Jeff Trickey talks with a sense of urgency, like Richard Simmons or Dick Vitale, his arms flailing, his eyes darting, his vocal chords bulging halfway across Qwest Field.

He's standing in front of more than 100 prospective quarterbacks and wide receivers, all in high school, all gathered for Matt Hasselbeck's annual passing camp, all wide-eyed and soaking in his every word. And one reporter who just looks like he's in high school, all bleary-eyed and sleep deprived and hoping, above all, to avoid injury and embarrassment.

"We have an opportunity today," says Trickey, a man who spends his days teaching in camps like these. "This is going to be a meaningful day. You have a gift. At the end of the day, you're going to be a better player, and you're going to be a better person."

Trickey splits the campers into groups based on age and position. As I trot out to join the senior quarterbacks in search of understanding the complexity of the position, Trickey grabs my arm.

"At the end of the day, we'll have you throwing better than Matt Hasselbeck," he says.

Or something like that.

Like a spider web

Jim Zorn likes to tell Seahawks quarterbacks he coaches that they go through heroics before the ball is even snapped. That's how complicated the position is.

From one tackle to the next snap, Hasselbeck runs through dozens of steps he has spent his life learning, memorizing and repeating. He's checking the time on the clock, checking the down and distance and listening to coach Mike Holmgren detail the personnel group coming toward the huddle.

He's sizing up the defense, its formation, its personnel. He gets a play, sets up the formation to match the play and calls the cadence.

As the Seahawks break the huddle, Hasselbeck checks the play clock, finds the free safety first and the strong safety second, takes his best guess at the defense's coverage and adjusts. Often, he puts a receiver in motion, hoping the defense will give away whether it's playing man or zone.

All that's left is the only part that everybody pays attention to — the play itself, a play that wouldn't be possible without all those hours in the film room and on the practice field and all the steps that came before the snap.

That's why the quarterback position is like a spider web. There's an intricacy to it.

"When I sat down and counted how many things we do before a snap," Hasselbeck says, "it's complicated. Sometimes, when you get the right protection and the right routes called, then you're sort of proud of yourself that you got the right play called against the perfect defense. You almost forget that you still have to make the play."

All the little things

The Seahawks recently signed former Indiana quarterback Gibran Hamdan and allocated him to NFL Europe. He came back with a better understanding of the position and a broken collarbone.

Hamdan is one of my group's main instructors. Before we start, he pulls us aside.

"That's the beautiful thing about playing quarterback — all the little things that go into it," Hamdan says. "I wish I had known all the little things about the position when I was your age."

We spend the rest of the morning working on the little things. Starting with the grip — index finger above the line on top of the football, two bottom fingers on the laces, thumb spread wide below the white line, all aligned for maximum friction, which Trickey tells us is the key to the revolutions that make a football spiral.

My passes revolve like an end-over-end punt. There's more grace in throwing fish at Pike's Place Market.

You want to feel like a boxer, Trickey says, vocal chords bulging again for effect. The perfect pass is an economy of motion in that way — compact, quick and at the expense of as little energy as possible.

He's right in that respect. The more I try for the perfect pass, the more they wobble toward my partner. It's like plugging a garden hose full of holes. Stick your finger in one and water comes bursting out another.

I'm just starting to get the hang of holding both hands on the football, protecting it for the inevitable moment when a defender blasts me from behind, when I start adding an extra hop to my three-step drop. I fix that and my release point is too low, sending balls sideways.

We pass with a partner from one knee, then standing, then running toward our partner. My partner is Ricky Blake, the starting quarterback at Yelm High School. His passes are more like bullets. After the first drill, the thumb on my left hand is numb.

Pass receivers run curl routes and comeback routes and slant routes and fade routes. My arm is the only thing that's fading. My first pass to a wide receiver wobbles toward Mark Anthony of Franklin High School, dropping 5 feet in front of his outstretched arms. The second pass is a spiral, the closest to perfection I'll throw all day.

"Good," Hasselbeck says behind me.

He won't say that again.

Position is "cerebral"

The consolation for any Monday Morning Quarterback trying to become a Sunday morning one is that there's not a harder position to learn in football. Trickey calls it "cerebral" in that "the beauty comes before you get to the line of scrimmage. It's a combination of physical gifts and mental preparation on every play."

Lacking both, I seek out Seneca Wallace, the Seahawks' backup quarterback, during lunch. He's athletic enough to warrant consideration as a punt returner next season, athletic enough to play multiple positions on the field, athletic enough to rank positions by degree of difficulty.

"There's so much to the position," Wallace says, "that people don't understand how complicated it is."

He pauses.

"You might want to stick to writing."

Minutes later, I shake the hand of Don Hasselbeck, Matt's father, and notice his Super Bowl ring.

"Be careful," he warns. "You know [ESPN anchor] Stuart Scott once got hit in the eye."

Chance to act

There's so much to learn and so little time. Hasselbeck used to cut pictures out of magazines, paste them into a collage and study grips in search of the perfect one. My grip? I need to get one.

Hasselbeck learned the nuances of the position during NFL training camps his dad participated in. He learned the tricks of his current trade sitting next to quarterbacks on bus rides home from exhibition games. I'm hoping for a faster osmosis.

Hasselbeck likes playing quarterback because he gets to be an actor. We're given the same opportunity in a drill that teaches you to sell play-action. Really, I'm acting like an athlete.

The uniqueness of the camp strikes me more than anything. For one, Hasselbeck isn't just using his name here. He's actively involved. That includes a film session in the interview room at Qwest Field.

Hasselbeck and wide receiver Bobby Engram break down tape of last season, showing campers how to distinguish between Cover 1 (one safety back) and Cover 2 (two safeties back), showing the difference between teams that disguise coverages well (New England) and teams that don't (St. Louis).

Campers watch Engram nearly score a touchdown, then wonder why he didn't.

"I had a hip flexor," Engram says while the campers laugh.

"Monday morning rude awakening"

The day ends and the Trickey checklist is half complete. Better person? Sure. Better player? Not so much.

I keep thinking back to something Zorn said when he dropped by, when he called football "the greatest sport on earth."

Tell that to my arms and hands. The next day, I can barely sit or walk or move my right shoulder. The thumb on my left hand is swollen and purple. It's what Hamdan calls the "Monday morning rude awakening."

What emerges is a newfound respect for the complications of playing quarterback. I learned more about playing quarterback in the camp than I did in three years covering the Seahawks.

I can grip a football, perform a three-step drop and read a defense. I just can't pass. And somewhere along the way, Hamdan said I went from being "hopeless" — his first impression — to a passable freshman high-school quarterback. Not bad for a day's work.

"I would say with a little work," Trickey says, "you're on the practice squad. If we work hard, coach Holmgren would have a tough time letting you go."

Greg Bishop: 206-464-3191 or gbishop@seattletimes.com