Originally Posted by
steelreserve
I am not sure I buy that. The reason there are so many more "running" QBs now is because there are more of them who actually CAN throw the ball. Not because the coaches in the '80s and '90s were all idiots who kept passing over good players and ignoring new schemes for no reason whatsoever, other than they were stupidly stuck in their ways.
The big, BIG difference between now and then is how much the college game has changed. 30 years ago, it was a lot less sophisticated. A real passing game is really difficult and takes a lot of coordination that many teams just don't have (watch any HS game and it becomes obvious), and in those days even a lot of major college teams weren't up for it. The option offense was either a run or a different run - that was it. I mean, the 1988 national championship was between two teams with some of the best option/mobile college QBs ever, Notre Dame and West Virginia, and both passed something like 10 or 15 times the whole game. They looked for guys with the skill set to run that specific offense to perfection; they didn't care if they had a QB who made it big in the NFL, they wanted to win college championships, so they got QBs who were perfect for their simplified college offenses.
No, it's not that all the coaches said "college offenses don't work in the NFL" because they were stupid and ignorant. It's that an '80s college option offense WAS way too one-dimensional to work in the pros. It would fucking suck, and the QBs running it in college had little to offer besides running it in the pros.
It's not that NFL offenses changed by suddenly going "a-ha!" and incorporating the college game - it's that the college game, and the type of players it produced, changed into stuff that could actually work in the NFL. Honestly, what made that happen was two things - Michael Vick showing what kinds of things were possible with a QB who was both fast AND a legitimate passer; and then you had the Oregon/Florida type spread offenses, which were not really viable pro offenses, but helped raise the table stakes of the skill set needed to play QB. Then the group of grade school kids and high school coaches below them saw that - and what do you know, 10 years later, you had a whole lot of mobile QBs coming up who were a lot better on average than the ones before, and you had college offenses that prioritized that, rather than basically a glorified running back who could throw a little.
Kordell Stewart's problem was that he was inaccurate and he threw more interceptions than TDs - not that he came around too early and his career was stifled by a bunch of Philistines. There had been good "mobile" QBs before - Cunningham, Steve Young, etc. - and after (but still before the current bumper crop) - McNair, Culpepper, Vick, McNabb ... the one thing they have in common is that the GOOD ones got a chance, and had long productive careers. Kordell had a career more like Rodney Peete's, because as a passer he was about as good as Rodney Peete. He would be a shitty starting QB in a read-option or hybrid college-style offense today, because every one of the current group of QBs in that style, along with the Vicks, McNairs, Culpeppers, McNabbs, etc. ... is simply a lot better passer than he ever was.
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