Oregon QB coach: Ice cream query about checking ‘conviction’

Oregon quarterbacks coach Koa Ka’ai wants a snappy answer to what he views as a simple question: chocolate or vanilla ice cream.

“The minute the kid pauses, I don’t really want that kid because you need to have some type of conviction right, wrong or indifferent,” Ka’ai told reporters Tuesday after a spring practice. “So whether you like chocolate or you like vanilla, I don’t really care. But if you sit there and say, ‘Ah, coach, I don’t know what I want, is it melted? Is it not? What’s the brand?’ So on and so forth.

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“What is this kid going to do on third down in front of 110,000 [fans]? He’s probably going to think about it more than he should. He’s not going to have conviction.”

While the question was just an apparent example in Ka’ai’s search for the next Ducks quarterback to follow recent starters Dante Moore, Dillon Gabriel and Bo Nix, it comes from an up-and-coming assistant whom Moore called a “genius” this week.

Ka’ai, who was a tight end, defensive lineman and special teams contributor during his Oregon playing career from 2012 to 2015, has moved around the Ducks’ offense as an assistant position coach since 2022 before being promoted to quarterbacks coach for the upcoming season.

“He’s always been an extremely intelligent player and then, obviously, coach as well,” Oregon coach Dan Lanning told reporters Tuesday. “He’s worked with every position on offense. He’s been an integral part of what we’ve done and really coached our quarterbacks last year. He’s worn that hat every single day.”

Ka’ai called it “surreal” to be back at his alma mater as a coach. The move to leading the quarterbacks has come with new recruiting responsibilities, and Ka’ai said he is focused on more than what he sees from a quarterback’s throwing motion.

“You cannot find a bunch of kids to play the quarterback position, in my opinion, because it comes down to the cognitive aspect. You can go back through the years. Would anybody have taken Philip Rivers out of high school with this throwing motion? Probably not. Could Peyton Manning throw a spiral consistently towards the end of his career? Probably not. But why were those guys such elite quarterbacks? It was the cognitive aspect of the game. It was a processing aspect.

“So for me, yes, there are some semantics and there are some things that you need to worry about with the throwing motion and whatnot, but really how smart is a kid? What is his emotional intelligence? What is his football intelligence?”

And apparently, whether they want a scoop of vanilla or chocolate.