Will spread hurt Tebow?
Tim Tebow will try to shed the stigma of being labeled a “system” quarterback.
Staff photographPublished: Friday, April 24, 2009 at 6:01 a.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 5:34 p.m.
They spend their college careers rewriting record books, competing for Heismans, leading their teams into the middle of national-title conversations.
It’s all great until draft day rolls around. Many don’t get picked, or if they do, it’s much farther down the list than they’d hoped. Some get turned into receivers. The lucky few whose stock remains high often get their two- or three-year try before they, too, find themselves labeled as disappointments or busts.
These are the quarterbacks of the shotgun, the spread, the dreaded “system” offenses that are taking over college football.
They are the Andre Wares of 10 years ago, the Alex Smiths of more recent vintage, the Graham Harrells and Chase Daniels of today.
Harrell (Texas Tech) and Daniel (Missouri) recently concluded college careers in which they threw for thousands of yards, set dozens of records, became household names. They have been rewarded by largely being left off the list of this weekend’s top 100 — or 200 — draft prospects.
For them, getting drafted is not a matter of ‘when,’ but ‘if.’ And if they do get their chance with an NFL team, it won’t come with many expectations.
“I’d go as far as saying that playing in that kind of offense is a gift and a curse,” said Shaun King, the former spread quarterback at Tulane who actually had some success transitioning to the pros with Tampa Bay.
“The gift is, you’re forced to make quick decisions, recognize a defense and understand where the football should go,” he said. “The detriment is, in the shotgun, you’re automatically on balance. There’s no drop. It’s easier to have your feet where they’re supposed to be. Then, you have to do all that while coming from under center. It takes some significant athleticism to make the change.”
Ask 100 draft experts why the so-called system QBs never pan out and you will get 100 variations on the same theme: Spread offenses don’t give quarterbacks opportunities to read defenses while making the three- five- or seven-step drops so prevalent in the NFL; they only require the quarterback to read one side of the field; they allow quarterbacks to pad stats by getting big chunks on bubble screens and low-risk throws; they don’t subject the thrower to the physical (or mental) pounding he’ll take in the NFL; and there are footwork issues.
The good news for these quarterbacks is that one constant has stayed the same, whether the player works in the wishbone, the shotgun or anything in between: If they have size, talent, arm and brains, eventually they will find their way into a lineup.
“If you have the skill level, you can make it no matter what,” said ESPN draft guru Mel Kiper. “But if you take a Matthew Stafford and you put him at Texas Tech, it’s going to make for a tougher evaluation.”
As it turned out, evaluating Stafford hasn’t been that difficult, in part because he played in a pro-style offense at Georgia that served him well, even if the Bulldogs didn’t reach their full potential. Ranked first at the beginning of last season, Georgia lost an ugly game at home to Alabama in September and was out of the national title hunt by Nov. 1.
Still, Stafford is widely projected as the best quarterback in the draft.
Meanwhile, Missouri and Texas Tech spent the last two years shaking up the Big 12 and giving themselves a chance at the national title much deeper into the season.
In his second season after taking over for Brad Smith, a multiple record setter at Mizzou who is now playing receiver for the Jets, Daniel led the Tigers to a No. 1 ranking heading into the Big 12 title game in 2007.
Last November, Harrell made what might go down as the most memorable throw of the season, the 28-yard touchdown to Michael Crabtree on the sideline with 1 second left that gave the Red Raiders a 39-33 win over Texas. Texas Tech moved to No. 2 in the polls after that win.
Harrell threw for 5,111 yards last season, becoming the first college player to break the 5,000-yard mark twice.
Daniel finished with 13,256 yards of total offense, a Missouri record.
But barring some kind of draft-day miracle, neither will be picked on the first day and both will likely be waiting until the end to see if their name gets called at all.
“You can forget about the statistics and the yardage that’s accumulated,” said former Bucs and Raiders coach Jon Gruden, who now works for the NFL Network. “The question is, can they make NFL throws under center under the gun? If they’ve fallen on draft boards, it’s because the times they’ve been seen, people have come away with questions about their physical status and their arm strength.”
Those questions seemed to have been answered about Alex Smith in 2005, when he was drafted first out of Utah. But these days, Smith serves as the poster boy for the modern-day spread-offense quarterback gone bust.
Smith led coach Urban Meyer’s Utah team to the Fiesta Bowl in 2004 and into the heart of the national title conversation.
In the pros, Smith has been through three major injuries, four offensive coordinators and now, a reworked contract for significantly less money as his quest continues to prove he can play in the NFL.
Meyer, meanwhile, has taken his offense to Florida and won two national titles, in addition to helping Tim Tebow win a Heisman.
Tebow, he of the jump pass and the bowling over of linebackers with his 245-pound frame, has a year left in college. One of the major debates in Florida, an argument that will certainly move to the national level over the next year, is what kind of pro quarterback he might make.
After last season, Florida brought in quarterbacks coach Scot Loeffler — who developed Tom Brady, Brian Griese and others in the pro-style offense at Michigan — to try to help Tebow rid himself of some of the stigma of being a “system” quarterback.
“You see guys like Urban Meyer, Mike Leach, Steve Spurrier, who’ve done a great job with their offenses,” former Ravens coach Brian Billick said. “None have ever developed a legitimate NFL quarterback, but that’s not their job. The difficulty is that in that spread style of play, very little of what they’re asked to do, beyond the basic abilities as a quarterback, is nurtured in a way that’s beneficial for when they come into the NFL.”
Not necessarily so, says Rich Rodriguez, whose spread offense nearly had West Virginia playing for a national title in 2007 — the year before he left for Michigan.
“People are looking at it the wrong way,” Rodriguez said. “Instead of looking at the system, they should look at the individuals they’re saying didn’t make it.”
Rodriguez got his spread system going at NAIA Glenville State College in the early 1990s, then took it to Tulane, where he was Tommy Bowden’s offensive coordinator when the Green Wave went 12-0 in 1998.
The quarterback there was King, who became a second-round pick by Tampa Bay in 1999. He got the starting job to end the ’99 season when Trent Dilfer got hurt and kept it for all of 2000, leading the Bucs to the playoffs.
“It’s definitely not impossible,” King said. “But I think one thing that hurts the spread offense is that it has become so gimmicky. It’s the thing that hurts these quarterbacks and it’s going to hurt Chase and Graham, fair or unfair. It’s 12 screens a game to the wide receiver and eight more to the running backs. You don’t see that anywhere in the NFL.”
Looking for a possible success, Rodriguez points to Pat White, who is coming out of the West Virginia system and is projected to go as high as the second round this weekend. Never mind that part of White’s marketability is the chance he might be able to play receiver in the NFL.
For now, he’s selling himself as a quarterback. Like those who have come before him, he will be in for an uphill climb.
“You look at it and you say, ‘There’s Graham Harrell. He threw for 5,000 yards. My God,’” said former 49ers and Lions coach Steve Mariucci. “Then you start saying, ‘Well, these yards are there because it’s 7-on-7. It’s not real football. It’s fun to watch. But you wonder, how suited is he for the NFL? That’s where you’ve got to do your evaluation.”
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