In 1992, Washington State’s Drew Bledsoe threw for 3,246 passing yards — third most in the country — and led the Cougars to a surprising 9-3 record and top-15 finish. His big arm and big-for-the-era numbers earned him the top spot in the 1993 NFL draft. It didn’t earn him the national title, though: that went to Alabama and its sensational defense. Bama quarterback Jay Barker (1,614 yards, 7 touchdowns, 9 interceptions) was primarily asked to stay out of the way and did so.
In 2003, NC State’s Philip Rivers recorded a 170.5 passer rating while throwing for 4,491 yards — the seventh- and fourth-best numbers ever, respectively, for a power conference quarterback. The Wolfpack went 8-5 with a Tangerine Bowl win, and Rivers was picked fourth in the 2004 draft. LSU, with head coach Nick Saban and eventual seventh-rounder Matt Mauck (2,825 yards, 148.2 passer rating), won the BCS championship.
It is part of college football lore: Offense pleases the eyeballs and earns the plaudits, and defense wins titles. Flashy quarterbacks might make it big in the pros, but game managers get rings.
Actually, that last paragraph should probably be in the past tense. Defense won championships, game managers got rings. It appears times have changed.
In the nearly four decades from 1965, when one-platoon football officially ceased to exist, to 2003, when Mauck helped Saban to his first title, only four quarterbacks both won a national title for their team and became a first-round draft pick, and it’s four only if you count the supplemental draft. Two-time Nebraska champ Jerry Tagge went 11th in the 1972 draft; Penn State’s Todd Blackledge went seventh in 1983; and the first two title-winning QBs at Miami, Bernie Kosar and Steve Walsh, went first in the 1985 and 1989 supplemental drafts.
As the principles of the spread offense began to dominate the sport, however, these percentages shifted quickly. From 2004 to 2015, five quarterbacks won titles and went in the first round: USC’s Matt Leinart, Texas’ Vince Young, Florida’s Tim Tebow, Auburn’s Cam Newton and Florida State’s Jameis Winston. Granted, Leinart and Winston played in what we then would have called pro-style offenses, but offensive firepower and college football power were beginning to align.
Over the past five seasons, that alignment seems to have become permanent.
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Clemson’s Deshaun Watson threw for 8,702 yards and 76 touchdowns in the 2015-16 seasons while leading the Tigers to two CFP finals appearances, losing the first and winning the second. He then went 12th in the 2017 draft.
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Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa came off the bench — replacing eventual second-rounder Jalen Hurts — to lead the Crimson Tide to a title-game comeback win over Georgia in 2017. Tagovailoa would nearly become the first quarterback to post a 200 passer rating in 2018 and would go fifth in the 2020 draft despite injury concerns.
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As a freshman, Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence led the Tigers to a blowout of Tagovailoa’s Tide in the 2018 title game on his way to a three-year career that featured 10,098 passing yards, 90 touchdowns, just two losses and the No. 1 selection in last month’s draft.
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LSU’s Joe Burrow erupted for 5,671 yards, 60 touchdowns and a 202.0 passer rating in 2019. The Tigers rolled to the national title — beating Tagovailoa’s Bama and Lawrence’s Clemson along the way — and, after easily winning the Heisman, Burrow went first in the 2020 draft.
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Alabama’s Mac Jones succeeded an injured Tagovailoa late in 2019, then topped Burrow by producing a 203.1 passer rating in 2020. He threw for 4,500 yards and 41 touchdowns in just 13 games, led the Tide on maybe their most dominant title campaign and went 15th in the 2021 draft.
Four times in 40 years, then five in 12, then five in five. It’s hard not to think of that as a trend.
Despite the decades-long assumption that the quarterback is the most important position in team sports, having a hotshot quarterback did not correlate as well as it should with winning big. Now it does. Let’s talk about why, and what it means for 2021.
Offenses are simply better and more quarterback-friendly
A year ago, even before Jones and Alabama had shown us the most optimized version of modern offense yet, I wrote about how the spread offense and its principles had officially conquered the sport. After percolating upward for decades — from the Iowa Wesleyans and East Centrals of the world to the Kentuckys, Purdues and Texas Techs and, now, the LSUs and Alabamas — it took over the sport to such a degree that many of the concepts can be found in the typical NFL offense. “Spread” has become “pro-style.”
Saban is a seven-time national champion and all-time defensive mastermind. A decade ago, he won back-to-back titles with defenses that allowed 8.2 and 10.9 points per game, respectively. In 2020, he won with an offense that averaged 48.5. His own reluctant acceptance of the game’s offensive modernization both helped him to continue dominating and furthered acceptance of said modernization. He didn’t necessarily like the changes, but he adapted.
One person who has had a unique vantage point for this adaptation: Greg McElroy, the starting quarterback for Saban’s first national title team at Alabama in 2009 and, for the past seven years, an ESPN college football analyst. “It’s night and day,” he says in regard to the offense Alabama ran in 2009 and what it ran in 2020. “It’s not even comparable. I had Julio Jones — he was incredible, probably the best that’s come through there — but if you wanted to put two guys on Julio, you could take him away.
“Julio was an X,” McElroy says — a receiver who lines up on the side of the field opposite the tight end and, for decades, a team’s commonly accepted No. 1 receiver. “That’s who Julio was. When we played LSU, Julio was getting [future All-Pro] Patrick Peterson. He wasn’t gonna get a favorable matchup. He was gonna have to win, and a lot of times he did.
“But the interchangeable nature of the wideouts the last couple of years has made the offense really challenging to defend because you can get matchups anywhere.”
The secret to Alabama’s offensive success in 2020 (at least beyond minor things like “have amazing personnel” and “have a quarterback who always makes the right read and delivers an extremely accurate pass”) was diversification. Heisman winner DeVonta Smith made 52% of his receptions on plays in which he had lined up wide and 43% when he was lined up in the slot. No. 2 receiver John Metchie III caught 51% from wide and 46% from the slot.
It was the same story at Florida. The Gators had two of the most versatile weapons in recent college football history in tight end Kyle Pitts and slot man Kadarius Toney and used them both in every possible way. Forty-four percent of Pitts’ receptions came on plays in which he was lined up inline like a traditional tight end, but 28% came from the slot and 28% came from wide. Toney made 66% of his catches from the slot but also 16% inline, 11% wide and 7% from the backfield.
“It wasn’t that we couldn’t have done that with Julio,” McElroy says, “we just didn’t, you know?” Now they do.
They also pass in more QB-friendly situations. Just as throwing when defenses can’t confidently blitz gave Josh Allen a massive shot in the arm at the pro level, it has made talented college quarterbacks even safer in the pocket and more likely to find the matchups they want.
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Alabama ran the ball 68% of the time on first down during its 2009 run with McElroy behind center; that was down to 53% in 2020.
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Clemson ran 68% of the time on first down during head coach Dabo Swinney’s first full year in charge and 49% with Lawrence running the show last year.
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LSU ran 71% of the time on first down as recently as 2017 but only 43% during 2019’s spectacular run.
If game-manager prototype Craig Krenzel was throwing a pass for Jim Tressel’s ultraconservative Ohio State offense in 2002, it was likely when the Buckeyes were behind the chains. Of the 22 passes he attempted in 2002’s national title game against Miami, only six were on first down, while six were on second-and-9+, nine were on third down (seven with 5+ yards to go) and one was on fourth-and-14. That he was asked to do this against Miami’s absurdly talented defense seems almost malicious, but the fact that Krenzel completed a 12-yarder on third-and-10, a 57-yarder on third-and-15 and a 17-yarder on the fourth-and-long in overtime helped the Buckeyes pull a classic upset.
When Mac Jones and Alabama played Ohio State in 2020’s national title game, 23 of his 49 dropbacks came on first down, and only nine came on third or fourth.
Defenses haven’t caught up yet (and might not)
The trend of good offenses passing more on standard downs and going further to create favorable matchups has made a defender’s life pretty difficult. The RPO has made it just about impossible. “Linebacker is probably the most fun defensive position to play,” McElroy says, “because you’re involved in every snap, and you’ve gotta read things out. If I had the physical ability, the position I’d be most intrigued by on that side of the ball would be middle linebacker.
“But with the RPO, you’re never right. It’s basically made it to where you can do everything right and still be wrong. It’s impossible. If the quarterback does the read properly, and they have halfway decent offensive personnel, you cannot be right.”
Saban said basically the same thing to the Louisiana Football Coaches Association in a Q&A session this spring. “RPOs create run-pass conflicts for just about everybody. You really can’t be as aggressive in run support on the perimeter as you used to be.” The fact that collegiate linemen can block 3 yards downfield on pass plays instead of 1 yard, as it is in the NFL — a rule that defensive coaches complain about more than anything else on the planet — means defenders have to hesitate before fully committing to run pursuit. That gives the run game extra space in which to operate. Meanwhile, an influx of talent at receiver has aided quarterbacks immensely.
The number of star receiver recruits has increased of late, because of developments in passing games at the high school level and because of the simple fact that blue-chippers who might have chosen the running back position or others — McElroy: “I think 10-15 years ago, Kyle Pitts would have been a pass-rushing defensive end” — in previous eras are now catching passes
“Three things can happen to you whenever you throw the football, and two of them are bad. You can catch the ball, you can throw it incomplete, or have it intercepted.” That Darrell K Royal quote is one of football’s oldest truisms. Whether he was truly the first one to say it remains unclear, but it’s safe to say that while offensive coaches lived by this ethos for quite a while, it has long since reached its expiration date.
“There were a lot of times last year when a guy would be breaking free and would have a sliver of room, and Mac [Jones] was able to, on so many different occasions, fit it in there,” McElroy says. “Most guys couldn’t and wouldn’t attempt that throw. When I was in school, it was always like, ‘Don’t even think about it. If it’s close, check it down.
“‘Interceptions and turnovers are catastrophic and you can’t come back from them.’ That’s not the message anymore. For a lot of schools, it’s like, ‘So be it. You’re gonna make some mistakes, but shoot your shot, man.’ I love that quarterbacks are getting empowered like that.”
Defense still matters, and if you have an ultra-disruptive lineman or a lot of guys who can hold their own in man coverage, then you can frustrate offenses. But if you aren’t empowering your quarterback, if you aren’t surrounding him with a loaded skill corps and if you aren’t capable of winning a 52-46 game at some point, then you probably aren’t winning the national title.
What this means for 2021
In a conversation with ESPN’s Chris Low last fall after Alabama’s 41-24 win over Georgia, Saban said, “It used to be if you had a good defense, other people weren’t going to score. You were always going to be in the game. I’m telling you. It ain’t that way anymore.” At some point or another, you have to be able to win in a track meet. To do that, you need massive offensive firepower.
Georgia head coach Kirby Smart, Saban’s longtime former defensive coordinator, had hired former Oklahoma State and NFL offensive coordinator Todd Monken as his OC before the 2020 season. It was an acknowledgment of the changing times and Smart’s attempt to land his own Joe Brady (the wunderkind who merged the RPO and pro-style worlds to great effect with LSU in 2019) or Steve Sarkisian (the coaching veteran who did the same, and then some, for Alabama in 2020), but we didn’t necessarily see the Monken offense in full effect last fall due to quarterback issues.
Incumbent Jake Fromm left early for the pros; presumptive starter Jamie Newman opted out; blue-chip transfer JT Daniels was recovering from a knee injury; and redshirt freshman D’Wan Mathis simply wasn’t ready. That left former walk-on Stetson Bennett to carry the reins, and he managed games well enough — with help from a strong run game and, per SP+, the best defense in the country — to lead the Dawgs to wins over Arkansas, Auburn, Tennessee and Kentucky. But they were outscored by a combined 85-52 against Alabama (No. 1 in offensive SP+) and Florida (No. 4).
With Georgia’s title hopes kaput and Daniels healthy and ready, Smart made a QB change. Daniels completed 67% of his passes and threw for more than 300 yards per game in the last four games of the season; Georgia’s scoring average increased by more than eight points per game; and the Dawgs won out to finish 8-2.
Perhaps more importantly than Daniels throwing well is that he was asked to throw a lot. He averaged 30 passes per game and hit 38 twice; in three years as Georgia’s starter, Fromm threw more than 30 passes just six times, and all six were in losses. Passing as a last resort is the modus operandi of a team that wants a game manager behind center, but Smart and Monken let Daniels cook. And while he wasn’t Jones or Burrow, he was close enough that it’s fair to wonder what he and Georgia might be capable of now that the rust has been knocked off.
If we’re living in a Death of the Game Manager era, what else can that say about 2021’s national title race?
For starters, it tells us that the race could be more open than in recent years. Although more teams than normal return their starting quarterbacks (and everything else) this season, last year’s three best teams — Alabama, Ohio State and Clemson, all of whom had QBs drafted in the 2021 first round — do not. Using Mark Schlabach’s post-spring power rankings and Todd McShay’s early 2022 NFL mock draft as our guides, we see that the teams with projected 2022 first-rounders are ranked first (Oklahoma), eighth (North Carolina), ninth (Cincinnati), 13th (USC) and unranked (Liberty).
To be sure, Alabama, Clemson and Ohio State are going to be just fine: The presumptive starters — Bryce Young for the Tide, D.J. Uiagalelei for the Tigers and C.J. Stroud, Jack Miller or Kyle McCord for the Buckeyes — are all recent blue-chippers who will likely be projected top picks in 2023 or later. But if there’s any learning curve whatsoever, and if these players aren’t quite ready to clear the ridiculously high bar set by Jones, Burrow, Lawrence, Tagovailoa and Watson in recent years, that could open the door for a new challenger.
Oklahoma is the most obvious candidate, but Georgia (No. 4 on Schlabach’s list) and Daniels could be ready; UNC, Cincinnati and USC all have high-end signal-callers; and No. 6 Iowa State and No. 11 Indiana both have particularly high-upside veterans of their own in Brock Purdy and Michael Penix Jr., respectively. If last year’s top teams are even slightly more vulnerable than normal, the quarterback position and its increasing importance could make 2021’s title race a little weirder and more exciting than it has been of late.