Isaac Magann Never Asked to Play Quarterback
Isaac N. Magann | QB | Class of 2032 | Verrado Middle School | Litchfield Park, Arizona
Nobody handed Isaac Magann the position. They kept giving it to him anyway.
“I never asked to play quarterback,” he said. “But whenever my coaches saw me throw and saw how much I loved the game, they would put me at QB.”
That has happened often enough now to stop being a coincidence. Seven years into playing football, the sixth-grader from Verrado Middle School has spent most of that time as the guy coaches look at once and then move to the middle of the offense.
It started in a backyard. Magann traces his love of the game to throwing with his dad at home and at the park, before there was a team or a position or anything at stake.
“Those moments made me want to join a team and keep getting better,” he said.
Last year raised the difficulty. 2025 was Magann’s first season of tackle football, and he played both quarterback and safety — a combination that turned out to be an education.
“Playing safety helped me understand the game even more and made me a better quarterback,” he said. Reading a defense is easier once you have stood in it.
His definition of the job leans on the parts that do not show up on film: leadership, confidence, hard work, and football IQ. He talks about staying calm under pressure, studying defenses, listening to coaches, and believing in teammates in big moments. It is Tom Brady’s blueprint, which makes sense — Brady is his answer for favorite quarterback, admired for leadership and for refusing to quit rather than for anything he did physically. Magann also points to Justin Jefferson for how he competes on every play and Jordan Love for his patience and growth.
There is one part of his game that people notice before any of that, and Magann would rather explain it than let anyone guess.
He has Tourette Syndrome.
“I only have movement tics, similar to Tim Howard from the USA soccer team,” he said. “Sometimes I make movements that are out of nowhere, and it can be challenging when teammates or coaches don’t understand why it happens.”
His approach to that is the same as his approach to a bad series: stay confident, focus on the next play. Football, he says, actually helps.
“When I’m locked in and playing, I’m focused on the next play and leading my team.”
What he wanted on the record was the rest of it.
“I’ve also learned that it’s important to educate people and not let it define me,” Magann said. “Having Tourette’s doesn’t stop me from working hard or being a leader — it just makes me stronger and more determined to prove what I can do.”
The proving has been going well. Last May he led his flag football team to an undefeated season and a championship. He has since led another team to another undefeated season with a title game in front of them.
“Being able to lead the team and come through in big moments is something I’ll never forget,” he said.
The development work runs through Phoenix. Magann has trained at camps with Coach Mike Giovando, attended the All American Flag camp in Texas, and is currently coached by Coach Mo. But the coaches he names as most important are two who are no longer coaching him at all: Carlos Reyes and Adrian Salgado.
“They believed in me, pushed me to work harder, and taught me how to be a leader on and off the field,” Magann said. “Even though they are no longer my coaches, they still support me and check in on me. That means a lot to me.”
Next is tackle football in fall 2026. He wants better accuracy, cleaner footwork, more speed, sharper football IQ, and time in the weight room. He wants chemistry with his teammates. And he wants, in his words, for the team to win it all.
Everything he lists is something he can control. For a quarterback who has spent seven years being handed a job he did not request, that seems to be the point — take what you are given and go be worth it.
Building the Résumé: Why Upgrading Your Membership Matters
Isaac said something in his questionnaire that most kids his age would never think to say. He said it matters to educate people, so they understand what they are seeing when they watch him.
He is right. And a free profile does not do that — it sits on a page and waits for somebody to find it.
Custom graphics turn his season into something people stop for. Every month, an upgraded member gets a professionally designed graphic built around him — his photo, his moment, his name in a format that looks like it belongs. Back-to-back undefeated seasons deserve one. Right now that lives in a form he filled out. As a graphic it becomes something a coach stops scrolling for, something a teammate shares, something his family can post.
Reposts on Instagram and X put him in front of people who are already looking. This is the part families underestimate. A post from his own account reaches people who already know him. A repost from QB Magazine reaches a feed that coaches, trainers, and camp directors follow on purpose — people whose job is finding quarterbacks. Those are two different audiences, and only one of them is doing the searching.
Engagement compounds. Weekly reposts across both platforms build familiarity, and familiarity is what turns a name into a known quantity. A name that appears once is noise. A name that appears every week becomes that quarterback out of Litchfield Park. Isaac is Class of 2032 heading into his second full tackle seasons — the visibility he builds now is what people will already know when it starts to count.
And there is the part that has nothing to do with recruiting. Isaac wants people to understand him before they misread him. An article in his own words does that at a scale no conversation on a sideline ever will — it reaches the next coach, the next set of teammates, and the next kid with Tourette’s who is deciding whether he belongs on a football field. That is worth having somewhere permanent, not in a feed that forgets it in a week.
He said he does not want it to define him. Everything above is the rest of the definition.
Upgrade your membership: quarterbackmagazine.com/memberships