Why the NFL Has a Quarterback Crisis
Since the dawn of the NFL, head coaches and general managers have been calling top college quarterback prospects into conference rooms to pepper them with rudimentary questions: how to attack a certain defense, for instance, or what to do when a play breaks down. The answers were sometimes dull and sometimes brilliant, but there were always answers.
This year, according to separate interviews with dozens of NFL coaches and executives, something disturbing happened in these pre-draft quiz sessions. When asked the same basic questions, many quarterback prospects responded with something NFL insiders said they have never seen before: blank stares.
Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Joe Lombardisaid the new crop of college quarterbacks were flummoxed by a simple question about an “under” front, one of the most common defensive alignments. “Whoa, no one’s ever told me ‘front’ before,” he remembers one prospect saying. “No one’s ever talked to me about reading these defenses.”
Buffalo Bills general manager Doug Whaley said he had the same results when he asked prospects a question about defenses shifting from a common scheme called “cover 2” to an equally mundane tactic called “cover 3.” Hue Jackson, the offensive coordinator from the Bengals, said he had to dumb down his questions, while Indianapolis Colts offensive coordinator Pep Hamilton said some QBs failed to grasp things as basic as understanding a common play call. “You have to teach these kids the absolute basics,” he said.
The knowledge base was so low, Buffalo’s Whaley said, that it left him feeling “a little nervous about the long-term future of this game.”
As the 2015 NFL season begins, the league’s decision makers say they are daunted by what they see as a widening gulf between the college game and the pro game, one that has existed for a while but is now starting to affect the quality of the league’s most-cherished commodity: Quarterbacks. The kinds of passers the NFL thrives on are those who can survey the field before the snap to “read” the defense and make any necessary adjustments, then drop back and dissect the coverage again, picking through a number of passing options to find the open receiver.
For years, this brand of preparation has been regenerated from Joe Montana to
Tom Brady to relative newcomers like Seattle’s Russell Wilson and Andrew Luck of the Indianapolis Colts. Spoiled by their immense talent and football intelligence, the NFL has organized itself around quarterbacks to the point where it is hard to imagine the sport without them. The five most productive individual passing seasons in history have happened since 2011.
But if current trends continue, NFL insiders say, quarterbacks who have the sophistication to outfox NFL defenses to deliver the ball to open receivers are “going to be on the endangered species list,” said Cleveland Browns coach Mike Pettine. “The quarterback may not be gone yet,” he added, “but if you have one, protect it.”
“It’s doomsday if we don’t adapt and evolve,” said St. Louis Rams general manager Les Snead.
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