BEREA, Ohio — All around the NFL coaches are looking for their quarterbacks to take some big steps backward.

Only then can those players truly move forward.

Teaching young NFL quarterbacks how to properly take a snap from center isn’t a snap at all, coaches say, especially when those players have spent the bulk of their high school and college careers operating out of the shotgun formation.

From coast to coast — from San Francisco’s Colin Kaepernick to Carolina’s Cam Newton — and a lot of places in between, quarterbacks are having to relearn their craft.

“People don’t make a big deal of it, but it’s a big deal,” said Cleveland Browns President Mike Holmgren, a noted quarterback expert who played the position at USC. “When you’re in that college offense that so many schools run, you don’t feel the same kind of pressure you feel when you’re under center.”

Among the young NFL quarterbacks who primarily were in the shotgun on throwing plays in college are Cincinnati’s Andy Dalton, Jacksonville’s Blaine Gabbert, New England’s Ryan Mallett and last season’s NFL offensive rookie of the year, Sam Bradford of St. Louis.

When he’s snug against the line of scrimmage, as opposed to standing five yards back and getting the snap tossed to him, the quarterback’s perspective can change dramatically.

“You don’t even hear the same noise,” Holmgren said. “If you’re of the faint of heart, it would scare you to death.

“When you’re underneath the center, you hear every single thing: the growling, the hitting, the cursing, the spit flying. You’re close. But when you get away from the center … that’s why the shotgun is very comfortable for these guys.”

Drop back in the shotgun, and you’re sending a clear message to a defense that you don’t plan to run the ball. You’re also giving up other strategic advantages.

“I like being underneath the center because I can hear the defensive calls,” Browns quarterback Colt McCoy said. “Also, I don’t have to take my hands out from under the center, so the defense doesn’t know when I’m going to snap the ball. I can talk, communicate with the offensive line, especially when I’m doing my cadence.

“In the shotgun, I kind of have to put my hands down, walk up, say something, then get back and get set. Kind of cues a defense.”

It might sound simple, but taking the ball directly from the center, then retreating in a three-, five- or seven-step drop — all the while reading what a defense is doing — is an incredibly difficult and complex process, experts say.

“You’ve got big guys around you,” said former NFL quarterback Rich Gannon, voted the league’s most valuable player in 2002. “You’ve got guards pulling. You’ve got people stepping back, people setting. You’ve got to get your feet out of there. You’ve got to sink your butt. There are a lot of different things.”

The most celebrated case of a quarterback struggling to make that transition is happening in Denver, where the Broncos have rolled the dice on 2010 first-round pick Tim Tebow, hoping to transform him from college shotgun star into a pro-style passer.

Gannon sees problems with Tebow’s style even before the quarterback winds up to throw.

“You watch him at the top of his drop and he’s bouncing so much,” Gannon said. “He’s not hitching forward, he’s kind of bouncing in place, moving and sliding. It’s almost like a young Michael Vick who never quite trusted his protection and he’s not quite sure where to go, so you can see it in his feet.”

By contrast, Gannon said, quarterbacks such as New England’s Tom Brady and Indianapolis’ Peyton Manning “are very quiet at the top of their drops.”

Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young said that if a quarterback has been in the shotgun throughout high school and college, it might be a lost cause to try to start him from scratch when he gets to the pros.

“When a guy hasn’t done it at all, I’d work around it,” Young said. “I’d say that if a quarterback has never been under center, I’d fiddle-faddle with it for a year or two and kind of introduce it, but I wouldn’t force feed it. It’s that difficult.”

What looks effortless and natural on TV can be a very challenging chore, he said.

“You have to get back seven steps, and you have to move,” Young said. “Your head’s bobbing up and down, and you’ve got to try to track the safeties on the back side. That’s hard.

“When you’re in the gun, you can keep your eyes downfield, you can stay square to the field. It’s just an easier way to go.”

But …

“What (the shotgun) really does is it limits your running game,” he said. “A team wants to put in the I-formation? It’s gone.”

Eventually, dropping back becomes second nature. That can take thousands of repetitions, or — in terms of the following analogy from Young — thousands of miles on the football odometer.

“Remember when you started driving, and you got on the outside lane on the highway and thought you were going to die?” he said. “Now, you drive with your knees, with a sandwich, on the phone, and you have the inside lane and you’re honking at everybody.

“It just takes time.”

Gannon recalls drills with the Kansas City Chiefs, when he and three other quarterbacks would line up next to each other and in unison take drop after drop after drop. Four cameras were positioned behind them to capture their footwork. Every step was analyzed.

“When I was in high school, we had to take Latin for four years,” Gannon recalled. “One of the quotes that stuck with me was ‘Repetitio est mater studiorum,’ which means ‘repetition is the mother of learning.’ That’s what this is.

“If you haven’t done it, you have to rep it.”

Repetitio est mater studiorum.

But for those quarterbacks struggling to learn under center?

All Greek to them.

METAIRIE, La. — Shaun Rogers, Aubrayo Franklin and Olin Kreutz are a testament to what the once laughable Saints have become in the Sean Payton era.

All three are established veterans who signed one-year deals to play in the Big Easy because they thought it gave them their best shot to win their first Super Bowl.

“It’s just an opportunity to win, and win a lot of games, and hopefully a big game as far as being in that championship situation and environment,” said Rogers, a 6-foot-4, 350-pound defensive tackle who spent his first 10 pro seasons doing a lot of losing in Detroit and Cleveland. “I just wanted to play on a winning team, and if I wanted to be here, there were certain terms to come here under and I felt it was important to be in this type of situation, so we took advantage of that.”

Again, Rogers was talking this week about the New Orleans Saints, a franchise that did not have a winning season in its first two decades of existence, and which qualified for the playoffs only five times in its first 39 seasons — winning only one playoff game in that entire span.

When Payton arrived in 2006 as a first-time head coach, the region’s recovery from Hurricane Katrina was barely six months old and the Saints had finished 3-13 in 2005, making the franchise even less attractive to the typical free agent than even before.

“This place didn’t have the best reputation,” quarterback Drew Brees recalled. “Guys weren’t jumping to come to a city that was under water for the past six months.”

In the five seasons since, though, the Saints have made the playoffs three times, gone as far as the NFC title game twice and won their first Super Bowl.

So when Kreutz was mulling where might be the best place to spend his 14th season as an NFL center, he took a flight down to the bayou to check out Saints camp, skipped a scheduled flight home the next day, and has been wearing black and gold ever since.

“Well, I’m going into my 14th year, so money wasn’t really important to me,” said Kreutz, who has been named to six Pro Bowls, and whose agent, Mark Bartelstein, said turned down more money over more years to play elsewhere. “It was about finding the right fit, and this is the right fit.”

Kreutz appears set to take over at starting center for three-year starter Jonathan Goodwin, who had won a title with New Orleans two seasons ago and was among the few Saints free agents who decided to leave in free agency for more money elsewhere.

When Goodwin opted for San Francisco, the Saints quickly moved to woo Kreutz, figuring he’d be hungry to join a proven winner with an elite quarterback, and that he might be willing to do so for less than he was being offered elsewhere.

“If a guy has something to prove, and wants to prove it here this year and hit free agency the next, we completely understand that,” Payton said. “We have been successful with guys like that.”

The best example from the Saints’ Super Bowl season was safety Darren Sharper, who was entering his 13th season when he signed a one-year deal for close to the veteran minimum to play in New Orleans. Sharper wound up having one of his best seasons, with three interceptions returned for scores, and won his first Super Bowl.

While Payton’s main focus as a head coach has been to build a strong nucleus through the draft and multi-year free-agent deals, such as the six-year contract that Brees signed, he noted that he doesn’t hesitate to look for players such as Kreutz, Rogers or Franklin and “piece them into the master plan.”

“All of them have a number of skins on the wall and have played successful football,” Payton continued. “Now, having them do that for us is the key.”

Franklin, an eight-year veteran defensive tackle who started for San Francisco the previous four seasons, said he was courted by several teams and was close to agreeing to contract terms with one of them — he would not say which — before the Saints contacted him.

“I was just trying to wait, to find out the best situation for me,” Franklin said. “I felt like when coach Payton called, that I could get a spot in the rotation here with Sedrick (Ellis) and Shaun. These guys have proven that they can win a Super Bowl, and I want to help contribute and see if we can win another one.”