It’s unlikely the NFL will ever evolve into a league of running quarterbacks. However, it is intriguing to wonder how long the apparent trend will last in light of the success this season of Robert Griffin III, Russell Wilson and Colin Kaepernick.
Not to mention Cam Newton, who wasn’t believed to be as productive this season as he was in his rookie year of 2011, but still rushed for 741 yards and eight touchdowns (compared to 706 and 14 last season), while passing for 3,869 yards with 19 touchdowns and a passer rating of 86.2 in 2012, not that much different than last year’s numbers of 4,051, 21 touchdowns and a 84.5 rating.
Former NFL quarterback Trent Dilfer, now with ESPN, had an interesting take on the issue a few days after Kaepernick accounted for 444 yards (181 rushing, 263 passing) in San Francisco’s Jan. 12 win over Green Bay.
Asked about Kaepernick, Dilfer said, “I think he’s everything you kind of want wrapped up in one. He’s big. He’s good looking. He’s athletic. He can throw. Very articulate. And at the same time he’s a little different. He doesn’t necessarily look the part. And I think that’s kind of cool and cutting edge. And he’s performing. I think at the end of the day you get famous in the NFL when you light it up. And he lit it up on a huge stage. He’s had a couple of big stages where he’s played excellent football this year. So the math kind of adds up. But between the performance, his persona, his giftedness, and the edge that he carries, too, that makes — I guess there’s intrigue about him that people are curious about and excited about.
“Is he revolutionizing it? I was thinking about the statements (being made). It’s funny in today’s football if you try to be wise and discerning and think about things before you say them and not knee-jerk react, you’re abnormal; why aren’t you reacting that he’s the greatest thing ever? I think I’m fortunate that I get to work with these quarterbacks at a very young age. So for a few years I’ve been kind of seeing this coming: that the biggest baddest dude is now playing quarterback. And that was not the case for a long time.
“Now they take the 6-5, 250-pound great athlete – the biggest baddest dude on the block – and they make him a quarterback and he gets this great training growing up and because of that, they’re bigger, they’re faster, they’re stronger. They still have the passing skills. They’re going to be more durable. It’s a natural progression that the quarterback run-driven game is going to enter the NFL. And the NFL purists are going to continue to say, ‘Well, they’ll write a book on it, figure it out,’ and that’s not true. They’ve never had to deal with the Colin Kaepernick, the RG3, the next generation of quarterback coming up that are pass-first guys, but also have this physicality and this expertise in the quarterback run-driven game. They’ve never had to deal with it before. So Colin is one of many coming up that are the biggest, baddest dude that are pass-first guys that are highly athletic and gifted in the run-driven, quarterback run-driven game.”
Jaws Says
Speaking of Kaepernick, ESPN’s Ron Jaworski said this before the playoffs began: “Kaepernick is the reason I like the San Francisco 49ers top win it all. Between his arm strength and his foot speed, there is nothing the Niners’ offense can’t do. They’ve got the smashmouth ground game, and the quick-strike deep ball. He has shown good feel in the pocket and, like Griffin, looks to make the pass first and doesn’t default to his legs at the first sign of pressure.”
Recycling Coaches
In 2007, Ken Whisenhunt left his job as offensive coordinator of the Pittsburgh Steelers to become head coach of the Arizona Cardinals. When the Cardinals had a quarterback (Kurt Warner), they had success in 2008 and 2009.
When they didn’t, they struggled, although in Whisenhunt’s six seasons, the Cardinals had just two losing records, while they had eight consecutive losing seasons before his arrival.
This past season’s 5-11 disappointment with an injured quarterback Kevin Kolb on the sideline led to the departure of Whisenhunt and general manager Rod Graves.
Replacing Whisenhunt is Bruce Arians, who was let go by the Steelers after the 2011 season and resurfaced in Indianapolis after Chuck Pagano was hired as head coach. The job Arians did while Pagano was undergoing treatment for leukemia landed him several head coaching interviews and the Cardinals’ job.
Oh, did I mention that Arians became Pittsburgh’s offensive coordinator in 2007, replacing Whisenhunt.
Meanwhile, Whisenhunt landed in San Diego to be the offensive coordinator under new coach Mike McCoy. The oddity in that situation was that Whisenhunt interviewed with the Chargers for the head coaching spot.
He elicited laughter in his San Diego press conference when he said, “It has been a long time since I’ve been here. I think a little over six days.”
As for the irony of the situation, Whisenhunt said, “It’s really kind of a unique opportunity and some of the other times that I’ve interviewed, it’s always been in the position of the offensive coordinator, so if you don’t get the job, you’re obligated to go back to the team you were with and you’re actually looking forward to that. But since I really didn’t have a team anymore, then I think you have a chance to look at the opportunities that were there. And I was excited about this organization and the way that they treated me and the way that they handled everything.
“As far as I was involved with that, you ask a lot of questions in those situations and I was very impressed with the answers that I got. And that’s part of it, but once again, coach McCoy, knowing Mike and having the opportunity to work with him I think is an important piece of it and certainly the Spanos family from my relationship with them over the years just from a different perspective, I always had great respect for that. So I think that’s a big part of it. It’s definitely different. You don’t necessarily think that you’re going to be in this type of position. I think that I’m very fortunate to be in it.”
One thing Whisenhunt knew is that he wanted to coach even if he didn’t land a head coaching job.
He said, “At the end of the season, especially when you go through some struggles like we did as a team, it’s always tough. It took about 24 hours maybe. I think that you miss it pretty quick and you want to get back in it. A lot of it is the relationships you have with coaches and with players. That is a big piece of it. It didn’t take long to figure out that I wanted to coach again.”
A Stunning Reversal
Perhaps it wasn’t that surprising that former Oregon coach Chip Kelly eventually decided to leave for the Philadelphia Eagles about nine days after announcing he would stay in the college game.
In explaining his “change of heart,” Kelly said: “First off, it was a very difficult decision for me. Playing in the Fiesta Bowl, I made a commitment that I was not going to talk to anybody until after we play the game. My ultimate goal was to not get distracted by that and I think our players handled it really well. In 36 hours, I met with three great organizations. It was more my timetable than anyone else’s timetable. I’m sure Jeffrey (Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie) obviously would’ve given me a little more time to think about it, and I actually would. I’m not stringing anybody along. This thing was a very public thing and I’m not a very public guy, so part of that was a very interesting thing. I made my decision and was comfortable in terms of it because of what I’m going back to. If the worse thing in my life was that I was going to be the head coach of the University of Oregon, I think a lot of people would trade places with me because it’s a really, really special place.
“I was going back, working, and doing those things. I know Jeffrey and Howie (Eagles general manager Howie Roseman) had reached out and talked with my agent and just said they’d still be interested, and all I said at that point in time was that I’d think about it. I think actually, in hindsight, it benefitted me because I wasn’t under the microscope and it wasn’t, ‘Do I have to make a decision now or what’s the timetable?’ When I did talk to Jeffrey, I said, ‘For me, I want to come but I want to do this the right way.’ To me, it was about how do I handle the people back at the University of Oregon and, as I go through this process and if I’m going to leave, what is the scenario that my players hear it from me and not from somebody else. I think people used to say that we live in the information age, and maybe we live in the information overload age. There is a very human side to the game of football, and that’s what attracts me to it. It’s more of me making a human decision of looking my players in eye and that I’d be the first to tell them how much they meant to me and the reason I got this job is because of them.
“I certainly understand that if we were 7-46 over the past couple of years, people aren’t talking to me. I’ve never taken a snap and I’ve never played a down, I had a group of kids there that I really cared about. It says a lot about this organization that they let me do that. The fact that no one knew and it gave me time to think told me what a special place this was and this is why I want to be in this organization because they do things the right way.”
Asked more about the Eagles and what attracted him, Kelly said, “The people in the organization. As I said earlier, the reason it was so hard to leave Oregon was because of the people. For me to leave, there had to be people here. In the time I met with Jeffrey and Howie and Don (chief operating officer Don Smolenski), it was very evident to me of their passion, very evident to me of their commitment. That was a no-brainer. I knew it was a great fit. From the Saturday (Jan. 5) that we had the meeting it was just, ‘Can I leave what I have?’ Sometimes you have to leave the nest to better yourself or leave one nest as a duck and go to another nest as an eagle. When an Andy Reid tells me what it’s like here and Dick Vermeil, who I had the chance to speak with, there’s a lot of people I spoke with, every single person just came back and kept saying the same things about the organization. Again, my decision was based on nothing to do with any trepidation about this organization. I wanted to be here. It was just my players, and I’m going to get emotional again, I love those guys and I love my staff. The people at Oregon gave me an opportunity when I was at New Hampshire and that meant a lot to me so it had to be something special for me to leave.”
Kelly also thanked Reid, who had been fired by the Eagles the day after the season ended. Kelly said, “One person that I really want to thank, in terms of advice in this whole thing, was Andy Reid and the fact that Andy reached out to me and told me about his experience here just told me what this organization’s all about. There’s not a classier guy. When Andy texted me yesterday when I accepted the job, I told him that I had really, really, really big shoes to fill and in typical Andy fashion, he said, ‘Just be yourself and you’ll be fine.’ I want to publically thank Andy because that really right there spoke to me about what this organization is all about.
As for Lurie, he talked about what sold them on Kelly: “Several factors. Our meeting was memorable. Tremendous obsession of football, an outstanding work ethic, ability to relate and communicate, intellect off the charts, forward thinking not just about what he is running at Oregon but where the league is headed and where college is headed, how there are going to be carrot trends and how there would be trends off of these carrot trends. Just somebody who is on the cutting edge of football today, but saw that there are going to be reactions to that and what to do going way past that. Also, someone who was a program builder. That’s important because it shows the best possible leader. Chip brings everyone together at Oregon culturally in preparing themselves to be the best football players they can be. Organizationally, he just had it all. After those nine hours, it was pretty clear what we had in Chip Kelly.”