How RG III, Jay Cutler, and other fragile or erratic passers could benefit from a paradigm shift in the way we think about the QB.
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Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III rolled right and turned toward the end zone, only a few Seattle Seahawks defenders between him and a 14–nothing lead in the first round of the NFL playoffs. Wearing a black knee brace on his right leg that looked like something out of Dark Knight Rises and running with a herky-jerky hitch, Griffin's angle to the end zone was easily cut off by a Seattle linebacker, forcing the normally Olympic-fast quarterback to plant his injured right foot and attempt a short pass. The ball bounced weakly out of receiver Pierre Garcon's hands and joined Griffin in the grassy gumbo that passed for FedExField turf that day. He got up, hobbling his way over to the huddle.
Griffin had injured the knee four weeks earlier in a ghastly collision that sent most of his body going in one direction while 340-pound tackler Haloti Ngata and the lower half of Griffin's right leg went in the other. Backup Kirk Cousins had come in a few plays later and led the trailing Redskins to a win over the Ravens, and then to another win the following week over Cleveland. This was the playoffs, though, and Redskins coach Mike Shanahan left Griffin in the game to limp around ineffectively until he eventually collapsed with just six minutes left in the game, tearing the LCL and ACL in his right knee as the Skins lost 24–14.
Reactions to the injury broke into two camps: Some supported Shanahan's decision to leave Griffin in, while others said once RG III tweaked his knee and started playing poorly, he should have been pulled for the rest of the game. But what about an approach that would have split the difference? Cousins had proven himself a capable quarterback in RG III's absence. Could the backup have shared snaps with Griffin throughout the game to keep him healthy for the biggest moments? Could Griffin perhaps have rested and gotten therapy on his knee for the second and third quarters, then pulled a Willis Reed and come back for the fourth?
After the game, the Redskins' official Twitter account quoted Shanahan as saying that it wouldn't have been in RGIII's "best interest" to leave the game. But exactly what "interest"? Certainly not the best interest of Griffin's body, and maybe not even in the best interest of the Redskins' chances against the Sehawks. The nebulous interest Shanahan seemed to be actually talking about is Griffin's image and reputation as the Redskin's franchise quarterback — a job fit only for old-school tough guys who rub dirt in their wounds and limp back out onto the gridiron.
It's the same image Jets coach Rex Ryan spent most of the season trying to reinforce with struggling quarterback Mark Sanchez — reiterating that he was still the Sanchize to anyone with a microphone and underutilizing Tim "The Closer" Tebow for fear of a quarterback controversy. Indeed, despite the many changes going on in the NFL right now — spread offenses that line up four and five receivers, leaping defensive ends who bat down passes like an NBA center, tight ends who catch deep balls like wideouts — quarterbacks are used in essentially the same way that they were when Rex Ryan's dad Buddy was a Jets assistant in the 1970s. Coaches pick a starter for the first game of the season, then give him every single snap until he's so injured or ineffective that the coach is forced to bring in a backup. That backup then takes on the same starter role as the guy he replaced. There have been teams that used Wildcat formations for running backs with good arms, and special packages designed to get a few snaps here and there for running QBs like Tebow or Kordell "Slash" Stewart, but otherwise there are virtually no deviations from the single QB model. Griffin's plight — and that of a few other prominent NFL signal-callers — suggests that maybe it's time for a new concept of quarterback use.
Think about Michael Vick, a phenomenal talent who's prone to both injuries and turnovers. Or Jay Cutler, a very good quarterback who, for three straight years, has gone down with late-season injuries that cost his team a playoff game or chance to make the playoffs. Or Tony Romo, an often fantastic QB who occasionally loses his head and throws interceptions by the bushel.
If these quarterbacks played different sports, their liabilities could be minimized. A basketball version of Vick would play limited minutes to keep his injuries down and efficiency up, perhaps as an instant-offense sixth man like Clippers guard Jamal Crawford. If he was a pitcher, Cutler would likely get some extra rest early in the year to keep him healthy for the end of it, like when the Red Sox used to put starter Josh Beckett on the DL for minor early-season ailments like blisters. Like Romo, Vancouver Canucks goalie Roberto Luongo is sometimes brilliant and sometimes a Swiss cheese headcase. But unlike the Cowboys, who will either keep Romo and give him every snap next year or trade him away for cents on the dollar, the Canucks have subbed in promising young goalie Corey Schneider when Luongo loses it, preparing Schneider for the future but taking advantage of the still-effective Luongo when he's hot.
There are a few reasons cited for NFL coaches' extreme reluctance to take their starting QBs out of games, even temporarily. Quarterback egos are supposedly so large that they won't stand for the possibility of sharing some of the spotlight and so fragile that any hint of competition will send them into a tailspin (exactly what Rex Ryan tried to prevent in New York, only for Sanchez to go into a tailspin anyway, even without any looming Tebow brilliance). The rest of the team is believed to need a single leader to rally around. The public is so used to having one starter taking all the snaps that any second QB who plays and doesn't immediately fall on his face inevitably creates a "quarterback controversy" that the press turns into a constant annoyance for the team. Coaches would rather play a beat-up quarterback and risk further injury than rest him occasionally and risk the ire of sports radio callers. Better to be conventionally wrong than radically right.
These are all at least plausible impediments to the idea of quarterbacks sharing snaps. But they are problems of a particular kind: They're the result of tradition and culture, superficialities of ego and optics. And as any good ad man will tell you, the best way to deal with silly, superficial PR problems is with the silly, superficial step of rebranding the product. Perhaps it's time to say good-bye to the era of overworked franchise QBs and desperation backups, and say hello to the "relief quarterback."
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An avoidable moment?
Image by Richard Lipski / AP
In 1923, Washington Senators player-manager Donie Bush ushered in one of the great tactical innovations in modern sport. To that point, a starting pitcher generally stayed in until the game was over or his arm fell off. The previous season, the New York Giants' Jesse Barnes and Yankees James Shawkey threw all 10 innings of a World Series tie at the Polo Grounds. The year before that, fatigued Yanks starter Carl Mays had blown an eighth-inning World Series lead against the Giants by giving up four runs in the final two frames for the loss.
Realizing that starters like Mays were often too exhausted to pitch well at the end of games, Senators player-manager Bush started using Allan "Rubber Arm" Russell as a regular in-game replacement for tired and ineffective starters. Russell was an instant success, setting records for appearances and innings pitched in relief. The following season the Senators replaced Bush with player-manager Bucky Harris, but Harris relied even more on substitute pitching, using both Russell and Firpo Mayberry as relievers on the way to a 1924 World Series win. Despite his nickname, Rubber Arm Russell was out of the league two years later (even relievers can be overworked), but Mayberry went on to have a successful career as a sub, considered by many to be baseball's first significant relief-pitching specialist.
The Senators weren't some team of isolated geniuses, pulling relief-pitching revelations out of a hat; they were just the first team to adjust to the drastic changes the game was already undergoing. Outfield walls, some as far as 500 and 600 feet from the plate, were being moved in, to the benefit of power hitters and the detriment of pitchers. The extremely effective spitball was banned in 1920 for all but a few aging pitchers (including the aforementioned Rubber Arm Russell) who were grandfathered in. Instead of reusing battered, lopsided balls until they unraveled, the league started replacing them regularly with new balls that were easier to hit. Offenses became supercharged, sluggers like Babe Ruth took over the league, pitchers threw more and more pitches, and the old "nine innings or bust" strategy wasn't physically sustainable anymore. The Senators were just the first to see the writing on the wall. The idea quickly spread through baseball. In the 1910s, the average league leader in innings pitched threw 370.1 innings, a number which fell to 328.9 innings in the 1920s. (It's about 100 innings less than that today.)
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