The Ringer NFL Show - Why Mobility Is the Future of NFL Quarterbacking

Episode Date: June 23, 2023

Ben and Steven continue their offseason deep dive into some of the biggest questions around the league. This week, they explore the rise of dual-threat quarterbacks like Jalen Hurts, Lamar Jackson, and Josh Allen. They look at the increase in QB scrambles over the years (03:51), the different tiers of quarterback mobility (17:53), whether pocket passers are becoming less and less valuable (35:40), and how seriously they must factor in injury risks (53:49). Hosts: Ben Solak and Steven Ruiz Producer: Eduardo Ocampo Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal and Conor Nevins Musical Elements: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Missa Kwanga and I'm Ryan Hunt and we co-host Stadio, a football podcast, on the Ringar Podcast Network. Twice a week, Musa and I talk about the goings on in men's and women's football around Europe and sometimes around the world. We like to zoom in, we like to zoom out, we like to make some silly references.

So if you like soccer or football, make sure you search for Stadio, a football podcast on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Think we got it? Yep, that's good. Howdy. I'm Ben Solac and this is The Ringer NFL show. joined today by the illustrious Stephen Ruiz.

Steven say hi to the people. Hello, people. And today, our big question is about quarterback mobility. Weekly NFL watchers will know just by intuition that more quarterbacks are running than ever before. Heck, more quarterbacks are called running quarterbacks or dual threat quarterbacks than ever before. But how did this happen? And more importantly, why did this happen? And more, more importantly, is this going to keep happening?

Today on the ringer NFL show, why the future of NFL quarterbacking is all about mobility. Steven, exciting pod today, fun pod, cool topic. But before we begin, I ended last week's episode, which if you haven't listened, was about how there's so many talented receivers in the league and why it's challenging to rank all of them. I ended last week's episode. And a call for reviews said, hey, we're doing this new show here. Curious what you think.

Tell our bosses if you like it. And we got some, some good ones. And then we also got a review from firstsportz.com. headline Stephen Ruiz snubs in all caps Bengals Jamar Chase by ranking him

outside NFL's top five wide receivers firstly how dare you secondly I also ranked him outside the top five I didn't even get

in the headline I mentioned like fourth paragraph I'm in my shadow buddy sorry the Bengals the Bengals fans know who they are after it is Stephen Ruiz man they don't just shove

Benson like off to the side this is our target this is our guy the article goes on to say Justin Jefferson deserves to get ranked above him and so is Devante Adams and then Tyreek Hill and AJ Brown

and Guber Cup are also in the top five which yeah and then I had Chase 6 and you had Chase 7 but yeah what do you have to say for yourself? I also had T. Higgins 8th like I had two Bengals and the headline is Stephen Ruiz snubs bangles like I didn't snub the Bengals if anyone did it was Ben

and then second of all just bad headline SEO no no no no no no no My name. It snubs Bengals with a possessive within a apostrophe. You snub Bengals Jamar Chase. That's who you, the Jamar Chase who plays for the Bengals. Well, I'm sorry, Jamar Chase. I mean, you should know,

Jamar Chase, if anyone understands how easy it is to be perceived as snubbing a great player, it's Jamar Chase this week because he did the same thing with Patrick Mahal. That's very true. After Joe Burrough said, you know, the best quarterback in the league is Pat. And Jamar Chase is like, I've never heard of him. Yeah, as we brought up on that show, I think there's about, I think if we had chosen to put Cooper Cup

outside of the top five, I think the Rams team blogs would have written about it. I think if we chose Benadio Brown outside of the top five, I think the Eagles team blogs would have written about it. And I think that's the nature of star receivers. It's just you continue to poke the bear

when it comes to Bengals fans, man. Not welcome in Metropolitan Cincinnati is Stephen Ruiz. No, no, I'm not. All right. Enough of the headline mongering, though. if you want to keep writing headlines about bad take Stephen has on the spot, I'll keep bringing them up at the top.

I find it delightful. As we said in the beginning, this is about quarterbacking mobility. And unlike, like, we talked about, like, play action and kind of how, you know, okay, like, what does it do? What doesn't it do? I think play action, I have a pretty good thumb on the pulse of, like, this is where it works, this is where it doesn't work, and this is how it operates. And, like, this is kind of the water's edge when it comes to the advantage is given by it.

But quarterback mobility, I feel a lot muddier. And I'm curious to hear what you think about all this. But when I get into the quarterback mobility numbers, I'm kind of like, okay, is this just the greatest thing ever and it will be for forever? Like, I struggle to find some of the limiting factors and how it fits into a larger puzzle of NFL offenses. But let's start with the basics, which is that mobility is going up. Quarterback run is going up.

In every year since 2018, last five seasons, at least 4% of all quarterback dropbacks, every single dropback, first string, second string, third string, doesn't. matter. At least 4% of all quarterbacks are dropbacks have been scrambles. That's one out of every 25, which, like, there are games or guys are dropping back 50, 60 times, right? This is not an insignificant number. No years before 2018, we're above 4%. Now every single year is above 4%. Scramble Raceramble rates this past season, we're at 4.6%, which is practically doubled that of what it was 20 years ago, 2.4%. Not only are quarterbacks scrambling more, but more quarterbacks are scrambling at really high rates. So it's not just to say that like the water level is rising.

It's also the water level is rising and the top is also shooting up as well, right? Like the highest rates are going up as well. From 2003 to 2012, the average season had six and six point five quarterbacks with a scramble rate over five percent, among quarterbacks actually started a bunch of games. From 2013 to 2022, the next decade, there were 11 quarterbacks with a scramble rate over five percent, almost double. So Stephen, if scrambling is clearly and emphatically going up. I want to know why. We're seeing this happen so much. Is it a function of just better athletes playing the quarterback position? Is it a function of kind of college schemes and NFL schemes overlapping something we've talked about before in the show? Is this a response to something

defenses are doing? Is it an amalgamation of the three? Why are scramble rates going up so much? I mean, I think one of the like major themes so far throughout all of these episodes is that everything in football is like interconnected. It's hard to just isolate one phenomenon. like mobility are scrambling going up and figuring out why that is. I think it, like you said, it's everything combined. It's not just the fact that quarterbacks are getting more athletic, although that's probably the most significant part of it. But I think a lot of it might be how offenses work now,

and especially like how the passing game works, where we're getting more receivers out into the route, which means there are fewer defenders around the pocket, which means there are more, there are clearer exit routes outside of the pocket. I think it's easier to get outside of the pocket. And then once you do, I think teams are playing more man coverage. They're playing more like match concepts where it's not true zone,

where they end up playing man-to-man coverage after the routes kind of distribute themselves. And when that happens, like defenders are turning their backs to the pocket. So not only is it easier to get outside the pocket because there are fewer bodies around, but once you do, I think there's more space to exploit. So I think it's a reaction to not only more athleticism, but also how the game has kind of evolved in terms of X's and O's. Yeah, I think it, I think starting and defining that idea of like scrambling is easier against man than it is against zone is always important, right? Like, I shouldn't even say easier.

It's just like a scramble is going to get more bang for your buck against man than against zone because in zone coverage, you have seven sets of defensive eyes on the quarterback, at least seven, right, in terms of the guys that are dropping. And man covers that numbers way lower. Like the deep safety might be able to see him. A corner in cover three might be able to see him, but the number's lower. And the guys that are seeing him are way further downfield. And so just in general, scrambling against man is better than scrambling against zone. And so I think that's an important part of the defensive responses as well. Certainly quarterback athleticism, I think is a big part of it.

Like just every position is getting more athletic, right? Like I wrote about this coming off of the combine this past year where it's like, we had four positions set a record for 40 yard dashes. It's like, yeah, we're kind of doing that every year at this point. You know what I'm saying? Like everybody's just so fast, so big, so explosive. And so I think that's certainly an aspect of it. But the thing that resonates with me as the most impactful change, especially if you

look at the last like 10 years, right? We're like 2012, 2013 is really when these numbers started to bounce up. And you see like Colin Kaepernick and you see Russell Wilson, you see Alex Smith, you see Tyrod Taylor, like these guys really start to to lift the numbers in terms of scrambling. Cam Newton obviously as well. You see an acceptance of NFL offensive minds. to change the way that they approach offense and critically, like, change the way they think about

quarterback processes, quarterback pedagogy. Like, how are you teaching the quarterback to go through his process? How are you teaching the quarterback to make decisions? What are you prioritizing? What are you highlighting? What are you allowing? What are you disallowing? When I see scramble numbers going way up,

I ask myself, what is that replacing? Like, okay, if quarterbacks are scrambling twice as much as they were 20 years ago, what are they doing half as much as they were doing 20 years ago? and there's no way to find this in a neat and tidy number, but my answer would be like getting to the third read, getting to the checkdown, right? Like, I, you know, this is a different pod,

but I generally don't believe of like pure progression, passing. I don't think it actually exists, like one to two to three. I don't think that's real. Like, I don't think any quarterback actually really goes like, bang the post, bang the crossroads, bang the backside day. Like, it's never that binary. It's never that linear. But in general, I think when you look at like the 2000s of quarterbacking, the early 2010s,

you're seeing the heyday of the traditional West Coast offense. You're seeing the prime of just pocket passers sitting back there. And the best sort of play that they could execute was looking to the post, seeing it covered, looking to the crosser, seeing it covered, looking to the backside dig, seeing it crossword and then, or seeing it covered, excuse me, and then finding the running back out of the backfield, dumping it off to him. and he bigs up four yards and it's second and six. And the reason why I say that was the best possible play is because that's what Mike Martz

and what's Seanheimer's dad's name. I can't remember Marty. Marty. Yeah, that's what the purveyors of this West Coast system were sitting and saying like, this is the way, like this is perfect. This is what we want you to be doing. And yeah, you end up at second and six. And it's Philip Rivers quickly getting that ball out to the back, four yards behind

the line of scrimmage and letting him catch you and letting him run. But now we say, okay, we can still get to second and six with the quarterback running the ball. Like if the quarterback leaves the pocket and breaks a tackle and he scrambles for four yards, we're still getting to second and six. But now we've allowed him to sit on the first read longer. We've allowed him to sit on the second read longer. We've allowed him to break the pocket and try to create a play outside of structure, right? Create a throw outside of the design of the play.

We're allowed to push our players all the way further downfield because we don't need to use this little back and control the flat defender and spacing and put five in the concept and have an underneath curl and have a hook and read the progression. We don't need to do that anymore. We can just send some guys deep, send some guys intermediate. And if they aren't open, the quarterback can be the checkdown for us. And so, like, if I were to argue what's being replaced when that quarterback scramble rate doubles, I think it's like the checkdown stuff. And it's not just like running back targets, not just behind a scrimmage targets, but it's just the general idea of getting to the third read, getting to the fourth read, that we just don't waste our time.

on it as much anymore. We don't value it as much anymore because the quarterback's legs can replace it for us for free. Yeah. And you also have to throw like sacks in there. Like they're replacing sacks. But sometimes that's what makes it so hard to kind of gauge the efficiency of scrambles. Because not every scramble attempt ends up being a scramble if that makes sense. Like guys try to leave the pocket. They're trying to scramble, but they get sacked before or for whatever reason. Maybe they have to throw it away. Maybe they have to throw the ball. And that's why it gets hard. to put this into context because when you just look at scrambles, so these are plays where the quarterback crossed the line of scrimmage with the ball on a dropback,

they average 0.49 EPA per play, which is like Patrick Mahomes's best games of the year. It's half of a point per play. So think about if a quarterback scrambles on first and 10, and then he scrambles on second and eight, and then the scoreboard goes from they have zero points to they have one point. Like that's what's happening on a scramble if you look at expected points out of, which is bananas.

Yeah. And so I feel like you have to add in the out of pocket and the sacks to kind of get the full breadth of like how well the quarterback is performing when they're scrambling. And when you do that, the scramble numbers go down significantly. Like when you mean by what do you mean by look at like the out of pocket? Yeah. So dropbacks at end outside of the pocket, but not with a throw. And I'm not including play action here because there are a lot of boots. And when you take out, like, play action accounts for 50% of dropbacks that end outside of the pocket because there are a lot of bootlegs.

Like, that's designed. So I took those out just to get the plays that weren't designed to get outside of the pocket that did. So when you combine those with scrambles, you drop from averaging 0.49 per play on scrambles to 0.06 per play. So I think that that kind of makes it easier to suss out who are the good scramblers and who are the bad scramblers. because even like Kirk Cousins, if he gets outside of the pocket and scrambles, he usually picks up a lot of yards because it's a,

I guess it's a survivor bias type of thing where he's only going to do it if there's a lot of room, so he's always going to average a lot. But when you do that, now you start to see, like, who are the real statute of quarterbacks? And when you sort the league out,

last place on EPA, on those plays, is obvious. It's Tom Brady. It's a 46-year-old man who can't move. That it's mad. Tom is just, yeah, Tom is just last in expected points out of her scramble. by like a country mile

no matter how you measure it. Like if you just look at scrambles on any given play, like you're not filtering at all. Second worst is Jimmy. Nice. Negative 0.33. Last worst is Tom.

Negative 1.39. It's the difference of my whole expected point. One point on the scoreboard. Tom is that much worse than Jimmy at scrambling. But then there are like surprising outcomes. Like Jalen Hertz, for instance. He lost the most EPA on dropbacks

that ended outside of the pocket without a throw. And then you look at his scrambling EPA and he's one of the best. But when you combine them, he's like right smack dab in the middle. So it's kind of hard to evaluate these guys. Slow down and break that down for me on Jalen Hertz. So we're saying on dropbacks at the end where Hertz is outside of the pocket and he didn't attempt to throw. Yes. End up being like an extremely poor quarterback.

The worst in the league. The worst in the league. Min is 34 EPA. So the net value of his scrambles. and so the positive impact of a scrambles does not weigh up to the negative impact of the sacks that he takes and the throwaways he takes

is that kind of what we're looking at or like what? Yeah, that's what we're, that's, you're slightly wrong where it slightly outweighs it. So he's like, when you put it all together,

total EPA, he's 0.003 when you combine all the plays. So it's right, it's like league average. Yeah. So when you were, so when you're watching Jalen Hertz then, you're like,

the thing that you're kind of looking for and seeing is like, all right, let's watch this guy play and let's see when he scrambles. And if he's scrambling from the pocket, it's typically, okay, he's got a ton of space. There's a gap between the tackle and the guard. You know, the pass rush got too far up to field and he can just step up and go. As opposed to when you're watching him scramble, he's outside of the pocket, you're going, okay, he's usually doing this like four seconds into the snap, five seconds into the snap.

And the defense by this point knows they've got the pass, the routes covered up. They know they have the receivers covered up. And now they're coming and pursuing hard into Jalen Hertz. Is that kind of the sensation you're seeing? I do think that's the case because I think that Jalen Hertz, and this is not like a dig at Jalen Hertz. I'm actually getting to a larger point where I think people kind of misunderstand Jalen Hertz's rushing value. He's a downhill runner. Like he's a legit, I'm not going to say he's a running back, but he has legit running skills like a running back.

And when you add in, now you add in quarterback design runs. And now he's at the top of the league again, even when you factor in those other plays that I said we're dragging down his EPA. So I think there are. tiers to quarterback mobility and that's like the next step and how we analyze these guys. There are the real focal points of a run game like design runs, option plays,

zone read all that good stuff. Then there are the scramblers who, like Joe Burrough is a good example, who is not the best athlete, but he's very smart. He knows when to get outside the pocket. Whenever he scrambles, it usually results in a good play. And then there are the guys that kind of mix those two. And those are the guys where you really see the value out of that

mobility. And then there are the guys that don't fit into either of those buckets. And I think those are the quarterbacks when we talk about, when we have these conversations about the evolution of the position and like, oh, is the pocket passer going extinct, so to speak?

I think that's the proof that they kind of are. Like, there's so much efficiency to be had with scrambles and design quarterback runs that you're just not getting out of even traditional passplades. All right. So yeah, let's take a break. And then when we come back,

I want to ask Stephen about these tiers of quarterbacking, trying to get into the nitty-gritty of how we should understand quarterback mobility in these different buckets. But first, advertisements. Okay. We're like 15 minutes in and we're already off my outline, but you're saying stuff that's very interesting to me. So now we're off autopilot.

We're driving on the open road. I, like, one of the big questions that I have coming into this is kind of trying to understand, like, okay, not like if I'm build a bearing a quarterback, where I just get to pick what I do on the mat and sliders. But if I'm just like generally looking at like the draft class that comes out or the available glut of like free agent quarterbacks, like what level of mobility should I be looking for? What level of scrambling should I be looking for?

Is it a floor thing? Is it a ceiling thing like what are we talking about here? So it seems like you're barking up that tree in terms of these tiers. When you think about quarterback mobility, how should we divide guys? How should we understand guys? What label should we give them? And then how should we value those dudes as they fit into those buckets?

I think, well, there are four types of quarterback plays that can happen in a game. There are plays that end with an attempt, a pass attempt. There are plays that end with a sack. There are plays that end with a scramble, and then there are designed runs. There are four types. The plays that end with an attempt, average 0.09 EPA. So pretty good, not like explosive, not great plays. Plays that ended with the sack are minus 1.6.

Horrible plays. sack, a drive that has a sack is three times as likely to end in a punt than a drive without a sack. Sacks are like, we should do a pot on sacks at some point. If you sack quarterback, you win. Like it's just, it's the best play for defense ever. Yeah. And then Scramble plays average, I've already said this,

0.49 EPA. So it's like five times the amount you get from a pass attempt. Call runs are 0.24 EPA. So like those are, those outweigh passing attempts, traditional passing attempts. But like double, you get double the EPA on call runs. and then five times the EPA on scramble. So it's just something that we can't ignore.

And I think this is where the conversation, I'm going to get to how you bucket these quarterbacks. But I think that's how you use stats to kind of bucket them. You look at how quarterbacks are gaining their EPA and how they're losing their EPA. And like quarterbacks like Jalen Hertz gain their EPA on called runs. And then like a quarterback like Joe Burrow who, I think we've talked about this and he's kind of sharpened his game

over the last year, but he was a quarterback that relied on explosive plays early on and that kind of outweighed the sacks, but it also dragged down his EPA a little bit.

But he made up for it because he's such a good scrambler and that like rose lifted him back into the top 10 in terms of efficiency. So I think this is how you bucket him. You have the,

like I said, you have the focal points of the run game, the guys that you can call design runs with and obviously when they drop back if there's a lane, they can take it

and they can scramble and pick up a bunch of yards. So that you have the guy. Marr, that's Jalen Hertz. Who else would you put in that bucket? Josh Allen, you could put in there. Justin Fields, of course. He's probably the best example.

Dana Jones. And then they're the quarterbacks that sometimes they get used on like option plays like Trevor Lawrence does every now and then, but it's not part of the offense. But they can scramble and they can make plays outside of the pocket. I think that's another group. And then you have the- Who's in group group?

Who's in group two for you, the occasional option? To me, that sounds like Patrick Mahomes, Are you putting Herbert there? Yeah, I'm definitely putting Herbert there. Where are you putting Kyler? Because Kyler, like, he's... Kyler's in that first group for me. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. I do think the Cardinals use him as, as it's like a runner. Or they did with Cliff. I don't know what's going to happen going forward. But yeah, that's like kind of... That's the bucket. And then every... And then there are...

I would say there are guys that can kind of get outside of the bucket, but that's not something you're, like, relying on them to do. Like, even like a Dak Prescott at this point in his career. I feel like he started out as a quarterback that you could use on like option plays, but now at this point he's barely leaving the pocket. And I think that's where I would put him. And then you have the Tom Brady's, the Jared Goffs, the Jimmy G's, and all the guys that just don't move. They refuse to get outside the pocket. Yeah. So I think those are the four types. And my theory, which I think we're going to get into, is that I would not draft any quarterback

from that last bucket in the first round, or maybe even the second round. Okay. So I'm looking right now just pure scramble percentage from last year. How often the guy scrambled? That's the whole metric. And leaders in the league are Justin Fields, Daniel Jones, Josh Allen, Jalen, Jalen, Hurts. That's one through four. Lamar Jackson is six because Marcus Mario da's five.

Those are the guys that you named for that first group, right? That's like we are the focal point of the running game, right? Like we can be designed in a quarterback run game. Those guys also tend to be the highest scramble rate quarterbacks, which makes sense to me, right? Like if you're just, if your brain is coded as a quarterback to be like, I'm part of the running game, just on like a Monday to Saturday perspective.

You're part of the game plan. Then when the bullets are live on Sunday and you have the opportunity to run, you're going to go, okay, I can do this, right? Like this is part of my game and I'm good at it and whatever. That second group you brought up, you mentioned a Patrick Mahomes who, right, he's seventh there in terms of scramble rate. And then there's an interesting group of guys.

Like, Kenny Pickett is eighth in terms of overall scramble rate in the league this year, which I think a lot of people would not know. I certainly looked through that and I was like, eh, Kenneth, let's go. Scambling on 6.3% of his drop. And Pickett's a really interesting pause, I think, in this conversation, a point to Dither on for a second, where you talked about how, okay, I would never draft a quarterback in that fourth group of guys in the first round. I would never draft the pocket statues. One of the most fascinating things about Kenny Pickett's pre-draft process was how everybody loved him as a processor. Everybody was like, look at him, reads, look at him, process. And he put him in the film, you're like, he's not doing that. He wasn't like, he was kind of, he was getting billed at times as, okay, this guy, you know, he can read the field and he can go through reads and whatever,

but the best plays that he was making were plays that were based off his physical talent. It was based off his mobility and then his arm talent. Those were his, like, most translatable, high-quality, high-tier plays. And that was one of the reasons that I was low on Fickett coming out is because I was like, this guy relies on athleticism so much. And I don't think he's going to walk into the NFL

and be that great of an athlete. Like, I don't think he's going to necessarily measure up to the rest of the guys. Well, Fickett performed better last year than I thought he was. I'm not going to go ahead and say pig, it was incredible or anything. I'm not expecting, like, a massive year-two jump or something, but he was more functional than I thought he'd be. And a big part of it was because it doesn't really matter that he's, like,

not that crazy good of an athlete. Like, just the choosing to scramble, the choosing to run, the decision to not be in tier four, to not be in pocket statute tier, but to instead be in tier two of like, this guy will run the football when he give him a chance. Like, that just raised his floor so much. And that's where, like, when we talk about the magic of,

of scrambling. We talk about why quarterback mobility matters so much. Guys like Daniel Jones and Kenny Picker are the guys who come to mind, not Lamar Jackson's, not Justin Fields and Jalen Hertz's. It's these dudes who like, Daniel Jones, Daniel Jones's scramble rate every single season was 5.3%,

4.9%, 5.1%. And then this year was 9.9%. He doubled how often he scrambled. His yard yards per attempt went down. His explosive play rate went down. But EPA jumped and success rate jumped. Why? he's just scrambling more.

He's just willing, he is changing what tier of quarterback he is in. He's changing what behavior he has in terms of tucking and running. And that's where there's so much meat on the bone right now in the league. It's just choose to be one of those guys. Choose to be a dude who's willing to tuck them and run the ball, 5%, 6% of your dropbacks. And you're going to find first downs and find stick moving plays and find sack avoiding plays that other guys who aren't making these choices, they can't find those. plays. I take issue with one part of that. Okay. The fact that you said don't include Justin

Fields in that group, I think you have to include Justin Fields in that group, because the reason why he is viable is because he scrambles so much. If you take out his scrambling, that's fair. He's like maybe one of the last year, it was one of the worst passing performances we've ever seen. It was on part with like Josh Rosen when you take out his scrambling. But he's a scrambler, so you don't take that out. I think the conversation, about like the shelf life of the pocket pastor and whether those guys can still be elite. I think that's something that we should go to next because I think it's very important in this discussion that we point out that I'm having a hard time articulating this,

but I feel like there's this idea that people who think that the pocket passer is extinct like me who wouldn't draft them in the first round, they ignore examples like Tom Brady. that would be the main defense against what I'm saying is like oh Tom Brady's still doing it like he was 45 years old and he was one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL but I think Tom Brady was like a perfect test case

especially last year we had a literal 45 year old man playing quarterback he could not move and then he had all the arm strength it wasn't like Tom Brady was lacking the physical talent to throw the football he just couldn't move and obviously he's Tom Brady so he was the smartest quarterback in the NFL

last year so we had this test case where he's like the perfect quarterback in terms of like throwing and thinking but he can't move and what he turned out to be was a league average quarterback in terms of like individual statistics he was EPA I think he was like 14 15th and then you go back to two years before that and that's kind of like the counter evidence because Tom Brady was one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL but what was the difference between those two years and last year for Tom Brady in your in your opinion his performance the offensive line play? Yeah, the supporting cast.

In those first two years, he had maybe one of the best supporting cast in the league, maybe like a top five offensive line, a top five receiving court in both of those years, and Tom Brady performed like a top five quarterback. Last year, he has a mid-to-bad supporting cast, and he was at a league average quarterback. Now you go back to 2019, and I think this is the point people forget, is like, Tom Brady was not a good quarterback in 2019 for the Patriots. That offense around him was terrible.

He didn't have a good offense line. he had a bad receiving court, and Tom Brady was around league average in EPA. So when you look at the last four years of Tom Brady, when he hasn't been able to move, but he still had an arm, he still had his mind. When he's had a league average supporting cast, he's put up league average numbers. When he's had a top supporting cast in the NFL, he's put up top numbers. And I think that's the case with all of the quarterbacks that don't move now. You can say the same thing about Jericho.

Like, he's a product of what's around him. You can say the same thing about Jimmy T. He's a product of what's around him. And I think that's the difference between what we expect out of the league quarterbacks now and maybe what the prototypical pocket passing archetype can provide you now. They're not guys who can elevate your offense. And there's no example of that really happening across the league right now. Where does, I'm just curious before I kind of give like a big theory respond,

where does Aaron Rogers fall into this conversation for you? Because in terms of how often Roger scrambles, 2.2% of the time, right? Just not, he's one of the lowest in the league. He's super old. He's obviously always had some mobility, but he's never been, you know, the most frequent tuck-and-run guy. If you look at whose scrambles in the league were most effective, Rogers is better than everybody. Better than Fields, better than Allen, better than Mahomes, better than Hertz, better than anybody you want to talk about. Rogers is the best scrambler.

And so honestly, like, when I watch Rogers, when I see Rogers, I see a guy who goes, all right, I'm fast enough to get four yards. Whenever it's third and two, I will use this. Whenever it is first in ten, I refuse to use this. I'm so gifted throwing the football that I'm just going to try to find an opportunity to push it down the field and try to get more than second and seven, second and six. So where does Rogers fall for you in terms of like this Brady paradigm of an aging quarterback who like physically probably can't operate outside of the pocket the way these younger guys can?

I think it's tougher without seeing this year to, It's because last year, Rogers was hurt, and his scrambling rate and his out of pocket throw rate went way down. I think that was the big difference outside of losing Devonte. I think the big difference between his performance was the willingness to get outside of the pocket. Because when he did, he was one of the better quarterbacks. When you combine scrambles and out-of-pocket throws or out-of-pocket dropbacks, he was seventh in the league in total EPA. Behind Daniel Jones, Justin Herbert, Joe Burrow, Patrick Holmes, Justin Fields, and Josh Allen. So he still can do it.

There you go. I think last year he was kind of banged up. He had some injuries that he played through. And we just saw he just didn't want to do it. He didn't want to put his body on the line. Now, will that continue because he's an older gentleman? I don't know. Or maybe he'll go back to pre-2020 when he wasn't, if he's healthy, and start scrambling again.

Or start getting outside the pocketboard at least. Yeah. The other thing about the continued survival of the pocket passer, The endurance of the pocket passer to me is this. We talked about this a little bit when we talked about some of the play action guys, like Kirk and Goff and Jimmy in particular. All right.

Kirk, Jimmy Goff, these guys are pocket guys. These are not scrambling guys. Kirk gets out of the pocket every so often and does something for you. Like Baker when he was in Cleveland, it was kind of like, oh, Baker's so good at scrambling. It was like, no, Baker's just on a lot of play action passes and bootlegs. And then because he's booting,

he just will cross the line of scrimmage and make it into a scramble. So, like, these dudes don't really fin to our paradigm of guys you can create with their legs. they operate from the pocket. However, Kirch been playing for almost a decade now, right? Like, he's been starting for almost a decade.

Golf is just a little bit behind him, and Jimmy's obviously been starting for like six, seven years now at this point. There comes a point where you've played the position for long enough, and you've taken enough snaps and enough starts, that you're just flat good at what you do. You hit escape velocity, right? Talking about, like, a rocket ship leaving the atmosphere. Once you get fast enough to break Earth's gravity, you're just going.

You're just moving now. You're just floating in space. These pocket passers have gone to play for long enough such that they just know the way around the issues presented to them by not scrambling. They know when to actually talk and run and die for it and they know how to quickly throw the ball away or dump it to a checkdown when they're half paying attention.

Like there comes a point where if you're just so experienced playing in the NFL level within whatever your style is, scramble or not scramble mobility or no mobility, you can just hang, right? You can just be solid. You can just be good. And so when we say, like, I think if you say like,

oh, the future of NFL quarterbacking is mobility, it's scrambling. And somebody responds with, what about Kirk? What about Jimmy? What about golf?

What about like, like, trying to think if there's anybody else really, like you throw Brady in there, right? You kind of, the response is kind of like, well, yeah, they got five years to figure it out,

six, seven years to figure it out before we're talking about it within this year, within this paradigm. And like, the fact they were able to hold onto those jobs, whether because of schematic help or because, you know, other quarterbacks couldn't supplant them.

Like, it's not really like golf actually held onto his job. Kirk also changed teams, you know what I'm saying? You don't see the star quarterbacks change teams. And these guys moved teams. They've been able to play for long enough that they have a functional way of working. They've just figured out the riddle. They figured out the path through the maze. Even if they don't have the tools that I think you would ideally see in a rookie quarterback,

a highly drafted quarterback, and then like a five, 10 plus year starter. They're just around at this point. They're just hanging around. And beyond that, the point I was trying to illustrate with Brady is that they are more susceptible to what's around them. Their production and their performance is more influenced by what's around them, whereas I think these other quarterbacks have a bigger margin for error. Like, they don't need...

Like, with Patrick Mahomes, we saw it last year. And Patrick Mahomes isn't some... Isn't Lamar Jackson. He's not Josh Allen even in terms of a runner. But that mobility and his ability to get outside the pocket... This is the craziest step that I came from. cross while researching the spot. The average sack rate when a quarterback leaves the pocket without play action is 10%.

Boy. Yeah, 10%. Patrick Boholm's sack rate was like 0.3% outside of the pocket. He is a fake quarterback. Like everyone else was up like over 4% and he's just a 0.3%. He's always, he gets a throw off 99.7% of the time where he scrambles. It's an insane stat. But I think that this is the best analogy I can come up with.

in terms of like why I think quarterbacks need mobility going forward. And I'm going to use AI as an example. Like if you, there's like this moral panic about AI is like, oh, it's going to replace like human workers. It's going to replace humans. And there's like pushback against it because of that. But if you read like any of the experts and any of the studies about it, it's like, no, they're not going to supplant humans.

Like humans are just going to learn to use it with their job. And the ones that don't use AI are the ones that are going to fall behind. The ones that do are just going to get better at their job. and I think that's what quarterback mobility is. It's like a human worker utilizing AI and making themselves better. If you don't have it, you're going to fall behind. And I think that's what's happening

with the Tom Brady's and the Jared Toph-Types. And now you're in a spot where if you have one of those guys and he's your starting quarterback and you're paying him, you better put a good team around him or you're not going to win a lot of games. Yeah. All right.

I think I want to push back a little bit on the schematic flexibility of pocket passing quarterbacks, but I want to do it after these advertisements. Okay, so here's my situation. Here's my problem. You and I, okay, every season, we like to watch,

we like to watch us in Trevor Lawrence, and we like to watch us in Dak Prescott, and we like to watch us some Justin Herbert, which are guys who all three of them can get out of the pocket and do something, but largely don't, right? Dak foot injury kind of changes things a little bit, but, like, Herbert only scrambled all over. 3% of his dropbacks.

Lawrence only scrambled on 4% of his dropbacks, which is like league average and below league average. And one of the reasons why you and I love these dudes is because they sit back there in the pocket and they just grip it and rip it. And they have the ability to execute just about any passing concept you can find because of how quickly they process

because of what their armed talent allows them to access. One of the reasons why we got so frustrated with Justin Herbert's offensive coordinator, Joe Lombardi, season is because he runs such simple underneath stuff for such a gifted passer in the pocket. One of the reasons why we really believe Trevor Lawrence was going to take a big step forward year one to year two is because there are clips of him ripping 20-yard seam balls against single high safeties that you just don't see other cats do. The processing and armed talent and accuracy from the pocket was reminiscent of that 2000s era I brought up of when that West Coast heyday was coming

and it was Rivers and it was Eli and it was Peyton and it was Braden. It was Rothersberger just sitting in the pocket and just chopping it up, right? Just a beautiful example of passing from the pocket and executing the offense. I see that, and then I see the offenses run by the Eagles trying to make Daniel Hertz work, the Bears trying to make Justin Fields work, the Giants trying to make Daniel Jones work, the Falcons trying to make Marcus Mariotto work last season. And I look at those and I say, okay, if you are really going to sell out for quarterback mobility, you kind of have to paint yourself into a corner of what you do.

You have to live in the gun in a lot of instances. If you're going to fully involve the quarterback in the running game in terms of running option stuff, in the case of like the Eagles and the Lamarera Ravens, you kind of have to live in like a spread world too, right? Like you can try to go heavy personnel, but you still have to live in this world where you're putting a lot of bodies up in the line of scrimmage.

Or you go like the Mario de Fields route. You have to live in like a heavy personnel world. You have to live in a condensed world. You don't have the ability to kind of switch your colors. You don't have the ability to kind of like change your stripes here in terms of the sort of offense that you run. And your past concepts, and this I think is the big one, become really simple, right?

Washington at Eagles pass the game last year, like they run four things, man. They run them unbelievably well, and they constantly call the right one. And Shane Stuygens has a great job hiding it. But they run the same RPO over and over again. The Falcons run the same play action over and over again. The Bears run the same four West Coast play action concepts,

over and over and over again. When you want to build the ship around quarterback run, you start to limit the variety of your passing game, as opposed to some of these elite pocket passing quarterbacks who can still run, they absolutely can, where you can just, I mean, like the best DAC games, man, the best Herbert games, the best Lawrence games? Like, well, the Lawrence Ravens game, right?

Like, these, this is truly an example of like an, an, unstoppable passing attack. This argument, I acknowledge, is largely, like, aesthetic, right? Because we're talking about, like, you know, Dack and Lawrence and Herbert, but these are guys who, to some degree over the last couple years, have underperformed expectations, right? Guys who haven't had necessarily the dynamic and dominant offenses that we were hoping for. Whereas, like, Jaylor Hurts just walks in and just like,

or I run the football, I have QB sneak baby. We're third an EPA per play. We're going to the Super Bowl. So, like, this is like, this is an aesthetic conversation. but I'm not sure that players with running ability don't limit their offenses more than players who have the ability to operate from the pocket. Right, you've got to be able to do both, right?

And I feel like those are the elite guys. And that's why maybe I'm not so anxious to put Jalen Hertz in that class. I feel like Jalen Hertz, for guys like us and like our friends and the people we talk to who watch film and kind of have the same opinion as us. We are certainly guilty of probably being an echo chamber that we don't recognize and being in our own bubble. But I don't think there's a bigger disparity between the public perception of Jalen Hertz

and then our perception of Jalen Hertz and what he is. There are conversations on Twitter where you're seeing people put Jalen Hertz in the top tier. People are talking about him. He might be the second best quarterback in the NFL. And I think to us, that's just an insane time. conversation and one that I don't even think we would even consider a serious one. And that's why, because I do, like the things you are saying, to get the most out of Jalen

Hertz, you have to run a particular offense. To get the most out of Justin Herbert, I think you could, are the most out of Patrick Mahomes or the most out of Josh Allen, you can do a bunch of different things. And it doesn't matter. So, yeah, I don't, I don't want to touch Mahomes and Allen at all because like Mahomes and Allen are both lead leaders in terms of like scramble rate, league leaders in terms EPA for scramble, lead leaders in terms of EPA for dropback, the leaders in everything, right? Like, these guys have got all of it, right?

Like, I'm interested in this second tier where, like, I went back and I looked at your quarterback rankings, right? Like, Justin Herbert's there at two, right? Joe Burroughs there are four, then there's Jaylon Hertz, and then there's Trevor Lawrence, and there's Dak Prescott. I feel like when I go and I find the dovetail, like where things start to diverge in that second tier, right? You have to Mahomes and Allen, they have everything.

In that second tier, okay, these guys are maybe lacking one thing. what's the thing that's lacking, I see guys who have truly elite ability on the move with their legs, hurts Lamar, and guys who necessarily don't, Herbert, Burrow, Lawrence, right? And when I ask myself,

okay, which of these players what I like to have, you know, in this second tier, who would I want if I wanted to really run things? I struggle, like, you will not find a bigger Lamar Jackson fan than me. Like, I love Lamar. I struggle to take him over a Burrow over Herbert because what those guys do in the passing game from the pocket to me

translates better into January football translates better into schemeless football, positionless football, high variety football, then what Lamar does is in terms of like, okay, he's irreplicable. He's irreplaceable. Is that the same as irreplicable? I don't, I don't. I'm twisting myself in words now. Lamar is one of one. We can all agree on this. But if I have Lamar, I have to run this offense to maximize him. And I like the ability to run different offenses. I don't think you need to run a particular offense

with Lamar. I think that that point is better made with other quarterbacks. I just think we haven't seen Lamar in that. We saw Lamar. That's a very good point. If you brought me right now on Baltimore radio and you're like, how do you feel about the Todd Monkine offense? I'd be like Lamar's winning MVP, baby. I do believe that Lamar can be that guy

who switches styles. We haven't seen it to this point. That's very fair. But I think the most interesting part of this conversation you're having with yourself is that those guys have like the bottom of the bottom 10 have replaced the

Kirk Cousins and the Jimmy G's and the Derek cars over the last couple of years. Matthew Stafford too a little bit. Those always used to be the guys we were like oh yeah 10 to 12 that always used to be like the range we talked about when we were talking about Kirk Cousins and Jimmy G's and all those guys and I feel like that has been replaced

and I think that's another sign that we're going towards this era of football where we're not going to see quarterbacks who can't move get drafted in the first round anymore. And I would not be surprised if, like, Mac Jones was the last stand for those guys. When you look at quarterbacks over the last, like 12 years is a good place, a good place to go back to because that's the 2011 CBA that kind of fundamentally changed the league because it changed how draft picks

work, how draft contracts work, it changed how teams could train guys, and change how teams could practice. So let's go back to there. real quick, that is a, it's a perfect year because 2011, the CBA changes. 2012 is the year where quarterback mobility starts to take over. And literally, lagging indicator one year later, boom, quarterback mobility. This is RG3. This is Tim Tebow.

This is Cap. This is Mike Vic. This is Russell Wilson. Like, this is right when it took off. So I wrote an article for USA Today before the 20, what was it? What was Matt Jones's draft? 20-21. Yeah, before that draft about like quarterback mobility and why we're not drafting

quarterbacks like Mac Jones anymore. From 2011 to 2018, that was like the last year that made sense to look at because I'm looking at second contracts. Quarterbacks that got second contracts. There were 28 quarterbacks taken from 2011 to 2018. 13 were given second contracts.

Only to average fewer than 20 yards, 20 rushing yards per game in college. So two of the 13, and that would have been what, golf and? Actually, there's only one. because Ryan Tano did not get a second contract from the team that drafted him. So actually, it's only been one, and it was golf.

And Derek Goff was replaced before his second contract even kicked in. So outside of Jared Goff, there have been zero immobile quarterbacks, are quarterbacks that average fewer than 20 yards. We've gotten a second contract with the team that drafted them. And that was 2011 to 2018. Now we can update it. We can update it with the 2019 draft. We can update it with the 2020 draft.

We don't know who's getting contracts from 2020, but we kind of do. We know Burroughs going to get one. We know Justin Herbert's going to get one. By the way, Tannahill definitely got a second contract with the Dolphins. He's on the Dolphins of 2012 to 2018. Okay, so Ryan Tana Hill's in there. But Ryan Tana Hill also played wide receiver in college,

and clearly it's not an immobile guy. He just doesn't like to scrabble. Yeah. Okay, I'll give you that one. It's just golf, okay? Okay, since 2019, you have Kyler Murray, average 54 yards in college, rushing yards. He got a second contract.

Daniel Jones, 36.8, got a second contract with the Giants. Duane Haskins got cut from Washington. Obviously, tragedy strut after that. Justin Herbert is going to get a second contract, 30 yards, 30 rushing yards per game of college. Joe Burrow, just looking at his time as a starter, not including his cameo appearances at the end of Ohio State games. 27.3 yards per game in college. Tua, 8.6 yards. I don't think Tua is going to get a second contract.

So the results of- Tua is going to get a second contract. Yeah, he is. From Miami? Yeah, I think so I don't know about that one All right Maybe

I will concede this But too, it's a health thing It's a help thing It's a help thing If he doesn't It's large going to be Results of Concussions But like

I mean, listen As somebody If he doesn't It's based on last year too Yeah, well last year Pretty pretty good numbers there For young Tua

I'm not saying It's going to be justified I'm just saying I would expect The Dolpham saying Okay Okay so let's go Okay

So using that 31 first round picks 18, 16 have gotten second contracts from the team that drafted them, and two more are going to get them. That's Herbert and Burrow. So 18 out of 31 picks. And none of the only golf was immobile. Golf is the only one.

So your best case scenario is Jared Goff, who really didn't even get a second contract from his first team because he got traded before that even kicked it. Do you remember watching, we weren't pals yet? Do you remember watching that Jared Goff, Cal offense in 2016? man, getting ready for the draft. Just sitting back there

gripping it and ripping it, man. Just living the air raid life at the University of California and Berkeley. Oh, baby, what a time. I was not an enlightened man in 2016. I was a sophomore in college. The Eagles were drafting Carson Wentz.

I was watching me some North Dakota state film and loving it. But I tell you, I was watching Jared Gough rip some nine balls like, yeah, this kid's going to be good. This is it, man. This is the future. I believe.

I fully believed. But yeah, he, had zero impact leaving the pocket even back in college and now continues to play that way. So the only reason I'm just looking at

first round quarterbacks is because those are the guys that I think are drafted and are expected to start. I don't think it's fair to look at Davis Webb and include him in this. But if you look at the guys

that did end up being starters that were drafted at the first round, you have Derek Carr, who got a second contract. He did not run a lot in college. He is another counter example. You can add him in with Derekoff. Mason Rudolph got a second

contract, but that doesn't count because it's like a backup contract. He's signing like one-year deals with Steelers. And then Kaepernick was a runner in college. Dalton averaged over 28 rushing yards for game in college and started the inverted veer. He was like the first quarterback to do that. If you ain't watched yourself some Andy Dalton TCU run option

offense, baby, you got to find you a YouTube clip. That's a good time. And then Russ in deck. So it's all mobile quarterbacks again. And then you look at the guys that ended up starting elsewhere and didn't get second contracts from their original teams. Jimmy G., Kirk Cousins, Gno Smith. Kirk Cousins, as you alluded to earlier,

have like the weirdest developmental track we've ever seen. We've never seen like a day two quarterback get as much time to develop as he did in Washington. And then Gino Smith is obviously another weird developmental track. He obviously didn't get it. Right. So when you eliminate those two, the weird developments, you're stuck with who?

Jimmy G. and Jared Gough. Those are the counter examples. of immobile quarterbacks who got drafted and got and kind of worked out. The other guy that I've actually been thinking about a lot recently is Tyrod. Tyrod Taylor was sixth round pick coming out of Virginia Tech. It was drafted in 2011. Obviously, it was a big part of the rushing game for the Hokies, 500 carries, 2,200 rushing yards over the course of his career in Virginia Tech. And then he's, when you look at guys who had high scramble rates,

you just search with like who had season for the scrambles? a lot. Tyrod is showing up constantly, man, every single season, Baltimore seasons, Buffalo seasons, it doesn't matter, he's a high scramble rate guy. And you start wondering, like, okay, how did this sixth round pick 2011, just hang around and, you know, get a starting job, lose a starting job,

get another starting job, just to continue to have these opportunities. And it's like, all right, like, now that I'm looking back at it in 2023, and I know what I know about scrambling, it makes so much sense why this guy found successful by the six-round picks don't. It's because he understood how to use his legs to keep the offense moving,

when as a pastor he maybe wasn't as as as sufficient. And he also contributed to Buffalo's run game. Like they had one of the best run games ever. I think it was one of those years. Greg Roman was there. That was a great Roman year. Yeah, they had like an offensive line that was really good. But I think that's like the, the undervalued thing about these running quarterbacks

are the ones that can be the focal point of a run game. And I think those are the guys that you see who are probably undervalued the most. Like you can even accuse me of doing that with Jaylen Hurst. going back to those numbers about like the four play types, and you look at scrambling and it's 0.49 EPA per play, but that's not something you can really call. Like that's just a, it just pops up. You call it dropback.

But called runs averaging 0.24 EPA per play is insane. Called quarterback runs. Yeah. And like when you look at just dropbacks, dropbacks, all dropbacks. So sacks, interceptions, completions, all that. Total. The NFL quarterbacks last year produced 144 each. EPA on those dropbacks.

NFL quarterbacks are combined for 238 EPA on called runs. Unlike a third of the plays or even less than that. So these are very, very efficient and valuable plays that a coach can actually control and call and dial up. And if you're not able to do that, you're leaving something on the table. Like that's just a play type that quarterbacks who can't move just can't execute. and I feel like we hold that against, like, the running quarterbacks you can't survive in a dropback passing game, we hold that against them,

but we don't necessarily do it the other way around. We're not like going Tom Brady, why can't you run his own read? You're kind of tanking our run game. And I think we need to start, like, thinking on those terms. Because, like, that's some very good EPA there. Like, that's one of the most efficient plays you can call is a quarterback. This is a sicko podcast.

Oh, that's some good EPA right there. Awesome. some nice pure quality high-grade EPA. That's where the good stuff is. Free-range EPA. Yeah, it's an organic, not GMO, baby. They didn't know pesticides and not the EPA. The thing that I think is important,

kind of a bit of an elephant in the room that has to be talked about when we say, like, all right, like, this is like quarterback mobility is it, man. Like, this is the cheat code, quarterback run, quarterback scramble. I would even actually say, you know, you brought up you can't really call scrambles.

The Eagles are trying to call scrambles, man. Like, do you remember the Sunday night football game late in the season where Chris Collinsworth was like, this isn't an RPO? It's an RPR. It's a run-fast run option because J.L. Hertz can hand the ball off or he can throw it or he can scramble. And he's bringing that up and he's saying that because he meets with Shane Steichen on Thursday, right, before they're calling the game. And they're talking about how the offense works to give Collinsworth color to provide to the broadcast. And like clearly Stiking communicated to Collinsworth. with like, we coach Jalen Hertz to if he sees X, Y, Z talk and run.

And that's going to get charted as a scramble in True Media and in PFF and in these charting services we use. Even though functionally it's not, it's like still like a read option. It's like, okay, read the defensive end. Okay, he's still there. So don't give it to the running back. Now roll out to your right, try to fill the football. But if the corner is covering it, there's going to be nobody left to stop you from running.

It's still like part of like the option. It's a kind of design. Yeah, right. But it's still going to get charted as a scramble. So, like, I would say, like, design scrambles are still, like, kind of a thing that teams are trying to access. But regardless, the thing about scrambling quarterbacks and running quarterbacks is the concern around injury rate, right? There is a belief that quarterbacks who run more are going to get hurt more. And if you look at it from a heuristic perspective, there's veracity to that.

you know, Lamar's been dealing with lower body injuries for the last couple of seasons. Now, Jalen Hertz missed multiple games of the shoulder injury. He got his result of being tackled by a defense alignment who landed on him. Justin Fields takes shot after shot after shot. Big bodied guy. Gets injuries in the ribs. Injuries to his back means that he's not available for the Bears. Kyler Murray, obviously out for the entire season with multiple ligament tears, I want to say.

It's more than just an ACL with memory serves. And he's going to be absent from the beginning of the 2023 season. And so again, here is, you look at it and you say, mobile quarterbacks get injured less than the immobile quarterbacks than the pocket passers. When you look at the data,

it doesn't really bear that out. Quarterbacks honestly get injured just as much inside the pocket, if not more, inside of the pocket than they do get injured outside of the pocket. There's some survivor bias here. The guys who are getting injured in the pocket tend to be bad athletes who don't know how to protect themselves from getting hit,

who don't know how to escape, who don't know how to fall safely. Think about the tub of conversations. and then accordingly get hit, they're like totally inert. They're standing still and they get hit by a 250-pound guy moving at light speed, as opposed to your mobile guys who can avoid that hit or can glance off that hit or can change the angle of that hit, can scoot off to the side and can protect themselves, and they know how to better take that velocity.

So you, I don't think, I think the injuries that mobile quarterbacks get are different than the injuries that immobile quarterbacks get. And I think that it'd be incorrect to say, oh, if you go for a mobile quarterback, then you're going to run a greater risk of injury long term than an immobile quarterback is. I think that's erroneous. I do think there's some veracity to, well, as quarterback's a crew injury, if your quarterback is predicated on playing with speed and predicated on playing with quickness, and a big part of his game is how physical he is, his athletic attributes,

then him getting injured over time is going to matter more, right? it's going to be harder for him to play the same way when he's 30, as opposed to a pocket passer playing the same way when he's 30. So I think there's some veracity to that. And then I also think there's some veracity to, I would like for the guy I'm paying $50 million to take fewer hits, the Josh Allen problem, right? Which is like, okay, Josh Allen can do everything,

and he's our whole offense, and we've given him all the money in the world. And so maybe let's try not to run him as much as we were and have him throw the ball a little bit more. So there's some veracity to those arguments, and then I think there's some that that's kind of like straw man nonsense. But it's something that has to be acknowledged as as quarterback mobility goes up, as scramble rates go up, as more quarterbacks from the ball more often, we're going to continue learning more about, okay, what is legitimately the increase or decrease in risk in terms of like season long injuries and nagging injuries over the course of a career? Even some of like the cautionary tales that seem like they're like real viable. Like Cam Newton, for instance, it's a quarterback who seemed to like fall off a.

Cliff, and he was a quarterback who was obviously used not only as a runner, but as a goal line runner and like a physical runner, almost like Jalen Hertz is. But even Cam Newton, the reason why he kind of fell off is because he tore his shoulder. And he tore his shoulder chasing down an interception and trying to die for a tackle. And then he re-agravated that injury getting hit in the pocket by T.J. Y. So even like Cam Newton, you could probably, it's hard to make the argument that the reason he fell off was because he was used as a physical runner. So, I mean, I feel like it's one of those concepts that makes sense on paper or one of

those theories that make sense on paper that quarterbacks that run more are going to get hurt more. But like you said, the data just doesn't bear it out. And if the data is not bearing it out, making team decisions based on that and like ignoring this, this, I don't even know if it's a high ceiling thing. For me, like the mobile quarterback is more like a higher floor. ignoring those guys and those prospects just because you're afraid that they're going to get hit

because in your mind it makes sense that running quarterbacks get hit more, I think it's just bad practice and it's going to lead to bad decisions and it's going to lead to you drafting back Jones in the first round. All injury science on all players of all positions at any time,

pre-draft process, veterans, whatever, all of it is bad and hard and challenging. I'm sure there's people doing good work, but predicting injuries, man, I mean, like, you're covering your eyes, you're spinning around 10 times, you're throwing a dart at a dartboard. Like, it is extremely challenging.

And so I think that while, like, yeah, there's stuff that feels legit on mobile quarterbacks, I'm not sure it actually is up to snuff. And there's a lot of good data on it. There's a fantasy points article that was written by a Dr. Edwin Poros. That's very good. Rich Rebar, I think, has written about this before previously as well. There's, like, research papers on it.

It's an interesting thing to read. But for now, I think that's something that I'll be interested to see five years from now what we know and what we know better in terms of mobile quarterbacks and injury rates. As it is, that's going to do it for us here on the quarterback mobility episode of the Ringer NFL show. This was not the episode that I put on the outline,

but I thought it was a good episode. It was a very fun episode. So thank you, Stephen. Thank you, as always, for the wonderful production provided by Eduardo Ocampo, as well as the additional production supervision provided by Arjuna, Ram Gapole, and Connor Nevins. As I brought up at the top,

we are soliciting reviews because we want you to tell us we like us. You like us because we have fragile self-images. So go ahead and start us to tweet and hit us up in the reviews and just make us feel good about ourselves for a brief fleeting moment. We will continue to slayboing the content minds

for that hit of dopamine. Stephen, we didn't talk about what we're doing next week. Do you have an opinion? This is the end of our preset schedule. What do you want to do? Let's talk about coaches. Do you want to do why? the Bill Belichick

coaching tree is bad. I've been excited for that one for a while. Yes, let's do it. Let's do it. All right. Next week on the Ringar NFL show every Friday this summer,

Ben and Stephen, we are talking about why the Bill Belichick coaching tree absolutely sucks. Until then, have a good week, fellas.