* The one thing that most impresses me in a quarterback is his ability to avoid doing something stupid when the game is on the line. It doesn’t even matter so much whether he actually manages to win the game, because that’s often not in his power. But I simply detest quarterbacks who just do something stupid to screw up the game — throwing an interception when there is no need to throw the ball at all, or calling a pass play when a run is obviously called for, or running out of time when a little bit of brains would make it obvious how to avoid doing so, etc. I can live with a quarterback who just misses his receivers sometimes, or lacks a certain amount of athleticism, but I really just can’t deal with quarterbacks who do stupid things. As a fan, it just drives me crazy.
And one thing I’ll say about Tom Brady: he doesn’t do a lot of stupid things, not when it’s important.
There aren’t many other quarterbacks about whom I can say that. For what it’s worth, these kinds of problems seem to be pretty common with black quarterbacks, including Russell Wilson. They make one great play after another, and then they commit some infamous boner. It would drive me out of my gourd if I was rooting for their team.
* It is in the NFL’s interest to keep the majority of quarterbacks white, even if blacks were more suited to the position (they aren’t.) Quarterback is the most high profile position on the team, and arguably the most singularly important. If QB demographics were to suddenly match the rest of the league, it would shatter the illusion that it is an “integrated” sport, and consequently lose a lot of white middle class fans. It would become another basketball or boxing. MMA is overtaking boxing because it is representatively white, and more suited to white abilities. Whether they say it out loud or even admit it to themselves, whites don’t like to watch sports that are completely dominated by nonwhites.
I guarantee NFL executives have had a more coded version of the above conversation on multiple occasions.
* Jason Whitlock, the black sportswriter who likes to say un-black sportswriter things, has pointed out that if the NFL switches to a “black” quarterback system—i.e. a lot more rushing, juking, diving, less emphasis on field general/throwing in complicated systems/drop back and pass—then the quarterback position will diminish.
And , Whitlock isn’t blaming “racism.”
Instead, Whitlock pointed out that the quarterback-as-running-back makes them much easier targets to injure and also, inevitably, will wear out their legs a lot faster than a drop-back-and passer while, simultaneously, making their legs even more important. A drop back passer can have crappy knees, but thanks to his pass protection and rules protecting him in the pocket, a dropback quarterback with poor but manageable knees can get along to his mid-30s or beyond, but a running quarterback will be worn out just from wear and tear.
So Whilock envisions that teams will have 2-3 quarterbacks that they will just rotate into plays—in other words, the same system as the other running backs on the field. So if one gets injured, there’s a couple replacements jumping right in on the next play without any significant drop off. And the other running backs tend to be done by their late 20s.
Whitlock is basically telling blacks that if they clamor for the NFL to change the game to suit them as quarterbacks they will actually diminish their own value. “Shut up and learn the position!”
Of course, what goes unsaid is that blacks largely won’t put the effort in to learn the nuances of the position if they can’t merely physically dominate it. Once in the NFL Michael Vick couldn’t just physically push over his opponents like he did in college, and his “Madden” and ESPN-friendly highlights were belied by his stats. Steve Young had great wheels, but at least learned a system and didn’t abuse them; Tim Tebow, who himself has great wheels, is stubborn like Vick about improving himself (but at least he doesn’t abuse dogs and is nice to the public).
* More glaring than the lack of black persons is the lack of funny black names. I just checked a few rosters going back to 2006. Not a single typical underclass name among a starter. The closest thing was Jameis and Tyrod, but those could be Mormon or Palin names.
By contrast, here are some names from a list of 40 defensive players:
D’Qwell
NaVorro
Reshad
Lavonte
Karlos
Donte
Deone
Ha’Sean Treshon (“Ha Ha”)
* Right now the NFL ideal qb is a tall guy with a missile launcher arm (“He can make all the throws”), and a positronic brain to make all those reads and go through checkdowns in a hurry.
If you run a “spread” offense the throws get a lot easier. Spread is kind of an ambiguous term to me, because it includes things like both Oregon’s offense and Mike Leach’s Air Raid.
But for the part about easier throws, the key is the qb is a threat to run. To me the biggest component of the pro defenses we’ve seen for about 50 years is the ability to double cover. Which is possible because the defense is playing 11 on ten, because the qb is no threat to run.
Remove this restriction and it opens up a lot of things. Obviously the defense can still double cover, but if it does, you leave a gaping weakness in another part of the field.
You really haven’t seen this done in the NFL yet, aside from parts of that one miracle season Tebow had in Denver. San Francisco, Seattle, they’ve used parts of the college playbook, but they haven’t gone full blown with it.
It is pretty standard to say it won’t work in the NFL. I tend to disagree. For a long time I’ve had a scheme like Whitlock’s in mind. Carry a number of qb’s and play all of them.
And trust me, I’d run qb power 40 times in a game until Ray Lewis (or whoever) is a bloody mess.
All these black/white things aside, to me it seems to be the natural evolution of the game at this point. For a number of reasons pro set/I formation teams are really the new “gimmick” teams in college football.
* Black dual-threat quarterbacks have led their teams to the last 3 Superbowls (that’s 400% over-representation). They won one Super Bowl by blowout and were one play away from winning the other two. And when was the last time the college championship did not feature a black quarterback?
* When I started to listen to jazz pianist Art Tatum (in my fifties), I finally figured out why I spent more time playing basketball with black guys when I was in college. Art Tatum was a self-taught genius; his amazing ability was in spontaneous creativity, not rote repetition. His best work was as a soloist; he didn’t work out as well in small groups (Clarinetist Buddy DeFranco said that playing with Tatum was “like chasing a train”). I enjoyed the style of black basketball players; in my own modest way, I was also creative and spontaneous, not to mention self-taught. I hated the rote repetition of playing on basketball teams that tried to run the same plays over and over.
This style of spontaneous creativity works in basketball; it wins games. More importantly to basketball as a spectator sport, it’s way more exciting to watch. One of the reasons that women’s basketball never catches on is that women basically can’t do it (there aren’t any women jazz pianists who do spontaneous performance, as opposed to classical pianists who do rote repetition). When I watched women’s basketball, I thought to myself that they looked like well-coached men’s intramural teams. They look like that because they run plays over and over. It’s inherently boring to watch.
This spontaneous creativity doesn’t work as well in football, because running plays that coordinate the effort of the linemen with the backs with the receivers with the quarterback is the only way to win. There can be individual creativity, but it is subordinated to running organized plays. One obvious place where creativity is treasured by fans is in the (useless) activity of victory dancing, which now takes place after every play. Other areas include hair styling (especially when it protrudes from the helmet), trash talking and tattoos. Of course none of these creative efforts advance the game.
* Maybe fans just didn’t care enough about interceptions back in Namath’s day?
To some extent that was rational since teams weren’t that good at moving downfield reliably, so a turnover on a deep pass wasn’t too much worse than punting.
I can remember around 1969 Roman Gabriel being cited for seldom being intercepted, but it was presented as minor positive side effect to the problem that he threw the ball so hard and with so much spin that his receivers couldn’t hold onto it.
My vague recollection is that the touchdown-interception ratio wasn’t a big deal to football fans in the 1960s-70s. Today, it seems like a really simple, obvious stat, but for some reason I don’t have a lot of old TD-interception ratios stored away in my head.
It seems to me that sheer passing yardage was the glamor stat way back then. Namath’s 4007 in a 14 game season was a big deal, like OJ’s 2003 yards rushing. Namath’s 4000 yard 1967 was an important breakthrough in that it showed you could pass all the time and do pretty well. Nobody broke that mark until Dan Fouts in 1979.
Or maybe the New York Jets had a strategy that once they got close to the end zone they’d always run it in?
In Bill Simmons’ book on the NBA, he found a lot of answers to statistical puzzles like this by reading old Sports Illustrated articles and player autobiographies and watching some old games on Youtube.
* Vick has little short range to middle range accuracy left & doesn’t have the wheels to make the highlight moves he had 10 years ago…but he still is in the top 20% of NFL qb mobility, imo. What he does have is a fucking cannon, and he can sling it (see the Wheaton TD in the 4th quarter).
The problem is 1/ Haley has designed an offense that is short to medium throws that gets the ball to the Steelers myriad of offensive weapons 2/ Big Ben is out until November-ish 3/ Bruce Gradkowski, the original back-up, is out for the year 4/ Landry Jones, the young draft pick from 2014 is not ready. So it became Vick by default in the preseason.
After another failed 3 and out in the middle of the third quarter, both Gruden and Tirico were openly wondering how bad Landry Jones must be to not get in for an inept Vick. But Vick made up for it w/ the bomb to Wheaton (his strength) and a last minute drive where he made a huge 25 yd run up the middle.
He’s a band-aid, and the Steelers were fortunate to get the win against a Chargers team that has 3 replacement level players playing O-Line.
* The key for the running QBs is getting to the point where the brain (I’m supposed to complete a pass!) overrides the instinct (Pressure…Take off!). Wilson has mostly gotten there. Taylor seems to be further along than most expected. Bridgewater averaged less than a yard per carry in college, so he was never a real runner.
Now they’re ready for the second step: the check-down list, an infinitely more difficult process. Some never master it. Some only look for the primary and then take off, leaving them to take the coaching staff’s abuse in the film session about missing those guys waving their hands downfield.
The key to it all is to find the guy who fits what you’re trying to do. Bradshaw’s job was to hand the ball to Franco Harris or Rocky Bleier, while occasionally using his cannon of an arm to throw it to the moon where Lynn Swann or John Stallworth would jump to said moon to pull it in. The offense didn’t run through Bradshaw.
Contrast that to the current wearer of 4 rings, Tom Brady. The entire offense runs through him. He’s had an ever-changing cast of characters lining up at running back not because they have 1,000 yard potential, but because they fit what Belichick is doing, Dion Lewis being the latest example. He’s had a steady supply of slow but precise white guys to throw to, and he’s seems to be able to get at least one of them 100 catches every year. As Steve has pointed out, too, the Patriots are pretty white, and they’re all smart enough to buy into what Belichick is selling.
* The Mel Blount Rule, introduced in 1978, where CB’s could no longer bump and manhandled WRs past five yards clearly helped Bradshaw’s overall passing numbers and helped get him into the HOF. Before ’78 he never had thrown 20TDs in a single season whereas he did for the next four. Its true that for first part of his career Terry was almost an afterthought since pgh had one of the all time greatest defenses in NFL history. All he had to do during that time was manage the game and not blow it.
But he definitely was the difference maker for Super Bowl XIII, the one where Jackie Smith dropped an easily catchable pass in end zone and he was wide open; on one within ten yards of him, so that’s on Smith for not catching an easily thrown pass to tie the game.
But in that game, Bradshaw threw 4 TD passes and had only 1 interception. It was a closely played game all the way til the Smith dropped pass in end zone. Even then he got it done in the end by passing to Swann in end zone for winning score.
Super Bowl XIII provided a glimpse into the future: A predominantly passing league, with higher scoring, with occasional big plays being made on defense.
* Tebow is interesting in that, more than perhaps any other quarterback, his career is a victim of the media age. He’s a lightning rod in the culture wars. Look up the second and third string QBs on active rosters, and even the most skeptical of his ability must admit that he’s a superior option to at least 10 or 15 of them. A sample: Bryce Petty, Kellen Moore, E.J. Manuel, David Fales, Blaine Gabbert, and Checkdown Charlie Whitehurst.
Unfortunately, he’s so popular that as soon as an offense struggles for a couple of games, fans will clamor for “Tebow Time”, and no GM or head coach wants to deal with the hassle. Imagine Tebow backing up Kaepernick right now.
* I recall in 1977 when black QB James Harris was traded to the Chargers from the Rams, San Diego columnist Jarry Magee remarked, “Harris is prone to the big error.”
That was his pattern on the Rams as well.
* Super Bowl XIII. “There’s no telling how the game would have gone if Smith had made the catch. The one thing I’m sure of is, if Pittsburgh had been up by 14 instead of 17 in the middle of the 4th quarter, their defense would have been a little more dialed in for the rest of the game.
Maybe Dallas lost focus after the drop? But if so, that’s on them, not on Jackie Smith.”
The two best defenses of the era (two SB titles for each before the game), two great offensive lines, outstanding QBs, receivers and runners, this was the real, greatest game ever played. Yes, who knows how it progresses if Smith makes the catch and it is 21-21. However, some shit luck came the Cowboys’ way after that drop, and not all of it made by Pittsburgh. A questionable PI penalty, a 3rd down sack of Bradshaw nullified by a questionable delay of game by the Steelers. Top the drive off with Franco’s TD run on which Charlie Waters was screened out by the Umpire, 28-17. Then on the kickoff Roy Gerela slips and squibs the kick right at Randy White, who with his broken hand in a cast, loses the ball and may have recovered the ball, but the refs allow a scrum and a late to the pile Steeler ends up with the ball 20 yards from the end zone. Next play, 35-17. So, yes, it could be argued that the Smith drop set in motion a bunch of bad luck for the Cowboys. I do agree that Bradshaw was outstanding in XIII and even more lights out in SB XIV.
