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Regarding the shortstop/quarterback link, Archie said this:

“I can certainly see where Patrick Mahomes is coming from. Not all quarterbacks can do all that, but Patrick does it probably better than anyone. It’s an interesting correlation between the two sports, and between those two positions.”

FRAN TARKENTON

An NFL quarterback must be accurate over just about everything else, said the man who broke Unitas’ lifetime league passing records, and held them for well over a decade.

Now 79, Tarkenton’s enthusiasm still punctures a phone speaker.

“It’s a natural thing for a quarterback to be a shortstop because, you know, you’re a guy that has got to have tremendous athletic ability,” he said in a phone interview. “As a shortstop and as a quarterback you have to go from side to side, backward or forward, and making throws off-balanced. You’ve got to have something on that ball, too … I think there’s a great correlation.”

Tarkenton kept returning to accuracy’s importance.

“Everybody can throw, right? But the great quarterbacks, they are accurate. They can throw the ball accurately.”

A nine-time Pro Bowler from 1961-78, mostly with the Minnesota Vikings, Tarkenton underscored his point with the following anecdote.

“I would start warming up with someone 20 yards away from me. And I would aim for his right earlobe, and then his left earlobe, and then I’d go for the right eyeball, then the left eyeball. That’s how precise I made myself. So it’s all about accuracy and control.

“Baseball pitchers have to have that accuracy, and not only to not walk people, but even if you throw it 99 mph over the middle of the plate, it’s gone. You’ve got to paint the corners.”

DAN FOUTS

The former San Diego Chargers icon would have loved to have starred for years at shortstop. He played it quite a bit as a kid.

“Then they moved me to third, and it ruined my baseball career,” Fouts said, laughing, in a phone interview.

“Shortstop is an important position. I mean, that’s where the action is. That’s where you make off-balance throws. If you look at all the guys you mentioned, that’s what they do. They make off-balance throws.

“Coaches always talk about throwing on platform. Well, throwing on platform is fine for practice. But when you’re in live action, you throw it any way you can. And off-platform is what you’re seeing from these young guys. You see a lot of it. It really stands out.”

Fouts, 68, also pointed to a key correlation to quarterbacking that shortstops routinely encounter. That is, the courage, toughness and ability to concentrate on making a good, hard, accurate throw just a split-second before getting slammed into over second base.

“You’ve got to make that double-play turn with somebody barreling in on you,” Fouts said. “Think about that.”

JOE MONTANA

Biographers of the four-time Super Bowl champion say that while growing up in the south Pittsburgh suburb of Monongahela, this multi-sport star was good at virtually every position in baseball, though he disliked catcher. He sparkled most at shortstop.

Montana liked basketball and football more, however. Especially basketball.

“I played all three sports all the way through my senior summer after high school, because I had no idea what sport I’d end up having a chance in,” Montana, 63, said in a phone interview in January. “I always wanted to go to Notre Dame, and I thought I was going to play basketball. But I wound up playing football.”

The iconic passer, who starred in the 1980s with the San Francisco 49ers and early ’90s with the Kansas City Chiefs, raved about Mahomes. Asked if he can see the shortstop in him, Montana didn’t hesitate:

“Oh yeah. Oh yeah, for sure.

“Every now and then a guy like that comes along, whether it’s a quarterback, or running back, defensive player. You’ll see them, and the things that those guys are able to do — especially him — is just a gift … it’s pretty amazing to watch.”

WARREN MOON

If he’d grown a few more inches in high school, the native of Los Angeles says the sport he would have pursued was basketball, his favourite.

As it was, to help support his family in high school, he had to choose only one organized sport to play, because his free time got eaten up by part-time jobs on the side. Moon picked football over baseball.

Until high school, though, Moon said he loved playing baseball as, yup, a shortstop — as well as a left fielder.

“Baseball was probably my best sport, one sport I was most talented in as a young boy,” Moon said in a phone interview, “but it was kind of slow for me.

“They always wanted me to pitch, but I didn’t want to wreck my arm for football, I’d heard of enough guys who’d wrecked their arms playing baseball. I played shortstop for about four years.”

Does Moon, 62, believe his baseball experiences helped him to become a better football thrower?

“No question about it. Just throwing from different angles, and different platforms. Especially as a shortstop, you’re getting the ball and throwing off-balance all the time, because you’re seldom able to set your feet and throw.

“Look at all these other quarterbacks who played baseball, like Russell Wilson, or Kyler Murray or Pat Mahomes. John Elway was a great baseball player. I could go on and on. I’m sure it helped their arms.”

Photo by Jamie Squire / Getty Images

TOM BRADY

Lastly, what about the man who has won six Super Bowl rings?

In an interview following New England’s first joint practice with the Lions in Detroit earlier this month, Brady said he was too slow as a youth to play shortstop.

“I was more of a catcher, third baseman,” he said. “You had to be pretty athletic to play shortstop, second base. So I could see how, with a lot of those younger guys, playing shortstop really helped with their mechanics, and getting everything lined up and going in the right direction.”

Brady said he didn’t get any help developing the various football-throwing angles through baseball. He had to learn them entirely on the gridiron, not the diamond.

“Yeah, there’s a lot of different ways to throw. I’ve learned over the years lots of different ways to get the football to a receiver. You’ve got to create angles, create torque and great ground force.”

Furthermore, pitching’s help to a quarterback is limited, Brady said. He didn’t do much of that either as a youth.

“There are a lot of variables in football throwing,” the native Californian said. “That’s different from starting pitchers, where every factor is always the same, outside of weather conditions. He throws the same distance every time, from the same mound height. But a quarterback, you think you’re going to throw five yards and, oh, the guy is only four yards away so you’ve got to transition your throw. So there are a lot of variables for quarterbacks.”

Brady’s father, Tom Brady Sr., said in a phone interview that his son played catcher pretty much all the way up through high school.

“When Tommy was growing up, baseball was always his favourite sport, until he got into high school,” Brady Sr. said. “He was a right-handed throwing, left-handed-hitting, power-hitting catcher. He had a gun.

“I always thought he liked being in the middle of the action behind the plate, as opposed to playing the infield, when you only get the ball five or six times a game. At catcher you get the ball 120 plays a game, or whatever. He also liked being the quarterback of the baseball team.

“And when he got to football, he really fell in love with it. It’s really kind of interesting because his body didn’t hurt as much playing football as playing baseball.”

Given what throwing-mechanics guru Tom House said about catching — (1) that after shortstop it’s the baseball position that best helps a quarterback, and (2) there’s no other position in all of sports with a throwing motion that more closely replicates a quarterback’s — is Mr. Underdog himself prepared to be a poster boy of sorts now for a new wave of catcher-QBs, to give all those shortstop-QBs what-for?

Uh, no.

“I think catcher probably didn’t help me much,” Brady said. “I think shortstop would probably be the ideal position to play.”

The list of ‘shortstop-QBs’

PAST

Peyton Manning

Joe Montana

Brett Favre

Fran Tarkenton

Dan Marino

Dan Fouts

Warren Moon

Troy Aikman

Kurt Warner

PRESENT

Patrick Mahomes, Chiefs

Aaron Rodgers, Packers

Drew Brees, Saints

Russell Wilson, Seahawks

Ben Roethlisberger, Steelers

Matt Ryan, Falcons

Matthew Stafford, Lions

Andy Dalton, Bengals

Jared Goff, Rams

Kyler Murray, Cardinals

Haskins wishes he could have played baseball

At least one current NFL quarterback who did not play competitive baseball growing up wishes he did.

Washington Redskins rookie Dwayne Haskins played only football competitively as a teenager. No baseball.

“No, not at all,” April’s No. 15 overall draft pick said, rather solemnly, in a training camp interview late last month.

“I wanted to. My dad wouldn’t let me. I did basketball, track when I was little. I wrestled too. That was about it, other than football.”

Some NFL QBs starred in sports other than baseball

Some NFL quarterbacks with multi-sports competitive pasts excelled in things other than football and baseball.

In yesteryear, Pittsburgh Steelers great Terry Bradshaw set a national high school javelin record.

Among current QBs, New York Giants rookie Daniel Jones credited his lacrosse past for helping develop the toughness for football.

“I didn’t really play baseball. I played basketball, football and lacrosse,” Jones said in a training-camp interview.

The 22-year-old was never afraid to take off and run from the pocket at Duke, or smash into the line for a short gain if that was required. Did lacrosse prepare him for that, specifically?

“I don’t know. Maybe that’s part of it,” Jones said. “I think that comes from just playing football … You learn a lot about the importance of toughness being undersized, by just competing. Toughness is important in all sports.”

Like just about every other successful pro athlete with a multi-sports background, Jones said that’s for sure the way to go.

“I think playing a lot of different sports is important for any kid. It was important for me, learning different skills. I think each sport teaches you different movement patterns, or different coordination with different parts of your body. All that is very important. And you learn to compete in different ways, from a young age. I think that’s important.”

JoKryk@postmedia.com

@JohnKryk