A Theory of high QB stats

[Twitches Brew]

Blame the changing college game. Blame spread offenses.

The emergence of the spread isn't simply a change to more passing; it's a personnel and strategic move to outshoot your opponent. Think about its main reason for success: It takes advantage of the poor defensive technique at the college level. Coverage, as we all know, is way less refined in college (hence, it takes a couple years for CBs to adapt to the NFL).

Put yourself in a college coach's shoes. A recruit comes in who played corner in high school. He's 5'11, runs a 4.3 40, is very quick, and has decent hands. Do you put him at corner where he'll guard and limit 1 WR out of the 4 you have to defend in a spread? Or do you take the fight to them and use him like Percy Harvin--an athlete who's unguardable due to a steeper learning curve for college defenses. College has quickly become a game of shootouts between spread offenses who score by flooding the field with (4-5 of) their best athletes and getting them the ball. Less and less of the top athletes are playing defense; they and their coaches would rather have them score TDs.

 

[Pachyderm_Wave]

Blame the changing college game. Blame spread offenses.

The emergence of the spread isn't simply a change to more passing; it's a personnel and strategic move to outshoot your opponent. Think about its main reason for success: It takes advantage of the poor defensive technique at the college level. Coverage, as we all know, is way less refined in college (hence, it takes a couple years for CBs to adapt to the NFL).

Put yourself in a college coach's shoes. A recruit comes in who played corner in high school. He's 5'11, runs a 4.3 40, is very quick, and has decent hands. Do you put him at corner where he'll guard and limit 1 WR out of the 4 you have to defend in a spread? Or do you take the fight to them and use him like Percy Harvin--an athlete who's unguardable due to a steeper learning curve for college defenses. College has quickly become a game of shootouts between spread offenses who score by flooding the field with (4-5 of) their best athletes and getting them the ball. Less and less of the top athletes are playing defense; they and their coaches would rather have them score TDs.

College football is a game of shootouts between spread offenses until they run into an SEC team like LSU or Alabama.... then that spread offense, run up the score on helpless defenses sh*t comes to a screeching halt.

They are the teams that still stress the fundamentals, and coach defense the way it's supposed to be played. These are teams who still have their best athletes playing on defense.



The problem with the NFL game, and why you're seeing rookies who couldn't complete a pass at the combine throw for 400+ yards in his first 2 NFL games, and have about a dozen quarterbacks currently on pace to break Dan Marino's single season yardage record is because the rules in the NFL are slanted towards offenses.

It's all driven by "fantasy football" and stats. Alabama and LSU play better, more fundamentally sound defense than half of the teams in the NFL.