Kaepernick, 49ers. Wilson, Seahawks. Pryor, Raiders. Newton, Panthers. E.J. Manuel, Bills. A. Smith, Chiefs, G. Smith, Jets. RGIII, Washington. Glennon, Bucs.
Welcome to the new National Football League—prototype, read-option quarterback.
Football is changing. Coaches are going to become extinct if they continue to stay ‘old’. Young Guns in the NFL have brought excitement back to the game.
Seeing a quarterback stand in the pocket and depend on his offensive line to hold up long enough for a passing lane to open was becoming boring, unless you liked seeing quarterbacks get their lower extremities broken. Once the pocket collapsed, they couldn’t outrun your grandmother, let alone a defensive lineman. (Remember Dan Marino? Slow as grass growing!)
The day of the ‘pocket passer’ is dying off. Peyton Manning is the exception to the rule. He isn’t running a ‘traditional’ passing offense: his play calling is done at the line. He takes what the defense gives him. He does not allow his offense to run motion or anything because he wants the defense to set itself. In this way, he can read who is supposed to blitz, then, he calls out the pass protection. #18 is a pure technician.
This isn’t to say that QB’s Flacco – last season’s Super Bowl MVP for The Ravens – Ponder (Vikings), Rivers, (Chargers), Luck (Colts), Schaub (Texans) and Dalton (Bengals) aren’t exciting to watch – there’s an audience for that traditional, stand tall in the pocket, deliver a pass even as you get your ribs crushed QB – but now?
We have quarterbacks with the speed of running backs, arm strength of a pocket passer, throwing accurate 35- 40 yard pass on the run, making defenses pay for blitzes – leaving 1-on-1 coverage – or drop back in a zone, leaving the underneath and middle open. This forces teams to depend on the tackling of linebackers and DB’s to bring down these elusive quarterbacks: “Danger! Will Robinson, Danger!”
Early this season, Terrell Pryor became the first QB since the merger to pass for 200+yds and run for 100+yds in a game.
The Read/Option may have just extended Michael Vick’s career. Part of the reason Vick kept getting hurt. Coaches kept attempting to turn him into a pocket passer. Enter new head coach Chip Kelly, fresh from the college ranks at University of Oregon, bringing the Read/Option with him. Barring an Injury, Vick has become reinvented and is still just fast enough to escape a defensive lineman or a linebacker; elusive enough to make tacklers miss in the open field, and wise enough to slide, rather than go head-first into danger. Welcome to ‘Generation Xbox’ in the NFL.
And this, and this, and this is called The Show!
