Why the NFL Has a Quarterback Crisis - from today's WSJ
From today's WSJ
Why the NFL Has a Quarterback Crisis
Coaches see more QB prospects entering the league without the skill sets to excel; Will the classic NFL passer go extinct?
http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the-nfl-has-a-quarterback-crisis-1441819454?mod=trending_now_4
Remember "read the Mike?"
September 10th, 2015 at 9:13 AM ^
September 10th, 2015 at 9:39 AM ^
Just like we used to . . . starting with Harbaugh.
September 10th, 2015 at 10:28 AM ^
September 10th, 2015 at 10:31 AM ^
yup, cuz Andrew Luck really had a rough time in college
September 10th, 2015 at 10:34 AM ^
September 10th, 2015 at 11:43 AM ^
September 10th, 2015 at 2:50 PM ^
So you have good reason not to get it.
September 10th, 2015 at 10:37 AM ^
style wins football games for Michigan. Antiquated, modern, whatever.
Bo ran like 15 different offensive styles while he was here. I expect the same from Harbaugh. He's not a one trick pony.
September 10th, 2015 at 2:06 PM ^
As long as we can adapt to our personel, I'll be a happy camper. No more trying to make denard/devin under center passers, that's all I want.
September 10th, 2015 at 9:19 AM ^
Pretty hard to take an article seriously when you see this quote:
In the last decade, many college football teams have embraced a form of offense that runs at a furious tempo with no breaks for huddles, the goal being to grind down and exhaust the defense. Teams that play this way don’t bother trying to fool their opponents with complex schemes and trickery, they just bull forward as fast as they can.
September 10th, 2015 at 9:23 AM ^
September 10th, 2015 at 9:30 AM ^
I'm still kind of dumbfounded when the NFL guys say "this QB is not ready for the NFL because the system he played under in college was so effective and easy to execute that he didn't ever have to learn how to do all these really hard-to-execute things I want him to learn." It's pretty shocking the response is not "why aren't we using this really easy-to-execute system?"
I know no one wants to expose the QB to injury by running him (though the evidence that the injury potential is much greater remains scant). I think someone is eventually going to run a pretty effective NFL team using a few reletively cheap, effective spread option QBs, and not freaking out so much about the "franchise QB" thing.
September 10th, 2015 at 9:43 AM ^
September 10th, 2015 at 9:47 AM ^
I'll take his mixed results on my NFL team any day. Two 10-6 years, with one division title. And that's with Nick Foles, Mark Sanchez, and washed-up Michael Vick as his QBs. Just wait when he gets a guy like Cam Newton in there.
September 10th, 2015 at 11:54 AM ^
"Wait until he gets a guy like Cam Newton" -- this is why you don't see more of it in the NFL. In the NFL, you're a lot more reliant on luck in getting the right QB for your system. You have to hope you can win a free agency battle or that the right QB falls to you in the draft (and that you can afford to draft a QB instead of filling other holes on the roster). And that's only if you and your GM are on the same page (or are the same person in Philly's case). In college, you can go out and target QBs and stockpile them while you develop them. You don't have that same level of luxury in the NFL.
September 10th, 2015 at 12:48 PM ^
Foles was probably the best QB of the bunch (at the time Chip was coaching him), and he was a third round draft pick with a bit of a glass jaw. Butt-fumble? Michael Vic's broken body? We will see if Bradford is still seeing ghosts every time he takes a snap. All of these guys are back-ups or marginal starters on ANY team.
Cam, of course would be fantastic; so would Luck (but those guys would kill it wherever they played, regardless of the system). I am more curious how Kaepernick would work out—an average quarterback, probably not the greatest football IQ, but supremely athletic. Harbaugh really worked wonders with him.
Actually, now that I think of it Jim Harbaugh would have been a PERFECT QB for Chip Kelly! Imagine if he had been able to really concentrate on 30 designed runs/game. He could have willed his team to victory.
September 10th, 2015 at 12:29 PM ^
Chip's QB's at Philidelphia have been either washed-up, dinged-up, or simply overmatched. I was hoping he would somehow swindle the titans out of Mariotta just so we could really see how Chip-ball truly plays out in the pros.
September 10th, 2015 at 10:01 AM ^
In fairness, this upcoming season will be his first with absolute control over the roster. I'm really hoping he does well.
September 10th, 2015 at 10:18 AM ^
The argument that I always hear is that NFL defenses are too intelligent and start to figure these things out quicker than they do in college where every defensive player isn't NFL caliber.
Everyone is bigger, faster, stronger and smarter in the NFL where fewer mistakes are made, which is what a lot of those spread, fast tempo offenses prey on, get the defense players in a position to decide quickly and force a mistake.
The example people use is the wildcat, how that was short lived and now people are saying the read-option is going that way too but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
September 10th, 2015 at 10:32 AM ^
I never thought the wildcat made any sense, especially in the NFL, in that usually the player taking the snap will run most every time as opposed to being a true dual threat qb.
September 10th, 2015 at 10:46 AM ^
Agreed. It seemed like the easiest play to defend and obvious what was coming.
The NFL is a funny thing how, dual threat QBs don't work because they get injured so often but they don't in college. I always wondered if they played two more years at the college level if they would break down too and the only reason it doesn't "work" in the NFL is because guys breakdown, not because of the harder/more hits in the NFL but because of the natural progression of their bodies breaking down.
September 10th, 2015 at 2:57 PM ^
It's both. NFL defenses do hit harder - facing NFL defenses is like playing Alabama 16 times a year - and their players are older with more wear and tear on their bodies.
September 10th, 2015 at 10:45 AM ^
September 10th, 2015 at 11:34 AM ^
These are good arguments, especially if your factual assumptions about hybrid space players are true. Thank you.
September 10th, 2015 at 11:01 AM ^
Defenders DO make mistakes in the NFL. All the time, in fact. No, the up-tempo offense won't win you every game, just like a smothering defense won't win you every game, because shit happens. Sometimes you don't get the matchup you want. Doesn't mean it's an inferior style.
September 10th, 2015 at 11:16 AM ^
NFL players are generally bigger and stronger than college players and this is why things like the option or the spread has never consistently worked at that level.
September 10th, 2015 at 9:49 AM ^
high expectations on a QBs. If you look at every decade, there's 4 great QBs and 4 good QBs. The rest are either meh or sucks. This is no different than any other decades.
It's hard to find great QBs because they have certain qualities that other QBs lack.
September 10th, 2015 at 9:38 AM ^
The complex schemes are certainly there, but I have seen some college, hurry-up teams who don't vary their offenses a whole lot. Some spread teams are zone read option, zone read option, zone read option, zone read option, etc. Other offenses get boring, too (like Michigan's offense last year, for example) but not all spread/hurry-up teams are extremely innovative.
September 10th, 2015 at 10:29 AM ^
and Randy Cross (Former 49'er All Pro lineman) is part of a morning sports talk show here. He commented on this extensivley this morning. He said he has friends in the Jets organization that talked about Bryce Petty not being able to identify pro defenses and couldn't pick out the Mike linebacker when he first got to the Jets camp. He said that instead of being taught to read defenses, some of the college "systems" only teach how to read the receivers in relation to their space on the field ( I am paraphrasisng a 10 minute conversation). He believes this is also one of the reasons RG III has had such a tough time in the NFL. He said that while these are very effective offenses in college because they get playmakers in space, they don't necessarily teach the required nuances of the NFL quarterbacks. He emphatically stated he is not "anti-spread" because the offenses are fun to watch and make the game exciting -- but feels they don't adequately prepare QB's for the NFL.
September 10th, 2015 at 10:52 AM ^
As someone who has taught a variety of offenses, I will say that the spread offense is predicated largely on creating space based on formations. It is different in that respect than, say, pro-style I-formation, veer option, Wing-T, etc. It's fun to teach in some ways because of all the formations and fancy things you can do, but you also miss out on some fundamentals because you spend so much time introducing new formations, motions, etc.
September 10th, 2015 at 10:56 AM ^
September 10th, 2015 at 11:18 AM ^
but I kind of took the quote about complex schemes being about the passing games in the spread offenses in college. How often is Cardale Jones going through 3 or 4 progressions before he finds an open receiver? How often is say Cardale Jones going to the line of scrimmage, seeing how the defense is lined up and adjusting the play call based upon the allignment of the defense?
In terms of the second question, it's almost never. The coaches on the sideline or in the booth do that and either relay in a new play or stick with what was called. Now, to combat this I guess the NFL could try to start getting the offense to the los earlier and just let the coaches determine whether to change the play or not.
September 10th, 2015 at 10:03 AM ^
And I say all that as someone who doesn't necessarily think the spread is the End-all be-all of offense for football (pro style will not become obsolete any time soon)...but as someone who thinks why the hell cant it work?!?
September 10th, 2015 at 10:27 AM ^
September 10th, 2015 at 10:36 AM ^
I think part of the issue is maybe these teams shouldn't draft Bryce Petty if they know he isn't a good fit for their offense? Crazy thought, I know...
September 10th, 2015 at 10:38 AM ^
September 10th, 2015 at 11:13 AM ^
September 10th, 2015 at 11:47 AM ^
I feel like, knowing this, the NFL needs to learn how to draft & develop smarter. If these guys who had great success at the college level aren't near prepared to handle the NFL level of complexity, then teams need to stop wasting first draft picks on them and they definitely have to stop expecting these guys to have instant success in the NFL.
September 10th, 2015 at 1:06 PM ^
September 10th, 2015 at 9:22 AM ^
Very interesting...
Petty admits to grappling with tasks such as hearing and calling the play, identifying defensive backs in coverage and identifying which player in the defensive backfield was the “mike” linebacker, the central part of the defense whose location teams base their offensive line protections on. “As crazy as it sounds, at Baylor, we did not point out the ‘mike’ linebacker,” Petty said.
September 10th, 2015 at 9:26 AM ^
I believe we always had someone identifying the mike, it just wasn't always the quarterback.
September 10th, 2015 at 9:38 AM ^
It was the center before Nussmeier came along.
September 10th, 2015 at 9:38 AM ^
September 10th, 2015 at 9:20 AM ^
when considering this issue.
It's obvious that the spread quarterback experiment in the NFL is a failure. The QBs either are forced to adapt, or face injury.
Michigan will be in a prime spot for recruiting QBs who intend to have a future in the NFL.
September 10th, 2015 at 9:31 AM ^
Most teams now have spread concepts built into some packages (see Seattle, NE, etc), but the coordinators in the NFL are less accustomed to calling the variations / counters off it which make the packages successful in college. It's much like how people called the "run n shoot" a failure after Houston crapped out in the Frank Reich playoff game, but in reality most teams had adapted a run n shoot package into their base structure.
September 10th, 2015 at 10:44 AM ^
September 10th, 2015 at 9:35 AM ^
Yes, the spread works fine in the NCAA since a sr. QB only has to last a year before replacement, and he is "free".
Run spread in the NFL and your see your $10M per 5yr investment get destroyed from all the hits a spread QB takes.
September 10th, 2015 at 9:43 AM ^
The NFL will be lining up at Michigan's door for game-ready QBs. It bodes well for recruiting when that starts to snowball.
If you are an elite QB with your eyes on the NFL, why wouldn't you want to come here? I could not think of a single better place to learn the craft of NFL-QB than Michigan.
September 10th, 2015 at 9:23 AM ^
You can't coach 6'4", 240 pounds (Luck; and P. Manning and Roethlisberger are even taller and heavier) nor 4.5 speed in the 40 (Luck again, along with RGIII). But you can coach technique, pocket presence, and reading defenses. Luck had the good fortune of being coached and mentored by a 15-year NFL quarterback in Jim Harbaugh before leaving Stanford for the pros. All he's done is take a team that went 2-14 the year before he arrived and posted three straight seasons of 11-5 and playoff berths.
September 10th, 2015 at 9:23 AM ^