Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Quarterback’ on Netflix, a Documentary Look At What Makes NFL Quarterbacks Tick

There’s no sport in the United States that’s bigger than NFL football, and there’s no player more important in NFL football than the quarterback. In Quarterback, a new eight-episode documentary series on Netflix produced in collaboration with NFL Films, we follow three current NFL starting quarterbacks through their 2022 season. We see these quarterbacks both on and off the field, and get insight into what it’s like to have the highest-pressure job in North American sports.

QUARTERBACK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Kirk Cousins reads his son a bedtime story–from a book about the NFL. He reads a passage about the importance of the NFL quarterback, something he’s one of only 32 of in the entire world. The passage concludes with a note about how rules were changed to ban low hits on quarterbacks after Tom Brady’s season-ending injury in 2008, and notes how he’s happy for that. It’s a cute, if obviously-staged scene.

The Gist: The series centers on three current starting quarterbacks, each in different situations. There’s journeyman Marcus Mariota, who spent the 2022 season with the Atlanta Falcons. Kirk Cousins is an established presence as starter for the Minnesota Vikings. Then there’s Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs, largely considered the best quarterback in the league now and arguably one of the best ever to play the game. Quarterback jumps between the three, following them through the 2022 season.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? This isn’t an outside-perspective sports documentary, it’s an NFL product–the first collaboration between NFL Films and Netflix. That collaboration shows–this is a slick, dramatic, heavily-produced piece of NFL propaganda, something in between HBO’s Hard Knocks and the classic John Facenda-narrated NFL highlight tapes.

Our Take: When it comes to turning a seasonal sport into a year-round product, no one can compete with the NFL. From the NFL Draft to schedule announcements to preseason camps, every corner of the league’s calendar year is filmed, packaged, and presented to a football-mad public for consumption.

It’s in this context that we get Quarterback, a new behind-the-scenes documentary-slash-infomercial produced by Netflix in collaboration with NFL Films. The eight-episode series follows three of the league’s 32 quarterbacks–Marcus Mariota, Kirk Cousins and Patrick Mahomes–through the course of the 2022 season. Though it’s paced by highlight films from the players’ games, the meat of the series takes place off the field, as we spend time with them between games, in the training room and at home with their families.

The series’ smartest decision is not automatically going for three top stars; while Mahomes is widely considered to be the league’s best quarterback, Cousins is a mid-tier established starter, and Mariota is struggling to hold on to a starting job in his first year in Atlanta. This makes for a little bit more drama than just seeing Mahomes do unreal Mahomes things, and brings parts of Quarterback more in line with HBO’s Hard Knocks, which routinely highlights the league’s do-or-die stories.

The level of access that Quarterback gets is unrivaled, and the production values second to none, but it’s hard not to feel a little cold watching it. There’s no deep insights here, nothing unexpected–this is a highly-polished piece of NFL propaganda, and watching it feels a lot like watching an extended version of the Sunday pregame shows. (Perhaps the only difference is that they don’t spend any time talking about fantasy football, and for that I thank them.)

If you’re a hardcore NFL fan–the kind who tunes in for each day of the NFL Draft and watches the schedule drops live on ESPN–then Quarterback will be a welcome oasis in the football-less desert of mid-July. But if you’re not hard-up for football, you’re not going to find much here that you can’t wait until the fall for.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Each of the quarterbacks, back home after a weekend of games, reflects on the things they did wrong–the receivers they missed, the plays they botched. It’s a reminder that even the best of the best beat themselves up, and have to work hard to get better.

Sleeper Star: While Mahomes is the unquestioned star and Cousins a familiar face, Mariota offers the most compelling behind-the-scenes footage, as he spends much of the season looking over his shoulder on the field, and anticipating a baby off the field.

Most Pilot-y Line: “I mean, think about it,” Peyton Manning offers. “As the quarterback, every single play you’re the focus. You have to know everyone else’s job just as well as your own. You can’t hear half the time, the weather’s bad, you’ve got 300-pound linemen trying to kill you. Win or lose, you are going to be front and center. You have to give credit when it’s good, you have to take blame when it’s bad, you have to face the music when times are tough. And there’s always someone waiting to take your spot.”

Our Call: SKIP IT. Quarterback is a tightly-produced piece of sports television, but it doesn’t offer much insight beyond what you’d get in a Sunday pregame show.

Scott Hines is an architect, blogger and proficient internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky who publishes the widely-beloved Action Cookbook Newsletter.