hand on the ground because you’re standing at a two-point-stance taking it from under center. Practice all your stuff in that position and that way it all transfers to the field very well. Don’t get caught up in the training aspect make sure it’s on the field stuff that is going to be genuine to you.