The receiver’s best friend is…a robot?
It’s not your typical college football story: man meets machine; man spends all-day and (especially) all-night with machine; man professes his adoration for machine on Instagram.
If nothing else, the Robo Quarterback otherwise known as MonarcSport’s “The Seeker’’ has changed the nomadic life of the Big Ten’s best punt returner. Charlie Jones was once the University of Iowa’s nondescript walk-on transfer from the University of Buffalo. Now he is an emerging star on the nation's fifth-rated team -- largely because of a gadget.
“It moves around, it’s this robot,’’ Jones says. “It’s pretty sweet.’’
He first laid eyes on the machine in March of 2020, just as the Covid-19 Pandemic was playing out. MonarcSport and the Iowa athletic department had years before corroborated on "The Seeker’s'' earliest prototypes, with a vision of creating “the world’s first robotic quarterback.’’ But now the company’s co-founder Igor Karlicic was ready to unveil a finished product
that could make every throw in the passing tree, at various speeds and distances, and also shoot punts high enough to bring rain.
As Karlicic was tutoring Iowa coaches how to operate a product that could spew out six footballs in rapid succession, up walked Jones and fellow wide receiver Niko Ragaini --- Jones, by absolute chance, being the perfect guinea pig.
Jones had yet to play a game for the Hawkeyes, was a virtual nobody. He had literally tossed aside his University of Buffalo scholarship to walk-on at a school in Iowa City that owed him nothing other than a look-see. He was listed at a generous 6-foot, 188-pounds, but that day in Iowa’s indoor facility – as he strode in with bare feet -- he looked average in every single way.
He took one look at The Seeker, and lit up. “It was amazing, the design of the whole thing,’’ Jones says. “They had customized the whole thing. It had our TigerHawk on it, our Iowa colors.’’
Karlicic’s eyes widened, too. As far as he was concerned, Jones seemed straight out of central casting: an anonymous curiosity-seeker who just wanted to push every button on the machine to see how far he could take it. Karlicic wanted to introduce the Iowa players to his invention. Jones – the would-be enthusiastic workaholic – was perfect.
Without shoes and socks, Jones began to run pass patterns. Ragaini – an All-Big Ten punt returner in the previous 2019 season – joined in. Before long, Jones had set up the Robo QB to throw each of them high, spiraling bombs that they would have to somehow run under, to test their speed and hands. On each rep, they would stand next to the machine, press a trigger to rev it up and take off on their fly patterns. To have called it a cardio workout was an understatement.
“It was getting to the point the ball was moving,’’ Jones says. “It was shooting it way out there, and we were full-on sprinting. And this is after we’d already worked out earlier in the day.’’
Karlicic gave Jones his business card, and, a week later – after the Pandemic shut down Iowa’s in-person classes – the football staff fortuitously gave Jones a key to the facility....and unlimited access to “The Seeker.’’
The fact is, anyone could have used the machine during the shut-down. But most players had left campus for home to do school virtually, while Jones decided to stay and grind with his new robot friend.
Many times, he had the whole facility to himself. He’d lift weights, run the sideline and then mosey over to “The Seeker’’ to flip the on-switch. Sometimes -- after attaching a GoPro to the Robo QB -- he’d work on one-handed catches, the ball spraying at him with velocity in rapid succession. Other times, he’d set the machine on “robotic mode,’’ then stand in one spot while the machine purposely made him stretch high, low, right and left to snare passes.
“Because in a game it’s not always going to be right where your hands are, right where you’re expecting it,’’ Jones says. “This way, it keeps you on your toes. It’s so realistic because it’s not always perfect.’’
But his favorite solitary drill of all was setting the machine to “punt mode.’’ For an aspiring kick returner, the only way he was going to impress his new coaches was to become a machine, himself. He couldn’t bobble a ball, drop a ball or, worst of all, muff a ball if he wanted to play a down in the Big Ten. So he would field 100 punts at a time, maybe more.
“You can set a distance on it if I want to go back and catch punts over my head, or you can adjust speed of the ball for the hang time,’’ Jones says. “You can customize whatever you want, which is perfect for me being a returner. Then, you load up the machine. It holds six balls at a time. And then after I catch six, I just bring the balls back in a bin and load it up again.
“I’d set it to [robotic mode] so it would punt the ball in my area but in different spots. In a game, I’m not going to stand back and catch a punt right where I’m set up. It’ll be to my left, my right, behind me. So I kept it realistic.’’.
Even more creatively, he would stash a trash bin right of where he caught the punts – to simulate a defender breathing down his neck.
“I’m sure it made me drop a punt,’’ he says. “I’ve probably dropped a couple. That’s the thing about being out there by myself. If I drop one, I’ll say, ‘Okay, I’ve got to get this many more in to make up for that drop.’ I don’t need to rely on someone else and say, ‘Hey, can I get another one, can I get another one?’ I’m able to stay out there all by myself.’’
Little did Jones know, Karlicic was able to electronically track how much the machine was being used from his office in Dallas. “I could see it’s 9 p.m. and someone’s been using it for 250 throws,’’ Karlicic says. “I knew it had to be Charlie.’’
By the fall of 2020, the Iowa coaches knew it had to be Charlie…returning kicks. He had supplanted his friend Ragaini as the main punt returner, and, by season’s end, led the Big Ten in punt returns with a 10.5 average.
“Yeah, ‘The Seeker’ helped a lot,’’ he says. “It was another way to get that extra edge in your game. To get better and to try to have that extra work.’’
Jones’ buddies were all in favor of the machine -- particularly his suite-mate, the Iowa punter Tory Taylor -- who didn’t have to worry about being dragged out at all hours to boot practice kicks to his roomie. With the team back on campus, Jones began to seek out “The Seeker’’ at night when the indoor facility was mostly empty.
“That’s the coolest part,’’ he says. “You can come in at night. No one’s in the building. And it’s just you. You turn on the lights and you just focus in on what you need to focus in on. There’s no one else. You turn the machine on and the machine does what you need.’’
His goal entering the 2021 season, his senior year, was to become a two-way player: punt returner and receiver. After a second off-season with Robo QB, he has secured a spot in the wide-out rotation, catching a 26-yard touchdown against Iowa State in Week 2 from an actual human, quarterback Spencer Petras.
“Charlie embodies everything that our company is about,’’ Karlicic says. “He’s the perfect archetype who we built this machine for. It’s about the workers, the people who want to put in the extra time. The walk-ons, the grinders. He’s such a great person, such a great personality, we love that, we feed off of that.’’
Since Iowa, Karlicic has sold “The Seeker’’ to other schools such as Missouri, West Virginia, Virginia, LSU, Oklahoma and SMU. He says he’s looking forward to meeting more walk-ons like Charlie Jones.
Problem is, Charlie Jones is not a walk-on anymore.
He’s on scholarship.
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