Spread quarterbacks in the NFL

From Fox Sports:

[W]ith a pile of passing yards and a bucket of collegiate touchdowns in tow, Missouri quarterback Chase Daniel believes the wide-open, receivers-all-over-the-field offense now dominating leagues like the Big 12 would work just fine in the NFL. "I've been telling some coaches I think that's the way the game's going,'' Daniel said. " ... And that I'm already there."

Trouble is not many folks calling the shots in the NFL are ready to agree because "there" is deep in the backfield, lined up in the shotgun, several yards behind the center, taking the snap and slinging the ball around. Not once in a while. Not in just certain situations. No, all the time, every time and Daniel has done it in the same type of offense since he was in eighth grade. . . .

[Spread quarterbacks] finish college, try to move on to professional football and ...

"They find a little trouble in our league," said Washington Redskins coach Jim Zorn, a former quarterback. "They find, I think, they've got a portion of their game down and they're pretty good at it, very talented at it. They know how to get the ball out quick, they know how to avoid, they learn how to make decisions with the ball, pulling it back, and make lots of plays.

"But they also find the whole game is not played that way at this level. It's just not, maybe once a year and there's the rub." . . . .

"The biggest challenge for guys who have spent pretty much their whole college careers — and even nowadays, their whole high school careers — lined up in the shotgun and now they've got to learn to get up underneath center, they've got to learn to take a snap, learn to take a full drop,'' said Air Force head coach Troy Calhoun, a former NFL quarterbacks coach. "I think that's, fundamentally, one of those simple skills that just got skipped over to go play college football.

"And then they find it's tough to take that full drop behind center, a five- or seven-step drop, because at that level, in the NFL, the ball has to be released immediately without taking a gather or a hitch step. Guys just aren't able to get the ball out when it has to be released."

It's that timing, timing with receivers, timing in offenses built around getting the ball to a certain spot in a given amount of time that is the biggest issue.

NFL quarterbacks are asked to do that in a traditional behind-center posture where they take the snap, drop back three, five or seven steps, survey the defense and deliver the ball. In the shotgun, quarterbacks stand deep in the backfield, often taking the snap and simply throwing from that spot. And it's the pocket passers, like Georgia's Matthew Stafford and USC's Mark Sanchez who are at the top of most teams quarterback ratings in this year's draft.

"And the difference is the other guys, the guys who played in the spread, just played the game different back there with so much space, they play deeper in the pocket,'' said Houston Texans coach Gary Kubiak, a long-time NFL quarterback. "Quarterbacks in this league don't play that deep (in the backfield) so it's an adjustment and one that can take some time. They have to see it more quickly and they have to do while having the footwork to get back from center, set up and throw.''

"If he's never played under center and never taken snaps, that's different ... it's a different skill to do all the things you do from the gun from under center,'' said Broncos coach Josh McDaniels, who coached the Patriots quarterbacks and was the team's offensive coordinator before taking the Broncos job. "Your footwork in the running game is awkward, your takeaway from center, your drops are shorter than you're used to. Now the line is right in your face, or that's your perception because you've played back for so long, now your reads are cloudier. Instead of looking downfield, you're looking at the guys right in front of you."

There's a lot going on here so far, but obviously Mike Leach disagrees with this. Leach is exaggerating, but it does seem to blink reality that you can dismiss a guy based on dropbacks. Especially considering that the consensus among most is that, with a few exceptions like Peyton Manning and Tom Brady, quarterback footwork in the NFL is pretty bad.

"I was in the gun about 90 percent of the time when I was at Purdue,'' said former Bears and current Broncos quarterback Kyle Orton. "And I went into a power running game, two-back, seven-step drop system in Chicago when I got to the NFL and it took a while to get accustomed to that. It's not an excuse, but you're going from what was your comfort zone to something else while trying to do the right thing with the ball. There's an adjustment there and probably bigger than you think as a player.''

Then again, if Orton said it, I tend to believe him since he has had to do it.

"But you want to see how a guy gets back there and how he makes the throws he needs to make," Kubiak said. "If he's got a good enough arm and is a good enough athlete to make the changes he has to with his feet, then he's got a chance. It may take more time and a lot of work, and maybe he doesn't play as quickly as people expect, but that's why they call us coach, to figure out a way to get them to do it. If he has the tools, if he can do it, we have to figure out a way to get it done."

I think this is right. College coaches' jobs are to win football games and succeed in college, not to run an offense the pro guys like. And, while some scouts might chafe at having to evaluate a guy who stands in the gun all the time with four or five wide, Kubiak at least recognizes that it is their job to succeed with whatever colleges are being produced. But all this -- and the whole article -- assumes an answer to Chase Daniel's question:

"I've been telling some coaches I think that's the way the game's going," Daniel said.

Is Daniel right? Or are these pro guys right? The best you get is Jim Zorn saying, "But they also find the whole game is not played that way at this level. It's just not." "It's just not," of course, is not an argument (it's just not). But let's assume that he is right that the all-spread (and this article is about the pass-first spread, not just the spread-to-run) is inappropriate for the pros: why? Is it the speed? The specialization of talent?

One of the complaints about spread QBs is their lack of footwork, and one of the reasons for that -- which is also a reason that college and high schools go to it -- is that there is simply less footwork in the gun. That isn't necessarily a bad thing: maybe it'd be good for pro offenses? (Think about pick-up football: nobody lines up and takes a seven-step drop in their back yard.) So that's ambiguous.

And then is there just so much more benefit by being extra multiple? In college practice time is quite limited, often more than high school. So that could be a factor too. Or, maybe, the pro guys are just whiffing, just missing the boat. I don't have an answer.

I end with this: I just watched a special about Joe Montana, who at Notre Dame had been running the triple-option; Bill Walsh, who knows a thing or two about coaching quarterbacks, wasn't scared away.

Comments are welcome.

Ravens' Ozzie Newsome and talent spotting (of all kinds)

Lots of interesting stuff from Sunday's NY Times article on the Ravens and Ozzie Newsome's approach to the draft. But maybe most interesting is this approach to identifying organizational talent -- guys within the organization who are smart, hardworking, and are willing to eat, breathe, and sleep football. All organizations and businesses look for this kind of person, but Ozzie Newsome has an interesting technique, though unsurprisingly he learned it from Bill Belichick.

In a program Newsome borrowed from Belichick, the Ravens rarely hire a scout from outside the organization. Rather, Newsome has his 20-20 club. He pays 20-somethings who hope to rise through the personnel department $20,000 a year. They work 20 hours a day filing tapes, picking up free agents at the airport and cleaning out the refrigerators of released players who have abandoned their apartments. In 1996, Coach Ted Marchibroda used to give DeCosta $100 and ask him to get an oil change for his car and keep the change. DeCosta dutifully scouted out the places that would do an oil change for $9.

In the meantime, Newsome and his staff get a read on an up-and-comer’s work ethic and intelligence. The older scouts tutor the younger ones in what to look for, so everybody’s eye is trained the same way.

“We even grade our lunches,” DeCosta said. “If I say it’s a 6.2 lunch — all the guys know what that means, pretty good, but not great. A 7.5 is like the Pro Bowl is, if I say the soup is a 7.5 today, everybody runs to get the soup.”

I will have more to say about the NFL draft in this next week, but it's worth pointing out that this is yet another area in football where you can only deal in probabilities, can only do your best and hope the dice roll works in your favor.

Newsome’s first draft as the director of player personnel in 1996 may define his career. Convinced the Ravens could support a troubled player, Newsome was prepared to take running back Lawrence Phillips because the Ravens needed a rusher. But offensive tackle Jonathan Ogden fell into the Ravens’ lap at No. 4. Ogden was rated higher on the Ravens’ draft board, so they took him. Phillips, eventually taken sixth, washed out of the league after playing only 35 games. Ogden is a near lock to join Newsome in the Hall of Fame. The Ravens got Ray Lewis later in the first round, too.

As he prepares for next weekend’s draft with his reputation burnished, Newsome can afford to laugh at his early good fortune. “I might not be here if it had gone the other way,” he said.

Homer Smith on Scouting

Misconception #42:

You scout an opponent’s defense to find out what it has done.

I suppose. But what you need to figure out is how a defense is coached, how it can be played against you.

To scout, you take everything you already know, then you watch tape
hour after hour. You hope that gradually their scheme will come into focus and you can begin to piece together a game plan.

As an example, you want to know how you can go through the top of their pass defense. You analyze how they coach the ‘lid.’ You watch the feet, the turns, the positions on receivers. If you are fortunate, you find a young player who is vulnerable if you go around him to his inside and then run on his toes; or, a leading backfield tackler who can be sucked up by a TE’s block and who won’t be close to a post route.

These examples are not of what defenses they have played in certain positions or situations. They are of specific ways to beat specific defenses. When you have the specifics, you do not want to take a 60 percent chance that your play will face the defense it will beat. You want a 100 percent chance that the play you practiced against a defense will be run against that defense.

Scouting? It is a whole lot more than naming defenses and listing when they have been played.

And here's a couple of bonus quotes from a discussion with Coach Smith from Crimson Confidential:

[Homer Smith] The spread offense today features the running QB. Defensive problems come from not having a tackler ready for the QB at the line of scrimmage. . . . As long as running QBs keep winning the jobs, the spread will be the formation of choice. Someone has to tackle the QB. If that someone is looking for a post pass, the QB is going to have running room.

[. . .]

[MLH] Who do you think is the best offensive mind in the NFL today?

[Homer Smith] I just don't know. I think the best minds are in college.

More thoughts on pro scouts' anger at "system quarterbacks"

Dr Saturday follows up on the weird storyline of trying to get Tim Tebow "NFL Ready" (by doing more under center, etc) even though he is still the quarterback for the defending National Champion Florida Gators who has excelled in a shotgun offense. In other words: what are they doing?

Maybe it is hype, maybe it is real. But at some level it (either the reality or the hype) is driven by the very real fact that NFL scouts now seem to spend the time from the end of bowl season until the draft railing against "spread" and "system" quarterbacks. When pressed to explain this, they proffer ridiculous reasons like the fatal flaw that spread quarterbacks can't take snaps under center and perform traditional drops. (Mike Leach remained unimpressed.) But no matter what the form, the consensus among NFL scouts seems to be the same: "system" quarterbacks (most notably "spread offense" quarterbacks) are bad.

But what are they talking about? Don't they have at least a bit of a point, considering that some college QBs put up huge stats and then are never heard of again? Let's take a step back.

NFL scouting is, of course, very difficult. Scouts must evaluate a player in one environment (college, certain workouts) and extrapolate how that will work in the NFL. In other sports -- most notably baseball -- there's been great strides in taking a player's high school or college numbers (most reliably with college) and getting a decent picture of how good a pro they will be. And this is huge: scouts do not have to solely rely on gestalt impressions like "well, he looks like a ballplayer"; they have at least some degree of certainty.

NFL scouts are not so lucky: many positions -- most notably lineman -- produce very few statistics, and what statistics players produce, whether pancake blocks or touchdown catches, are heavily dependent on the other players on the field. So it's really difficult to turn football data into something meaningful.

Yet, for a time at least, quarterback statistics at least seemed to indicate what talent lay within. A guy couldn't have a great TD-INT ratio or throw for a set number of yards without knowing the game. Or could he? In the late '80s and early '90s some West Coast Offense and Run and Shoot QBs came out of college with huge stats, only to fail miserably in the NFL. They weren't the first QBs to fail, but they had come out with such pedigree -- look at their stats!

So the term "system quarterback" became a slur, roughly translating to: "He who throws for lots of yards and touchdowns in college but will be crap in the NFL."

College coaches -- like Leach -- bristle at the very idea. And it's hard to argue with that: is Leach supposed to apologize for the fact that some guy named BJ Symons threw for nearly 6000 yards and the next year someone else named Sonny Cumbie who threw for 4,700 and then yet another fifth-year senior named Cody Hodges with another 4300? I mean, he throws the ball a lot and would like to win games; it's not to have his guys perform at a level exactly commensurate with their talent to ensure that they don't send any fake signals to NFL scouts.

But, to an extent, I sympathize with NFL scouts. Stats used to at least mean something. But when 45 touchdown passes could equally mean Arena League second-stringer as it could NFL starter, scouts are left again with not a lot more than: "well, he looks like a ballplayer." It's not a very scientific way to pick players, and it's hard.

And in the hyperbolic pre-draft world (Mel Kiper on Percy Harvin: "He’s not that big, and he’s taken a lot of hits. But his explosiveness after the run is explosive.") this confusion injected by good coaches who squeeze talent out of their shotgun operating signal callers arises something like resentment and at minimum a lot of skepticism.

It sounds like I'm giving NFL scouts a break here. And I kind of am: there's not a lot for them to go on. But that doesn't change the fact that they are just guessing and most don't know what they are doing. In Malcolm Gladwell's "quarterback problem" article he sat down with an NFL scout who sat around drooling over Chase Daniel, who might not even get drafted. In baseball, when the Moneyball crowd came in, lots of old school scouts that had dominated for years were swept away like discredited mystics of some defunct religion. If football ever figures it out, the same thing will happen. The guys harping on somebody's "hips" as code or their size of their pinky toe will finally look as foolish as they sound. (Even if there is validity in some of these minor details the question remains what on earth someone could do with all of it to aggregate it into some kind of player ranking.)

So if I have to take sides, put me with the college coaches who aren't afraid to put their QBs in the shotgun and let them run with it and sling it; system moniker be damned. (And I would recommend the same to players considering where to go to school.) And my advice for (most) NFL scouts? Quit, or be fired: NFL drafting would probably be fine without any of this ridiculous minutiae and hyperbole.