HOUSTON — It’s hot as hell outside.
For Texans, a sunny 78-degree day in mid-March is as normal as jacked-up pickups and barbecue. But for someone with Midwestern sensibilities, this blazing heat is a precursor to an extinction-level event.
Regardless, it’s high noon and Darrell Colbert Jr. is in this weather barking orders to his group of six quarterback clients. He’s on the outdoor football field of a training facility on the west side of town called the Warehouse.
Out on the Warehouse’s patchy grass field, likely torched by this sun, the private quarterback trainer — whose client list includes Cam Ward and Shedeur Sanders, the top quarterback prospects in next week’s NFL draft — is decked out in black shorts, red Nike Zoom Vomero sneakers and a gray hoodie with a large orange “S” on the back, the logo for his training company Select QB Athletics. A gold chain with “Select” written in big bold letters adorns his neck, while a snapback hat sits slanted a few degrees off-center on his head like the rapper T.I.
For one of the first drills, the quarterbacks are all facing left in a straight line, bouncing on the balls of their feet. On Colbert’s call, they quickly pivot 45 degrees to the right and toss a spiral to one of the receivers brought in to catch passes today. After a few reps, they add a backwards slide to the drill, simulating stepping back in the pocket.
“Eyes move first,” Colbert yells out, his hat already in another position on his head.
Over the course of the two-hour session, Colbert takes the quarterbacks — a combination of high school, junior college, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCU), Division I transfers, and Ward — the presumed No. 1 pick in this month’s NFL draft — through nearly a dozen different drills intended to perfect the mechanics, movements and motions necessary to play the position at a top level.
After this group session, Colbert has a one-on-one training and a promotional photoshoot to attend at a high school located over 30 minutes away. He’ll be there until 10 at night. By the next day, he’ll be back out on the field at Warehouse for another group session. A week earlier, he was in Virginia training another client, the week before in Indianapolis to attend the NFL draft combine.
For a former Division I quarterback and son of an HBCU football legend who once had to direct message high schoolers on Twitter in hopes of nabbing new clients, these are the fruits of all the labor he’s put in over the years to get to this point – even while out in this hot ass sun.
“I knew what it felt like when I wanted to be this busy,” Colbert, 28, said. “So I don’t complain at all.”
If you’re wondering how Ward, in the span of five years, could go from little-known University of Incarnate Word, which plays in a 6,000-seat stadium, to transferring to Miami and leading the nation in touchdown passes (39) while breaking the NCAA record for most career touchdown passes (156), Colbert had a hand in that.
Or if you’re wondering how the son of Deion Sanders could turn historically Black Jackson State into primetime television and then follow that up by bringing Colorado back from the dead in just two seasons, leading the entire nation in completion percentage (74%) along the way, Colbert had a hand in that too.
Both are supremely talented quarterbacks who put in the work to be predicted as the first two picks in the draft, according to ESPN’s Jordan Reid’s most recent mock draft. In fact, Colbert has had his hands in Heisman finalists, top-tier transfers, and at least one five-star high school prospect.
But where Colbert comes in is fine-tuning the raw talent that each quarterback he trains arrives with, while also connecting with these quarterbacks, most of whom are Black, in a way that instills in them the confidence needed to excel at the position.
“He’s relatable to me because I could talk to him like he a teammate, I talk to him like he my coach, and he understands it,” Ward told Andscape while sitting inside Warehouse.
“… And him playing the position helps every quarterback he worked with, because he actually lived it already, so he’s able to give us insider stuff that our coach can’t give us because they ain’t really played the position in college or in the NFL.”
Colbert started playing football when he was about five years old. While he spent time at multiple positions, quarterback was what he was 100% committed to. “I always wanted the ball in my hand,” he said.
His father, Darrell Colbert Sr., starred at historically Black Texas Southern from 1983 to 1986, leaving the school as its career leader in receptions (215) and touchdowns (32) and second in school history in receiving yards (3,177). The 2010 Texas Southern Hall of Fame inductee played two seasons (1987-88) in the NFL with the Kansas City Chiefs.
“People would always tell me, ‘Your dad was a bad boy,’ ” Colbert Jr. said.
Colbert Sr. understood what it meant to be at the top of your sport, so he had to instill in his son that hard-work mindset. Back in high school, Colbert would get his receivers together after practice – sometimes picking them up from home – to continue working out throwing routes. When the father and son would play catch outside the house, Colbert Sr. would drill the ball at his son to make him a better catcher. “To this day, I got the best hands out there,” Colbert Jr. said.
“My deal was always … if this is something you really want to do, we’re going to do it the right way,” Colbert Sr. said. “You’re going to understand what it takes to do it and the work that it takes to do it.”
Colbert Jr. starred at Lamar High School in Houston, playing for legendary head coach Tom Nolen, who retired in 2018 with the most all-time wins of any Houston-area coach. In 2012, Colbert Jr. helped lead Lamar to the Class 5A Division I state championship game, the only appearance in the school’s history and the first Houston Independent School District (HISD) program to make it to the final in 20 years (Lamar lost 35-21 to Allen High School).
Left: Kim Klement/USA TODAY Sports. Right: Antranik Tavitian for Andscape
Multiple Division I programs – including Missouri, Iowa State and Yale – recruited Colbert, but at 5-feet-11 and under 190 pounds, all of the programs wanted him to convert to receiver or defensive back – all except Southern Methodist University in suburban Dallas.
After three uneventful, injury-plagued seasons at SMU, Colbert graduated early and transferred in 2017 to Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, 80 miles west of Houston. During the 2018 season, Colbert (1,611 passing yards, 597 rushing, 24 total touchdowns) helped Lamar overcome a 1-5 start to the season to win six games in a row and advance to the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs, a first in school history.
After that season, Colbert went to Dallas to train with Jerrod Johnson, the former all-time leading passer in Texas A&M history and journeyman NFL quarterback. Johnson was the first trainer Colbert had who both understood the game and how to teach it. But soon after meeting him, Johnson took on a role with the Indianapolis Colts, which created an opening for a new trainer to take on his clients. Johnson, who has been the Houston Texans quarterbacks coach since 2023, offered to push his former clients onto Colbert if he was interested in getting into the trainer game.
“So I was like, ‘S— I ain’t got s— else to do,’ ” Colbert said.
Colbert began to shadow Johnson during group sessions, picking up on the ins and outs of teaching. While he kept in touch with a few of Johnson’s former clients, he eventually had to find his own. After founding Select QB Athletics, Colbert drafted up a message about his resume as a former Houston-area and collegiate quarterback and the early work he had done as a trainer and blasted the message out in the Twitter DMs of every HISD quarterback he could find on the district’s website.
“Literally like 60 to 80 kids,” Colbert said.
The first person to respond to him was Cameron McCalister, who was playing at nearby Clear Brook High School at the time and will play at Texas Southern this season. The two worked out a few times and started posting training videos on social media.
“It was hot, I remember that,” McCalister said of that first session with Colbert. “… He put me through a bunch of drills and I was gassed.”
The videos with McCalister, coupled with word-of-mouth from coaches in the area who knew Colbert, led to Colbert growing his client list to about 15 quarterbacks by the end of 2019. Then-Miami transfer D’Eriq King, whose 144 career passing touchdowns at Manvel High School broke the Texas Class 6A record, was looking for a trainer in the area to work with and put out a call on social media for help in finding one. Colbert and King got in contact and began to workout three to four times a week. Then came Florida’s Kyle Trask (who’d be a Heisman finalist by the next year), Texas A&M’s James Foster, Houston’s Logan Holgorsen and future Baylor and Virginia Tech quarterback Kyron Drones.
From 2014 to 2015, Colbert was teammates at SMU with Deion “Bucky” Sanders Jr., Deion Sanders’ eldest son. The two hit it off, and when Shedeur Sanders, who was still in high school at the time, would come up to the school to workout with his brother, he’d also work out with Colbert. Once Colbert got the OK from Deion Sanders, he became Shedeur Sanders’ official trainer.
Ward came through word-of-mouth. Drones, the Virginia Tech quarterback, is Ward’s cousin and helped put the then-Incarnate Word quarterback in contact with Colbert. When Colbert first watched Ward throw, he took notes of some of the things one can notice about Ward: He naturally throws sidearm. His release point is a few degrees off from where it is for other top-tier NFL quarterbacks. Colbert initially noted to himself the things he wanted to change. But after going back to watch the tape, he reconsidered. These quirky mechanics are what makes Ward, Ward. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it; just perfect it.
During a drill in Houston, Ward takes a three-step drop, plants his left leg and turns his body completely around while sprinting towards the left side of the field. As he waits for the receiver to get into his out route, Ward swings his hips around, maintaining his upright position and balance the whole time, and throws a missile towards the pylon where it falls in the receiver’s hands.
Ward did the same exact thing on a touchdown throw against Florida during his first game as a Hurricane last August.
“He boosts my confidence up a lot because every throw I make on the field, every throw we practice, I know when it comes Sundays now I’m just doing the same throw I do on Monday, Wednesday, every day I work with him,” Ward said. “We emphasize instead of doing just like the basic quarterback stuff, we do the crazy throws, the crazy arm angles. End of the day you never know what position [your body’s] going to be in on the field.”
Colbert’s core philosophy is to meet everybody where they’re at. He has to see you throw and move before he can diagnose where he can help you improve. Over the two days I observed, Colbert ran his clients through over a dozen drills, rarely repeating any single exercise. “The only thing that stays the same is the warm up,” he said.
He’s at his best when identifying the small mechanical things that the casual football watcher doesn’t notice, which he yells out consistently.
“Chest up.”
“Lift ya hips.”
“Eyes down the middle.”
“Chest up.” (Again.)
“Rotate, rotate.”
But base and balance are what Colbert harps on the most. Those two components are the engines that make the rest of the car go. Whether you’re throwing on the run, eluding a defender in the pocket or faking a handoff in a run-pass option (RPO), lacking base and balance can change the arc and the placement of the throw. “Regardless of what position I’m in, if I have a good base, I’m balanced, I can be able to put myself in good position to make a good throw,” Colbert said.
One drill in particular illustrates that.
Two quarterbacks face one another about five feet apart. At Colbert’s call, one quarterback hops back three steps off both feet as if dropping back in the pocket. At the same time, the other quarterback is hopping forward towards his partner, and the pair go back and forth in this sort of tug-of-war dance for a few reps. At Colbert’s second call, the quarterback on the right immediately breaks stride to sprint for an on-the-run bullet to a receiver doing a crosser route towards the left side of the field. Meanwhile the quarterback on the left does a 360-degree turn, evades the quarterback running across his line of sight to hit a separate receiver on a curl route towards the right.
This drill is to simulate the chaos of a post-snap pocket, emphasizing balance and movement in the event the quarterback has to break containment and throw on the run.
“It’s just adding more movement into it, making sure we stick and moving, not just being robotic with everything,” Colbert said.
What most makes Colbert relatable to his clients is his steadfast belief in being who he is. He’s a Black dude from Texas who curses a little and appreciates himself a chain or two. “I don’t think you see any trainers, or quarterback trainers for sure, walking around with chains on,” he said.
When Colbert was attending Elite 11 camps growing up, most of the trainers were white. So a shared background means that Colbert can bring a comfort to his clients – all but one of whom were Black during my time with him – that perhaps a white trainer can’t.
Last month, NFL reporter Josina Anderson reported that an anonymous NFL quarterback coach referred to Shedeur Sanders as “brash” and “arrogant” during team interviews at the draft combine, which has historically been coded language used to knock Black confidence. Colbert pushes back on that assessment.
Being outwardly confident and boisterous is who Sanders is; he’s the son of Prime, after all. It’s who Sanders was in high school. Who he was at Jackson State when he said, at his first Southwestern Athletic Conference SWAC media day in 2021, that he wouldn’t lose a game in the conference (he didn’t). Sanders is just confident enough to tell it like it is.
“I think it’s just that he’s just different, because he’s just saying what everybody doesn’t say,” Colbert said.
Wake Forest transfer Robbie Ashford said part of why he likes Colbert is because Colbert knows what it’s like to face the scrutiny of being a Black quarterback.
“Everybody wants to say, ‘Oh, we can’t play quarterback. Oh, you should go play a different position,’ just because, s—, the color of our skin,” Ashford said. “So just being around somebody who’s done it, done it at the D-I level and is a Black quarterback, you want to be around those types of people because they understand the struggle, they understand the grind, they know how to relate to you.”
While Colbert is being photographed for this story, one pose calls for him to look out from inside the Warehouse longingly at the practice field. From the other side of the room, Ashford yells out, “Hey, man, you ugly as f—.” The two share a laugh.
Colbert can be straight and stern with his clients from time to time, but never angrily yells. When one quarterback throws flat-footed rather than on balls of their feet or another lazily fakes a handoff on an RPO, Colbert never comes off as if losing confidence in them.
“Just because it’s an easy throw, don’t get lazy,” he said at one point. “I don’t know what this s— is,” he said at another.
Keisean Henderson is the No. 2 high school quarterback in 2026 ESPN 300, with offers from Texas, Colorado and Alabama. Instead, he chose to stay home and play for Houston. In January, Henderson became the first junior to ever win the MVP award at the annual Navy All-American Bowl showcase of the top 100 players in the nation.
The 17-year-old has worked with Colbert since he was in the eighth grade.
“I started off terrible,” he said of his first session back then. Working with Colbert is all about fine-tuning, and any pushing that the trainer does is all about getting quarterbacks to their fullest potential.
“I’ll say it’s still tough love at the end of the day. It’s a different way of tough love though. So it’s more so laid back,” said Henderson. “He’s still going to get on my ass at the end of the day. But it’s not like in your face, ‘You got to do this! You got to do that!’
“It’s like, ‘if you want to be great, here’s the steps to take to be great.’ ”
Colbert didn’t start off with Heisman candidate clients and trips to the draft combine. After his first training with McAllister, he didn’t see a client for another week. Colbert would hand out his business card at quarterback camps and not get a single reply.
Now Colbert sometimes works upwards of 60 days straight, going from sunup to sundown on many days, only taking some time off on Sundays. “I go to church in the morning,” he said. During the seven-plus hours I spent with Colbert over two days in March, I rarely saw him pull out his cellphone and didn’t see him eat a single thing.
A few weeks before our interview, Colbert was in Indianapolis for the scouting combine working out privately with Ward and Sanders. Over a decade ago, getting to the combine was one of Colbert’s goals. It’s what all the long nights working out with receivers or playing catch with his dad were all about, that moment to showcase his talents for NFL teams. That invite never came, but it just meant that wasn’t the journey Colbert was supposed to take. Instead, he was there with two of the top quarterback prospects in the entire country, just months after attending the Heisman Trophy ceremony in New York City (Ward was the fourth-place finalist).
Life didn’t go as Colbert originally planned, but sticking to the work ethic that his family instilled in him and never compromising who he is still got him in the very rooms he sought as a teenager.
I asked him what it meant to be living all this out. And while the question pertained to being at the combine, the answer can apply to Colbert’s entire football journey.
“I always prayed to be in those positions,” he said. “I wanted to be there as a player, but God never told me how I would get there.”