All it took was one handshake for Warren McCarty to figure it out.
It was the summer of 2016 when the quarterback guru met Aidan Atkinson for the first time and asked him the same question he’d posed to all of his pupils.
An ice-breaker: “What do you need to tell me about yourself?”
Without hesitation, the freshman-to-be replied, “I’m going to win a state championship, national championship, and at least one Super Bowl, and I hope that you can help get me there.”
“I knew right then that this kid is wired differently,” McCarty said.
Indeed, there’s very little that’s standard about the 6-foot-3, 212-pound Fairview quarterback.
This is a high school senior who spends his free time reading FBI director James Comey’s memoir, considers film study fun and cited the Kellogg School of Management as one of the primary reasons he accepted a football scholarship from Northwestern.
“He’s really into the big picture,” Fairview coach Tom McCartney said.
He’s also into the most minute of details.
Like when he was playing against Boulder last season and saw a safety’s feet lined up in the wrong direction before a snap. He quickly audibled into a hitch-and-go. A few steps and one throw later — touchdown.
Every element counts. Every rep. Every read. Every play call.
In Atkinson’s mind, it’s a math problem. And every problem has an answer.
“Every single ball should be complete and every single play should be a touchdown just based off every problem having a solution,” Atkinson said. “You just got to find it.”
As a junior last season, Atkinson had little trouble doing that.
Starting for the second straight season in McCartney’s pass-happy attack, he was given free rein to alter formations and routes as he saw fit. The results were like nothing Colorado has ever seen.
Atkinson set 11-man football records with 687 yards and nine touchdown passes in a Week 6 win over Legacy. He eclipsed the state record for single-season passing touchdowns by the end of Week 9. And he was on his way to breaking the single-season passing yardage record when a broken thumb ended his year midway through Week 10.
All told, Atkinson threw for 3,952 yards on 62.5-percent passing with 55 touchdowns and just seven interceptions as the Class 5A state player of the year.
“There’s not a lot of high school quarterbacks that are doing what he does,” McCarty said. “(Fairview’s) system is complex. He’s doing a lot pre-snap at the line of scrimmage.”
Atkinson estimated he audibled into a different play about 50 percent of the time last season — all part of the chess game he finds so appealing. Expect more of the same this fall, McCartney says.
“Aidan is very, very smart and bright, but he also is super smart football-wise to where we’ve already opened up all the offense to him.”
Of course, it’s not all about Atkinson’s brains.
Studying and repetition aside, a quarterback still has to make the throws. For McCarty, who’s tutored his fair share of Division-I quarterbacks and works with Atkinson 2-3 times a month, there’s no doubt the Knights signal caller has the requisite physical talent as a pure pocket passer.
“He can make every throw on a field,” McCarty said. “People marvel at his deep ball because he’s so accurate throwing downfield, but to me whatap magic is his intermediate game… especially over the middle of the field. I’ve never seen it before from a high school quarterback, deadly accurate.”
Many of the targets will change this fall.
Only one of the Knights’ four top pass catchers return — senior receiver Henry Blackburn (54 receptions, 890 yards). But Fairview rarely has trouble finding guys who can catch a football. The addition of 6-foot-5 basketball star Jalen Page is likely the latest discovery.
After missing out on the state playoffs with his broken thumb last season, Atkinson has unfinished business.
“We’re reloading at every single position and we have more depth than we’ve had in a lot of years since I’ve been here,” Atkinson said, “so winning the state championship is definitely the ceiling.
“And I’m not saying that just to say that.”
Nope. He’s been saying it all along.
