The Ringer - Welcome to Wunderkind Week2019-08-22T10:45:20-04:00http://www.theringer.com/rss/stream/205678142019-08-22T10:45:20-04:002019-08-22T10:45:20-04:00Byron Leftwich and Bruce Arians Hope to Change the NFL by Changing the Bucs
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<figcaption>Getty Images/AP Images/Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>The Tampa Bay coordinator enters this season as the only black offensive play-caller in the NFL. That status says a lot about the state of coaching in the league.</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="K0JJzU">Bruce Arians swears he didn’t plan it this way. When the former Cardinals head coach retired after the 2017 season, he didn’t think he’d return to the sideline a year later, this time as coach of the Buccaneers. For a prospective job to lure him back to the NFL, every detail had to be perfect, from employing a familiar general manager and a talented quarterback to being a short drive from his home in Georgia. Aside from those factors, one less talked-about detail was also critically important.</p>
<p id="NnbYPN">Arians has been fiercely protective of play-calling duties for most of his career. He held that role as a coordinator with the Browns, Steelers, and Colts, and he kept it when he got a head-coaching opportunity with Arizona in 2013. In 2017, he went so far as to declare that he would rather <a href="https://cardswire.usatoday.com/2017/07/14/bruce-arians-would-probably-get-out-of-coaching-if-he-had-to-give-up-play-calling/">leave coaching</a> entirely than not call plays. “But when I came back,” Arians says, “part of it was that to be a better head coach, I had to relinquish that. And there was only one person I would relinquish it to.”</p>
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<p id="Ky7c7M">Byron Leftwich served as the Steelers’ backup quarterback in 2010 and 2011 when Arians was the team’s offensive coordinator. He retired from playing the following year, and started his coaching career working as an intern for Arians in 2016. Even in those early days, Arians was quick to crow <a href="http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000816691/article/bruce-arians-byron-leftwich-has-future-as-head-coach">about his protégé’s promising future</a>. After spending one year as a low-level assistant, Leftwich was elevated to Cardinals QB coach in 2017, and he stayed in that role the following season when Steve Wilks took over for Arians. Leftwich maintains that there was no spoken arrangement about him taking over the offense if Arians returned to the NFL, but he suggests that he had an inkling this could be possible. “How can I say it … ” Leftwich wonders aloud, before taking a long pause. “I knew that if there was ever an opportunity again, this would probably be the situation.”</p>
<p id="Mf40dc">Many—including Buccaneers ownership and several of Arians’s longtime assistants—were floored when the head coach handed Leftwich the keys. But that’s not the most notable part of the 39-year-old’s rapid rise through the ranks. This fall, 15 teams will begin the season with a different offensive play-caller than the one who held the title at the start of 2018. Among that group of coaches, Leftwich is the only one who’s black. That problem extends even further: Leftwich enters this fall as the only black offensive play-caller in the NFL. “The trend right now seems to be QB coaches [who are] young, and to be frank with you, white,” says Buccaneers assistant head coach and run game coordinator Harold Goodwin. “That’s where we are right now in the NFL.”</p>
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<p id="YREJrO">As teams around the league have searched for their <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nfl-preview/2019/8/12/20801410/nfl-sean-mcvay-coaching-generation-matt-lafleur-kliff-kingsbury-zac-taylor">own versions of Sean McVay</a>, many white coaches have taken jobs that were previously held by black predecessors. Wilks was fired after just one season in Arizona; he was replaced by the 40-year-old Kliff Kingsbury, who has zero NFL coaching experience and compiled a losing record over six seasons at Texas Tech. Longtime Bengals coach Marvin Lewis was ousted after going 6-10; he was supplanted by 36-year-old Zac Taylor, the former Rams QB coach who’s never been a full-time play-caller at the professional level. “Hiring a guy that first of all has never called plays, and then asking him to be a head coach <em>and </em>call plays,” Arians says. “That ain’t an easy job. It’s only been done about five or six times. Everyone wants it now because Sean was successful.” </p>
<p id="3Zb1w7">Arians sees this movement as similar to the one that Bill Parcells inspired in the early 1990s, when teams emphasized finding defensive-minded head coaches above all else. The hope—for Arians and everyone else who wants to see more minorities in NFL head-coaching positions—is that Leftwich can thrive for Tampa Bay and inspire a leaguewide trend. Yet even if Leftwich can curtail Jameis Winston’s turnover issues and turn the Bucs into one of football’s top offenses, the shortage of black offensive coaches in the league means that widespread change will likely come slowly. “We don’t have a lot of guys in the pipeline,” Goodwin says. “We’ve got to get guys in the pipeline so they can take this next step.” </p>
<p id="dhOZ0p">For now, Goodwin is just glad Leftwich is getting an opportunity that he and so many of his peers lacked. He believes that Leftwich’s appointment could mark a small step in challenging an <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nfl-preview/2019/8/16/20807654/nfl-black-coaches-forgotten">epidemic that the league has failed to address</a> over its history. “Fortunately for Byron, he’s played quarterback, he’s coached quarterbacks, and now he’s a coordinator,” Goodwin says. “Hopefully he can change that trend a little bit, have an opportunity to be a head coach—and do a great job if he becomes one.” </p>
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<cite>Cliff Welch/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Byron Leftwich</figcaption>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="2GlxAX">Even as his playing career wound to a close, Leftwich never thought that he’d get into coaching. “BA would tell me, ‘You’d be a hell of a coach one day,’” Leftwich says. “As a player, you not payin’ attention to that.” After retiring in 2012, Leftwich began a routine of doing “absolutely nothing.” He had a standing 7:47 a.m. tee time Monday through Friday. At one point, he got his handicap down to eight. But as Leftwich honed his golf game, Arians kept trying to coax him to Arizona to see what a future in coaching might look like. “I remember him telling me, ‘I want you to come down and just see it,’” Leftwich says. “‘Come down here for a couple days and just let me know what you think.’’’ </p>
<p id="PYvBYS">Leftwich finally relented during OTAs in the spring of 2016, and when he arrived at the Cardinals’ facility, with its whiteboards full of play designs and scribbled ideas about protection schemes and personnel packages, he realized how much he’d missed the game. “You think, ‘This is my world,’” Leftwich says. “‘This is my life.’ Since I was a kid, this is what I saw.” He joined Arizona’s staff that summer; less than a year later, Arians named him the team’s quarterbacks coach. </p>
<p id="ztJkWv">In discussing the challenges that black coaches around the NFL face, Leftwich is quick to point out that his trajectory is different than most. He never toiled in the background of a staff, and was never passed over in favor of a white colleague with significantly less experience. In four years, he’s gone from being an intern to an offensive coordinator. “I’ve been given an opportunity that some guys have never gotten,” Leftwich says. “I think this whole thing has always been about opportunities.”</p>
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<p id="tlIwqm">Goodwin is one of those coaches who waited a long time before his shot finally came. He was in his 10th season as an NFL coach when Arians hired him to be the Cardinals offensive coordinator in 2013. “There’s always been a barrier,” Goodwin says. “I guess there’s been a barrier since the beginning of time. When it comes to football, we just deal with a situation where there’s not a lot of minorities in positions of power.” </p>
<p id="FZUpvB">In Goodwin’s first three seasons as the Cardinals coordinator, Arizona went 34-14 with a pair of playoff appearances and a trip to the NFC title game. Those results prompted three teams to offer him head-coaching interviews, but he says it quickly became clear that two were orchestrated only to fulfill the NFL’s Rooney Rule, which requires franchises to interview a minority candidate from outside its organization for any open vacancy. “Any time you walk in the room and the owner’s not sitting at the table, you know it’s a sham,” Goodwin says. The league recently installed a rule that mandates ownership must be present for all head-coaching interviews if it’s present for one of them, but Goodwin doesn’t consider that progress. “Mr. Rooney had this rule implemented a long time ago, and we’re still having this same conversation,” he says. “At what point are we going to have a huge change?”</p>
<p id="UB86P4">Aside from the lack of legitimate interest, a few other impediments arose during Goodwin’s interviews. One team informed him that it wanted to keep both coordinators who were already on staff—a demand that made Goodwin wonder what he was doing in that room at all. “Why are we having a head-coaching interview if you want to keep both coordinators, who are associated with what you did in the past?” Goodwin says. Another team dismissed his list of potential assistants as merely a compilation of his friends. Several members of that group have since been promoted to the positions that Goodwin suggested. </p>
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<p id="z0CK2H">The most common refrain, though, was that teams were concerned about Goodwin’s lack of play-calling experience. It’s that detail Goodwin now sees as most hypocritical, considering the NFL’s recent hiring spree. He specifically mentions the case of Taylor, who went directly from Rams quarterbacks coach to Bengals head coach. “I was told that I didn’t call plays, which is why my head-coaching interviews were a wrap,” Goodwin says. “What do you see in that? There’s a lot of things we’d like to say. But owners do what they want to do. Period.”</p>
<p id="6J2jOx">In the minds of Goodwin and others, Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy represented the most egregious oversight in teams’ head-coaching searches this offseason. In his first year as the coordinator in Kansas City, Bieniemy helped build an offense that scored an NFL-best 35.3 points per game. Yet when it came time for interviews, Bieniemy encountered the same criticism Goodwin did: He doesn’t call plays. Goodwin believes Arians had this in mind when he ceded play-calling duties this year—he understood it was the only way to fast-track Leftwich’s climb up the ladder. “Byron being a minority, what Eric’s going through, the only way Byron could be a head coach and let BA expand his tree is to let Byron call it,” Goodwin says. </p>
<p id="2VIJBe">Like Leftwich, Goodwin understands that the situation with Arians in Tampa is unique. The challenge now, he says, is finding the <em>next </em>Leftwich, and that can only happen if certain trends around the league get reversed. </p>
<p id="xGBz0b">Of the NFL’s 15 first-year offensive play-callers this season, only three have not served as a QB coach at any level. In 2019, just two black QB coaches will be employed by NFL teams: the Colts’ Marcus Brady and the Dolphins’ Jim Caldwell. A typical reason that’s often floated to explain this shortage is the lack of black quarterbacks in the NFL, but Leftwich doesn’t buy that theory: None of this year’s new play-callers were quarterbacks in the NFL; beyond that, of the NFL’s 32 QB coaches this season, 12—more than a third of the league—never played the position in college or in the pros. “That argument makes no sense when the people who are getting hired never played quarterback,” Leftwich says. “I played quarterback. I know who’s played quarterback. I know NFL history. And that’s not always true.”</p>
<p id="QMdDMd">Having experience playing quarterback might not be a requirement for becoming an NFL play-caller, but having experience coaching them seems to be. That realization motivated the league and the Black College Hall of Fame to hold the first Quarterback Coaching Summit this June in Atlanta, where minority coaches and executives from various levels of football came together to share ideas. Despite what the stats indicate, Arians maintains that there are avenues to get more minorities into the offensive coaching pipeline. Of the Bucs’ five interns from the Bill Walsh Minority Coaching Fellowship this season, four have been placed on the offensive staff. “It’s about hiring young guys to groom into that position, whether they were QBs in college, receivers in the pros—guys who see the game,” he says. </p>
<p id="voxAdt">For Goodwin, the first step “is that we need to have bodies in those seats to have them grow.” As the next wave of coaches develops, he hopes Leftwich’s ascension can serve as a blueprint. </p>
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<cite>Cliff Welch/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Jameis Winston and Byron Leftwich</figcaption>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="nwKkDE">For the first time in his six seasons as a head coach, Arians has time on his hands. With the Cardinals, he oversaw every offensive meeting, led the installation of his system, and finalized each week’s game plan. But soon after the Buccaneers’ offensive staff first convened this offseason, he realized his constant presence wasn’t required. Leftwich had it covered. These days, while Leftwich runs the room, Arians stays in his office to study opponents’ tape and work on the Bucs’ personnel decisions. “We think so much alike,” Arians says of him and Leftwich. “He was in that QB room in Pittsburgh. He’s been in the room with me enough to know how I want it done.”</p>
<p id="soTnb4">Leftwich got his first crack at play calling with the Cardinals last season after the team started 1-6 and coordinator Mike McCoy was canned. The results in Leftwich’s nine games at the controls weren’t pretty: Arizona averaged 14.8 points per game and finished the season ranked dead last in scoring average (14.1). Arians says that initial showing didn’t sour him on Leftwich’s promise. It made him only more optimistic. “I can’t believe he even put points on the board at all, with all those rookies,” Arians says. </p>
<p id="pr1ceP">The Cardinals were decimated by injuries in 2018, which meant they were forced to rely on a group of young players, including a rookie quarterback. Trying to run an offense with Arizona’s depleted roster was a challenge, but Leftwich says the most difficult part of the job was trying to call an offense that wasn’t his own. “You know what you’re looking at, but it’s how you say things,” Leftwich says. “It’s how you teach things.” Upon taking the reins, Leftwich tweaked some of the offensive verbiage. But with a new game plan to create each week, he had no time to make wholesale changes. “I couldn’t go cold turkey because these guys have been practicing this since training camp, since OTAs,” Leftwich says. “It’s that feeling where you want to just scratch the whole thing and do it how you see it, but it would have been unfair to the players.”</p>
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<p id="AMR78W">Now Leftwich is now back in a system that he knows inside and out. As both a player and a coach, he’s spent countless hours shoulder to shoulder with Arians learning every nuance and detail of this scheme. He’s able to speak his first language again. Leftwich called plays for his new team in the Bucs’ preseason opener against the Steelers earlier this month; outside of a small suggestion to use more play-action, Arians says that he wouldn’t have changed a thing. “He played [quarterback] in this offense,” Arians says. “So he has insight that no one else really has.” </p>
<p id="uY3ftI">That familiarity with the system is one reason Leftwich is the perfect mentor for fifth-year quarterback Jameis Winston, but their connection runs deeper. As one of the NFL’s eight black starting QBs, Winston is now playing for its only black play-caller. Leftwich first learned about Winston in 2013, when the then–Florida State quarterback threw for 356 yards with four touchdowns at Pitt in his college football debut. As Winston lit up the Panthers at Heinz Field, Leftwich was bombarded with messages from his friends around the city. “My phone blew up,” Leftwich says. “<em>Hey, you seen this kid playing for Florida State? Look at this kid, he reminds me of you</em>.”</p>
<p id="d0CRwb">As Leftwich watched the game’s second half, he could already see the gifts that made Winston a talented passer. His appreciation only grew after he studied the young quarterback’s move to the NFL. Winston’s issue is that his desire to create big plays has often been the Bucs’ downfall. He threw 14 interceptions in just 11 games last season, and at one point was benched for journeyman Ryan Fitzpatrick. With the QB entering the final year of his rookie deal, Leftwich’s ability to hone Winston’s decision-making as a passer may determine the trajectory of both the Bucs and his own coaching future. </p>
<p id="F4KhC2">When asked about Winston’s development, Leftwich is quick to point out that his quarterback is still young. And he says they share a connection that no other quarterback-play-caller tandem in the league has. “We were born African American,” Leftwich says. “That starts really before the quarterback thought even comes into play.”</p>
<p id="Wiytmc">Any time Leftwich talks about coaching, he constantly brings up the word “teacher.” It’s easy to sense the obligation he feels toward his players. He appreciates what it takes to get to the NFL and how much pressure guys endure upon reaching the sport’s highest level. And while Leftwich knows that his career will have an outsize impact, he can’t afford to look too far ahead right now. “You can’t waste time thinking like that,” Leftwich says. “I promise you. The job takes attention. The job takes awareness. The job takes time. You don’t want to waste time worrying about things you can’t control.”</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="Ail7ff">Leftwich may not focus on the influence he wields, but others on the Bucs staff have thought about it plenty. Arians has championed minority and <a href="https://www.tampabay.com/sports/bucs/2019/03/27/bruce-arians-doesnt-see-the-big-deal-about-bucs-female-coaching-hires/">female coaches</a> in the NFL since he got his first head job in 2013, and hopes that Leftwich can become his second black assistant to become an NFL head coach (the first being current Buccaneers defensive coordinator Todd Bowles). Goodwin is just happy that someone is getting this chance, and believes Leftwich will make the most of it. “At least now we can say, ‘This is Byron’s show,’” Goodwin says. “‘He’s calling it the way he wants to do it, without any interaction with BA.’ When there are interviews going on next January, Byron should be at that table.”</p>
https://www.theringer.com/nfl-preview/2019/8/22/20827749/byron-leftwich-bruce-arians-tampa-bay-buccaneers-play-callerRobert Mays2019-08-19T13:04:13-04:002019-08-19T13:04:13-04:00The Era of the Once-in-a-Generation QB Prospect Is Here. How Will NFL Teams React?
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<p>Tua Tagovailoa and Trevor Lawrence are perhaps the two most sought-after college QBs since Andrew Luck. They’re about to force NFL teams to decide if they’re truly transcendent talents worth tanking for—or just the faces of a larger trend.</p> <p id="okwE1m">The 2019 NFL season is still a few weeks away, but the Dolphins’ tank job may have already begun. Normally teams wait until things go awry before they consider throwing in the towel, but Miami started stripping its roster of talent early this offseason, getting rid of Ryan Tannehill, Robert Quinn, Cameron Wake, Danny Amendola, Frank Gore, Ja’wuan James, and Josh Sitton, among other potential starters. And while many rebuilds come with the introduction of a highly drafted quarterback, the Dolphins chose to pass over Dwayne Haskins in April’s first round, going with defensive lineman Christian Wilkins instead. Miami is now in the midst of a quarterback battle between Ryan Fitzpatrick and Josh Rosen. It is basically the only team in the NFL with a legitimate QB battle, and whoever wins could end up being the worst starting quarterback in football.</p>
<p id="BY3bi7">The Dolphins’ decisions may seem strange on the surface, but perhaps they make sense considering that a preposterously talented quarterback is on the league’s horizon: Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa, the Hawaiian lefty who transformed the Crimson Tide from a team that suffocated opponents with strong defense and conservative offense into one that blows their doors off with a lightning-fast RPO-heavy attack, is eligible to be drafted next year. Tagovailoa announced his presence to the world during the 2018 College Football Playoff national title game, when he came off the bench with the Tide trailing 13-0 and sparked a dramatic comeback victory capped by a <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2018/1/9/16868318/alabama-tua-tagovailoa-national-championship-game-recap">41-yard walk-off touchdown pass</a>. And Tagovailoa accomplished that as a true freshman—two years before NFL teams were allowed to draft him. In 2020, Tua can go pro if he so chooses.</p>
<p id="shYajr">However, tanking for Tua might not even be the wisest way for NFL teams to suck. It’s possible that the future of quarterbacking is not Tagovailoa but another player who captured the college football national championship as a true freshman: Trevor Lawrence, the QB who led Clemson to a <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2019/1/8/18173695/clemson-national-championship-coronation-alabama-game-recap">stunning 44-16 rout of the Tide</a> in January, the 6-foot-6 prodigy who was born to play quarterback or <a href="https://twitter.com/rodger/status/1044252785452019712?lang=en">star in Pantene commercials</a>, or possibly both. </p>
<p id="qGYbMN">Before 2018, only one true freshman QB had ever won a Division I college football national championship. Jamelle Holieway ascended to Oklahoma’s starting job in 1985 after Troy Aikman broke his leg and led the Sooners to eight straight wins, including an Orange Bowl triumph over Penn State. Now, two true freshman passers have done it over the past two years. Tua proved that his title-winning half was no fluke by <a href="https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/leaders/pass-rating-player-season.html">setting the single-season record for passing efficiency rating</a> last fall. (His 11.2 yards per pass attempt would have been second all time if he’d recorded it two years ago; instead, he’s <a href="https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/leaders/pass-yds-per-att-player-season.html">ranked fourth</a> behind Kyler Murray, Baker Mayfield, and Michael Vick, three no. 1 NFL draft picks.) Lawrence hasn’t yet had a chance to follow his remarkable national championship performance, but he was considered a legendary prospect long before that title game.</p>
<p id="kuIn4n">Tagovailoa is in my pantheon of all-time favorite quarterbacks, a dynamic stunner who combines the seemingly diametrically opposed qualities of unpredictability and consistency. I have no idea what he’s going to do at any given moment, and QBs like that tend to make tons of mistakes. Not Tagovailoa, who routinely delivers clean strikes to players I didn’t even know he could see. This touchdown makes no sense:</p>
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<p id="y5sE6N">This touchdown makes negative sense:</p>
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<p id="bOftK6">Tagovailoa is not the consensus no. 1 draft pick in 2020—some mocks have Oregon’s Justin Herbert ahead of him. Tua is better at virtually every aspect of playing quarterback, but Herbert is taller, so I understand the debate. I think Tua is the obvious no. 1, and it isn’t particularly close. I also would’ve taken Tagovailoa no. 1 over Kyler Murray in April, and I <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33kOEVXrOEI">love Kyler Murray</a>. </p>
<p id="H877f9">And yet the hype over Tagovailoa pales in comparison to the hyperbolic praise received by Lawrence. Rivals.com national recruiting director Mike Farrell <a href="https://n.rivals.com/news/ask-farrell-is-trevor-lawrence-the-best-qb-prospect-of-rivals-era-">once called him</a> “the most special quarterback prospect I’ve seen,” elaborating that he is “Peyton Manning, except he’s more athletic with a better arm.” Pro Football Focus lead draft analyst Mike Renner <a href="https://www.espn.com/college-football/insider/story/_/id/27302413/tua-vs-trevor-better-2019">wrote that</a> Lawrence is “unlike anything we’ve ever seen at the college football level” and “a robot put on this earth to play quarterback.” Lawrence threw for 21 touchdowns and two interceptions after taking over as Clemson’s starter last October, directly ahead of his 19th birthday. Usually, this is where I’d pinpoint one quality that stands out about a given player, but that’s tough to do with Lawrence, because he simply does everything well. His style is perfection; his strength a complete lack of weaknesses.</p>
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<p id="CVexNe">It wasn’t long ago that the NFL was gripped with a <em>Children of Men</em>–esque fear that every great quarterback had already been born. As Tom Brady, Drew Brees, and others drafted in the first decade of this century continued their runs of quarterbacking excellence longer than anybody could have expected, new crops of QBs generally faltered. (What’s your favorite group of quarterbacks taken in the first round of the same 21st-century draft: Sam Bradford and Tim Tebow; JaMarcus Russell and Brady Quinn; Blake Bortles, Johnny Manziel, and Teddy Bridgewater; or Blaine Gabbert, Jake Locker, and Christian Ponder?) There were concerns that young quarterbacks weren’t being properly trained.</p>
<p id="aDpDFO">That fear has dissipated over the past few years, with players like Patrick Mahomes and Baker Mayfield proving that the kids are all right. Perhaps the most robust rebuttal stems from Tagovailoa and Lawrence, though, two phenoms who showed up at college already immaculate. </p>
<p id="FDRbtc">This fall, the eyes of college football fans will be locked on Alabama and Clemson, two teams that have split the last four national championships as part of a dominant duopoly. The eyes of pro fans will be zeroed in on their QBs. On the one hand, the rise of Tua and Trevor feels like part of a trend in which young passers are growing increasingly competent; on the other, they may be in a class of their own, the rare quarterbacks so special that they’re worth tanking an entire NFL season to draft. </p>
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<p id="2tDsQY">The NFL has long had the most restrictive draft entry rules of any major American sports league. Both MLB and the NHL draft players straight out of high school. The NBA controversially increased its age of entry from 18 to 19 in 2006—the so-called “one-and-done” rule, since it causes so many star players to spend a single year in college before turning pro. It’s unpopular enough that many experts <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/2/25/18239529/nba-one-and-done-draft-zion-williamson">believe the league will reverse its ruling</a> by 2022. </p>
<p id="y8ubjR">The NFL, however, requires players to be at least three seasons removed from graduating high school before they can enter the draft. Until 1990, the league was even more restrictive, only accepting players who had exhausted their eligibility or graduated college. Occasional exceptions were made for guys who had been ruled ineligible (<a href="https://theeagleswire.usatoday.com/2016/07/06/eagles-wr-cris-carter-was-the-best-supplemental-draft-pick-ever/">like Cris Carter</a>), graduated school early <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-04-23-sp-11563-story.html">(like Bernie Kosar</a>), or played for teams that were on probation (<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1990/02/17/nfl-allows-college-juniors-to-enter-draft/04b4c486-e177-40b0-b1e9-866fde2cbb53/">like Barry Sanders</a>). Fearing legal battles and worried about the rule’s inconsistency, the league <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1990/02/17/nfl-allows-college-juniors-to-enter-draft/04b4c486-e177-40b0-b1e9-866fde2cbb53/">implemented the three-seasons stipulation</a>, regardless of eligibility or graduation status. </p>
<p id="DvlujB">And there hasn’t been much pushback on that. Maurice Clarett sued the NFL over its entry policy in 2004; he <a href="https://www.espn.com/nfldraft/draft04/news/story?id=1787651">lost the case</a>, and there’s been little discussion of it since. That’s partly because conventional wisdom suggests that prospects need their college years to develop into NFL-ready players. Pro football players are men; high schoolers are boys. There’s not a high school offensive lineman on the planet who could avoid getting physically wrecked by an edge rusher on an NFL practice squad. And while QBs may not need to put on 50 pounds of muscle before moving from high school to the pros, it’s long been understood that players at football’s most important position need the time to develop mentally. There is truth to that idea: As I <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2019/8/14/20803796/patrick-mahomes-kansas-city-chiefs-quarterback-history-outlook">wrote last week</a>, every study on QB play by age comes to the conclusion that quarterbacks peak around the age of 29. So teams have historically shied away from drafting the youngest passers in a given class. </p>
<p id="DCfnLp">From 2002 to 2008, there were 21 quarterbacks picked in the first round of the NFL draft. Eleven of those spent five seasons between graduating high school and getting drafted, including no. 1 picks David Carr, Eli Manning, and Carson Palmer. Eight of those (including Manning, Matt Ryan, and Jay Cutler) took the most typical route—redshirting as freshmen while more experienced players took the field, and then using all four years of their NCAA eligibility. (Palmer and Byron Leftwich used medical redshirt years due to injury; Joe Flacco sat out for a season as a transfer.) These were old rookies, 23 or 24 years old by the time of their respective NFL debuts. </p>
<p id="7CTAhJ">Eight of the 21 quarterbacks in that time frame spent four years in college. Some, like Philip Rivers and Brady Quinn, started for their programs as true freshmen and spent four full years in that role. Others, such as Ben Roethlisberger and JaMarcus Russell, redshirted as freshmen and then left for the draft after their junior years. Only two QBs in that set—Alex Smith and Aaron Rodgers—spent the minimum of three years in college, and both were unusual cases. Smith had earned a ton of college credits in high school and graduated after just two years at Utah, while Rodgers played a year in junior college before spending two seasons at Cal. Neither was immediately ready for the pros: Rodgers wouldn’t start for the Packers until his fourth year in the NFL, while Smith’s rookie campaign remains one of the worst in league history, as he threw one touchdown against 11 interceptions.</p>
<p id="blQEvs">From 2015 through this year, 16 quarterbacks have been drafted in the first round. Just one, Baker Mayfield, spent five years in college. And Mayfield didn’t take the redshirt-and-play-four-years route that was so common in the prior decade. He played as a true freshman at Texas Tech before sitting out a season upon transferring to Oklahoma. Six players in this set spent four years in college, but none exhausted their eligibility. Four had redshirt seasons, Kyler Murray transferred, and Josh Allen played at a juco school. Meanwhile, <em>eight</em> spent the minimum of three seasons in college. Of those, three (Jameis Winston, Sam Darnold, and Dwayne Haskins) redshirted before playing just two years in college. Five (Mahomes, Deshaun Watson, Jared Goff, Josh Rosen, and Lamar Jackson) played as true freshmen and left after their junior years. These very young quarterbacks were clearly ready for the NFL: Mahomes recently became the second-youngest MVP in league history at age 23; Jackson led the 2018 Ravens to the playoffs at 21. </p>
<p id="oYlYqQ">There’s been a massive shift in the proficiency of young quarterbacks over the last decade. While the NFL probably isn’t about to change its draft entry rules, it at the very least should be on the table, considering that 14 of the last 15 first-round quarterbacks left school without exhausting their NCAA eligibility. These players think that they’re ready for the NFL. The NFL apparently thinks so too.</p>
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<p id="GXmJH3">Young quarterbacks are ready for the NFL earlier than ever because they’re ready for college earlier than ever. It used to be that the top QB prospects showed up to campus as blank slates. They were capable of dominating high school competition based largely on their sheer athletic ability, but they often needed a redshirt year to really learn the ins and outs of the position. Now, top prospects treat quarterbacking like a 12-month-a-year job beginning in middle school. They get coached by private quarterback tutors, spend their summers playing 7-on-7 and attending elite QB camps, and graduate from high school early so they can participate in spring camp with their respective college team. </p>
<p id="peFe9F">It wasn’t long ago that a college team starting a true freshman quarterback was seen as a sign that something was seriously wrong—how could a program go four years without developing an upperclassman capable of playing? (This <a href="https://www.footballstudyhall.com/2013/8/17/4630390/so-youre-starting-a-true-freshman-quarterback">2013 post</a> examines a sample of 27 then-recent true freshman QBs who received significant playing time. The vast majority performed poorly, and six of the 27 played for either Rutgers or Kentucky. The Scarlet Knights actually started true freshmen in 2009, 2010, <em>and</em> 2011. Rutgers was ahead of the curve!) Now, the best programs in Division I routinely turn to true freshman QBs. Last year ESPN wrote a story with the headline “<a href="https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/23396659/the-rise-true-freshman-qb">The rise of the true freshman quarterback</a>.” And that was <em>before</em> Lawrence had even played a game at Clemson.</p>
<p id="eoSPjC">When Tagovailoa entered the national championship game in January 2018, he replaced Jalen Hurts, who had led Bama to the previous season’s national title game as a true freshman. Tua took the field against Georgia, which also featured a true freshman QB (Jake Fromm) who had supplanted a player who had started the year before as a true freshman (Jacob Eason). While Lawrence didn’t directly unseat a former true freshman breakout star at Clemson, he was always pegged as the heir apparent to Deshaun Watson, who played exceptionally for the Tigers as a true freshman before tearing his ACL in 2014. USC, UCLA, and Nebraska all started true freshman QBs in 2018. Arizona State and North Carolina have already announced that they will start incoming four-star quarterback recruits; Auburn seems likely to follow suit with five-star Bo Nix.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="iH1uam">And so, Tagovailoa and Lawrence are representatives of a generation that is prepared to succeed at top levels at younger ages than any other in football history. Of course, that doesn’t mean that Tua and Trevor don’t stand alone. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed watching a quarterback more than I enjoy watching Tagovailoa; I don’t think I’ve ever seen a quarterback prospect with more all-around skills than Lawrence. The expedited development of young passers does not portend a future version of the NFL with 32 equally talented children at quarterback. It just means the timeline for determining who the best QBs are has changed. We’ll be able to recognize the great ones earlier than ever before, and we’ll be able to watch them succeed in college as freshmen and in the pros as rookies. If the Dolphins are tanking, it isn’t for a trend—it’s because they don’t have to wait to find out if Tua is great.</p>
https://www.theringer.com/2019/8/19/20812319/tua-tagovailoa-trevor-lawrence-quarterback-draft-classRodger Sherman2019-08-16T06:30:00-04:002019-08-16T06:30:00-04:00“You’re Going to Have to Run Faster”: How Football Neglects Black Coaches
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<figcaption>Getty Images/Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>NFL teams are in search of the next offensive mastermind, but where are they looking? For many black coaches, this year’s coaching cycle felt like another instance of the league moving the goalposts.</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="K31cev">The humidity hangs heavy in the air as I sit with Byron Leftwich under a tent at a recent Buccaneers practice. Tampa Bay summers like this can dry a man’s soul. Wear him down. But Leftwich is full of life and its lessons. “Color really shouldn’t come in mind. And you hope it don’t. Ultimately, you hope it never do.” Leftwich sounds sad as he explains this to me. He does not take his position lightly. He knows his career path is tenuous. “Football is a simple game, but nothing about it is easy, right?” he says. “When you break it down, it’s all hard. Everything is hard.”</p>
<p id="03GX9I">Leftwich has accomplished something rare in professional football. He became the Arizona Cardinals quarterbacks coach two years ago—his first NFL coaching job—and after hurdling myriad challenges on a middling franchise, he ascended to offensive coordinator after Mike McCoy was fired last October. In January, Bruce Arians hired him for the same position in Tampa Bay. In many ways, Leftwich is following a familiar trajectory for a young assistant in the NFL. But he is a unicorn, one of two black offensive coordinators in 2019 (Kansas City’s Eric Bieniemy is the other). Leftwich chatted with Bieniemy about it at the NFL combine this year. He expects the two will exchange “good luck” messages before the season starts in a few weeks. </p>
<p id="hYFzqP">Leftwich tries not to put additional weight on his broad shoulders. He’s been black all his life. The same black boy from H.D Woodson High in Washington, D.C., who went on to become a star quarterback at Marshall, a first-round draft pick in 2003, and a Super Bowl champion in 2009, and now one of the few black coaches to hold an offensive coordinator role this decade. </p>
<p id="536caV">“Don’t let nobody tell you that you don’t know [anything], because you know a lot just by playing. You play in this league seven years, you know a lot. You know a lot about football and don’t allow nobody to ever sway you on that,” Leftwich says. Overcoming the odds was no simple task. “It’s hard to get here. It’s hard to make it to this level. … Guys that make it to this level that played in this league, I want them to know, ‘Hey, man, you can coach this game.’”</p>
<p id="g6eU72">It’s a crucial point for Leftwich. At one point, coaching was an afterthought after he finished his nine-year playing career in 2012.</p>
<p id="nfoZT0">“I finally talked him into it,” Arians tells me. “He wanted to play golf all the time! Shit. He had plenty of money, plenty of money. He wasn’t looking for a job.” Every year, Arians asked Leftwich, “‘Hey, you ready yet? You ready yet?’” Leftwich finally called in 2015 to tell his former coach he wanted to test the waters, and Arians brought him onto his Cardinals staff as an intern in May 2016. </p>
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<cite>Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports</cite>
<figcaption>Buccaneers offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich talks with quarterback Jameis Winston</figcaption>
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<p id="sRr9q7">As Leftwich speaks, I notice how proud he is of his second life in football. He lives for his players and the new Buccaneers gear he sports. He’s vital to the process of rejuvenating a moribund franchise—Tampa Bay has finished last in its division in seven of the past eight years—yet he’s an outlier in his profession. This season, 15 NFL teams will have a new offensive play-caller: Seven of those coaches are 40 years old or younger and, except for Leftwich, they are all white. Football’s most precious coaching commodities are overwhelmingly white men early in their NFL careers. The league’s power brokers are free to prioritize youth, and value innovation, in a coaching search. It becomes problematic if the talent pool that decision-makers are choosing from is mostly homogenous. The search for the next Sean McVay has yielded a group of coaches molded in his image. Matt LaFleur. Kevin Stefanski. Kellen Moore. Zac Taylor. Offensive geniuses, in this telling, more frequently resemble Kliff Kingsbury than Leftwich. </p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="NbWv28"><q>“It still boils down to who is making that decision and what are they looking for. And our job is to make sure that there is somewhat of an open process, as much of a process we can have, that the viable candidates are considered.” —David Shaw, Stanford head coach</q></aside></div>
<p id="GR86LJ">Teams are looking for offensive specialists to jump-start their franchises. It’s the current trend in a copycat league: The Cardinals hired Kingsbury as their head coach six weeks after Texas Tech fired him; Taylor got the Bengals job after serving as McVay’s quarterbacks coach with the Rams. But black coaches don’t feature prominently in discussions about offensive coaches. A <em>Denver Post</em> analysis in 2017 studied NFL hires <a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2017/09/11/nfl-black-coaches/amp/">from 2007 to 2017</a> and found that 110 of the 147 offensive coordinator positions filled during that time went to a former NFL and/or college quarterbacks coach. Of those 110 jobs, five went to black coaches. Three of those five went to the same coach: Hue Jackson. </p>
<p id="7LCxLO">The last NFL coaching cycle tells a troubling story about representation for coaches of color at the highest levels of the sport. Truthfully, every offseason does. There are systemic barriers that prevent black coaches from progressing in the industry. They know it. They see their white colleagues running teams as they labor for decades as assistants. We rush to anoint the McVays and Kingsburys of the world as the great new minds in football. But it appears no one is looking for the next black coaching wunderkind.</p>
<p id="Cznb0V">“We’re a powerful league. We’re capable of doing a lot of things, and I think we can fix this issue, but I don’t personally know how,” Leftwich tells me. He sighs. “Maybe one day I do have an answer on how to get this minority coaching situation figured out,” he says. But, “it’s not up to me to figure it out.”</p>
<p id="mBRexz">“It’s not really about coaching, right?”</p>
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<figcaption>49ers tight ends coach Jon Embree</figcaption>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="WW3gTb">In November 2012, Jon Embree got emotional during a press conference to announce his firing as the University of Colorado’s football coach. Embree, a former tight end for the Buffaloes, inherited a disastrous team and won just four games in two seasons. He was the first black head coach in the program’s history, and one of 15 black head coaches in Division I at the time. “We don’t get second chances,” Embree said of black coaches. He later told the <a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2012/11/25/jon-embree-fired-as-colorado-buffaloes-coach-says-he-needed-more-time/"><em>Denver Post</em></a>: “You know we don’t get opportunities. At the end of the day, you get fired and that’s it, right, wrong or indifferent. … We get bad jobs and no time to fix it.”</p>
<p id="X0h1M2">Embree, now a tight ends coach with the San Francisco 49ers, was describing a problem black coaches in the NFL know all too well. The same year Colorado dismissed Embree, the league tapped Carlton Keith Harrison and Scott Bukstein, academics at the University of Central Florida, to study occupational mobility within the league. They published their findings in a <a href="http://nebula.wsimg.com/f7c02e05105ee596ed6f3db09e05f9df?AccessKeyId=7CAA7E9F7200FEB6B0B0&disposition=0&alloworigin=1">report</a> that addressed systemic barriers that coaches and personnel of color face, and provided data-driven policy recommendations to improve hiring conditions. The data is made public every year and is released without much fanfare or publicity by the league.</p>
<p id="OlNiO8">This year’s report echoes Embree’s sentiment from seven years ago. “Historically,” it reads, “NFL teams have been reluctant to hire a person of color for a head coach, offensive coordinator or defensive coordinator position after a person of color has previously served as a head coach in the NFL.”</p>
<p id="XMmVnV">The NFL has data tracking the occupational mobility of its coaches dating back to 1963. During that span, there have been 18 different black head coaches and four Latino head coaches in the league. In 2019, there are four head coaches of color, three of them black, compared to 28 white head coaches in a league in which more than 70 percent of the players are black. Since 1963, 112 white coaches have been hired as a head coach, offensive coordinator, or defensive coordinator after already having one head-coaching job, compared to 18 coaches of color in the same situation. For white coaches who have had two head-coaching jobs, 24 have been hired to these same roles in the future, compared to three coaches of color.</p>
<p id="YfX2VL">The most recent coaching cycle paints a bleak picture. Of 36 open positions at head coach, coordinator, or general manager, 30 of those hires were white candidates. According to the study, by February 2019, there were six fewer men of color serving as either an NFL head coach, defensive or offensive coordinator, or general manager than there were in February 2018. Data provided by the league office shows that, as of February of this year, NFL teams interviewed or sought to interview 61 total candidates for eight open head-coaching positions. Only 31 percent were coaches of color, and only seven of those candidates actually interviewed for those jobs.</p>
<p id="zA3GxR">The primary challenge for candidates of color, according to Harrison and Bukstein’s report, is breaking into the ever-elusive head-coaching pipeline. When teams keep hiring the same people to different roles, it creates what they described as a “reshuffling effect,” an outcome that reduces opportunities for new coaches, especially those of color. And lesser performances by white coaches are rewarded more than, or equal to, greater work by their black counterparts. This flattens how quickly talent of color can experience upward mobility.</p>
<p id="vEuAFz">“If you get fired and you’re a person of color,” says Harrison, the lead researcher, “the odds that you’re going to get reshuffled ever” are slim. At this point, he says, “it’s not even refutable.”</p>
<p id="TOqSyW">A 2016 <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2710398">Georgetown University research paper</a> explained how leaders of organizations remain predominantly white despite efforts to increase racial representation in leadership positions. To anchor their assertions, researchers analyzed more than 1,200 NFL coaches at all levels from 1985 to 2012. They found that white assistant coaches were promoted at higher rates and made up over 70 percent of the hiring pool. There was “clear evidence of a racial disparity in promotion prospects for NFL assistant coaches that have persisted for over two decades despite a high-profile intervention designed to advance the candidacies of minority candidates,” the researchers wrote. They identified racial bias in lower-level coaching positions, such as receivers or defensive backs, and found that coaches of color are often hired into positions with inferior promotion prospects. Black and white coaches overseeing the same position don’t advance equally, either. Black coaches, the study found, are 114 percent less likely to become coordinators than their white counterparts. </p>
<p id="uhdBdc">“It still goes back to who’s doing the hiring and what they’re looking for,” says Stanford head coach David Shaw. “And unlike most professions, there is no ladder. Anything that looks like a ladder is false. It’s not a ladder. It has nothing to do with experience. … It still boils down to who is making that decision and what are they looking for. And our job is to make sure that there is somewhat of an open process, as much of a process we can have, that the viable candidates are considered.”</p>
<p id="ECNoaj">The obstacles presented are not easily overcome. Unless the structure changes, candidates of color will continue to be at a disadvantage in the hiring process. No hard work, no prodding, no representation at the highest level will change that. These factors create divergent outcomes for black and white coaches. Harrison and Bukstein’s study found that black coaches experience different rates of promotion than white coaches and are less likely to attain authoritative positions. Some of this, they argue, can be attributed to an unconscious bias in the hiring process on the part of white decision-makers, in which the résumés and skills of black coaches are devalued. Black coaches are also disadvantaged in a system where social connections serve as professional capital.</p>
<p id="gYWymC">“I don’t think it’s ever been equal,” says Chargers head coach Anthony Lynn. “You know, the NFL is a great organization, but you can’t exempt the NFL from the rest of the world. How quickly are we moving up in the world? I don’t think it’s as fast as we would like.”</p>
<p id="gHHlFu">It makes the question Harrison poses in his study so important. “Would a coach of color be fired from a collegiate-level job and then hired by an NFL team as its new head coach?” Harrison asks. “There is no data to support this would occur.” People say Kingsbury “looks the part,” Harrison tells me. He’s not wrong. The white faces holding powerful positions at every level of the game have damagingly become football’s normalcy.</p>
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<cite>Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>NFL executive vice president of football operations Troy Vincent</figcaption>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="5QxEAp">In June, the NFL hosted a quarterback coaching summit at Morehouse College, a historically black institution in Atlanta, bringing together the best black minds in the game. Troy Vincent, a former All-Pro and the league’s executive vice president of football operations, listened as black coaches from all levels of the sport shared their stories and offered their advice. In his closing remarks, Vincent responded with a passionate appeal.</p>
<p id="SXTckk">“God damn it, we know this game,” he said. “We can coach it and we can teach it. All we’re asking for is a fair process.”</p>
<p id="t817hP">Vincent was involved in the league’s decision to commission Harrison and Bukstein’s annual study. “It’s important that we don’t hide,” Vincent tells me in July. He wanted the league to have a look in the mirror. The past seven years of evaluation have caused Vincent and the league to ask what they can control in the fickle process of hiring coaches. “As an organization,” he says, “what can we do?” The role of the league, he says, is to assist the clubs, be a resource, and identify and develop talent and then mentor coaches for the next phase of their career.</p>
<p id="38dttz">He recognizes what he describes as the “trend” of looking for offensive-minded coaches. He touted the quarterback summit as a way of bringing in a bevy of black play-callers and praised the fellowships and internships that coaches of color frequently receive to work inside franchises. But Vincent didn’t have an answer for why these efforts haven’t produced better results.</p>
<p id="2fQPk6">“We’re just trying to control what we can control,” Vincent says. “And that is to continue to prepare those individuals that have been identified, to get them ready so that when that opportunity arises, we hope that decision-maker is looking across the board,” and picks a black coach. “No one likes the results,” he admits. “But the results are the results.”</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="azbHVn"><q>“Don’t tell me I have to check the box to be a coordinator before I can be a head coach, and then two years later you hire young guys that never called a play a day in their life.” —Anthony Lynn, Chargers head coach</q></aside></div>
<p id="n4HxjQ">Vincent consistently told me that the NFL wants to be a model for diversity initiatives, that diversity is good for business, and that the NFL is like any other American organization. “We can probably talk about the organization you work for and all others,” Vincent says. “We see the disparity all across America. It’s been that way for a long time.”</p>
<p id="XjRSGz">Vincent says the league doesn’t believe the <a href="http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000999110/article/nfl-expands-rooney-rule-requirements-to-strengthen-diversity">Rooney rule</a> needs to be altered, though numerous black coaches I’ve spoken with say it’s often used as a box-check for organizations who aren’t serious about hiring a coach of color. </p>
<p id="W8OvhF">I ask Vincent whether the league can do more to push teams to be better on the issue. He says the league is doing all it can. “We cannot require the club or make the club hire. You’re going to hire who you think is best suited to run your organization.”</p>
<p id="ljw0tS">The league supports these coaches and hypes them at motivational summits, but is hesitant to lead on the issue. It’s content to let individual franchises conduct their own hiring processes. If there were corrective measures, or consequences, football’s hiring powers would be pushed to do more than they have. As is, the shield is safeguarding their most profitable stakeholders, ensuring that progress is a foregone reality.</p>
<p id="smCrS1"></p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="New York Jets Portrait Session" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0bMO5Ej2t8qP2QabxgXvMfwdP1I=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/18993804/179468575.jpg.jpg">
<cite>Photo by Al Pereira/New York Jets/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Rod Graves, chairman of the Fritz Pollard Alliance</figcaption>
</figure>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="tDWyGd">“The system is sick,” Rod Graves tells me over dinner in Washington, D.C., one night in July. Graves, a longtime front-office executive, is the new face of the <a href="https://www.fritzpollard.org/">Fritz Pollard Alliance</a>, an advocacy group formed in 2003 that works to improve hiring practices for coaches and executives of color in the NFL. It’s Graves’s job to be a voice for change. It’s not like he’s unfamiliar with the game. The 60-year-old from Houston worked in the NFL for three decades, including a 15-year career with the Cardinals, where he served as vice president of football operations (1997-2001) as well as general manager (2002-12). Under the dim restaurant lights, Graves appears visibly troubled. How can he succeed where others before him have failed?</p>
<p id="VU4HRQ">“The thing that I tend to get a little bit emotional about when it comes to the focus of the league now is the idea that we need to be focused on the pipeline,” he says. Black and brown talent has always existed, he says, and the league acts as if there hasn’t been a crop of diverse coaching talent whiling away on teams each season.</p>
<p id="gFHGOd">“We have not given enough attention to those who have given their lives to becoming professionals, who are really good and ready today,” he says. “We ignore that group as if they don’t really exist. There are well over 100 coaches of color in the league, and yet we don’t talk enough about those who are in the same category [Chargers coach] Anthony Lynn was in several years ago. … Guys deserve an opportunity. And yet, they’ve not been called for one interview.”</p>
<p id="P0uK7I">Graves will make an impact if he can change the messaging around hiring practices for coaches of color. He agrees with Vincent that diversity is good business.</p>
<p id="zZ6oc9">“It’s positive for our fans,” Graves tells me. “When people look at who the leaders are and the opinions expressed out of an organization, they tend to feel there’s opportunities in the National Football League for all of us. The game is not just for a privileged few. Those things suggest the game is available to everyone. And it should be.”</p>
<p id="7sTlOV">Graves spent 30 years working alongside the league’s decision-makers, including its billionaire owners. He believes quantifying the economic benefits of diversity, and communicating it effectively to the league’s power brokers, will be powerful tools for the Fritz Pollard Alliance. The owners speak in dollars and cents, and that is one way Graves intends to articulate his message.</p>
<p id="XutBch">“What we have to do is somehow have more conversations about how diversity affects the bottom line,” he says. But even he understands this is a long shot. “We may not necessarily change opinions. But owners certainly are concerned about money. If we can show that diversity is more profitable for their business, we’ll get more diversity-related approaches in business plans of owners.”</p>
<p id="E8YQgn">Within their advocacy, leaders like Graves need to grapple with the reasons these coaches are hobbled in their profession. Steve Wilks and Vance Joseph were both fired last year, the former after one season with the Cardinals and the latter after two seasons with the Broncos. Both will be defensive coordinators in 2019. It’s as Jon Embree preached seven years ago: Even with the right people in power, candidates of color have difficulty getting second chances. They are given short strings and asked to knit full sweaters.</p>
<p id="XYUTyC">Graves promises me he sees this. He had to fight for his opportunities in NFL front offices, and hopes to use the rest of his life to change a broken system. He’s willing to wrestle with the obvious.</p>
<p id="yj674Z">“Most are hesitant to say, but the standards are different,” Graves says. “For whatever reasons why people decide to go in a certain direction, I’m not questioning the legitimacy of those reasons, but what I am questioning is why don’t people of color get the same opportunities in the same situations?” He sits for a second with his thoughts. “You have to certainly consider racism,” he admits. “You have to put it in the context of a bias. There is a bias and that bias is working against these coaches.”</p>
<p id="wBu91c"></p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Los Angeles Chargers v Arizona Cardinals" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0c8bnRg5XOvln5Eg2vl6yaKJb5M=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/18993830/1166926229.jpg.jpg">
<cite>Photo by Ralph Freso/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Chargers head coach Anthony Lynn</figcaption>
</figure>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="HvzakH">Anthony Lynn tells me two stories this summer. As a rookie running back for the Broncos in 1992, Lynn and his teammates developed a ritual on game days. To kill time while they were sitting in the locker room before games, they flipped through team media guides, looking for something specific: How many black faces coached on the Giants? Or the Lions? Or anywhere? “You’d just flip through the pages, and I just remember we would be well aware of how many African Americans were on staff,” Lynn tells me. </p>
<p id="JHb2WA">“Hey! I want to play here one day,” players yelled across the locker room. “You know this company right here is really diverse.”</p>
<p id="TUjYm7">Lynn said he wouldn’t be surprised if current players had a similar ritual. “You’re well aware of which organizations have the most diversity. It’s just something that interests minority players,” he says. The second tale Lynn tells me is just as important.</p>
<p id="xZKzJX">When Lynn was a child, his grandfather would speak to him before football practices. One day, Lynn said he told him: “To go where you want to go, you’re going to have to run faster.”</p>
<p id="yRqtyC">“Grandpa,” a precocious Lynn shot back. “What are you talking about? I’m the fastest kid on the team!”</p>
<p id="6UU5zT">“One day,” his grandfather said. “You’re going to understand what I’m talking about.”</p>
<p id="AbV6Gp">“Well,” Lynn tells me now, “it took a while, but I understand exactly what he was talking about now. That’s just the way I was raised. I knew the rules of the game, and I knew that it wasn’t always going to be fair and I knew that I was going to be better, that I was going to have to try harder.”</p>
<p id="0I1OXt">Lynn says his grandfather’s advice prepared him for life and for his future in the NFL. “Nothing really surprised me,” he says. He notices when the goalposts move for black and brown coaches. He thinks the criteria changed this year as teams looked for the next offensive mastermind, even if those coaches have limited NFL experience, or any at all. </p>
<p id="zrO4gz">“When I went through the process, that pissed me off,” Lynn says. “I was told by an owner that he wanted to hire me and the reason why he didn’t hire me was because I hadn’t been a coordinator and the other guy had. And I said, ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think that’s fucked up.’”</p>
<p id="OVzQNK">“Don’t tell me I have to check the box to be a coordinator before I can be a head coach, and then two years later you hire young guys that never called a play a day in their life,” he continues.</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="RESukh"><q>“There’s a lot of really good coaches in this league. You gotta do more investigation. Dig deeper. Turn over every stone. If you look hard enough, you’ll find them.” —Brian Flores, Dolphins head coach</q></aside></div>
<p id="T6PlKb">Lynn’s frustration was a common theme with many of the coaches I spoke to. The criteria change, and they are passed over for younger white coaches. They have to wait longer to ascend in their profession if they ever get the call at all. After Rex Ryan was fired by the Jets in 2014, Lynn was asked to interview for the head-coaching vacancy. He said he nearly declined because he said he knew it was a Rooney rule interview. “I was like, you gotta be out of your damn mind!” He changed his mind after his friends called him and told him to take the interview. He didn’t get the Jets job but was hired as the Chargers’ head coach a few seasons later.</p>
<p id="WcDLZv">It doesn’t work out that way for many coaches, however. Lynn spent 17 years on the sideline before his number was called. Being on the opposite end can be just as draining. Raheem Morris was a young, upstart coach when he got his first head-coaching gig in 2009, at 32 years old, with the Buccaneers. He was fired after three seasons. The NFL’s mobility data suggests it’s unlikely he’ll get the head-coaching hat again. </p>
<p id="bNEhIM">“I know it’s frustrating,” says Morris, the Falcons’ assistant head coach and offensive passing game coordinator. He tries not to spend too much time wondering whether he got a fair shake in Tampa Bay. “I’m 42 now. It’s been 10 years, and I think my time will come again. I want to be one of the few guys that you’re talking about that got the second opportunity.”</p>
<p id="DAYzeW">Morris tells me it’s important not to get stagnant, or to make excuses, to only move forward. I ask him whether doing that can overcome the inherent biases keeping him and others out of head-coaching offices, or combat a hiring process that selects from a pool of mostly white coaches for head jobs.</p>
<p id="AhUgeO">“I have no choice but to believe that,” he says.</p>
<p id="ehxiQR">This rejection is one of the reasons Shaw remains in his college football castle at Stanford. Shaw is often brought up as a candidate to make the leap from college to the NFL. He doesn’t see why he should. He remembers being bounced from the NFL in 2005 when he was a Ravens assistant, and doesn’t wish to revisit that experience. </p>
<p id="cmL2fI">“If you coach longer than three years, then you know rejection,” Shaw tells me. “I’ll say it nicely. When I left Baltimore or was asked to leave the Baltimore Ravens, I interviewed for multiple jobs and tried to get multiple jobs and struck out multiple times. And multiple times I thought I had the job. I thought I was the perfect person for the job and crushed the interview, and someone else got the job.” Those denied opportunities eventually brought Shaw to his alma mater, but he never forgot those feelings of disappointment. </p>
<p id="qBw0g3">“If people have closed minds, hey, it’s up to us to try to open those minds the best way we can and continue to have great examples of people that don’t look like the cardboard cutout football coach,” Shaw says. </p>
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<img alt="NFL: AUG 06 Buccaneers Training Camp" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-2zW53egBiIbHK5Rv_kXZU-4I4c=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/18993809/1160116554.jpg.jpg">
<cite>Photo by Cliff Welch/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Buccaneers special teams coordinator Keith Armstrong</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="Zm3oql">The challenge for these coaches is compounded when they can’t break in immediately. Keith Armstrong has been coaching special teams for 27 years and is currently the Buccaneers’ coordinator. For years he gave up his summers to participate in the Minority Coaching Fellowship, a diversity workshop the league recommends for upstart play-callers. “I never went on vacation for four years,” he says. “Sometimes, you gotta give that up.” But what if he hadn’t been a young 20-something without a relationship or kids? He may have never made it in pro football.</p>
<p id="zPdLhh">“You gotta be willing to grind,” he says. “And a lot of guys have. But you have to have a lot of luck. I been lucky as hell. I got horseshoes. I can’t say that for the rest of ’em.” Armstrong admits a lot of his fortune came from other coaches’ social capital. Jimmy Johnson made calls on his behalf in the ’90s. Arians has done the same. “A lot of this stuff is who you know, who you gather with. Everybody travels in families and packs, and you gotta get caught up in one of those families,” Armstrong says. But he knows his tenure in the league is nowhere near the norm.</p>
<p id="T9ZEoB">“It can be frustrating. There’s no doubt about it. It’s just like the real world,” he says. “You gotta keep gettin’ up. That’s the thing here. Because you’re gonna get knocked down. Keep gettin’ up.”</p>
<p id="J2beSJ">Even with all the anecdotal evidence and quantitative conclusions about the state of coaches of color in professional football, these results don’t sit the same with everyone. Black people are not a monolith. Every black coach is not forced to find fault with the state of their profession. Dolphins head coach Brian Flores told me last week that hard work would prevail.</p>
<p id="4r0qbT">“I just, I just,” Flores sighed. “Speaking truthfully, honestly, I feel like guys who work hard and do a good job are productive. They can lead, they’ll get their opportunities. Maybe that’s a pipe dream of mine.”</p>
<p id="24dEuT">During his introductory press conference in February, Flores said he wanted to be an example for coaches of color to help them get the same opportunities. He takes it seriously, he said. He’s seen the richness of talent in the game. He was brought up for years as a coach who was next in line. Now, he’s reached the top. And he wants to see something change.</p>
<p id="rnv2H9">“This isn’t an offense or a defense or special teams job. This is a leadership job,” he says. He wants those with hiring power to work harder. “People need to, I don’t want to say broaden their horizons, but take a good, hard look, investigate a little bit more, take the time to listen to players and listen to other coaches. There’s a lot of really good coaches in this league. You gotta do more investigation. Dig deeper. Turn over every stone. If you look hard enough, you’ll find them.”</p>
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<img alt="Atlanta Falcons v Miami Dolphins" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/K_zad1-r8XGOXZKZ-uGkCsTEm2A=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/18993785/1166907025.jpg.jpg">
<cite>Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Dolphins head coach Brian Flores</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="Nq5ymK"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="z8MsWr">No one person can be a shining light to influence those who are unwilling to see that black coaches are capable of the same things that their white counterparts are.</p>
<p id="GXQvc4">If the trailblazer Tony Dungy, the first black coach to win a Super Bowl, could not convince them, or Mike Tomlin, with the third-longest tenure among active coaches, or Jim Caldwell, Dennis Green, Fritz Pollard—if they could not change the minds of football’s power brokers, then who can? The NFL is not unlike many American workplaces. The culture of many of this country’s elite institutions, football included, is built on race-based exclusion.</p>
<p id="oEPp1J">It is not the job of any black coach to attempt to fix the structures in their workplaces. It is a deeply unfair expectation for a group of people who’ve been refused a seat at the table since the legs were screwed on and the silverware set. It is not a question of whether black and brown coaches can succeed at the highest levels of the game—it’s a matter of when we will let them.</p>
<p id="pt8qNC">Many consider Leftwich to be the next man who will reach glory. “I’ve been around some really good African American coaches on both sides of the ball. Like really, really, really, really good coaches,” Leftwich tells me. He’s a product of what this collective of coaches has always wanted: representation, yes, but also advancement based on merit. “We are in the teaching business,” he says. “And the teaching business can no longer be about color.”</p>
<p id="xFJMoP">Getting the job in the first place is only one step. “When it takes this long to get one, and if you do get an opportunity and you’re not ready, you’re done. You never get another chance again,” Lynn says. “That’s just the way it is. I can’t say that’s the same for everybody, but it’s damn sure the same for us.”</p>
<p id="iQ0UGq">Lynn rests for a minute and tells me one last story.</p>
<p id="lyfU9W">“I hope that the data is wrong,” he reveals. “I still look forward to the day that every man gets his equal opportunity.”</p>
<p id="eqYbrO">“I hope one day it’s wrong, too,” I admit.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="hfCmCy">Lynn laughs and says, “I know you do.”</p>
<p id="pngdwl"><em>An earlier version of this piece incorrectly stated that Lynn interviewed for the Bills job.</em></p>
https://www.theringer.com/nfl-preview/2019/8/16/20807654/nfl-black-coaches-forgottenTyler Tynes2019-08-15T05:20:00-04:002019-08-15T05:20:00-04:00Can the NFL’s Youngest Play-caller Unlock Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott?
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<figcaption>Getty Images/Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>Kellen Moore has just one year of coaching experience under his belt. This season, he’s tasked with getting Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott to justify their looming mega-extensions. </p> <p id="tTIQuA"><em>The NFL is valuing youth and innovation more than ever before. A year after the Rams made Sean McVay the youngest head coach in league history, Patrick Mahomes became the youngest MVP winner since Dan Marino. This offseason, an avalanche followed: The Cardinals threw caution to the wind and paired Kliff Kingsbury with Kyler Murray, the Packers ended the Mike McCarthy era, and the Bengals poached the Rams’ quarterbacks coach to be their new head coach. When did the NFL begin to resemble Silicon Valley? </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2019/8/13/20803773/welcome-to-wunderkind-week"><em>Welcome to Wunderkind Week</em></a><em>, when we’ll dive deep into how the NFL became a young man’s league.</em></p>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="kryweK">For the past decade and a half, the Dallas Cowboys have played it safe with their coaching hires. Owner Jerry Jones brought in two-time Super Bowl winner Bill Parcells—the embodiment of the old NFL establishment—to lead the team in 2003. When Parcells left coaching three seasons later, Dallas hired league fixture Wade Phillips. Throughout Phillips’s tenure, Jones seemed to be grooming former backup QB and Cowboys lifer Jason Garrett for the role, and after Philips was fired in 2010, Garrett took over. He’s held the job ever since.</p>
<p id="Nwfp3N">Dallas has been similarly cautious in choosing its assistants: Garrett relinquished play-calling duties in 2013—after holding them for two full seasons—and former Rams head coach and veteran play-caller Scott Linehan filled that role for the past four years. A franchise that’s been notoriously aggressive when it comes to player personnel (see: last year’s midseason trade for Amari Cooper), has been far more risk-averse in the coaching realm. Which made this offseason’s decision to empower Kellen Moore to call plays such a surprise.</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><div id="CscLrW"><div data-anthem-component="aside:8729584"></div></div></div>
<p id="tqYXG5">Following a promising start to the Dak Prescott–Ezekiel Elliott era in Jerry World, the Cowboys offense sputtered during the past two seasons. Dallas finished a lowly 24th in offensive DVOA in 2018, one spot behind the Lions. After an initial vote of confidence from Garrett in the days after the Cowboys’ divisional-round loss to the Rams, Linehan was fired in mid-January. The Dallas media speculated that Garrett would resume play-calling duties in 2019, but instead of maintaining the status quo, the front office took a risk. Moore has been with the organization since 2015, first in a reserve QB role and then as the team’s QBs coach last year. Now, with just one season of coaching experience under his belt, he’ll be the one making the calls.</p>
<p id="fZuPdA">Fifteen different teams are going into Week 1 with a different offensive play-caller than the one who held that title at the beginning of the 2018 season. For the most part, those coaches have a history of calling plays, either in college or the NFL. Only four of the 15 have never held a play-calling role in their coaching careers, and of that group, none will face the type of pressure awaiting Moore this fall.</p>
<p id="hQWJWs">Other first-time play-callers, like the Dolphins’ Chad O’Shea and the Bengals’ Zac Taylor, enter this season coaching offenses with modest expectations. For Dallas, though, the sense of urgency has never been higher. Prescott wants a new deal worth upward of $35 million per season. Elliott is currently on a beach in Cabo as his contract holdout drags on. Dallas is expected to eventually extend both when the two sides can find common ground, which will likely mean spending around $50 million per season on the team’s two biggest stars. </p>
<p id="4Xi7si">A boyish coordinator in his first year on the job may seem like an odd choice to steer that pricey ship, but some within the organization are already convinced that Moore is the right fit. “He’s brilliant,” says Cowboys quarterbacks coach Jon Kitna. “He can see 22 people at one time on the field and know why certain things are happening. He also has a great understanding of how to attack defenses and understand what they’re going to do.” The Cowboys are on the brink of investing a small fortune in their future. And they’ll rely on the league’s most inexperienced coordinator to stretch that money as far as it can go. </p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Dak Prescott" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/AhjMPJ12_R_pfJbOugP84Vz5_sU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/18980458/1093880276.jpg.jpg">
<cite>John McCoy/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Dak Prescott</figcaption>
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<p id="NH3JDt"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="tuk7ai">At 30 years old, Moore is the youngest play-caller in the NFL—and it shows. On this Tuesday afternoon in August, he’s dressed in a baggy T-shirt and shorts and looks more like an overgrown sleepaway camper than an NFL coach. It’s probably been a few days since he’s shaved, and it’ll be a few more before he has to do anything about it. Only two years removed from his playing career, Moore is now coaching his former teammates, some of whom—like 37-year-old Jason Witten—are several years his senior. “It’s unique in the sense that when you’re asking a player to do something, I was <em>just </em>in that position,” Moore says. </p>
<p id="H80d8j">At this point, Moore is far more famous for his college football accolades than his coaching credentials. He went 50-3 in his four seasons as the Boise State starter and became the first QB in college football history to tally 50 victories. In 2010, he finished fourth in the Heisman Trophy voting. Undersized and physically outgunned at the pro level, Moore was never able to translate his college dominance to the NFL, but his time in Boise will likely pay dividends this fall. Under head coach Chris Petersen (who’s been at Washington since 2014), the Broncos showcased one of the most innovative offenses in college football. “That’s the world I was involved with and kind of embraced, trying to be a little bit different,” Moore says. Loaded with various formations, motions, and methods of deception, the principles that defined Boise’s prolific attack are just what the previously lifeless Cowboys approach needs.</p>
<p id="4K4RWY">Under Linehan in 2018, Dallas utilized pre-snap motion on just 31 percent of its plays, according to Sports Info Solutions. That figure ranked 24th in the league and was well below the NFL average of 36.6 percent. The Cowboys’ static approach, replete with passing concepts that often featured the receivers executing the same route combinations on both sides of the formation, made the Cowboys predictable. The hope is that Moore can add more layers to this system, ones that will bewilder defenses. And the early signs point to a more creative approach.</p>
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<p id="wDewPI">Moore and Garrett made a blanket decision to keep the offense’s language consistent from what Dallas has used in the past. With nearly every starter from 2018’s unit returning this year, Moore felt no need to add extra confusion to the offensive installation. Many of the route types and combinations will also carry over from Linehan’s version. The biggest difference with Moore’s scheme will be the packaging. “Plays are plays,” Moore says. “Everybody’s got the same plays. At the end of the day, it’s how you present them.”</p>
<p id="JAuQXk">Across the NFL, passes out of heavier packages (like <a href="http://insidethepylon.com/football-101/glossary-football-101/2015/09/22/itp-glossary-12-offensive-personnel/">12 personnel</a>) have been much more effective than those out of lighter looks (<a href="http://insidethepylon.com/football-101/glossary-football-101/2015/10/05/itp-glossary-11-offensive-personnel/">11 personnel</a>) over the past few years: In 2018, throws from 11 personnel averaged 7.1 yards per attempt; those out of 12 personnel averaged 8.1. Despite that, Dallas passed out of 12 personnel just 9 percent of the time last season (the league average was 14 percent) and threw just 78 passes with two tight ends or a fullback on the field. Compare that to the 49ers (228) and Patriots (164), and the gap between the Cowboys and the league’s most innovative schemes becomes apparent. “I think you’d be kinda dumb not to look at those things,” Moore said of the Niners and Pats offenses. “They’ve been doing some really positive things, and it’s certainly been branching out throughout the league.” </p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">The Rams may go to more 2TE sets this year, but the crux of their scheme is still going to be playing under-center and throwing it over teams' heads on play-action: <a href="https://t.co/SNUZjno6i1">pic.twitter.com/SNUZjno6i1</a></p>— Danny Kelly (@DannyBKelly) <a href="https://twitter.com/DannyBKelly/status/1161728206191222784?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 14, 2019</a>
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<p id="Ab5e7C">The Cowboys have already implemented a wider variety of personnel packages in training camp. Moore’s offense has practiced a considerable amount of plays that start with one or two backs on the field and use motion to create an empty formation, a tactic that the Patriots used in the Super Bowl—and for most of last season—with great success. “We want to spread it out and make the defense have to cover the full field,” Kitna says. “We’re going to try to use formations and shifts and movements to our advantage. I think a lot of people have that idea coming in, but we’re going to emphasize that.” Those tactics will particularly help Elliott, and though the running back hasn’t been present for camp, it’s clear that Moore has designed concepts with him in mind.</p>
<p id="xrFix5">The Cowboys’ Pro Bowl back had the best receiving year of his career in 2018; his 77 receptions were 19 more than he tallied over his first two seasons combined. But the Cowboys can still do more to maximize his abilities as a pass catcher. Elliott lined up in the slot or out wide on only 54 snaps last season. When Arizona’s David Johnson tallied 487 air yards in 2016—<em>200 </em>more than the previous decade’s running back record—he lined up as a receiver 197 times. Despite seeing a larger receiving workload last season, Elliott ranked 24th in air yards among the 50 backs with at least 25 targets. His average depth of target was 0.5 yards, which ranked 30th. The best way to manufacture pass-catching value from an excellent dual-threat back—especially one who’s about to be paid to reflect that skill set—is to shift his targets from checkdowns and screens to actual receiver routes.</p>
<p id="lFykcR">There are also ways that Moore can ease Elliott’s burden as a runner. Last season, Elliott faced eight or more defenders in the box on 24.7 percent of his rushes, the 20th-highest rate in the league. Compare that to Todd Gurley, who saw those looks on just 8.2 percent of his carries, thanks to the Rams’ usage of lighter personnel (they used 11 personnel on 77 percent of their rushing attempts; the Cowboys used three-receiver sets on only 53 percent of their runs). If Dallas feels compelled to build its offense around Elliott to justify his massive price tag in the coming years, there are smarter ways to do it than the ones the team has used in the past.</p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Ezekiel Elliott" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/IoYbOb67Jo9sA1XAwtweWuTbTV0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/18980463/1077952870.jpg.jpg">
<cite>Andrew Dieb/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Ezekiel Elliott</figcaption>
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<p id="dedBGi"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="BXEIeV">Compared to the other first-year play-callers around the NFL, Moore has one crucial advantage: He doesn’t have to spend this season learning the habits and preferences of his quarterback. Moore has been in offensive meetings—first as a teammate and then as a quarterbacks coach—with Prescott for three full seasons. The difference now is that he’s running them. “A lot of things, we’ve probably talked about in the past few years,” Moore says. “But once you’re in this role, you see how all the pieces fit together. It’s a wider-lens viewpoint. I think that’s good.” </p>
<p id="EcKkEa">As Moore has navigated the offseason and tried to determine what <em>his </em>version of this offense will look like, he’s tapped into his knowledge of Prescott’s preferences and devised plays that utilize his strengths. Kitna points to Prescott’s deep ball as a particularly impressive area of his game. “It’s tremendous,” Kitna says. “He throws it with great velocity, the right kind of air, the right kind of firmness.” Prescott’s 115.7 passer rating on deep throws ranked fourth in the NFL last season, behind only Drew Brees, Russell Wilson, and Aaron Rodgers. The issue was that the Cowboys hardly pushed the ball downfield: Just 10.8 percent of Prescott’s passes traveled 20 or more yards in the air, which ranked 24th out of 35 qualified quarterbacks. Moore would be smart to give vertical shots a stronger emphasis in this year’s offense, and the emergence of deep-ball specialist and second-year receiver Michael Gallup—who’s had a standout training camp so far—would only help matters. </p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="W3Ux7F"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The NFL’s Great Sean McVay Experiment and the Age of the Coaching Wunderkind","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nfl-preview/2019/8/12/20801410/nfl-sean-mcvay-coaching-generation-matt-lafleur-kliff-kingsbury-zac-taylor"},{"title":"Kliff Kingsbury and Kyler Murray Just Raised the Stakes of the NFL’s Offensive Revolution ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nfl-preview/2019/8/14/20804948/arizona-cardinals-kliff-kingsbury-kyler-murray-nfl-trends"},{"title":"Matt LaFleur Is Here to Modernize the Packers Offense—and Maximize Aaron Rodgers’s Prime","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nfl-preview/2019/8/13/20802817/green-bay-packers-matt-lafleur-aaron-rodgers-prime"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="SqGIth">Other concepts that Moore has introduced this summer, though, are designed to make Prescott <em>uncomfortable</em>. The offense features a robust menu of new pre-snap and different formations, which means Prescott has to read changing defensive alignments on the fly. “When the picture changes for the defense, the picture changes for the offense as well,” Moore says. “You’ve got to get used to that.” That’s been a challenge at times, but Moore says that’s what this time of year is for. “Sometimes my thing is, ‘Dak, I don’t want you to like every play,’” Moore says. “And that’s OK. That’s part of this deal. We’ve still got three or four weeks to work on this.” </p>
<p id="ByEC9e">One benefit of the increased motion will be the way it creates space for the Cowboys receivers. As defenses around the NFL have shifted toward more man coverage, the static looks Dallas showed under Linehan put the onus on his players to get open on their own. Last year, Prescott’s 67.7 completion percentage was 2.1 percentage points higher than his <a href="https://nextgenstats.nfl.com/glossary">expected completion percentage</a> (xCOMP), which is calculated based on receiver separation. A completion percentage higher than a player’s xCOMP typically means a quarterback performed better than his scheme would suggest. More motion and a higher percentage of stack and bunch formations—which teams like the Rams use to create free releases for their receivers—should provide Prescott with wider throwing windows this season. If Moore can consistently create more separation for Amari Cooper, Gallup, and the rest of the Cowboys pass catchers, it will go a long way toward making sure the Cowboys’ $30 million–plus yearly investment in Prescott is worth it. </p>
<p id="etRz5F">As his quarterback gets a feel for his new role, Moore is doing the same. The scheme-creation part of his job is nearly done, but there are still areas to hone during situational periods in practice—like the two-minute drill and red zone calls—and tweaking to be done to the back-side concepts of certain route combinations. “You start bouncing ideas off [each other] with all these situational things,” Moore says of the interplay between him and his fellow coaches. “It’s good for me.”</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="aMK8j1">Despite Moore’s youth, he carries a different demeanor than most of the offensive whiz kids who’ve come into the NFL in recent years. Sean McVay is always on, his overwhelming enthusiasm emanating off him as the words fly from his mouth at a breakneck pace. Kyle Shanahan is meticulous about every detail of his scheme, down to the inch. Moore is chiller, quieter. Laid-back, even. He exudes the kind of calm-in-the-storm vibe that helped him set winning records in college. That personality should serve him well as he takes over one of the sport’s highest-profile jobs at the very moment that the Cowboys’ two biggest names are transitioning from rookie-contract bargains to market-setting stars. The eyes of the football world will be on the Cowboys this fall. And the fate of America’s Team may just come down to whether its young offensive coordinator can stand the gaze. </p>
https://www.theringer.com/nfl-preview/2019/8/15/20806357/dallas-cowboys-new-offense-dak-prescott-ezekiel-elliott-kellen-mooreRobert Mays2019-08-14T06:30:00-04:002019-08-14T06:30:00-04:00Kliff Kingsbury and Kyler Murray Just Raised the Stakes of the NFL’s Offensive Revolution
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/jwsq_teshwCcQsOnTXr-4nixSJE=/420x0:3087x2000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65015092/mays_kyler_kill_getty_ringer_feature.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Getty Images/Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>As teams around the league search for innovative coaches and dynamic passers, the Cardinals have taken those trends to their logical extremes. Will hiring an Air Raid–focused head coach and drafting a 5-foot-10 QB pay off?</p> <p id="tctXnR"><em>The NFL is valuing youth and innovation more than ever before. A year after the Rams made Sean McVay the youngest head coach in league history, Patrick Mahomes became the youngest MVP winner since Dan Marino. This offseason, an avalanche followed: The Cardinals threw caution to the wind and paired Kliff Kingsbury with Kyler Murray, the Packers ended the Mike McCarthy era, and the Bengals poached the Rams’ quarterbacks coach to be their new head coach. When did the NFL begin to resemble Silicon Valley? </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2019/8/13/20803773/welcome-to-wunderkind-week"><em>Welcome to Wunderkind Week</em></a><em>, when we’ll dive deep into how the NFL became a young man’s league.</em></p>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="KIzp3X">Kliff Kingsbury didn’t ask for this. He wants to be clear about that. When the Cardinals’ brass was deliberating about which player to select with the first overall pick in this spring’s draft, Kingsbury claims he never lobbied general manager Steve Keim to take Kyler Murray—despite having a <a href="https://twitter.com/EricKellyTV/status/1056683979326271489?s=20">well-documented</a> affection for the 2018 Heisman Trophy winner. “What’s funny is that I purposefully tried to stay away from the topic,” Kingsbury says. “I wanted the process to play out and let evaluations be evaluations.”</p>
<p id="1hI9qw">The first in-depth conversation that Keim and Kingsbury had about Murray came a few days after the NFL combine in early March. Keim was sitting in his office studying game tape of Alabama tackle Quinnen Williams—one of the three players Arizona would eventually consider drafting with the no. 1 pick. As he watched Alabama’s College Football Playoff semifinal win against Oklahoma, Keim tried to focus on Williams, but he kept getting distracted by the other team’s quarterback. “I threw on that game, and I couldn’t stop watching Kyler,” Keim says. When he finally realized the Williams evaluation was a lost cause, Keim made his way to Kingsbury’s office. “He just kinda shook his head,” Kingsbury says. “And I said, ‘Yeah, he’s pretty good, huh?’ That was the start of it.”</p>
<p id="jOurCr">As Keim finally solicited input on his coach’s longtime QB crush, Kingsbury—who coached both Baker Mayfield and Patrick Mahomes at Texas Tech—said that in his opinion, Murray belonged in the same elite tier as the two young passers who lit up the NFL in 2018. “I had that baseline,” Kingsbury says. “That was my conversation to start, that I felt like [Murray] fit into that group.” </p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="QifvXM"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The NFL’s Great Sean McVay Experiment and the Age of the Coaching Wunderkind","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nfl-preview/2019/8/12/20801410/nfl-sean-mcvay-coaching-generation-matt-lafleur-kliff-kingsbury-zac-taylor"},{"title":"Kyler Murray and the Cardinals Are Worth the Fantasy Football Hype","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2019/8/6/20755180/make-the-case-arizona-cardinals-fantasy-football-kyler-murray-david-johnson-kliff-kingsbury"},{"title":"Why Kyler Murray Is a One-of-a-Kind Quarterback Prospect","url":"https://www.theringer.com/video/2019/4/23/18512458/why-kyler-murray-is-a-one-of-a-kind-quarterback-prospect"},{"title":"History Says Patrick Mahomes Should Regress. History Has Never Seen a Patrick Mahomes.","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2019/8/14/20803796/patrick-mahomes-kansas-city-chiefs-quarterback-history-outlook"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="RcVyhD">Keim spent the rest of that afternoon digging through Murray’s tape. By the end of the day, he was enamored. “Every game, it was the same thing,” Keim says. “He did something multiple times that you either said, ‘Wow,’ or [I] had seen very few times in my scouting career.” As he watched Murray launch the ball from different angles, look comfortable making accurate throws both inside and outside the pocket, and rip defenses to shreds with his feet, Keim felt torn. “For a lot of reasons,” Keim says, “I didn’t want to like [him].” </p>
<p id="PrDEF2">A year earlier, Keim had traded the 15th pick, along with third- and fifth-round selections, to move up to draft UCLA quarterback Josh Rosen 10th overall. Taking Murray would be Keim’s second significant admission of failure in four months. The GM had already fired head coach Steve Wilks in December, following a single disastrous 3-13 season, and replaced him with Kingsbury. If Keim moved on from Rosen, he’d be conceding that each major decision the franchise had made in the past year was a mistake. Aware of the flogging he’d endure, Keim and the Cardinals rolled the dice on Murray anyway. “Taking this guy no. 1, I took a lot of grief for that,” Keim says with a sigh. “You have to make the tough decisions and avoid the outside noise— ‘Why’d you give up on this guy? Why would you trade this guy?’ … It’s unprecedented. I took [Rosen] in the top 10. I just felt that [Murray] was a generational talent that I just couldn’t pass up.”</p>
<p id="eqC955">The decision to ride with Murray (and trade Rosen to the Dolphins for the 62nd overall pick) isn’t all that’s unprecedented about the 2019 Cardinals. This season, Arizona will take the NFL’s two hippest trends—the proliferation of college’s Air Raid principles throughout the league, and teams’ searches for the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nfl-preview/2019/8/12/20801410/nfl-sean-mcvay-coaching-generation-matt-lafleur-kliff-kingsbury-zac-taylor">next play-calling wunderkind</a>—to their extremes. In reshaping the franchise, Arizona took a chance on the second 5-foot-10 starting quarterback <a href="http://pfref.com/tiny/jjXQn">since the NFL merger</a> and a 40-year-old offensive mastermind who went 35-40 as a college head coach. A new era of the NFL has arrived, and the Cardinals are about to test its limits. </p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Kliff Kingsbury" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/bIOqGrCFMRngn0Q31gCF6YQbo9E=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/18971176/1167123742.jpg.jpg">
<cite>Christian Petersen/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Kliff Kingsbury</figcaption>
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<p id="p40Cg9"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="slDq4Y">After throwing for 11,937 yards in Mike Leach’s Air Raid offense at Texas Tech, Kingsbury was drafted in the sixth round by the Patriots in 2003. He spent the next six seasons bouncing around professional football before starting his college coaching career in 2008 as an assistant at Houston. During his time in the NFL, Kingsbury watched plodding offenses that seemed like polar opposites of the fast-paced scoring machines he piloted for Leach, and he couldn’t figure out why the league rejected Leach’s ideas out of hand. “There have been some wildly successful college teams that have spread it out and gone to work,” Kingsbury says. “So that was always a question to me of ‘Why is no one doing this?’” </p>
<p id="QBYr51">There are several features of the NFL game, such as the closer hash marks and abundance of game-wrecking defenders, that would prevent a team from ever implementing a spread Air Raid scheme wholesale. But what confused Kingsbury most during his playing days were the lazy arguments coaches would use to avoid adopting some of the system’s simpler tenets. Fifteen years ago, the idea of using shotgun on a majority of plays would have seemed ridiculous. “Then you watch Kansas City, I think it was 85 percent [shotgun] last year,” Kingsbury says. “And they scored the most points in the history of the game.” </p>
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<p id="78c9tv">Coaches like Andy Reid, Doug Pederson, and Freddie Kitchens have all helped encourage the flow of more Air Raid play designs into the NFL. But the Air Raid has <a href="http://smartfootball.com/offense/the-air-raid-offense-history-evolution-weirdness-from-mumme-to-leach-to-franklin-to-holgorsen-and-beyond">always been</a> more about a mind-set than a playbook. It emphasizes an openness to new ideas and execution over complicated schematics. And after decades of resisting innovation, NFL teams are finally embracing Air Raid philosophies like simplifying quarterback reads and spreading defenses out to find and exploit open grass. “It’s no secret that college offenses are—I’m not saying they <em>are </em>the NFL, but they’re morphing into the NFL more and more,” Keim says. </p>
<p id="HzqRRR">While other coaches are dipping their toes in the Air Raid waters, Kingsbury is about to become the first modern play-caller to dive in headfirst. After getting the job, he started to plan what his scheme would look like in the NFL and realized he wouldn’t have to throw out any of his core concepts. “We won’t throw it 88 times [a game] the way we did with Mahomes,” Kingsbury says. “But I don’t think there’s a staple that jumped out to me” that the team couldn’t use. </p>
<p id="vQ0cmb">Kingsbury’s challenge will be filtering those Air Raid principles through an NFL- and Cardinals-specific lens. Luckily, one benefit of this system is that it’s easily tailored to different rosters and personnel packages. Kingsbury primarily used four wide receivers and no tight ends at Texas Tech, but Oklahoma’s Lincoln Riley uses the same basic system with two tight ends on the field.</p>
<p id="iXu8qb">Many of the Air Raid’s passing concepts should be easily translatable to the current NFL, but the chasm between college and professional running games is much wider. To ease this part of the transition, the Cardinals brought in former Broncos offensive line coach Sean Kugler to help Kingsbury shape his rushing attack to the restrictions of the NFL. Tweaks to some of the protection schemes have also been necessary. In the Big 12, Kingsbury was free to leave offensive linemen in precarious positions because few college defenders were talented enough to sabotage a play on their own. That isn’t an option when facing Aaron Donald twice a year. “There was a lot of experimentation in the spring, and there still will be,” Kingsbury says. “There are gonna be a lot of ups and downs as we figure out what we can do and what we can’t do offensively. But when you have a guy who can run it <em>and </em>throw it, you can turn a bad play into a good play really quick.” </p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="1bepEe"><q>“A lot of people point to the record. But when you really break down the bare bones of the offensive success and the players who’ve been associated with that, it just is what it is.” —Kliff Kingsbury</q></aside></div>
<p id="HR9V19">There will likely be some fits and starts as Kingsbury learns how to properly configure his scheme, but Murray could be the great equalizer. He has a history with this system after playing under Riley at Oklahoma and Kevin Sumlin at Texas A&M, and he’s shown a strong grasp of Kingsbury’s version since OTAs this spring. During the team’s first practice, Murray stepped to the line, saw a coverage that Kingsbury had merely glossed over in meetings that morning, and executed a check that the team hadn’t even learned. “I’m like, ‘I don’t know if anyone else on the field knows that,’” Kingsbury says. “And I said, all right, this kid sees it, and on the level I want him to see it. And that means [having] an attacking mentality where if you see something better than what we’ve got called, get into it, and let’s go.” More than specific route concepts or play designs, Murray’s familiarity with the ethos and the mechanics of Kingsbury’s system has accelerated the Cardinals’ overall mastery of it. “To be able to process so many things at once <em>and </em>look at the defense <em>and </em>execute the play, it’s a lot,” Kingsbury says. “All he’s done his entire life is no-huddle spread stuff. So he feels really confident in that.”</p>
<p id="z2R9uL">Keim insists that in 21 years of scouting players, he’s never studied one with Murray’s combined running and throwing abilities. He pulls out his phone and scrolls to a video he saved early in training camp that shows Murray completing a perfectly lofted fade about 40 yards down the right sideline. That sort of stunning moment has become a daily occurrence. “I guess time will tell,” Keim says about whether Murray will be able to transfer his college prowess to the NFL. “But I certainly like the early returns.”</p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Kyler Murray" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/FQOXRLtZ4akE7ZE6JTe4sC6HjHg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/18971177/1167643039.jpg.jpg">
<cite>Christian Petersen/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Kyler Murray</figcaption>
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<p id="8BBIiX"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="6l1KiN">Kingsbury first heard there was interest in him as an NFL head coach in December. Even a few weeks earlier, that notion would have seemed absurd: He’d recently been fired from Texas Tech after a 5-7 season (the program’s third consecutive sub-.500 year). </p>
<p id="NSnOIO">The sought-after offensive mind wasn’t out of work long: USC tapped him as its next offensive coordinator just 10 days later. For a renowned play-caller who struggled to build a complete team in Lubbock, the move made sense. He could focus on the aspect of the game where he’s most valuable and ignore the rest. But despite his losing record over six seasons as a Big 12 head coach, NFL teams came calling around the New Year. Just 34 days after taking the gig at USC, Kingsbury was announced as the Cardinals’ next head coach. </p>
<p id="3q3EDf">Kingsbury gets why people might think that he skipped the line and that his results in college didn’t warrant his failing upward. But he wasn’t surprised at the NFL interest, either. He feels that his strengths perfectly align with the ones that teams have started to value most. “A lot of people point to the record, and I understand that completely,” Kingsbury says. “But when you really break down the bare bones of the offensive success and the players who’ve been associated with that, it just is what it is.” </p>
<p id="4UETFA">In its <em>worst</em> season under Kingsbury, Texas Tech averaged 30.5 points per game. Twice, the Red Raiders topped 40 per game and finished as a top-five scoring team in FBS. In 2016, Texas Tech’s Patrick Mahomes–led offense <em>averaged </em>566.6 yards per game. “When you look at the production the offense had when he was calling it, it was mind-blowing,” Keim says. “And more than that, when you take a deeper dive, he was doing it at Texas Tech with less talent against schools who could way out-recruit him. They were getting five-star, four-star players at Texas, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, and he’s still scoring 48 points per game and putting up over 500 yards per game.” With eight years of experience, Kingsbury had significantly more play-calling reps than each candidate that Arizona interviewed—all of them offensive coaches who intended to be the team’s play-caller. </p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="ao7QGx"><q>“He’s like a grandpa. He gets in at 4 o’clock in the morning, and every time I walk down to his office, all he does is watch film and draw plays up.” —Steve Keim</q></aside></div>
<p id="KVaKcv">The loudest criticism of Kingsbury as a head coach was that he was too focused on his offense at Texas Tech to build a competent defense. Keim, for his part, felt that concern was overstated as it related to the NFL. Arizona could pair him with a seasoned defensive coordinator (the franchise landed on former Broncos head coach Vance Joseph), and after talking to several defensive players from Texas Tech, Keim felt comfortable in Kingsbury’s ability to lead an entire locker room. “They thought he was a guy that had enough of a swag to him that the players respected him,” Keim says. “They looked to him for advice. He didn’t just concentrate on the offensive side of the ball.” </p>
<p id="U71h9G">Most important to Keim, though, was Kingsbury’s track record with grooming quarterbacks. Mahomes threw for 5,052 yards and 41 touchdowns in his final college season under Kingsbury in 2016. Before Baker Mayfield transferred to Oklahoma in late 2013, he played one season for Kingsbury and threw for 2,315 yards in just eight games, despite an occasionally adversarial relationship with his head coach. The two most exciting young quarterbacks in the NFL were players that Kingsbury sought out and taught. “Our mind-set was to hire a guy who was a play-caller and someone who could develop the quarterback position, regardless of who the quarterback was,” Keim says.</p>
<p id="QEkhV6">Among all the potential coaches Arizona interviewed, Kingsbury was the only one to ask Keim for film of last year’s Cardinals. When he arrived in the desert for his meeting with team brass, Kingsbury brought reams of handwritten notes about topics that ranged from Rosen’s footwork to how he’d improve certain concepts within the Cardinals offense to the ways he’d mold his system around the team’s personnel. The initial plan was crafted for Rosen, but with Murray now in place, Kingsbury’s history with quarterbacks and schematic background have become even more useful. </p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="0nE8kw"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Matt LaFleur Is Here to Modernize the Packers Offense—and Maximize Aaron Rodgers’s Prime","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nfl-preview/2019/8/13/20802817/green-bay-packers-matt-lafleur-aaron-rodgers-prime"},{"title":"Move Over, Rookies: Midlevel Veterans Are Having a Moment","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nfl-preview/2019/8/13/20803216/nfl-youth-veteran-movement"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="Z5aM4U">Keim understands what an outsider’s perspective of Kingsbury might be. With his perfectly coiffed hair, permanent stubble, and chiseled jaw, he looks more like an A-list actor than an NFL coach. During a Q&A session at an event for season-ticket holders this offseason, a woman stood up and asked Keim if he’d hired Kingsbury because he was good-looking. “I told her no,” Keim says, “but that I did look a hell of a lot better standing next to Bruce Arians.” Kingsbury can wear the heck out of a pair of designer shades and could easily be mistaken for Ryan Gosling in the right light, but Keim says that the person he’s gotten to know couldn’t be less Hollywood. “I don’t know whether people thought he was a playboy and likes to have fun or whatever,” Keim says. “But he’s like a grandpa. He gets in at 4 o’clock in the morning, and every time I walk down to his office, all he does is watch film and draw plays up.” He says that Kingsbury’s cave at the Cardinals’ facility is littered with hand-drawn play designs, the <a href="https://images.app.goo.gl/HYnWvWfs1esCNruE9">Pepe Silvia obsession</a> in football form. </p>
<p id="7u0osd">Nearly half the teams in the NFL seemed to be searching for their own version of Sean McVay this offseason, and Kingsbury may be the most shameless example. The two have been friends for years, and McVay even tried to lure Kingsbury to the Rams as an offensive consultant after he was let go by Texas Tech—a point that the Cardinals were <a href="https://theramswire.usatoday.com/2019/01/08/nfl-rams-cardinals-sean-mcvay-kliff-kingsbury-friend-genius/">sure to mention</a> in their initial announcement after Kingsbury was hired. The NFL is a reactionary league, and right now the Cardinals are chasing trends harder than any other team in football. A year after Mayfield proved that an undersize Air Raid QB from Oklahoma could be a viable option at the game’s highest level, Arizona drafted one with the first overall pick. Nine days after McVay’s team capped off a 13-3 regular season, the Cardinals hired their own play-calling head coach—a coach that happens to run an offense that’s never been more popular among the NFL ranks.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="rfnMsZ">Pivoting hard to the hot new fad carries inherent risk, and Keim understands that. “Who wants to have the no. 1 pick?” Keim says. “I know I never want to have it again. And if we do, I’m not gonna be here.” The Cardinals are about to try a formula that no team in the NFL has ever attempted. In Keim’s mind, it was the bet they had to make. </p>
https://www.theringer.com/nfl-preview/2019/8/14/20804948/arizona-cardinals-kliff-kingsbury-kyler-murray-nfl-trendsRobert Mays2019-08-14T06:20:00-04:002019-08-14T06:20:00-04:00History Says Patrick Mahomes Should Regress. History Has Never Seen a Patrick Mahomes.
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<p>The Chiefs phenom had the best debut season of any quarterback in NFL history. Could he be even better in Year 2?</p> <p id="jW6obX"><em>The NFL is valuing youth and innovation more than ever before. A year after the Rams made Sean McVay the youngest head coach in league history, Patrick Mahomes became the youngest MVP winner since Dan Marino. This offseason, an avalanche followed: The Cardinals threw caution to the wind and paired Kliff Kingsbury with Kyler Murray, the Packers ended the Mike McCarthy era, and the Bengals poached the Rams’ quarterbacks coach to be their new head coach. When did the NFL begin to resemble Silicon Valley? Welcome to </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2019/8/13/20803773/welcome-to-wunderkind-week"><em>Wunderkind Week</em></a><em>, when we’ll dive deep into how the NFL became a young man’s league.</em></p>
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<p id="28G1PO">What goes up must come down, although it doesn’t often seem that way with Patrick Mahomes. Last October, Patriots coach Bill Belichick told reporters that Mahomes “<a href="https://twitter.com/MikeGiardi/status/1049295087266672640">could throw the ball out of the stadium</a>,” speaking metaphorically about the arm strength of the Chiefs’ wunderkind quarterback. Only it wasn’t as metaphorical as Belichick probably believed. On one July afternoon, Mahomes went to Arrowhead Stadium to see if he could literally throw the ball out of the building. I like to think that the news chopper filming the proceedings was simply cruising above Kansas City and went to investigate the brown spheroids that kept soaring through its airspace.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">That's some serious arm strength right there . <a href="https://twitter.com/Chiefs?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Chiefs</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/PatrickMahomes?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@PatrickMahomes</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/OurQuarterback?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#OurQuarterback</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ChiefsKingdom?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ChiefsKingdom</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Chiefs?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Chiefs</a> <a href="https://t.co/YN7CUNSFCS">pic.twitter.com/YN7CUNSFCS</a></p>— 41 Action News (@41actionnews) <a href="https://twitter.com/41actionnews/status/1149817374704570368?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 12, 2019</a>
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<p id="M9MJro">What goes up must come down, and that’s somewhat alarming for Mahomes, whose stock is currently as high as a football hurtling over Arrowhead Stadium. His first season as the Chiefs’ starter was easily the best debut performance of any quarterback in league history. Mahomes became the third QB ever to throw 50 touchdown passes in a season, was named the runaway MVP, and nearly kept the Patriots from reaching the Super Bowl. (He was <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nfl-playoffs/2019/1/20/18191213/patrick-mahomes-kansas-city-chiefs-afc-championship-game-new-england-patriots">no match for a coin flip</a>. You can’t have everything.)</p>
<p id="71Gpu9">Common sense would indicate that Mahomes is now due for regression. My colleague Danny Heifetz <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2019/8/5/20754590/patrick-mahomes-fantasy-football-do-not-draft-overvalued">laid out the case for that</a> earlier this month. No QB has ever thrown 40 or more touchdowns in an NFL season and then increased his output the following year, with an average drop-off of 18.8 touchdowns. (Take out Tom Brady’s 50-to-0 injury-related decline and it’s still an average dip of 16.) Factor in that the Chiefs will play one of the toughest schedules in football and that opponents have had a full year to game-plan against Mahomes, and it seems like a step back is inevitable. How could Mahomes keep up <em>that</em> quality of play?</p>
<div class="c-float-left"><aside id="GolSpU"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Matt LaFleur Is Here to Modernize the Packers Offense—and Maximize Aaron Rodgers’s Prime","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nfl-preview/2019/8/13/20802817/green-bay-packers-matt-lafleur-aaron-rodgers-prime"},{"title":"Move Over, Rookies: Midlevel Veterans Are Having a Moment","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nfl-preview/2019/8/13/20803216/nfl-youth-veteran-movement"},{"title":"The NFL’s Great Sean McVay Experiment and the Age of the Coaching Wunderkind","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nfl-preview/2019/8/12/20801410/nfl-sean-mcvay-coaching-generation-matt-lafleur-kliff-kingsbury-zac-taylor"},{"title":"Kliff Kingsbury and Kyler Murray Just Raised the Stakes of the NFL’s Offensive Revolution ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nfl-preview/2019/8/14/20804948/arizona-cardinals-kliff-kingsbury-kyler-murray-nfl-trends"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="lmON48">Of course, common sense may be ill-suited to analyze a player who decided it was reasonable to <a href="http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-cant-miss-plays/0ap3000000997417/Can-t-Miss-Play-Patrick-Mahomes-unveils-no-look-pass">throw no-look passes during NFL games</a>. Mahomes is <a href="https://twitter.com/bykevinclark/status/1159492481001672705">reportedly working on behind-the-back throws now</a>, like he’s an <em>NFL Street</em> character who broke contain and escaped from a PlayStation 2. (On the topic of Mahomes as a video game character: Common sense also faltered when <em>Madden</em>’s programmers gave Mahomes the strongest arm, best mobile-throwing capabilities, and best accuracy on deep balls of any quarterback in the game—all perfectly reasonable takes—and looked up to realize they had <a href="https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/patrick-mahomes-in-madden-20-might-be-the-most-unfair-character-in-the-video-game-franchise-since-michael-vick/">created a character who can’t be beat</a>.)</p>
<p id="225P0j">At 23 years old, Mahomes came into the NFL and did things the league had never seen. What goes up must come down, but if anyone has a trajectory that can defy gravity, it’s the guy who spends his free time throwing footballs over buildings.</p>
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<p id="8pqU0M">Mahomes’s 2018 campaign was inarguably one of the 10 greatest passing seasons in league history. He racked up the third-most passing touchdowns ever (50), the eighth-most passing yardage ever (5,097), and the eighth-highest passer rating ever (113.8). He also recorded the seventh-highest adjusted net yards per pass attempt (8.9—that’s post-merger, minimum 100 attempts) and the 11th-highest touchdown percentage (8.6—again, post-merger, minimum 100 attempts). There have been few seasons as productive as Mahomes’s 2018, and few as efficient. For Mahomes to have been that productive <em>and</em> efficient is absolutely ridiculous. I was going to compare Mahomes’s season to a baseball player’s hitting .350 with 50 home runs, but six guys have done that throughout MLB history. No NFL player except Mahomes has thrown 50 touchdowns while averaging more than 8.5 yards per attempt. (On second thought, batting average is probably akin to completion percentage, and yards per attempt is more like slugging percentage. I’m getting really bogged down in this baseball analogy. Please ignore it.)</p>
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<p id="dLzFts">Most of the other all-time great NFL passing seasons have been delivered by established veterans. Peyton Manning was 37 when he set an NFL record by throwing 55 touchdowns in 2013. Tom Brady was 30 during his 50-touchdown campaign in 2007. All seven quarterback seasons that topped Mahomes’s 2018 passing yards total came from QBs 32 or older. That group includes Drew Brees’s age-32, -33, -34, and -37 seasons. (Statistically speaking, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2018/10/9/17956106/drew-brees-career-passing-yards-record-qb-greatness">Brees is the GOAT</a>.)</p>
<p id="DhLZje">Mahomes is 23. He’ll turn 24 ahead of Kansas City’s Week 3 game against the Ravens. Zendaya, who just played a high schooler in <em>Euphoria</em>, is about a year younger than Mahomes. Mahomes is six months younger than Baker Mayfield, the reigning rookie of the year, and six months younger than Will Grier, the QB whom the Panthers took in the third round of this spring’s draft to back up Cam Newton. Mahomes is about three weeks older than Shaker Samman, <em>The Ringer</em>’s<em> </em>editorial assistant who may have fact-checked this piece.</p>
<p id="5dwiOc">Quarterbacks are not supposed to be finished products at 24. Chase Stuart of Football Perspective <a href="http://www.footballperspective.com/quarterback-age-curves/">analyzed 77 QBs</a> who managed at least three above-average NFL passing seasons and found that quarterbacks generally peak at 29 years old, with a clearly defined prime between the ages of 27 and 31. A <a href="http://advancedfootballanalytics.com/index.php/home/research/payroll-personnel/93-how-quarterbacks-age">2011 post by Brian Burke</a> (now of ESPN) found roughly the same peak, with quarterbacks rapidly improving until age 26 before a plateau that peaks at 29 and drops off after age 30. Rotowire <a href="https://www.rotowire.com/football/article.php?id=17122">proposed that quarterback production peaks slightly earlier</a>, at age 27, but Mahomes is not yet 27. He’s 23. </p>
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<p id="cGgYol">Only one under-25 quarterback season even somewhat resembles Mahomes’s 2018: Dan Marino’s 1984 effort, which was his second as the Dolphins’ starting quarterback. At 23, Marino passed for 5,084 yards with 48 touchdowns, both NFL records at the time. Nobody broke Marino’s touchdown record for 20 years, until Manning in 2004; nobody broke Marino’s yardage record until 2011, when both Brady and Brees did. The 1984 Dolphins went 14-2 en route to a berth in Super Bowl XIX, and Marino won league MVP.</p>
<p id="extJRA">It’s incredible to realize that Mahomes’s only reasonable age-appropriate comparison is a seven-time All-Pro and first-ballot Hall of Famer. However, it’s also worth noting that Marino’s records standing for 20-plus years reveals that he never surpassed his own prolific age-23 performance. After 1984, Marino threw at least 20 interceptions in four of the next five seasons; after averaging 9.0 yards per attempt in ’84, he would never even crack 8.2. Marino did lead the league in passing yardage and touchdowns on several occasions, but never won MVP nor made the Super Bowl again.</p>
<p id="5NwSeL">There seem to be two truths about what’s next for Mahomes, and they cannot coexist. Mahomes is only 23, and thus is expected to get better. But few QBs coming off all-time great seasons have delivered a superior season for an encore. The bell curve of a typical NFL starting quarterback’s career indicates that the rise of Mahomes will continue; the history of NFL quarterbacks suggests that Mahomes can’t ascend much higher.</p>
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<p id="sgUZli">The first pass Mahomes threw in a 2019 preseason game was as perfect as a throw could be, a 25-yarder that dropped smoothly over the helmet of a defender and into the waiting arms of tight end Travis Kelce. It looked like a casual toss to a wide-open target, not a pass fit precisely into a tight window.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce are back <br><br>(via <a href="https://twitter.com/NFL?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NFL</a>)<a href="https://t.co/o0HXdW1YUt">pic.twitter.com/o0HXdW1YUt</a></p>— NFL on ESPN (@ESPNNFL) <a href="https://twitter.com/ESPNNFL/status/1160348690487369729?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 11, 2019</a>
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<p id="dRvdvT">And the videos trickling out of Chiefs camp show Mahomes doing the same stuff that made him a sensation last year. Here’s a casual 60ish-yard pass to the QB’s newest receiver, speedster Mecole Hardman. The way Mahomes unhinges his shoulder to generate throwing power reminds me of an anaconda opening its jaw to swallow a capybara. </p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Dude just continues to wow everyone. Insane <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ChiefsKingdom?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ChiefsKingdom</a> Insane (h/t <a href="https://twitter.com/TomKCTV5?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@TomKCTV5</a>)<a href="https://t.co/mGhuSYeDIo">pic.twitter.com/mGhuSYeDIo</a></p>— KCH1EFSFAN (@MarcCentanni) <a href="https://twitter.com/MarcCentanni/status/1157309668919787527?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 2, 2019</a>
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<p id="ycaWOg">Mahomes plays quarterback differently than anybody else ever has. This was clear when he was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvx8ZHHfj4k">putting up 700-yard games at Texas Tech</a>; it was clear when he was <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2018/1/31/16955022/patrick-mahomes-chiefs-alex-smith-trade">lighting preseason and Week 17 defenses on fire</a> as Alex Smith’s backup. The <em>Madden </em>ratings aren’t wrong: Mahomes genuinely seems to throw the ball harder and farther than any of his peers, and he’s more comfortable releasing the ball from a variety of arm slots and angles.</p>
<p id="aFpzqw">What Mahomes does in 2019 could reset the standard for what NFL phenoms are capable of. History tells us that he should come back to earth after an off-the-charts 2018 season. It’s possible that we’ve already seen the best of him, just as the world saw the best of Marino in 1984. If this proves true, Mahomes will still be a legend, but that legend will be limited.</p>
<p id="Hm6Loi">Yet if Mahomes keeps playing at or above the level he did in 2018? If one of the most talented quarterbacks to ever play actually <em>improves</em> in a scheme designed by a passing-game genius (Andy Reid) that’s stocked with dangerous playmakers? Well, then maybe we didn’t just witness one remarkable season; maybe we witnessed the birth of a GOAT. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="YZl7c8">What goes up must come down, but when Mahomes cocks back and hurls the ball skyward, that momentarily seems untrue. Where footballs thrown by other QBs would drop, his sail on, past the horizon of the stadium rim. Perhaps one of his passes will hit the necessary velocity to escape earth’s atmosphere and become the first football thrown by a human to reach another planet. Logic tells us that Mahomes should regress this fall; I choose to believe that his singular trajectory will lift him even higher.</p>
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https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2019/8/14/20803796/patrick-mahomes-kansas-city-chiefs-quarterback-history-outlookRodger Sherman2019-08-13T06:30:00-04:002019-08-13T06:30:00-04:00Move Over, Rookies: Midlevel Veterans Are Having a Moment
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<p>The NFL keeps getting younger, but the oldest teams are winning Super Bowls, which has led coaches and general managers to turn to an undervalued resource to build their rosters</p> <p id="5A6M5k"><em>The NFL is valuing youth and innovation more than ever before. A year after the Rams made Sean McVay the youngest head coach in league history, Patrick Mahomes became the youngest MVP winner since Dan Marino. This offseason, an avalanche followed: The Cardinals threw caution to the wind and paired Kliff Kingsbury with Kyler Murray, the Packers ended the Mike McCarthy era, and the Bengals poached the Rams’ quarterbacks coach to be their new head coach. When did the NFL begin to resemble Silicon Valley? </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2019/8/13/20803773/welcome-to-wunderkind-week"><em>Welcome to Wunderkind Week</em></a><em>, when we’ll dive deep into how the NFL became a young man’s league.</em></p>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="AWgr9G">There is a metric called snap-weighted age that goes a long way toward telling the story of what is happening in football. Developed by Football Outsiders in 2012, it measures the average age of an NFL team adjusted for how many snaps each player plays during the season. In 2018, that number <a href="https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stat-analysis/2019/2018-snap-weighted-age">hit a record low</a>—26.5 years old—for the third straight year. </p>
<p id="SAc1no">Countless factors led to this moment: The rookie wage scale instituted in the 2011 NFL Players Association collective bargaining agreement, which makes players selected in the first round cheaper, is probably the biggest culprit, but certainly not the only one. College players—more prepared for the pros and incentivized to get into the league earlier to get to their second contract sooner—are entering the draft early <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/ct-spt-nfl-draft-early-entries-20190118-story.html">in record numbers</a>. There were 135 early entrants in this year’s draft—up from 119 the year before—and a new mark is set seemingly every year, much like snap-weighted age averages. College schemes trickled up to the NFL, which favored younger players who excelled at running them. And then there’s the simple answer that some young players are just awesome: Patrick Mahomes’s $4.5 million cap hit is extremely valuable to the Chiefs; Alvin Kamara at $1.1 million isn’t a bad deal for the Saints, either. </p>
<p id="LtTFEY">The most valuable piece when building an NFL roster continues to be a great young player who is cost-controlled through the first five years of his career. Until there’s a dramatic change to how players are paid, this will remain true. By now, we know the reasons for this trend—I’ve written about them <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2016/9/7/16077250/the-nfl-has-an-age-problem-7068825845e4">plenty of times</a>—but we’re beginning to see how smart teams have reacted to it. Great teams like the Patriots and the Eagles have already learned a valuable lesson: Veteran players on manageable second contracts are underrated assets in an increasingly young era. </p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="an7iof"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The NFL’s Great Sean McVay Experiment and the Age of the Coaching Wunderkind","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nfl-preview/2019/8/12/20801410/nfl-sean-mcvay-coaching-generation-matt-lafleur-kliff-kingsbury-zac-taylor"},{"title":"How the NFC West Explains NFL Offenses in 2019","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nfl-preview/2019/8/12/20801577/nfc-west-wunderkinds-sean-mcvay-kyle-shanahan-kliff-kingsbury-pete-carroll"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="2KglQT">And in numerous interviews with coaches and decision-makers, I’ve found that the middle-class veteran is back en vogue for many other teams as well. </p>
<p id="MkhVXI">An obsession with cheap, young players defines this modern era of the NFL, but Football Outsiders’ data contains a strange revelation: The teams that win the Super Bowl are old. All but one Super Bowl winner since the 2011 CBA has been ranked in the top 10 of the league’s oldest teams, <a href="https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stat-analysis/2019/2018-snap-weighted-age">according to snap-weighted age</a>. Only the 2013 Legion of Boom Seahawks won a Super Bowl while fielding a roster ranked in the youngest half of the league. Last year’s Super Bowl participants, the Patriots and Rams, ranked last and next-to-last, respectively, in the amount of snaps taken by rookies, according to <a href="https://twitter.com/PFF_Mike/status/1087378082795802624">Pro Football Focus</a>. The Rams were the youngest team to make a Super Bowl in the previous four years (26.6) based on snap-weighted age, but they were still older than the league average (26.5). Football Outsiders has this age data for Super Bowl participants stretching back to 2006. Notably, the 2018 Patriots are the oldest team to win the Lombardi Trophy. The data is not exactly definitive. It is a small sample size, and half of last year’s playoff teams were ranked in the younger half of the league, so don’t try to sign present-day Joe Montana or Dan Marino to boost your Super Bowl chances. But this information helps us understand how smart teams are viewing roster-building. </p>
<p id="PnmZW5">The salary cap rises at least $10 million a year—and has increased a total of $65 million since 2013—and teams can roll over cap space, meaning they have more money than ever to spend. This led to some <a href="https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/26152059/set-spend-big-2019-nfl-salary-cap-space-all-32-teams">ludicrous</a> situations, notably the Jets and Colts entering this offseason with over $100 million in cap space. It’s easier than ever for teams to add a midlevel veteran at a salary of say, $3 million, to a young roster. In short, teams can afford veterans, and in most cases, they are pretty good players. (Two GMs told me similar stories about a player on their team who finished his rookie contract. They both assumed their player would get a competing offer they couldn’t afford. They were wrong. After a soft market developed and no competition materialized, they were able to reopen negotiations, proving that a lot of non-star veterans are plenty affordable.)</p>
<p id="kS3Lc3">Over the past decade or so, the NFL has developed into a league of haves and have-nots. If you got paid big money in the NFL in the 2010s, it usually meant you were a quarterback. More recently, non-passers have closed the gap: Los Angeles defensive lineman Aaron Donald, Bears defensive end Khalil Mack, Chiefs pass rusher Frank Clark, and Seahawks linebacker Bobby Wagner each received deals worth at least $18 million annually in recent years. But there is a massive gap between stars and scrubs, and midtier veterans can fill those gaps. General managers have taken notice of this inefficiency.</p>
<p id="vzf9og">“What happened, obviously, is because of the salary structure being so out of whack, you can’t afford to have a whole crew of veterans. You have to have choice veterans at choice positions, which we’ve been able to do,” Panthers coach Ron Rivera told me. </p>
<p id="PndyYI">Because of the salary cap and the rookie wage scale, teams will always have a large portion of players on their roster who are still on their rookie deal. <a href="https://overthecap.com/2018-nfl-roster-construction/">According</a> to a study from Over the Cap, a whopping 62 percent of NFL players were on their rookie deals last season. The study also found that the average cost of a player on his first contract was $1.06 million, compared with $5.85 million for players beyond their first contract, which means a <em>veteran </em>team will always be a relative term. Even the Patriots’ relatively ancient roster (made older by Tom Brady) had an average age of 27.9 years, oldest in the league. </p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="1lbxO5"><q>“You have to have choice veterans at choice positions, which we’ve been able to do.” —Panthers coach Ron Rivera </q></aside></div>
<p id="rd6dxm">The 2013 Seahawks are the model for a team looking to draft, develop, and win immediately. It’s worth noting that this plan includes drafting multiple potential Hall of Famers like Wagner, Russell Wilson, and Richard Sherman in the middle rounds and superstars like Earl Thomas in the first. If a team is not confident it can execute a similar plan, it might consider building its roster with midtier veterans. However, there have been teams that have taken the draft-and-hold approach to extremes. I wrote a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the-packers-promote-from-within-1452891866">story</a> during the 2016 playoffs about the Packers, who at the time had <em>two players </em>on their roster whom they didn’t draft. </p>
<p id="kkJGNz">I asked Titans general manager Jon Robinson about his team-building philosophy, specifically adding a handful of manageable second-contract players over the past few years. “This offseason, we tried to identify players who (a) have the skill set to help us and (b) understand that the skill set may not be to run by somebody or run over somebody because there are several different ways to win the rep,” Robinson told me. “[Cameron] Wake has rushed the passer a long time in this league and is pretty dang good at it. He doesn’t just win with speed or power. He’s learned how to analyze the set the tackle is giving him and works to get into position to win the rep. That knowledge and instinct is powerful. Logan Ryan is another one with defensive backs, Kenny Vaccaro, Ben Jones on the offensive line, Dion Lewis at running back, Adam Humphries is doing it at receiver. These guys are helping younger guys on their craft. There is a saying that the most powerful thing in the body is from the neck up, I think having that instinct and knowledge on how to win is just as important as the physical ability to win.” </p>
<p id="K5ZIKJ">As Robinson and I were talking, I brought up the Patriots—where he formerly worked as a director of college scouting—because a <em>lot </em>of people around the league mention the Patriots when it comes to using veterans effectively. They have helped their dynasty along by taking players from other teams, putting them in specific roles, and winning the Super Bowl with them. They use the rookie wage cap effectively—a star defensive end like Trey Flowers was a nice cap hit in 2018 at $2 million—but they also corner the market on midlevel veterans like Kyle Van Noy, Patrick Chung, Julian Edelman, and even Stephon Gilmore, all of whom made less than $10 million against the cap last season while on their second contracts. </p>
<p id="0HhqbF">“Every year, with the success the Patriots have had, you look at their roster, and they have a layer of veteran players,” Bills coach Sean McDermott said. “I think when you go back to the teams I’ve been around—Philadelphia or Carolina—there were a lot of veteran players in that mix. There is no substitute for experience. You don’t want to beat yourself, and sometimes younger players bring mistakes. You have to have both because of the challenge of balancing the cap. That’s a delicate balance.” The Bills signed 36-year-old running back Frank Gore<em> </em>this year as well as a slew of free agents to their second contracts—including Mitch Morse, Cole Beasley, and John Brown—to surround second-year quarterback Josh Allen. </p>
<p id="lRbjZY">“You can’t get out of balance,” Falcons coach Dan Quinn tells me. “If you get too much of the older, you don’t have enough speed and juice. But you can’t get too much of the young. That’s the balance.” </p>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="DIaoGi">Rivera tells me he likes to have what he calls “a guy” on the team. This is a simple, but crucial role: “It’s a guy who comes to me and says, ‘Hey Coach, this isn’t right,’ or ‘Think about this,’ or if it’s really bad, ‘Hey Coach, this is fucked.’ What you need is a guy to tell you what you need to hear and not what you want to hear.” Rivera lists off the veteran players who have filled this role with the Panthers: Jordan Gross, DeAngelo Williams, Ryan Kalil, Thomas Davis. Now, he said, it’s Greg Olsen. </p>
<p id="gBqNAO">Rivera is concerned by the leaguewide disappearance of veterans, which is in part why he wants them in the locker room. “If we are not careful, we’re going to lose the sense of tradition of what this league is about,” Rivera said. “I don’t want to be that coach—sometimes I am that coach, saying ‘Well when I played …’ But when it comes from a current player, it carries a lot of weight. Greg Olsen says something and guys [nod their head]; Trai Turner has become that on the offensive line. We’ve got Torrey Smith, Chris Hogan, players who tell young guys what it’s about.” </p>
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<p id="IFcuEc">Rivera thinks, in particular, that younger players are not as well-versed on earlier labor struggles, especially the fight to get the 1993 CBA done. “I was just talking to someone about how with the Bears, Mr. [George] Halas used to get offseason jobs for guys at banks or car dealerships,” he tells me. “There’s almost a sense of entitlement to these young guys. ... You aren’t entitled just because you showed up. You’re entitled because there’s a whole group that came before you and a group that came before them.” </p>
<p id="LJMB5K">So Rivera thinks veterans are important not just on the field and in the locker room but also to help teach the league’s history to players. </p>
<p id="ldbhc9">There are, of course, different types of veteran teams. While the Patriots are a hodgepodge of former free agents assembled to plug holes on a roster defined by the best quarterback in the league’s history, the Vikings, the 12th-oldest team in the league last year, have taken a different approach. Much of their roster is composed of players they’ve drafted and developed. “We were in a cycle where we were very young, but we had to pay all these guys,” general manager Rick Spielman told me, referring to a group of homegrown players that includes Harrison Smith, Kyle Rudolph, Adam Thielen, and, most recently, Anthony Barr, who rejoined the team on a five-year deal this year.</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="S34Yj4"><q>“If you get too much of the older, you don’t have enough speed and juice. But you can’t get too much of the young. That’s the balance.” —Falcons coach Dan Quinn</q></aside></div>
<p id="UL1nSK">“Our philosophy is: Hopefully we’re drafting well enough to give these guys second, big contracts. And I think now a lot of these guys are in their prime. So, you give these young guys roles where they don’t have to be starters right off the bat, though [first-round pick Garrett] Bradbury is the exception to the rule because we focused on the offensive line,” Spielman said. “But to draft [2019 rookie tight end] Irv Smith Jr. and extend [Kyle Rudolph], to bring Anthony Barr back, keeping that continuity with those guys—I think that’s why we’re pretty consistent on the defensive side. And hopefully, now with things settling down on the offensive side—systems in place and knowing what our identity is—that will carry over to the offensive side.” The point about continuity is crucial. Spielman, offensive coordinator Kevin Stefanski, and defensive coordinator George Edwards each talked about how important it is in a league with near-constant roster churn, and that keeping the core of a roster together, while hard, is worth it. </p>
<p id="2oTGaW">When you ask around the league about other benefits of going older, there are varied answers. A young, cheap player who still runs a 4.3-second 40-yard dash is probably the best building block to stopping the NFL’s ever-improving offenses, but there are more ways to slow those units. I asked 35-year-old New York Giants safety Antoine Bethea, a three-time Pro Bowler, about experiencing the NFL’s offensive boom throughout his career. He started his career in 2006, a year before the Patriots <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2017/8/7/16107814/2007-new-england-patriots-tom-brady-randy-moss-wes-welker">shattered offensive records</a>, and has witnessed firsthand nearly every offensive trend over the past 13 years. But what I’m interested in is how veterans might be better equipped to fight back against modern NFL offenses, particularly the play-action-heavy offenses that are now en vogue across the league. “Veteran guys, older guys might get slower in their steps, but the one thing about them is they have great eyes and great technique. The veteran will be faster because he knows what he’s looking at,” said Bethea. “Obviously you have the politics of football, the business of football, but guys who have seen different things are going to be successful. That stuff is priceless.” </p>
<p id="O2bRyX">Giants defensive coordinator James Bettcher tells me that training a player’s eyes is perhaps the most important thing when defending against innovative offenses—not just on play-action, but with nearly any deceptive wrinkle that a modern offense can throw at a defense. “All that stuff: Play-action, naked bootleg, it’s all eyes,” he said. “I think you can train eyes. Some guys have dirty eyes and can see ghosts, but you can train them.” </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="LI3wzx">There is no right answer when it comes to player age. Even if you <em>wanted </em>a roster of 53 players who were all 26, you couldn’t get them, so it will always be a blend, with young players remaining the most valuable resource in the league. Like most things in the NFL, the sample sizes are small, and the problems—or benefits—are mostly anecdotal. The league will probably get younger again this year; it always does now. And the Patriots will find some 30-year-old to get them to a Super Bowl, which also happens annually. </p>
https://www.theringer.com/nfl-preview/2019/8/13/20803216/nfl-youth-veteran-movementKevin Clark2019-08-13T05:50:00-04:002019-08-13T05:50:00-04:00Matt LaFleur Is Here to Modernize the Packers Offense—and Maximize Aaron Rodgers’s Prime
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<p>Green Bay hired a 39-year-old whiz kid as head coach in an effort to embrace the NFL’s team-building strategy du jour. Only LaFleur’s challenge isn’t to unlock a young passer’s potential. It’s to get the most out of one of the greatest QBs of all time.</p> <p id="EfQSTr"><em>The NFL is valuing youth and innovation more than ever before. A year after the Rams made Sean McVay the youngest head coach in league history, Patrick Mahomes became the youngest MVP winner since Dan Marino. This offseason, an avalanche followed: The Cardinals threw caution to the wind and paired Kliff Kingsbury with Kyler Murray, the Packers ended the Mike McCarthy era, and the Bengals poached the Rams’ quarterbacks coach to be their new head coach. When did the NFL begin to resemble Silicon Valley? </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2019/8/13/20803773/welcome-to-wunderkind-week"><em>Welcome to Wunderkind Week</em></a><em>, when we’ll dive deep into how the NFL became a young man’s league.</em></p>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="SPWYZ0">There have been just 15 head coaches across the Green Bay Packers’ 100-year history. The first one’s name graces pro football’s most storied cathedral. The best one’s name adorns the NFL’s ultimate prize. Two others oversaw Super Bowl wins, and two more were Hall of Fame players who later became coaches. Now, that list also includes Matt LaFleur. </p>
<p id="i3zlcG">The 39-year-old took the job in January, following a single season as the Titans’ offensive coordinator, and his first few days in Green Bay were spent reveling in the history that can be found throughout Lambeau Field. Here was a Midwestern kid from Mount Pleasant, Michigan, sitting in the chair once held by Vince Lombardi. But the time for wide eyes disappeared quickly. “There’s so much tradition here. We will always respect that tradition,” LaFleur says, from a black leather chair in a Lambeau Field interview room. “But now it’s about how we make it about our guys that are here now. And not only that, but how do we help them make a new tradition, a new history?” </p>
<div class="c-float-left"><aside id="VZCse1"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The NFL’s Great Sean McVay Experiment and the Age of the Coaching Wunderkind","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nfl-preview/2019/8/12/20801410/nfl-sean-mcvay-coaching-generation-matt-lafleur-kliff-kingsbury-zac-taylor"},{"title":"How the NFC West Explains NFL Offenses in 2019","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nfl-preview/2019/8/12/20801577/nfc-west-wunderkinds-sean-mcvay-kyle-shanahan-kliff-kingsbury-pete-carroll"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="bvZaFl">For LaFleur to do that—and ultimately succeed in Green Bay—he’ll have to make a very important piece of the Packers’ old history new again. Like the other four play-calling head coaches who were hired this offseason as teams <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nfl-preview/2019/8/12/20801410/nfl-sean-mcvay-coaching-generation-matt-lafleur-kliff-kingsbury-zac-taylor">try to emulate Sean McVay’s success</a> with the Rams, he was brought on to invigorate his franchise’s quarterback. The difference is that LaFleur’s new charge isn’t a young passer hoping to unlock his potential: It’s one of the greatest players in NFL history. </p>
<p id="DE8zJk">The notion that Aaron Rodgers—who currently has the second best passer rating in league history at 103.1—would need reviving might seem ridiculous on its face. Early-period Rodgers was the most efficient passer the league had ever seen. During his first seven seasons under former head coach Mike McCarthy, he put up 8.2 yards per attempt, a 6.5 touchdown percentage, and a 106.6 QB rating—all of which, if extrapolated over an entire career, would be the best numbers since the 1970 merger for players with 20 or more starts. That stretch also included two MVP awards (2011 and 2014) and a Super Bowl victory (following the 2010 season). In the latter years of McCarthy’s tenure, though, the superhuman Rodgers transformed into a mere mortal. From 2015 to 2018, Rodgers averaged 7.1 yards per attempt. Among QBs with at least 500 attempts over that span, that number ranks 22nd—one spot ahead of Mitchell Trubisky and five spots lower than Ryan Tannehill.</p>
<p id="iWIWcs">Rodgers defenders will argue that McCarthy’s obsolete offense—which did little to create separation for his receivers and in turn left most of the heavy lifting to his quarterback—was to blame for that drop-off. His detractors will say that Rodgers is too committed to an improvisational style, and that hinders any system’s ability to function. LaFleur’s arrival will test those theories by introducing the first new scheme the 35-year-old QB has seen in 14 years. </p>
<p id="QN2Anb">At first glance, Rodgers’s game and LaFleur’s system seem to be at odds. Rodgers has traditionally been granted almost total autonomy at the line of scrimmage. LaFleur’s scheme—which is derived from the offenses made famous by Mike Shanahan and Gary Kubiak—is more restrictive for quarterbacks. The Packers also predominantly ran a shotgun offense during the past few seasons. LaFleur prefers to be under center more than most modern teams. In the eight months since LaFleur was hired, those disparities have led both fans and the media to parse <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=373724216827665">every</a> <a href="https://www.12up.com/posts/it-s-too-damn-early-for-aaron-rodgers-to-complain-about-matt-lafleur-s-offense-01ddhd5cftxh">comment</a> from him and Rodgers for hidden meaning and underlying intent. The interplay between the first-time head coach and the two-time All-Pro—and the onfield results it produces—will be one of the most obsessed-over stories of the NFL season. </p>
<p id="5CFpiQ">LaFleur knows that the pair’s separate histories will have to be put aside in favor of a shared future. “It’s not about what I’ve done in my past,” LaFleur says. “It’s not about what the guys who’ve been here have done in the past. It’s about how we come together and make this the Green Bay Packers offense.” And the coach’s tenure will be defined by what he can squeeze out of Rodgers’s twilight.</p>
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<cite>Dylan Buell/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Aaron Rodgers</figcaption>
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<p id="P71zGh">During the interview process last winter, LaFleur got a phone call from an unfamiliar number. When he answered, Rodgers was on the other line, which LaFleur took as a good sign: “I was like, ‘Man, I think I’ve got a chance at this thing.’” </p>
<p id="0E1qrW">After LaFleur was hired, the two had a few early conversations in which LaFleur laid out the parameters of his offense, and Rodgers made it clear that there were aspects of the Packers’ old system that he couldn’t live without. “Obviously, you can watch the film and try to pair up concepts, but there’s some stuff that he really wanted to know that I <em>had </em>to keep from the previous offense and what stuff I could let go,” Rodgers says. “Being in the same system for, really, 14 years, you kind of get used to certain plays and feel more comfortable with certain plays based on things that have happened. It could be a rep in practice that really turns you on or turns you off to a play, to crunch-time plays that you’ve hit.” Two areas where Rodgers prefers to lean heavily on past experience and maintain more autonomy are in the red zone and during the two-minute drill—both of which require especially quick mental processing and streamlined execution. To this point, Rodgers says that LaFleur has been “great” at accommodating those requests. </p>
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<p id="iiUhpU">One of the more scrutinized aspects of the pair’s relationship so far, though, has been the amount of freedom Rodgers will have at the line of scrimmage. Earlier this summer, Rodgers <a href="http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000001033990/article/aaron-rodgers-matt-lafleur-navigating-new-packers-partnership">told</a> NFL Media’s Mike Silver that the conversation about his control at the line was “in progress,” but that it’d be difficult to “turn off” 11 years of analyzing defenses. The comment created a stir, but nearly two months later, Rodgers attributes the commotion to a quiet time in the NFL calendar. “Some of the folks talking about it I don’t think know a whole lot about football if they’re making a big deal about it,” Rodgers says. “Because there are adjustments on every play. A lot don’t ever get called or initiated. I stand by everything I said. I wasn’t taking a shot at anybody. I wasn’t subliminally trying to say anything to Matt.”</p>
<p id="dqIDv9">When asked about those comments, LaFleur said the situation had been exaggerated “to the nth degree.” On the second day of training camp, he told the team that the quarterback is the most important position in all of sports—and that he doesn’t plan to rob a future Hall of Fame passer of the traits that will one day send him to Canton. “We’re fortunate that we’ve got a guy that’s played at the highest level,” LaFleur says. “The last thing we want to do is put him in a position where he’s not comfortable with something. Because if he’s not comfortable with it, he’s not going to be confident in it.” To LaFleur, that confidence is valuable beyond just the quarterback’s performance. The first-year coach can already sense that when Rodgers is steadfast in his support of a play or action, his conviction seeps into the rest of the Packers’ huddle. “Belief is so powerful,” LaFleur says. “If the 11 guys out on that field believe in what we’re doing, we’ve got a much better chance at success.”</p>
<p id="MyRRWC">The most significant adjustment Rodgers faces in this system is dealing with the amount of pre-snap motion. Last season, the Titans used some sort of motion on 56 percent of their offensive plays, which was one of the higher rates in the league, according to Sports Info Solutions. Green Bay was at the other end of the spectrum at just 27 percent. Without much movement before the snap, Rodgers was able to diagnose relatively static defenses. In LaFleur’s scheme, the Packers <em>want </em>the defense to change, which limits the time Rodgers has to make late adjustments. Rodgers admits that element of the scheme has taken some getting used to, but for his part, LaFleur embraces the uneven moments. The final goal may be ensuring that Rodgers believes in every aspect of the Packers’ playbook, but the new coach finds it necessary to feel a little discomfort along the way. “Anytime there’s change, in order to grow and learn something new, you’ve got to get comfortable with the uncomfortable,” LaFleur says. “And I appreciate the fact that I think he’s done that. Shoot, it’s been the same for me in this position. It’s not always the most comfortable, but that’s how you grow as a person.” </p>
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<cite>Quinn Harris/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Matt LaFleur</figcaption>
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<p id="RbjU0L">When the Rams and Vikings squared off in a Thursday-night game last September, the results sent shockwaves around the league. Billed as a matchup between the NFC’s most explosive offense and the Vikings’ famously ferocious defense, the game turned into a shootout, as Rams quarterback Jared Goff threw for 465 yards and five touchdowns in a 38-31 win. “What L.A. did that night, everybody was buzzing about,” Rodgers says. “Obviously, all the TV networks. But our locker room was buzzing. Especially on the offensive side. Like, ‘Man, that looked pretty fun.’” </p>
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<p id="0qGysF">Sean McVay dresses up his offense differently than LaFleur did in Tennessee, but the two come from the same Shanahan-Kubiak tree and even worked together in Washington and Los Angeles. And what Rodgers saw that night—and what he’s seen with LaFleur’s scheme so far—is a system tailored to exploiting modern defenses. </p>
<p id="zeTUt4">The NFL has shifted to more single-high safety alignments and man coverage in the secondary in the past few years, and more motion allows the offense to take advantage of those one-on-one matchups and makes defenders question their assignments. “What this offense does is that it really stresses you with crossing routes and release patterns,” Rodgers says. “Because you’re adding a motion and making a defense figure out, is he gonna be the no. 1, no. 2, no. 3 [receiver]? And what type of release pattern is gonna happen at that moment?”</p>
<p id="vJ090Y">Along with the unique route combinations and distributions, LaFleur has also adopted McVay’s preference for play-action. Among qualified QBs last season, Goff led the league by using play-action on 35.8 percent of his dropbacks (according to Pro Football Focus). Under LaFleur in Tennessee, Marcus Mariota finished third at 32.1 percent. Rodgers ranked 29th out of 37 QBs at just 20.1 percent. In McCarthy’s shotgun-heavy scheme—Green Bay used shotgun on 71 percent of its offensive plays last season, the eighth-highest rate in the league—the Packers didn’t have many runs tied to their play-action concepts, which hampered the amount of deception a play fake could create. LaFleur, on the other hand, pairs the run and pass actions in an effort to make every play initially appear the same. “This offense is all about multiple looks and multiple plays from the same look,” Rodgers says. “So you have an action, you have a run, you have a keep, and you have a shot play out of the same look.”</p>
<p id="kSlMSG">To achieve this, LaFleur and other Shanahan disciples run much of their offense under center. The Rams ran 63 percent of their plays under center last season, which led the NFL; Kyle Shanahan’s 49ers ranked second at 56 percent; and LaFleur’s Titans ranked fifth at 49 percent. Matt Ryan ran this offense with Kyle Shanahan in 2016—the year he won league MVP—and says that the transition to a high volume of under-center play-action throws was the most significant adjustment he had to make in this scheme. In shotgun, quarterbacks are able to survey the defense, even when faking a handoff. But when executing a play fake from under center, the QB spends a split second with his back to the defense, which initially made Ryan uneasy. “That was the most different thing I’d done in anything prior to that,” Ryan says. “You had to trust it was going to set up what it was supposed to set up. You’ve got to push through being uncomfortable because there’s a lot of good things that happen as a result of it.”</p>
<p id="Z5Rs4W">Rodgers faces a similar adjustment—and leap of faith—after spending so much time in the shotgun in recent years. There was some speculation this offseason that the Packers’ shotgun-heavy tendencies were a direct result of a Rodgers decree, but he says that isn’t the case. The Packers used shotgun 63 percent of the time in 2017 in part because Rodgers broke his collarbone and backup Brett Hundley was much more comfortable in the gun. And last season, Green Bay was forced into the shotgun because Rodgers broke his leg in a Week 1 win over the Bears and couldn’t physically pull out from under center. “I think that was a necessity instead of a philosophy,” Rodgers says. He points to his history of playing under center in junior college, during his college career at Cal—even in his early days with the Packers. </p>
<p id="juAXNN">Rodgers is leaning on that past experience now, and, as a visual learner, he’s been poring over tape to try to nail down the footwork and movements that are necessary to run this offense. But that process has required a slightly disorienting educational method. Under McCarthy, Rodgers would study his own tape. He watched himself take reps, over and over, during installation periods and the early days of training camp. This spring, for the first time in over a decade, Rodgers is watching other quarterbacks run the concepts he’s learning to execute. He’s taken in film from two decades of Shanahan system QBs, and he stresses that LaFleur’s emphasis on “two-spotting”—a practice method that increases reps by allowing multiple sets of offenses to run at once—has accelerated the process. “When you see yourself doing the rep, it’s totally different than seeing any other quarterback doing it: Matt Ryan, Jimmy Garoppolo, C.J. Beathard, even going back to Rex Grossman, McNabb, RG3, Kirk Cousins,” Rodgers says. “It all helps, but it helps a little more when you can really critique yourself and your interpretation of the footwork on certain plays.”</p>
<p id="LnEcgJ">Rodgers has been friends with Ryan for years, and at this February’s Pebble Beach Pro-Am, the Falcons QB gave Rodgers the lowdown on working with LaFleur, who was Ryan’s quarterbacks coach in Atlanta in 2015 and 2016. Ryan was in his eighth season when LaFleur came to the Falcons, and over nearly a decade in the league, Ryan had developed a refined set of likes and dislikes within an offense. He assured Rodgers that LaFleur would be receptive to his ideas. LaFleur was “open to the input on things I’d done before, things that I liked, things that I was comfortable with,” Ryan says. “That is what Matt wants. He wants his quarterback to feel really comfortable out there.”</p>
<p id="Vyoah8">The way that Rodgers sees it, Ryan is part of an elite fraternity of quarterbacks who’s been given a rare amount of freedom to change plays and take control within his offense. Rodgers also lists off Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Ben Roethlisberger, and himself as members of that club. That group features some of the best quarterbacks of their generation. But the Packers legend is about to take on a challenge Brady, Brees, and Roethlisberger have never had to face. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="f8VVpF">Both Brady and Brees have spent more than a decade with their current play-callers. And even though Roethlisberger’s longtime offensive coordinator, Todd Haley, was let go after the 2017 season, Roethlisberger actually <em>gained </em>more<em> </em>authority to dial up his own plays after quarterbacks coach Randy Fichtner was promoted. Rodgers is the only surefire Hall of Fame, Super Bowl–winning quarterback of this era that will be learning a new system for the final stretch of his illustrious career. One of the best to ever play is starting over, as part of an arranged marriage with a first-time head coach who’s asking him to change in order to grow. Whether he can will ultimately determine the legacies both men leave in Green Bay.</p>
https://www.theringer.com/nfl-preview/2019/8/13/20802817/green-bay-packers-matt-lafleur-aaron-rodgers-primeRobert Mays