NFL Run/ Pass Maestros: Can't Catch This

There was a time when the CFL was the league of Air-Raid football. Mobile quarterbacks throwing off the run to receivers spread across the field. Think Warren Moon. Doug Flutie. Jeff Garcia. As we saw in the recent Grey Cup game, CFL teams still spread around the ball, producing last-minute dramatics.

The NFL, by contrast, was always  the league of pocket passers, riveted in place throwing rockets to receivers like Lynn Swann or Jerry Rice running proscribed routes. Think Terry Bradshaw. Ben Roethlisberger. Tom Brady. Running from the pocket was never a designed scheme but one of survival from defensive lineman with malicious intent. 

NFL QBs have a running tradition going back to Fran Tarkenton in the 1960s, but their rambling was more of a survival instinct in a brutal time. Even when the NFL stuffed shirts allowed  Robert Griffin III, Cam Newton, Randall Cunningham, Daunte Culpepper, Vince Young  and Michael Vick to break from the pocket their careers were compromised by injuries. 

The most notorious might be San Francisco’s Colin Kaepernick, who did much to start the read-option craze in the league but ultimately was broken down by injuries in his fourth year as a starter— with three surgeries following the 2015 season. (Kaepernick left football to become the John The Baptist of BLM.)

Then, in act of mercy or perhaps to juice offence, the NFL took pity on the athletic QBs. “It feels like the NFL is in a moment when a defender can get called for roughing the passer or unnecessary roughness simply by breathing hard on the QB,” writes Joe Mahoney of SB Nation. “It’s a reason why the career longevity for running QBs like Lamar Jackson, Kyler Murray, Jalen Hurts, Justin Fields, Josh Allen, and Taysom Hill should be much longer the career lengths of some of the previous elite dual-threat QBs.”

Today’s NFL is indeed a changed beast at the QB position. Call it the attack of the Run/ Pass Option. The League is now Brady’s Bunch versus Pat’s Ma-Homies. Traditional maestros of structured football like Tom Brady against the chaos artists led by Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Kyler Murray and Jalen Hurts. They bob and weave and double back, improvising as they go, forcing defensive backs to cover receivers for as long as 10 seconds. 

The Chiefs’ genius Mahomes is like a welterweight, rambling from sideline to sideline to keep himself from hard hits as he makes time till Travis Kelce or Marquez Valdes-Scantling get open. Buffalo’s Allen, by contrast, is a heavyweight bruiser like Mike Tyson who buys time and crushes opponents by running them over with his 6-3, 235 pound frame. Baltimore’s Jackson is a sly middleweight who uses the field the way Floyd Mayweather used the ring.

As the expression goes, “If it’s not one thing it’s another”. Paul Domowich 33rd Team has the numbers: “For the first time in the modern era of the NFL, there currently are seven quarterbacks among the league’s top 50 rushers – the Ravens’ Lamar Jackson (9th, 480 yards), the Eagles’ Jalen Hurts (17th, 432), the Bills’ Josh Allen (39th, 269), the Bears’ Justin Fields (43rd, 243), the Giants’ Daniel Jones (44th, 241), Washington’s Taylor Heinicke (45th, 232) and the Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes (48th, 229). Last year, there were six in the top 50.

Six quarterbacks are on pace to have 80-plus rushing attempts this season, including four – Jackson, Hurts, Allen and the Cardinals’ Kyler Murray — who are on a 100-carry pace. And a record 11 quarterbacks are on pace to have 25 or more rushing first downs.”

Judging by current statistics The Mahomies are in the ascendance while the Brady Bunch is just holding on. Quarterback rushing yards accounted for 15.4 percent of all rushing yards in 2021 (9659 of 62,694 yards). While the percentage of rushing TDs from QBs came down from its record high in 2020, QBs still accounted for 19.4 percent of all rushing TDs in 2021.  Through the midway point of the 2022 NFL season quarterbacks have run for 3310 yards which is 14.7 percent of the 22474 rushing yards so far this season.”

Brady and the stick-in-the-pockets like Jared Goff, Kirk Cousins and Matthews Stafford are still viable threats, but it’s clear that to stay one step ahead of defensive coordinators a QB needs the option of rolling out, isolating a defender and making him choose between the run or pass. 

And that requires the athleticism previously left to running backs and receivers. For a glimpse of the future look no further than Caleb Williams of USC, the favourite to win the Heisman Trophy in U.S. college football. Williams is a hybrid of Mahomes and Lamar Jackson who makes wine from Gatorade. His two-TD performance as USC crushed Notre Dame this weekend was his defining moment in capturing the Heisman.

According to CBS: “His 267 total yards are certainly good enough, but his impact clearly went beyond his yardage total. Williams was a force. Entering this game, Williams was already one of the frontrunners for the Heisman Trophy with 3,480 yards passing, 316 yards rushing and 40 total touchdowns. This showing against Notre Dame may have just sealed the deal.”

NFL teams will have to wait one more year for the sophomore Williams— who transferred from Oklahoma. But you can bet that— injuries aside—when his time comes he’ll go No. 1  in the 2024 draft. He won’t be alone, either. There is a posses of mobile QBs circling the airport. Because, as they’ve learned from this generation of NFL wizards: Catch Me If You Can.

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Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx