PROVO - Under the Wasatch Mountains, along the Provo River, on his last Saturday in Utah, the newest Dolphins quarterback taps the brakes of his Ford truck and points through the mud-speckled windshield to some favorite spots.
    ''I've caught some nice rainbow trout right there at that bend,'' John Beck says.
    Tap.
    '''. . . Down there, you wade in up to your waist and cast back into the rocks near the shore. Get here early in the morning, 5 or 6. You get some nice 20-, 21-inch trout.''
    One side of his back seat holds the gear Beck uses for twice-a-day workouts with Brigham Young teammates getting ready for NFL camps: footballs, cleats, gym bag. The other side overflows with fishing gear: rods, reels and a tackle box that carries the hand-tied flies he has used along this river for the past four years.
    Meet the quarterback who isn't Brady Quinn. The Dolphins couldn't have found a much larger gap in style. Quinn is Hollywood; Beck is Huck Finn. Quinn drives a Hummer; Beck drives a pickup truck. Quinn proclaimed loudly he should be the draft's first pick; Beck's proclaimed only that teams would get his best.
    Quinn was the poster child of ESPN's draft coverage even before he became the unwitting focus of millions of viewers for several, stagnant draft-day hours while being passed over by the likes of the Dolphins. 
    Beck sat in his condo that day. The only media present was a photographer from Boys' Life magazine.
    So no one heard the story line about: an Eagle Scout who doesn't touch alcohol but played his sophomore year at Brigham Young with a separated shoulder that was numbed with Novocaine each Saturday; a Mormon missionary who was the Mountain West Conference's Offensive Player of the Year as a senior while secretly playing on two sprained ankles, his right one so bad it was put in a boot every week; the son of a national pole-vault contender and father of a baby boy named after former NFL quarterback Ty Detmer.
    But this drive on his last Saturday in Utah isn't to channel Grizzly Adams. It's to walk down aisle 11 at the local store.
    ''Diapers,'' he says.
   
    A gym rat
   
    As Beck returns to his condominium, the baby is asleep, his younger sister, Anna, is studying on the couch and the NFL Network is on the high-definition TV. It carries the NFL Europe game of Rhein vs. Frankfurt. But it could be showing anything. This channel is always on.
    ''And I mean, always,'' his wife of three years, Barbara, says, smiling as she rolls her eyes.
    ''I tell her it's like a business person watching those business channels with the stock ticker that runs across the bottom,'' he says.
    Until he needed the memory for draft day, Beck had a taped library of NFL Network profiles of players called In My Words. Steve Young. Dan Marino. Jake Plummer. Troy Aikman. Jerry Rice. He studied them, too. Phil Simms, for instance, tells the story of rocketing balls so hard in his first minicamp until he realized it was more important for receivers to catch them.
    This is one of the personality quirks the Dolphins appreciate in Beck. ''A gym rat,'' General Manager Randy Mueller called him on draft day. And while the term applies to the time Beck spends doing the actual work - practicing, working, watching film - it also covers his general thirst for football.
    Example: During lunch every day, Beck reads the Dolphins' playbook. Example: Curious about legendary coach Paul Brown, Beck ordered and read his autobiography. Example: Watching Florida State quarterback Charlie Ward play, Beck implemented Ward's hand signals for his youth team. (Fifteen years later, ask him the hand signal for a post-corner pattern, he'll waggle it for you).
    ''In my house growing up, we'd play football Friday night, do chores Saturday morning and then watch college games the rest of the day,'' he said. ''On Sunday, we'd go to church and then watch the NFL games. We had the (NFL Sunday Ticket) and three TVs would have different games.
    ''My dad would be saying, 'Did you see what he did there?' or 'Understand why that's what happened?' That's just how we watched games every week.''
    He is such a fan that, even now, he can throw 20-yard spirals left-handed while playing with two young nephews. This is a by-product of being a San Francisco 49ers and Brigham Young fan.
    ''I tried to become a lefty as a kid, like Steve Young,'' he said.
    Beck's arm strength was obvious from the time he threw a baby bottle up four rows in church. As a high-school junior growing up in Mesa, Ariz., he led his football team to the state semifinals and could throw a baseball from home plate over the left-field fence 315 feet away.
    Then he landed at Brigham Young. After not touching a ball for most of three years because of an LDS Church mission, injuries made him a freshman starter in the second game. This is the first thing Beck mentions when asked if he'd be content sitting in the NFL as a rookie quarterback.
    ''There's so much to learn when you go to the next level,'' he says.
    NFL scouts, unaware of Beck's ankle sprains his senior year, began questioning the arm strength of a kid who threw a football 75 yards one week back from his mission. Dolphins General Manager Randy Mueller heard the whispers. He watched Beck play the Las Vegas Bowl against Oregon. That closed the subject.
    ''He looked like the varsity against the junior varsity,'' Mueller said.
    ''What you have to love is he played at such a high level while hurt,'' Miami coach Cam Cameron said. ''Everyone gets hurt in this game. And he didn't just play great. He didn't tell anyone.''
   
    Fun in the sun
   
    For some draft-day fun, Beck's family and friends wrote down the team they thought would draft him. That morning, he had told his wife, ''Hey, I think we're going to end up in Florida.''
    But for the draft-party pool, he chose Detroit. They had shown the most interest.
    But as teams ticked off through the first round, Mueller sent Beck a text message: ''Are you OK?'' Beck wrote back: ''My wife wants a tan, and I'm wearing flip-flops.''
    When the Dolphins' second-round pick arrived, Beck's phone rang with a 954 area code. The room erupted. After a minute of talking with a team scout, Beck blurted out, ''Are you guys going to take me or not?''
    Cameron took the phone. ''Do you think your wife and Ty are ready to live here?'' he asked.
    At one point last Saturday, as he looked up at the snow-capped mountains, Beck said, ''That's what I'm going to miss about this place. The mountains are picturesque.''
    He then smiled. ''But I've already bought a saltwater fly rod. I can't wait to try that out.''