Showing posts with label Graham Harrell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Graham Harrell. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Mike Leach was railroaded
The Mike Leach saga took a bizarre twist this morning when Texas Tech fired him [Tommy Craggs, Deadspin] just before [Matt Hinton, Dr. Saturday] he received a court order [Pete Thamel, Twitter] allowing him to coach in their bowl game. This comes after [AP] their suspension of him a few days earlier in response to allegations [Craggs] of mistreatment by Tech wide receiver Adam James, the son of ESPN analyst Craig James.
The whole thing stinks to high heaven. Seth C of Double-T Nation, the SBN blog for Texas Tech, has an excellent post here detailing the lack of communication between the university and Leach, the financial implications at stake and the power play between Leach and athletic director Gerald Myers. Spencer Hall goes through more of the details and discusses the power struggle between the two sides over at SB Nation, Chris Brown has an interesting analysis of how this might eventually shake out and Matt Hayes of The Sporting News has a great piece on the real reasons for the firing. As he writes, "This is the definition of payback, everyone. Nearly a year after the fact. The record will show that Leach, Tech's unorthodox yet highly successful coach, was fired Wednesday for mistreatment of a player with a "mild" concussion. The reality is Leach was fired because he took Texas Tech for everything it had last February during contract negotiations -- and made the university brass look like bumbling fools in the process." There's pretty clear evidence that there's more going on here than just Leach's alleged mistreatment of James.
Concussions have obviously been a key issue of mine for a long time, so you'd think I'd be all in favour of a coach getting fired for dealing with them improperly. In this case, you'd be wrong, though. Leach's actions seem perfectly reasonable; when faced with a concussed player sensitive to light, he had him go stand in a dark room during practice. That sounds like a pretty logical treatment, and certainly not something that would cause James further injury. It hardly smacks of cruel and unusual punishment, especially if you watch this video from the local NBC affiliate that explored the "sheds" where James was allegedly confined:
Not bad, eh? They certainly doesn't look anywhere near as awful as the James' family's press release made them sound. Perhaps even more revealing are the e-mails from former Tech players and coaches CBS' Dennis Dodd published on his blog, which give some interesting insights into the character of both Leach and Adam James. Here are some highlights:
Former Red Raider WR, current Saskatchewan Roughrider Eric Morris: "You can find out a lot about a person after playing three years of college football with them. Adam James was a teammate of mine from 2006-2009. Ever since the day he arrived on the Texas Tech campus you couldn’t help but to feel a negative energy from him. He expected people to baby him and that he was going make it solely on the fact that his father was a very successful player. Coach Leach has never been a coach to just give something to someone because of who they are. He believes that everyone is equal and you have to earn respect from your coaches and teammates. Adam was never known as a hard worker. I can honestly agree with this because we played the same position and I witnessed his laziness on a daily bases."
Former Red Raider QB, current Saskatchewan Roughrider Graham Harrell: " Before Adam James ever entered the football locker room at Texas Tech I heard how spoiled and selfish he acted in a team atmosphere from many of my baseball friends. Adam was on the baseball team his true freshman year at Tech, before he ever joined the football team, and did not make it through the baseball season because of his selfish attitude. After a baseball game in which he felt like he did not get enough playing time, but the team still won twenty to one, he came into the locker room after the game and “pouted and threw a big fit” according another player on the baseball team. A few weeks later in the middle of the season, he just stopped showing up to practices or game and quit because he was not happy about how he was being treated.
One of my roommates was a baseball player on the team and many of my friends were a part of the team that witnessed all of this. These baseball players told me he was “spoiled and selfish” before he ever came to the football team. After quitting baseball he came out for football and his selfish attitude was very evident, as was his laziness. During >off-season workouts he often would be caught skipping lifts in the weight room or finding ways to cut corners/get out of conditioning exercises. When we had player organized seven on seven throwing in the summer, when he would show up he was much more interested in playing his own games on the side of the field or telling people that he wasn’t going to run any routes because the coaches do not get him a “fair opportunity” anyway. During the season he was often “injured” (it usually seemed like a very minor injury that could keep him out of practice but never out of any other activity, including games) so he would not participate in some drills in practice. None of these acts were productive for our team, but the most detrimental part of Adam was his off field attitude and actions. ...
Mike Leach was not only my head coach, but he was my position coach all five of my years at Texas Tech. I spent more time with him than any other player during my five years and had meetings with him every day. He was very hard on me and every other player in program and he held very high expectations for every player. He would push us all every day during the season and during the off-season. He felt that hard work, dedication and doing things right was the only way we could be successful and compete in the Big XII conference. He worked harder and longer than anyone else in program and was committed to winning at all cost. He would never have been unfair to a player or not played the best players he had because he wanted to win more than anything else. Coach Leach also expected us to be tough but smart at the same time. He would not pressure a kid to play with a serious injury or play when he did not feel ready to play. Coach Leach is a man that cares about his player and puts his players, coaches and the well being of the Texas Tech football program above all else."
Current Tech slot receiver coach Lincoln Riley: "During the last two years of being the inside receivers coach, I have had the chance to learn a lot about Adam James. He came to Tech because of one person: Coach Leach. Although we adamently doubted his talent, we as coaches came to see that Adam actually had enough talent to help us out. The problem, though, is that Adam is unusually lazy and entitled. Many other players on this team, specifically receivers, have a much larger role on this team with less talent. I have always been worried about Adam's effect on my other players because of his weak and conceited attitude. I recently found out that Adam deliberately undermined my authority on many occasions. This is particularly disturbing because Coach Leach hired me to make our receivers the best group in the country, and Adam has damaged this
group far more than I even realized. ...
Two practices before Adam James claimed he had a concussion, Coach Leach and I were forced to discipline him for poor effort from the previous practice and poor effort during the early drills of that day. This has been a common theme about Adam's work ethic and attitude during his entire career. Adam, along with two other receivers that were also unsatisfactory, was sent to run stadium steps with Bennie Wylie. After the practice, Bennie made it very clear to Coach Leach and I that Adam was a complete "jerk" while he was being punished. After talking with Adam after the practice, it was very clear to me that Adam did not agree with the punishment and believed that we were just mis-asessing his effort. He complained to me that we were not doing our jobs as coaches and that his effort was just fine, all of which is very typical of him to say."
Former Tech slot receiver coach Dana Holgorsen, currently the offensive coordinator at the University of Houston: "I am writing this letter on behalf of Mike Leach in regards to the Adam James situation. I was the inside receiver coach at Texas Tech when we made the decision the sign Adam James in January of 2007. Adam had no offers to play NCAA D1 football during and after his Senior year. After a conversation between Coach Leach and Adams father Craig, Coach Leach acquired a brief highlight tape of Adam and made the decision to take him as a scholarship student athlete. I was opposed to doing so in belief he was not a D1 football player. Coach Leach overrode my opinion and Adam became a Red Raider. During the rest of my time at Texas Tech I was Adams position coach where I always remained critical of Adams ability to play at this level due to being lazy in not only the classroom but also in the off season and during practice. Coach Leach was the one who kept saying he believed Adam would eventually contribute. Adams teammates believed he was selfish and were constantly getting onto him for lack of effort as they sensed entitlement on his part due to his father being a very good football player. Adam eventually ended up playing a little after I left due to his body type being able to do some TE sets which consists of around 5-10 plays a game. Adam should be thankful for the opportunity to play at Texas Tech and for Mike Leach, who gave him the opportunity. In my opinion playing 5-10 plays a game in an outstanding offense is more than he would get at any other school in NCAA D1 football."
I highly recommend going to Dodd's blog to read the whole series of e-mails, but just the excerpts show a lot of what's really going on here. Yes, all of the players and coaches above have reasons to support Leach, but it's very interesting that they all hit the same points about James. Particularly of note are the comments by the coaches on how they didn't want James, but Leach argued for him. Sounds like Leach did James a favour, and for that favour, he's been stabbed in the back and has lost his job. Et tu, Brute?
What's interesting is that this is at least in some way a reassertion of the football establishment. Leach has always been a quirky figure outside the general club of football coaches, as shown by this fascinating 2005 profile of him by Michael Lewis. Craig James is much more of a traditionalist, so it's not surprising that he and Leach butted heads.
It's a shame that this is how things ended for Leach and Tech, though; he created a brilliant passing offence by thinking outside the box and produced greatquarterbacks like Harrell, who were unfortunately overlooked by the groupthink of professional football as I've written before
. He turned an afterthought of a program into a national presence, not by traditional means but through an unconventional system that maximized his players' strengths and minimized their weaknesses. For my money, he's one of the best coaches in NCAA football.
Of course, not everything Leach did was brilliant (blocking his players from using Twitter was just dumb, his "fat little girlfriends" comment was bizarre, renaming his quarterback "Nick" was pretty ridiculous and receiver Ed Britton, who Leach made study outside in a blizzard for missing class, has a much better claim to mistreatment than James). None of that is a reason to fire him, though, and neither is this latest case. In the end, the pirate-loving Leach has been forced to walk the plank before his time, railroaded by an administration looking for an excuse to dump him in favour of a more traditional coach. That's a shame. Hopefully Leach will land on his feet, bring an unconventional but successful approach to a new school and make all involved regret this travesty of a process.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Graham Harrell and Saskatchewan: a perfect fit?
It was rather exciting to see former Texas Tech quarterback Graham Harrell sign with the Saskatchewan Roughriders yesterday [Murray McCormick, Regina Leader-Post]. Harrell, the NCAA Division I career leader in touchdown passes, is one of the most impressive quarterbacks I've seen. As I wrote a while ago, there's a great chance he would have been able to succeed in the NFL if not for the groupthink that determines the evaluation of NFL quarterbacks. Harrell had a far better season and career statistically than first-overall draft pick Matthew Stafford or fifth-overall pick Mark Sanchez, but went completely undrafted and then failed to catch on with the Cleveland Browns as a free agent.
The logic behind passing Harrell over? Well, it isn't especially convincing. NFL evaluation of quarterbacks has long placed college numbers below such things as height and arm strength. The NFL also consistently passes over "system" quarterbacks who run pass-heavy offences in favour of those who got their playing time in a more balanced environment . Sometimes this works well; players like Matt Cassel, who never started in college, have gone on to be NFL stars, while other players with impressive college careers, like Ryan Leaf, have failed spectacularly in the professional ranks.
On the whole, though, the system is rather flawed. As Malcolm Gladwell examined in Outliers (a book I wrote about here), many different approaches have been tried, but no consistent way to predict quarterbacks' professional success has yet been found. With that in mind, it doesn't particularly make sense to eliminate massive amounts of capable quarterbacks such as Harrell because they don't fit into an evaluation model that has been demonstrated not to work.
The NFL's loss may well be the CFL's gain, though. As I wrote in my initial piece, Harrell isn't a perfect quarterback in the traditional NFL mould. He doesn't have the pure arm strength of many NFL players (although he's still able to throw deep balls when needed), and he isn't a gunslinger in the Brett Favre mould who zips bullet passes into tight coverage. That may be to his advantage, though, especially in Canada.
What Harrell excels at is running a spread offence with four or five receivers, making quick reads and finding the open man. That allows him to have an extraordinarily high completion percentage and a low number of interceptions, as well as a lot of touchdown passes. He's far more efficient and effective then the strong-armed types who rely on pure power and often throw interceptions. Harrell might or might not be a successful quarterback in a traditional NFL offence, but I'm quite confident he could be very successful with a team that tailored its offence to his strengths. Well, the CFL just happens to feature a lot of shotgun spread formations and pass-oriented offences, and the Roughriders in particular have an extraordinarily deep receiving corps that would be a perfect fit for Harrell. With the likes of former teammate Eric Morris, Rob Bagg, Andy Fantuz, Chris Getzlaf, Jason Clermont, Weston Dressler and Johnny Quinn as slotbacks and wide receivers, plus a couple of excellent receiving backs in Wes Cates and Hugh Charles, Harrell will have plenty of weapons suited to his style of play. That's not just my evaluation, either; Texas Tech play-by-play man Brian Jensen wrote that "this could be a match made in ... yes ... Canada is far enough north to be close to heaven!" and Tech assistant coach Matt Jansen wrote on Twitter that he's also a big fan of the move. " I'm so excited for Graham," he wrote. "He gets to team up with Eric Morris again and they could be a deadly combo up there. If you're a fan of that team, you couldn't ask for two guys with more heart for the game of football. I'm jealous."
Of course, the Roughriders are 2-0 so far this year, and you don't usually make quarterback changes when you're winning. Still, starter Darian Durant hasn't been overly impressive thus far, and backup Steven Jyles still has to prove himself at the CFL level. The Riders' quarterback situation is actually perhaps more open than any CFL team except Winnipeg, as neither of their top two options has really been spectacular at the CFL level yet. Thus, this could be a terrific fit for Harrell.
It also could be good for the league to get a high-profile QB like Harrell. It brings back memories of the days when the likes of Warren Moon and Doug Flutie were passed over by the NFL and opted to come to Canada. In fact, those guys faced similar challenges in cracking the NFL system; Moon was a black quarterback long before black quarterbacks were widely accepted, and Flutie was considered far too short to succeed in the NFL. Both did well in Canada and then proved to the NFL that their evaluation model was flawed with triumphant returns. Let's see if Harrell can follow in their footsteps.
The logic behind passing Harrell over? Well, it isn't especially convincing. NFL evaluation of quarterbacks has long placed college numbers below such things as height and arm strength. The NFL also consistently passes over "system" quarterbacks who run pass-heavy offences in favour of those who got their playing time in a more balanced environment . Sometimes this works well; players like Matt Cassel, who never started in college, have gone on to be NFL stars, while other players with impressive college careers, like Ryan Leaf, have failed spectacularly in the professional ranks.
On the whole, though, the system is rather flawed. As Malcolm Gladwell examined in Outliers (a book I wrote about here), many different approaches have been tried, but no consistent way to predict quarterbacks' professional success has yet been found. With that in mind, it doesn't particularly make sense to eliminate massive amounts of capable quarterbacks such as Harrell because they don't fit into an evaluation model that has been demonstrated not to work.
The NFL's loss may well be the CFL's gain, though. As I wrote in my initial piece, Harrell isn't a perfect quarterback in the traditional NFL mould. He doesn't have the pure arm strength of many NFL players (although he's still able to throw deep balls when needed), and he isn't a gunslinger in the Brett Favre mould who zips bullet passes into tight coverage. That may be to his advantage, though, especially in Canada.
What Harrell excels at is running a spread offence with four or five receivers, making quick reads and finding the open man. That allows him to have an extraordinarily high completion percentage and a low number of interceptions, as well as a lot of touchdown passes. He's far more efficient and effective then the strong-armed types who rely on pure power and often throw interceptions. Harrell might or might not be a successful quarterback in a traditional NFL offence, but I'm quite confident he could be very successful with a team that tailored its offence to his strengths. Well, the CFL just happens to feature a lot of shotgun spread formations and pass-oriented offences, and the Roughriders in particular have an extraordinarily deep receiving corps that would be a perfect fit for Harrell. With the likes of former teammate Eric Morris, Rob Bagg, Andy Fantuz, Chris Getzlaf, Jason Clermont, Weston Dressler and Johnny Quinn as slotbacks and wide receivers, plus a couple of excellent receiving backs in Wes Cates and Hugh Charles, Harrell will have plenty of weapons suited to his style of play. That's not just my evaluation, either; Texas Tech play-by-play man Brian Jensen wrote that "this could be a match made in ... yes ... Canada is far enough north to be close to heaven!" and Tech assistant coach Matt Jansen wrote on Twitter that he's also a big fan of the move. " I'm so excited for Graham," he wrote. "He gets to team up with Eric Morris again and they could be a deadly combo up there. If you're a fan of that team, you couldn't ask for two guys with more heart for the game of football. I'm jealous."
Of course, the Roughriders are 2-0 so far this year, and you don't usually make quarterback changes when you're winning. Still, starter Darian Durant hasn't been overly impressive thus far, and backup Steven Jyles still has to prove himself at the CFL level. The Riders' quarterback situation is actually perhaps more open than any CFL team except Winnipeg, as neither of their top two options has really been spectacular at the CFL level yet. Thus, this could be a terrific fit for Harrell.
It also could be good for the league to get a high-profile QB like Harrell. It brings back memories of the days when the likes of Warren Moon and Doug Flutie were passed over by the NFL and opted to come to Canada. In fact, those guys faced similar challenges in cracking the NFL system; Moon was a black quarterback long before black quarterbacks were widely accepted, and Flutie was considered far too short to succeed in the NFL. Both did well in Canada and then proved to the NFL that their evaluation model was flawed with triumphant returns. Let's see if Harrell can follow in their footsteps.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
On Graham Harrell, "system quarterbacks" and the NFL
This past season in American college football, Texas Tech quarterback Graham Harrell broke the NCAA record for most touchdown passes thrown in a college career with 134. He completed 442 of 626 passing attempts for an outstanding 70.6 completion percentage, threw for 5,111 yards, completed 45 touchdown passes while only being picked off nine times and became the first NCAA quarterback to record multiple seasons with more than 5,000 yards passing. Despite all that, Harrell wasn't selected in the NFL draft. In the first five picks alone, the Detroit Lions and New York Jets opted to take Matthew Stafford and Mark Sanchez respectively, despite each accomplishing significantly less than Harrell at the college level. By comparison, Stafford completed only 235 passes on 383 attempts at Georgia last season for 3459 yards and a completion percentage of 61.4 per cent; he also threw 25 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. Sanchez completed 241 of 366 attempts (65.8 per cent) at USC for 3207 yards with 34 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. Moreover, both Sanchez and Stafford didn't have a great track record previously; Sanchez wasn't USC's top quarterback in the previous year and Stafford hadn't cracked 3000 yards in two seasons at Georgia. By comparison, Harrell put up 5705 yards in 2007 with 48 touchdowns, 14 interceptions and a 71.8 per cent completion percentage. Yet, in the draft, NFL teams concluded that Stafford and Sanchez were the first- and fifth-most valuable players respectively, while Harrell didn't even crack the top 256. It didn't get much better afterwards; Harrell wound up attending the Cleveland Browns' training camp, but many observers of the team, including Tony Grossi of the Cleveland Plain Dealer see him as a long shot to even make the practice squad.
Why was Harrell so overlooked? The curse of the dreaded label; "system quarterback". It's a bizarre term, as by definition, all quarterbacks play in one system or another. Yet, "system quarterback" is a pejorative and derogatory term hurled at those college quarterbacks who put up great numbers in pass-oriented offences like Texas Tech's, many of which prominently feature the spread. System quarterbacks tend to be seen as a product of their environment, doomed to failure outside of college ball.
To be fair, there is some historical evidence supporting this idea many NFL teams seem to have. Andre Ware, Gino Torretta and Eric Crouch all won the Heisman Trophy in college but didn't make much of an impact in the NFL. Of course, some of that was due to a lack of opportunity; Crouch didn't even get much of a chance to play quarterback in the NFL due to his height. Still, there is precedent of great college quarterbacks failing to adjust to the NFL, and many of them came from pass-heavy offences.
However, who will make a good NFL quarterback is one of the most difficult things to predict, as the great Malcolm Gladwell relates in Outliers. Teams have tried everything from college stats to height requirements to arm strength to Wonderlic tests, but still haven't found a consistent way to pick who will be a good quarterback at the NFL level. Lately, the focus has been on tall, athletic players with good mobility and arm strength who have played in offences similar to the traditional ones used in the NFL, but even that hasn't always panned out; see JaMarcus Russell, Alex Smith, Jason Campbell and Vince Young for examples.
So, if both groups of players frequently become busts, why are players with lesser stats but more "desirable" physical attributes still so favoured by NFL teams? For one thing, there's the lure of potential; you can always imagine a guy with a rocket arm learning to make good reads and precise throws under pressure, but it's hard to picture an intelligent, high-percentage quarterback with a weak arm suddenly becoming able to throw downfield bombs. That doesn't mean it's true, though. It's like the equivalent of baseball's plate discipline. As Michael Lewis detailed in Moneyball, Billy Beane was able to get unathletic guys who put up great on-base percentages in high school or college rather cheaply because most of the other teams were more concerned with players' swing mechanics and speed. They figured they'd win by taking great athletic specimens, and in many cases, it worked; however, everyone was going in the same direction, so those players became quite hard to find. Moreover, Lewis relates that many of those teams figured that players with low on-base percentages would improve them over time as they learned discipline; plenty of research has shown that players don't tend to change their hitting approach, though. It's a similar story to the NFL; it's easier to imagine someone gaining plate discipline or route-reading abilities than tremendous speed or a rocket arm, but that doesn't mean it's much more likely to happen. Some batters will always go up to the plate hacking away with tremendous swing mechanics, and some quarterbacks will always be gunslingers who have great arms but are often picked off.
Another aspect of this bias is because of highlights. Sports tend to be all about highlights these days, and much of the NFL scouting process is based on looking at film of players. It's always going to be more impressive to watch a quarterback successfully chuck a 40-yard bomb to a receiver in double coverage than a 8-yard quick out to an open receiver near the sidelines, even if the latter is a much better play nine times out of 10. The high-completion percentage, low-interception quarterbacks tend to excel via great route-reading skills, an ability to think on their feet and a knack for safely getting the ball to an open man, all of which take a tremendous amount of talent but don't easily translate into highlight packages. Meanwhile, the strong-armed daredevils make spectacular throws that could just as easily turn into interceptions as touchdowns, but look better on film. It's why the New York Jets dumped notoriously weak-armed Chad Pennington for aging gunslinger Brett Favre before last season; Pennington wound up with the Dolphins and put up great stats with them, while Favre self-destructed down the stretch with a ton of interceptions. Pennington finished the year with 19 touchdowns against seven interceptions, a 67.4 completion percentage, 3,653 passing yards and a 97.3 passer rating, while Favre finished with 22 touchdowns, 22 interceptions, a 65.7 percentage, 3,472 yards and a 81.0 rating. Pennington was superior in every category except touchdowns, but Favre wound up on the highlights more frequently thanks to his habit of forcing the ball into dangerous situations that either resulted in a spectacular catch or an interception.
The final element to consider is the NFL systems involved. If you ever catch NFL analysts talking about quarterbacks, something that invariably comes up is their ability to make "The NFL Throws". This has been one of the biggest knocks against quarterbacks like Harrell that aren't considered to have the arm strength to throw 30- to 40-yard bombs. However, this presumes that those throws are necessary for success in the NFL, when in reality, they're generally the least likely to succeed. That's not to say there's never an occasion where a Hail Mary is required, but rather to suggest that such occasions are few and far between and success on them perhaps isn't necessarily the best benchmark for NFL quarterback success.
Part of the problem is that there's a certain element of Orwellian groupthink involved in the NFL. NFL head coaches are frequently former players and almost always guys who have been around the league in assistant capacities for a long time. There isn't a lot of fresh blood or original thinking, and as a result, most teams' systems and offensive schemes tend to be somewhat similar. Sure, there's plenty of variations on the different themes involved, but the general plan of an NFL franchise's offence involves a big and strong quarterback who can throw bullet passes, a bruising running back who can crash up the middle for "three yards and a cloud of dust" each down, a couple of tall and lightning-fast wide receivers who can streak downfield and perhaps a pass-catching tight end or slot receiver for the occasional shorter throw.
The big flaw with this schematic is it puts substantial limitations on the types of players you can draft. There are only a certain number of quarterbacks who fit this mould, only a certain number of wide receivers with the speed you need and pass-catching skills to with them, and only a certain amount of running backs who will match your physical specifications. Like baseball in the old days as well, this is excarbated by every other team also looking for the same types of players. There's a large demand and a limited supply, which drives the price up. If you get lucky with draft position or free-agent signings, you might be able to get some of the players you need, but it won't be easy.
How do you get around this? It's not particularly simple. The reason these ideas and schemes have persisted for so long is because they do tend to work. The basic offence described above is reasonably well-balanced and ideally is full of athletic players who can execute their roles to perfection. Each player is generally strong in several areas, such as running backs with speed and size and receivers with speed and hands. As previously mentioned, this makes it difficult to build an entire roster of these types due to the demand and the resulting costs, but the basic idea isn't a bad one.
You can get a little creative, though. If you'll permit me a little geekery here, consider football as a roleplaying game (say, a Dungeons and Dragons-based one) for a moment. These games work by allowing you to pick a race and a class, each with their own unique abilities. You can then further customize your character with specific attributes, skills, feats and equipment. However, there is a cost involved; you only have a certain number of points or resources you can allot to each area, and your class and race helps in some areas but weakens others. Moreover, you can pick up some skills and such from other classes along the road, but they're more expensive to develop. Thus, the real path to success is by picking one or two areas that you're going to excel in and focusing on developing them. You can have a fighter who shines in close combat, a ranger who prefers to snipe from afar, a wizard with strong magical attacks or any variety of other types, but it's almost impossible to create a character that's skilled in all areas. If you attempt to be good at everything, you excel at nothing. Instead, it works much better to star in one area and count on the other characters in your party to take care of your weaknesses.
This can be applied to football quite successfully. It's very rare to find those players that are good at everything and have all the physical attributes you want at a position. When they do show up, they're so expensive that it's incredibly tough to land them. More frequently, you have to make tradeoffs, which explains why Detroit and New York chose Stafford and Sanchez in the draft; they had some of the athletic attributes they were looking for and they're hoping that they can develop the route-reading skills necessary for success. They may fit the traditional NFL system or they may not; we'll have to see.
However, Stafford and Sanchez did shine in many of the areas highly regarded by scouts and they have some skills in all areas, which of course made them rather in demand and thus expensive. Trying to build a franchise according to this model requires a succession of high draft picks or expensive free agency signings, and there isn't much room for error because of the cost of each area.
The alternative is to take a Moneyball-esque approach and target talented players who are undervalued, such as Harrell. Now, these players tend to be undervalued because they have significant flaws in the eyes of the typical NFL model. They usually aren't as versatile as you'd like and they won't be stars in a traditional NFL system. The advantage of this is they tend to make up for their flaws in other ways. To revert to the D&D example, it isn't a big problem for a wizard to not be the best hand-to-hand fighter thanks to their magical skills. The other benefit of these players is they tend to come at a considerably lower cost, making the price of failure much more acceptable.
What you then need to do is come up with a system that can utilize these players effectively. The classic example of this is legendary San Francisco head coach Bill Walsh's West Coast offence. Walsh started with a cast of players no one else was that excited about and made a key move when he drafted quarterback Joe Montana 82nd overall in 1979. Montana's resume to that point reads much like Harrell's; he had a great college career at Notre Dame, but was overlooked by most scouts thanks to his unexceptional arm strength. What he did have going for him was tremendous accuracy, which Walsh made great use of in a new offensive system that emphasized tons of quick and accurate short passes instead of the traditional strategy pounding the ground with bruising runs up the middle and then throwing bombs downfield. Under Montana and Steve Young, a quarterback in a very similar mould, the 49ers were one of the dominant teams of the 1980s and claimed five Super Bowls between 1981 and 1994.
That's not to say that the West Coast offence is the entire answer; in fact, it's been quite widely adopted since them and many NFL teams now use at least some elements of the strategy. The key is Walsh's overarching philosophy of finding players that were overlooked by other teams due to some weaknesses and then designing schemes to take advantage of their strengths. There's no divine commandment that mandates NFL teams to play a certain way, but most of them adopt similar strategies due to conservatism; you aren't often questioned if you follow the crowd.
It's largely the same in college ball, but some underdog teams and coaches are more willing to try unusual strategies. Mike Leach, Harrell's coach at Texas Tech, is one such unconventional thinker (and surprise, surprise, he's been profiled twice by Michael Lewis). Leach couldn't compete with the big schools like Texas and Oklahoma in recruiting in-demand, all-around athletes who fit the profiles everyone else was using, so he developed his own pass-wacky system using undervalued quarterbacks who were extremely accurate but didn't have much else going for them. Here's the money quote from Lewis' first profile of Leach:
"[Current Detroit Lions head coach Jim] Schwartz had an N.F.L. coach's perspective on talent, and from his point of view, the players Leach was using to rack up points and yards were no talent at all. None of them had been identified by N.F.L. scouts or even college recruiters as first-rate material. Coming out of high school, most of them had only one or two offers from midrange schools."
These aren't the all-around players used by most schools, but Leach found a way to mould them into a tremendously successful team. That suggests that there's more ways to win than traditionally thought by many football coaches and analysts. We're seeing this more in the NFL as well; look at the Dolphins' success with the Wildcat offence last year, which prompted them to draft Pat White this year. White's another quarterback who likely wouldn't have had much of a chance in the NFL in a traditional mould, but has a chance to shine in the Wildcat. Like White, Harrell isn't the perfect fit for the standard NFL offence, but that doesn't diminish his talent; all he needs is the right system to succeed. The NFL's too concerned with the arms race for all-around players at the moment and often overlooks those who don't quite meet its physical expectations. The question is if there's a Billy Beane or Mike Leach out there who can exploit that.
One final thought on Harrell; if he isn't able to catch on with an NFL team this year, might he come north of the border? CFL offences are already heavily pass-based, and some of the multiple receiver sets are pretty close to what Harrell was used to at Texas Tech. Plus, the CFL has a long and detailed history of innovation, so perhaps a Texas Tech-style offence is the next natural step. The CFL's also been an excellent proving ground for those overlooked by the NFL in the past, such as Doug Flutie and Warren Moon. Could Harrell be the next great quarterback to follow in their footsteps? We'll never know unless someone gives him a shot.
Why was Harrell so overlooked? The curse of the dreaded label; "system quarterback". It's a bizarre term, as by definition, all quarterbacks play in one system or another. Yet, "system quarterback" is a pejorative and derogatory term hurled at those college quarterbacks who put up great numbers in pass-oriented offences like Texas Tech's, many of which prominently feature the spread. System quarterbacks tend to be seen as a product of their environment, doomed to failure outside of college ball.
To be fair, there is some historical evidence supporting this idea many NFL teams seem to have. Andre Ware, Gino Torretta and Eric Crouch all won the Heisman Trophy in college but didn't make much of an impact in the NFL. Of course, some of that was due to a lack of opportunity; Crouch didn't even get much of a chance to play quarterback in the NFL due to his height. Still, there is precedent of great college quarterbacks failing to adjust to the NFL, and many of them came from pass-heavy offences.
However, who will make a good NFL quarterback is one of the most difficult things to predict, as the great Malcolm Gladwell relates in Outliers. Teams have tried everything from college stats to height requirements to arm strength to Wonderlic tests, but still haven't found a consistent way to pick who will be a good quarterback at the NFL level. Lately, the focus has been on tall, athletic players with good mobility and arm strength who have played in offences similar to the traditional ones used in the NFL, but even that hasn't always panned out; see JaMarcus Russell, Alex Smith, Jason Campbell and Vince Young for examples.
So, if both groups of players frequently become busts, why are players with lesser stats but more "desirable" physical attributes still so favoured by NFL teams? For one thing, there's the lure of potential; you can always imagine a guy with a rocket arm learning to make good reads and precise throws under pressure, but it's hard to picture an intelligent, high-percentage quarterback with a weak arm suddenly becoming able to throw downfield bombs. That doesn't mean it's true, though. It's like the equivalent of baseball's plate discipline. As Michael Lewis detailed in Moneyball, Billy Beane was able to get unathletic guys who put up great on-base percentages in high school or college rather cheaply because most of the other teams were more concerned with players' swing mechanics and speed. They figured they'd win by taking great athletic specimens, and in many cases, it worked; however, everyone was going in the same direction, so those players became quite hard to find. Moreover, Lewis relates that many of those teams figured that players with low on-base percentages would improve them over time as they learned discipline; plenty of research has shown that players don't tend to change their hitting approach, though. It's a similar story to the NFL; it's easier to imagine someone gaining plate discipline or route-reading abilities than tremendous speed or a rocket arm, but that doesn't mean it's much more likely to happen. Some batters will always go up to the plate hacking away with tremendous swing mechanics, and some quarterbacks will always be gunslingers who have great arms but are often picked off.
Another aspect of this bias is because of highlights. Sports tend to be all about highlights these days, and much of the NFL scouting process is based on looking at film of players. It's always going to be more impressive to watch a quarterback successfully chuck a 40-yard bomb to a receiver in double coverage than a 8-yard quick out to an open receiver near the sidelines, even if the latter is a much better play nine times out of 10. The high-completion percentage, low-interception quarterbacks tend to excel via great route-reading skills, an ability to think on their feet and a knack for safely getting the ball to an open man, all of which take a tremendous amount of talent but don't easily translate into highlight packages. Meanwhile, the strong-armed daredevils make spectacular throws that could just as easily turn into interceptions as touchdowns, but look better on film. It's why the New York Jets dumped notoriously weak-armed Chad Pennington for aging gunslinger Brett Favre before last season; Pennington wound up with the Dolphins and put up great stats with them, while Favre self-destructed down the stretch with a ton of interceptions. Pennington finished the year with 19 touchdowns against seven interceptions, a 67.4 completion percentage, 3,653 passing yards and a 97.3 passer rating, while Favre finished with 22 touchdowns, 22 interceptions, a 65.7 percentage, 3,472 yards and a 81.0 rating. Pennington was superior in every category except touchdowns, but Favre wound up on the highlights more frequently thanks to his habit of forcing the ball into dangerous situations that either resulted in a spectacular catch or an interception.
The final element to consider is the NFL systems involved. If you ever catch NFL analysts talking about quarterbacks, something that invariably comes up is their ability to make "The NFL Throws". This has been one of the biggest knocks against quarterbacks like Harrell that aren't considered to have the arm strength to throw 30- to 40-yard bombs. However, this presumes that those throws are necessary for success in the NFL, when in reality, they're generally the least likely to succeed. That's not to say there's never an occasion where a Hail Mary is required, but rather to suggest that such occasions are few and far between and success on them perhaps isn't necessarily the best benchmark for NFL quarterback success.
Part of the problem is that there's a certain element of Orwellian groupthink involved in the NFL. NFL head coaches are frequently former players and almost always guys who have been around the league in assistant capacities for a long time. There isn't a lot of fresh blood or original thinking, and as a result, most teams' systems and offensive schemes tend to be somewhat similar. Sure, there's plenty of variations on the different themes involved, but the general plan of an NFL franchise's offence involves a big and strong quarterback who can throw bullet passes, a bruising running back who can crash up the middle for "three yards and a cloud of dust" each down, a couple of tall and lightning-fast wide receivers who can streak downfield and perhaps a pass-catching tight end or slot receiver for the occasional shorter throw.
The big flaw with this schematic is it puts substantial limitations on the types of players you can draft. There are only a certain number of quarterbacks who fit this mould, only a certain number of wide receivers with the speed you need and pass-catching skills to with them, and only a certain amount of running backs who will match your physical specifications. Like baseball in the old days as well, this is excarbated by every other team also looking for the same types of players. There's a large demand and a limited supply, which drives the price up. If you get lucky with draft position or free-agent signings, you might be able to get some of the players you need, but it won't be easy.
How do you get around this? It's not particularly simple. The reason these ideas and schemes have persisted for so long is because they do tend to work. The basic offence described above is reasonably well-balanced and ideally is full of athletic players who can execute their roles to perfection. Each player is generally strong in several areas, such as running backs with speed and size and receivers with speed and hands. As previously mentioned, this makes it difficult to build an entire roster of these types due to the demand and the resulting costs, but the basic idea isn't a bad one.
You can get a little creative, though. If you'll permit me a little geekery here, consider football as a roleplaying game (say, a Dungeons and Dragons-based one) for a moment. These games work by allowing you to pick a race and a class, each with their own unique abilities. You can then further customize your character with specific attributes, skills, feats and equipment. However, there is a cost involved; you only have a certain number of points or resources you can allot to each area, and your class and race helps in some areas but weakens others. Moreover, you can pick up some skills and such from other classes along the road, but they're more expensive to develop. Thus, the real path to success is by picking one or two areas that you're going to excel in and focusing on developing them. You can have a fighter who shines in close combat, a ranger who prefers to snipe from afar, a wizard with strong magical attacks or any variety of other types, but it's almost impossible to create a character that's skilled in all areas. If you attempt to be good at everything, you excel at nothing. Instead, it works much better to star in one area and count on the other characters in your party to take care of your weaknesses.
This can be applied to football quite successfully. It's very rare to find those players that are good at everything and have all the physical attributes you want at a position. When they do show up, they're so expensive that it's incredibly tough to land them. More frequently, you have to make tradeoffs, which explains why Detroit and New York chose Stafford and Sanchez in the draft; they had some of the athletic attributes they were looking for and they're hoping that they can develop the route-reading skills necessary for success. They may fit the traditional NFL system or they may not; we'll have to see.
However, Stafford and Sanchez did shine in many of the areas highly regarded by scouts and they have some skills in all areas, which of course made them rather in demand and thus expensive. Trying to build a franchise according to this model requires a succession of high draft picks or expensive free agency signings, and there isn't much room for error because of the cost of each area.
The alternative is to take a Moneyball-esque approach and target talented players who are undervalued, such as Harrell. Now, these players tend to be undervalued because they have significant flaws in the eyes of the typical NFL model. They usually aren't as versatile as you'd like and they won't be stars in a traditional NFL system. The advantage of this is they tend to make up for their flaws in other ways. To revert to the D&D example, it isn't a big problem for a wizard to not be the best hand-to-hand fighter thanks to their magical skills. The other benefit of these players is they tend to come at a considerably lower cost, making the price of failure much more acceptable.
What you then need to do is come up with a system that can utilize these players effectively. The classic example of this is legendary San Francisco head coach Bill Walsh's West Coast offence. Walsh started with a cast of players no one else was that excited about and made a key move when he drafted quarterback Joe Montana 82nd overall in 1979. Montana's resume to that point reads much like Harrell's; he had a great college career at Notre Dame, but was overlooked by most scouts thanks to his unexceptional arm strength. What he did have going for him was tremendous accuracy, which Walsh made great use of in a new offensive system that emphasized tons of quick and accurate short passes instead of the traditional strategy pounding the ground with bruising runs up the middle and then throwing bombs downfield. Under Montana and Steve Young, a quarterback in a very similar mould, the 49ers were one of the dominant teams of the 1980s and claimed five Super Bowls between 1981 and 1994.
That's not to say that the West Coast offence is the entire answer; in fact, it's been quite widely adopted since them and many NFL teams now use at least some elements of the strategy. The key is Walsh's overarching philosophy of finding players that were overlooked by other teams due to some weaknesses and then designing schemes to take advantage of their strengths. There's no divine commandment that mandates NFL teams to play a certain way, but most of them adopt similar strategies due to conservatism; you aren't often questioned if you follow the crowd.
It's largely the same in college ball, but some underdog teams and coaches are more willing to try unusual strategies. Mike Leach, Harrell's coach at Texas Tech, is one such unconventional thinker (and surprise, surprise, he's been profiled twice by Michael Lewis). Leach couldn't compete with the big schools like Texas and Oklahoma in recruiting in-demand, all-around athletes who fit the profiles everyone else was using, so he developed his own pass-wacky system using undervalued quarterbacks who were extremely accurate but didn't have much else going for them. Here's the money quote from Lewis' first profile of Leach:
"[Current Detroit Lions head coach Jim] Schwartz had an N.F.L. coach's perspective on talent, and from his point of view, the players Leach was using to rack up points and yards were no talent at all. None of them had been identified by N.F.L. scouts or even college recruiters as first-rate material. Coming out of high school, most of them had only one or two offers from midrange schools."
These aren't the all-around players used by most schools, but Leach found a way to mould them into a tremendously successful team. That suggests that there's more ways to win than traditionally thought by many football coaches and analysts. We're seeing this more in the NFL as well; look at the Dolphins' success with the Wildcat offence last year, which prompted them to draft Pat White this year. White's another quarterback who likely wouldn't have had much of a chance in the NFL in a traditional mould, but has a chance to shine in the Wildcat. Like White, Harrell isn't the perfect fit for the standard NFL offence, but that doesn't diminish his talent; all he needs is the right system to succeed. The NFL's too concerned with the arms race for all-around players at the moment and often overlooks those who don't quite meet its physical expectations. The question is if there's a Billy Beane or Mike Leach out there who can exploit that.
One final thought on Harrell; if he isn't able to catch on with an NFL team this year, might he come north of the border? CFL offences are already heavily pass-based, and some of the multiple receiver sets are pretty close to what Harrell was used to at Texas Tech. Plus, the CFL has a long and detailed history of innovation, so perhaps a Texas Tech-style offence is the next natural step. The CFL's also been an excellent proving ground for those overlooked by the NFL in the past, such as Doug Flutie and Warren Moon. Could Harrell be the next great quarterback to follow in their footsteps? We'll never know unless someone gives him a shot.
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