Definition of "quarterback" []

• Football The backfield player whose position is behind the line of scrimmage and who usually calls the signals for the plays. (noun)
• Football To direct the offense of. (verb-transitive)
• Slang To lead or direct the operations of: "needed someone to quarterback the [brain trust] for the first U.S. ICBM program” ( Forbes). (verb-transitive)
• Football To play quarterback. (verb-intransitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The shortest path to the quarterback is a straight line and they line up closer than anybody to the quarterback."
• "Well, when doing a football movie, the quarterback is also one of the more important casts that a casting director must fill."
• "The "target" statistic doesn't tell us if the quarterback is actually coming that close to the receiver."