DEATH OF THE QUARTERBACK

Without a doubt, the most important position on the football field is the quarterback. If you don’t believe me, just take a look around the NFL. The teams that get good consistent play from their quarterbacks (i.e. the Colts, Patriots, Chargers, Eagles, and Steelers) are regular post-season participants, while the teams that are inconsistent at that position struggle to make the playoffs with any regularity (i.e. the 49er’s, Chiefs, Raiders, Bills, and the infamous Lions). Of course, as with anything else there are some exceptions. For instance, Baltimore’s defense has traditionally been good enough to overcome the lack of a consistent quarterback. On the other end of the spectrum, there are players like Drew Brees and Jay Cutler who aren’t annually competing for a playoff spot simply because their teams have terrible defenses. Whatever the case may be, it is fair to say that in the NFL the quarterback is usually the difference between a winning team and a losing team. Even in Baltimore’s case, the quarterback has to be good enough to stay out of the way of the defense.

With this thought in mind, I am sad to announce that in the coming years the quality of quarterback play in the NFL will decline tremendously. I am placing the blame for this on one group of people, COLLEGE FOOTBALL COACHES! Gimmick offenses are the new flavor of the month in college football. You have the “Spread (running) Option” of West Virginia, the “Spread (passing & running) Option” of Florida, and the glorified “Run – and – Shoot” of Texas Tech, Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri. Add to that the “Triple Option” of Georgia Tech, the “Snap it to Pryor and Get Out of the Way” of Ohio State, and you have a host of teams that put quarterbacks on the field who never truly learn to read a defense and go through progressions. The list goes on, because I didn’t even bother to mention the host of teams who run some copycat form of one of these offenses (with no success at all).

Obviously, there are several reasons why these gimmick offenses have become so popular in college football. For example, the reason that West Virginia and Florida run their versions of the “Spread Option” is to simply keep the ball in the hands of their best players as much as possible. In the case of both teams, that player is the quarterback. As far as the “Run – and – Shoot” offense, teams simply have more good receivers than the opposition has defensive backs. The triple option on the other hand is a fairly safe offense and is hard for opponents to prepare for, because there aren’t many teams at the highest level of college football who run such an offense. As for Ohio State, they run the “Snap it to Pryor and Get Out of the Way” for two reasons. The first of which is that Terrell Pryor is a great athlete and the second is that Coach Sweater-vest (Jim Tressel) doesn’t have any offensive imagination.

All of these offenses are fine and well in the college game, and I don’t fault the coaches for doing what they feel will give their teams the best chance to win. However, they are doing kids who dream of playing quarterback in the NFL a huge disservice and all but ensuring that NFL teams will have to spend extra time teaching new quarterbacks the basics of playing the position.

One would think that at the professional level, coaches would not have to spend time teaching quarterbacks how to do such basic things as take a snap from under center, go through progressions, or identify a defensive formation. However, the under-development of these skills in college football will dictate that NFL quarterback coaches spend a lot of time working with the quarterback on these things. A lot of college quarterbacks go their entire college career without taking a single snap from under center. Taking a snap from center is a mandatory requirement in the NFL because your footwork has to be on point in order for the timing of routes to work and because being in shotgun all the time severely limits the amount of running plays at your disposal. The other problem with the gimmick offenses is that the majority of them are one-read offenses. This basically means that the quarterback has a predetermined receiver that he is supposed to pass the ball to, and if that receiver is not open he should keep the ball and run it himself. That is another philosophy that simply won’t work in the NFL, because good NFL defensive coordinators usually scheme to take away your first option on most pass plays. Therefore it is very important that the quarterback learns to go through his progressions and get to his second, third, or even fourth receiver. Oh, by the way he needs to be able to do this is about four seconds. If you are an NFL quarterback and you don’t have the speed of Michael Vick; running is not an option, it is only to be done as a last resort. Teams really don’t like their quarterbacks running around because they make too much money to risk injury taking open field hits and because defensive ends in the NFL run like college running backs, so the chances of them catching you are very high. In short, if an NFL team tried to run Florida’s, West Virginia’s, or Georgia Tech’s offense, they would have to change its name. It wouldn’t be called an “option”, it would be called INJURED RESERVE!!!! NFL defensive players and coaches would LOVE to play against these offenses, and the shelf life of quarterbacks would be greatly reduced.

Most of the college football fans that I know enjoy the college game because of the excitement associated with seeing so many completely different offensive styles. I on the other hand, enjoy the precision of NFL offenses. Moderately skilled college quarterbacks can have a great deal of success in that game because receivers are allowed to routinely get wide open in their routes. A college receiver is open when he has the defender beat by five yards or so. Therefore it isn’t hard to get him the ball. On the other hand, a receiver in the NFL is open if he is running even with the defender, but has inside position. The NFL quarterback is expected to be able to not only get him the ball, but get him the ball IN STRIDE! At the rate that the college game is going, there will be very few quarterbacks entering the league in the coming years who are talented enough to even attempt such a throw. The Tennessee Titans are already realizing that they wasted the third overall draft pick in the 2006 draft on a quarterback who can’t throw the football (in my opinion his passing has not improved one bit since he arrived at the University of Texas). Trust me, other teams learned from their mistake, which is why Tim Tebow or Pat White won’t be drafted early to play quarterback. Ohio State’s Terrell Pryor is very similar to what Young was at Texas, which means he has a lot of work to do if he plans on ever being an NFL quarterback. He has plenty of time, and I hope he is successful.

I am not saying that every NFL quarterback has to be a classic drop-back passer in the mold of Peyton Manning, Dan Marino, Tom Brady, and Carson Palmer. In fact I would love to have a duel threat lead my team (i.e. Donovan McNabb, Steve Young, Michael Vick, and even David Garrard), as long as they are truly a duel threat and not a player that couldn’t throw a football in an ocean like Young and (currently) Pryor.

I believe that two of these “gimmick” quarterbacks have bright NFL futures at the position. The two players that I am a referring to are Sam Bradford and Colt McCoy. They are in the minority of those who seem to actually be able to go through progressions and are also very accurate with their passes. The simply have to learn to take snaps from under center and get their footwork together.

Year in and year out, the best rookie NFL quarterbacks come from colleges that play a “Pro-Style” offense. Look at Matt Ryan and Joe Flaco. That was also the case with Phillip Rivers, Ben Rothlisberger, and Eli Manning, all of whom were in the 2004 draft and were still alive in the playoffs this past weekend. Jay Cutler belongs in this group as well. This will also be the case with this year’s draft, where Matthew Stafford (from Georgia) is likely to be the first quarterback taken. He comes from a “Pro-Style” offense and has proto-type NFL size and a rocket arm. He already knows how to take a snap from under-center and read a defense. Although there have been some busts who came from traditional offenses, there have been very few that have been successful from “gimmick offenses”.


AND NOW FOR MY BALLER & SCRUB OF THE WEEK!

BALLER: Larry Fitzgerald (Arizona Cardinals) - Fitzgerald had 8 catches for 166 yards and 1 touchdown while leading the Cardinals to the NFC Championship game by crushing the Carolina Panthers 33-13.

SCRUB: Jake Delhomme (Carolina Panthers) - Delhomme helped lead the Arizona Cardinals to the NFC Championship game by completing a very Favre like 5 passes to thier defensive backs. Just for good measure he also lost a fumble.