I’m absolutely thrilled that someone is tracking this…click on the link to see the average length of time your favorite QB has held onto the ball before being sacked this season.
Quinn comes in at 3.29 seconds - let’s watch this as the season progresses.
By this point in Mesa’s existence, Mike and I have made it fairly clear that our M.O. is to question the established norms of how to look at sports. Every once in a while, though, I’m going to take this position to the extreme and write a post based on an argument that I don’t necessarily believe in 100%, just for the sake of conversation and contrarianism.
I know in advance these posts will motivate probably 85% of our readership to call me a complete idiot. But I’m okay with that - especially since I’m slapping this disclaimer on them.
I’m going to refer to this as the “Devil’s Advocate” series.
For the inaugural installment, I’d like to endorse the idea that Quinn and DA should alternate snaps.
In conversations I’ve had with friends, this seems to be a really controversial topic. The established football wisdom is that not running the same quarterback out for every play will “disrupt continuity” and prevent the offense from “getting into a rhythm.” This is supposed to be attributable to all kinds of things: a different snap count, a different way to run the huddle, different tendencies once the ball is snapped, whatever.
However, after listening to Jon Gruden ram the merits of the Wildcat formation down my throat for the entirety of the Dolphins-Colts game on Monday Night Football this week, I realized something: almost all of the reasons the Wildcat supposedly works are the same reasons that playing two different quarterbacks is NOT supposed to work.
If my memory serves me correctly, these are the main pro-Wildcat positions:
1) It forces the opposing team to spend valuable practice time preparing for this alternate formation leading up to any games against an opponent who uses it.
2) Despite the time spent preparing for it, the Wildcat creates havoc on the playing field because the defense has to instantaneously adjust to a completely different set of weapons and possibilities at a moment’s notice. This increases the likelihood of a breakdown that will allow for a big play.
On MNF, the Dolphins ran 84 offensive plays. They used the Wildcat for 12 of those 84, which calcs out to about 14.3% of their snaps. In other words, Miami’s established starter, Chad Pennington, was still under center for more than 85% of their time on offense.
Hypothetically, let’s say that your team had a starting QB whose specialty was supposed to be short, accurate passes - but that he’s currently struggling to move the ball in any fashion. Hypothetically, let’s also say your second string QB has a completely opposite skill set - say, throwing deep for big yardage.
Since your offense needs some kind of spark, isn’t there merit to the idea of inserting that second string QB into the game for, say, 15% of your snaps in order to expand your offensive capabilities and screw up the defense’s head in the same fashion as the Wildcat?
The reasoning I’ve heard for why the Wildcat doesn’t disrupt the offense is, “Well, the team actually spends time during the week running the Wildcat, so they’re familiar with it. This eliminates the negative effects.” So, um, couldn’t you just practice running some plays with this alternate QB set? In theory, it should work just as well as practicing the Wildcat, right? Especially when you define the Wildcat as what it really is: putting in someone other than your starter to play quarterback for select snaps.
Plus, there’s no danger to “disrupting the offense” in this scenario because - guess what - the offense has shown it’s incapable of getting into a rhythm if run traditionally.
The only other counter-argument I can think of is that, if your QBs really have these completely opposite skills, any time the second-stringer comes in to take the snap, it’s like telegraphing a deep throw.
But when you take into account that the second-string QB can hand off just as easily as the starter, it’s not a sure thing. (The reality of the Wildcat is that even if a running back like Ronnie Brown takes a direct snap, he’s just as likely to hand the ball off as run it himself or throw - which is exactly what the regular quarterback would’ve done in the same play.) And it’s ESPECIALLY not a sure thing if your “accurate” starter has been throwing very poorly, even on short-range passes. In that circumstance, the second-stringer doesn’t limit you any more than your starter. All he does is open up more possibilities.
Finally, if you’re only running this alternate set for a small fraction of plays, then there’s theoretically no danger to your starter’s status as “the guy.” The only thing that could threaten him is if the second-stringer is consistently more effective and explosive than he is. And in that case, well, wouldn’t you be better off just installing the second-stringer as your starter?
In other words, if we use the Wildcat as the guideline, there seems to be very little downside to trying this alternate formation - supposing there’s a team that, hypothetically, is in this exact circumstance (a sluggish offense, a questionable starter, and a back-up with complementary skills). But how likely is that to happen?
OK, you may begin calling me a jackass….now.
-T
I’m still accumulating thoughts and perspective for my blowout pro football article (which is currently titled “Is Football the Sport Where Intangibles Matter?” so you have a sense of where I’m going with it), but in the meantime, I wanted to drop in for some debate about the value of a quarterback’s completion percentage.
When a QB drops back to throw, his job is to accurately fire the football at an open receiver. There are variables to this like what happens if no one’s open, the amount of pressure from the defense, how far a QB can throw the ball, and how precisely he can place it, i.e. what qualifies as “open” is different for different QB’s.
Whether or not a QB’s pass is complete is not entirely up to the QB. Receivers drop the ball or don’t get both feet in bounds. Linemen blow assignments or receivers run the incorrect route.
Sh!t, in other words, happens.
There are, on top of this, additional concerns. The ultimate goal, more often than not, is to complete passes in order to score touchdowns. But sometimes even that changes like, for instance, when the most important thing becomes either stopping the game clock or keeping it running.
Looking at the passing game with this kind of wide lens begins to expose one of the underlying characteristics of football, which is that achieving success is contingent on an extensive amount of variables on both of sides of the ball on each and every play.
This is a large part of what makes stats in football a poisonous fountain of information.
Having laid all of that out, as far as the topic of this post goes, what do we really learn from studying a QB’s completion percentage? If a QB completes above the league average (about 60%) is he an above average QB (and vice versa)?
Making that argument, I think, is a dubious proposition to say the least.
According to data cited in The Blind Side - Michael Lewis’s book about the importance of the Left Tackle in the NFL in general and about Michael Oher, specifically - overall completion percentages in the NFL started to increase when Bill Walsh’s West Coast offense infected the rest of the league.
The reason was that Walsh’s offense - which I personally find boring as all hell to watch - was mechanical as opposed to artistic (to borrow language from the book). Its focus was eliminating risk by keeping passes under 12 yards, spreading the field horizontally, minimizing decision making at the line of scrimmage, and throwing precisely to spots. 10 yard passes were deemed the ideal because passes over 12 yards, statistically, are more prone to being picked off.
It should be noted that Walsh created this offense because the QB he had in Cincinnati, where he was Offensive Coordinator under Paul Brown, was terrible.
Walsh won some Super Bowls so his way became the way and it’s now the reason average QB completion percentages are where they are - because most offenses are geared around high percentage passing routes.
If the offense isn’t orchestrated in that fashion, like the Browns offense was’t in 2007-08, then the QB’s completion and interception rates should be below average.
Which kind of offense wins games?
I think that’s a debate NFL coaches will continue to have far outside of our realm of comprehension.
