Sam Darnold, Jared Goff and Baker Mayfield have been playing like three of the best quarterbacks in the NFL this season. Such hasn’t always been the case with these maligned signal callers. All three have had noteworthy seasons of struggle. All three are playing for teams other than the one who drafted them. And all three have, at one point in time, been labeled a “bust.” Yet all three currently rank as top 10 QBs in matters of EPA/play + CPOE composite this season.
Mayfield, a former No. 1 overall selection of the Browns, has enjoyed a career resurgence since moving to Tampa. After plateauing in Cleveland, the Browns decided the embattled Deshaun Watson offered a better future for their franchise than Mayfield and effectively made the swap at QB. All that’s happened since is a major Mayfield rebound and karmic freefall for Watson.
Goff, also a former No. 1 overall selection, came to the Lions by way of Los Angeles. With the Rams he made the Pro Bowl and the Super Bowl, but those accomplishments came with an insulting asterisk. Goff wasn’t remotely decent until coaching prodigy Sean McVay came to the Rams, and even then, he was exposed in the Super Bowl when Bill Belichick realized McVey was making all the pre-snap reads. By the time Goff left LA he was considered a liability rather than an asset. McVey sent a boatload of draft picks for QB Matthew Stafford and Detroit was essentially forced to take on Goff. All that’s happened since is Goff now leads a top five offense, enters the playoffs as the top seed and has made his way into the MVP conversation.
Darnold, once a third overall pick of the Jets, is on his fourth team in seven seasons. The USC product never posted more than seven wins in a single season until he came to Minnesota, and he only accomplished that by accident since it took a season ending injury to starting QB J.J. McCarthy to even give him a chance. Now Darnold leads a top team into the playoffs, has the first Pro Bowl bid of his career and faces a mind-blowing payday in free agency this March.
While it’s possible all of these QBs suddenly figured something out and flipped a career 180 on their own, the real credit belongs to the coaching staffs that unlocked them.
Once upon a time the QB position was as black and white as a checkers board. Good prospects came from pro style offenses in college, they were masters of three and five step drops, they understood progressions, stood tall in the pocket and created on their own when things failed to develop. Occasionally they utilized play-action, used motion, or gained yards on a scramble, but more often than not, it was sink or swim within the pocket and fairly transparent in nature.
These are different times. The days of leaning on the QB are gone because defenses are smarter than they’ve ever been, and not enough transcendent QBs exist. Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen may be able to thrive under any system, but the rest of the NFL’s signal callers need a coach helping them, not a coach leaning on them.
Various cheat codes exist in the NFL. Play action, RPOs and read options are nice wrinkles that typically contribute to a higher success rate. Motion at the snap, complementary route combinations, deceptive personnel groups and deceptive offensive formations also make things easier on quarterbacks. In other words, good coaches make things easier for their QBs. It’s what happened with Darnold, Goff and Mayfield and it’s what’s happening all over the NFL.
Even the Canton-bound Aaron Rodgers declined in production when it became clear the Packers were just relying on him to make magic. It wasn’t until Matt LeFleur replaced Mike McCarthy that Rodgers reclaimed his brilliance, and Green Bay joined the modern game we know today. LeFleur is continuing that magic right now with Jordan Love, a prospect scouts were universally lukewarm about entering the draft.
Looking around the NFL it’s abundantly clear the majority of the league’s top offenses and NFL’s most successful teams employ offensive coaches who make things easy for their QBs. It begs the question, “why wouldn’t the Cowboys hire a coach who adds value to the team?”
For as much praise as Kyle Shanahan gets around the NFL (and for good reason), his offense isn’t the only brand of offense that makes things easy on his QB. Smart coaches from other coaching trees also lean into strengths based on the personnel available to them. The common trait being all the smart coaches find ways to make things easy on their team’s most important player. They scheme players open. They create deception with their packages and formations. They play-design systematic progressions that offer escape hatches. They gameplan for specific opponents and they adjust in-game and on-the-fly to take advantage of sudden opportunities.
The Cowboys need to be mindful of this when deciding the direction they want to take going forward. McCarthy likes pre-snap motion but has been severely lacking in at-the-snap motion. He’s below the Medoza line on play-action and RPOs as well. McCarthy is good at designing short rub routes but doesn’t do much else to scheme his receivers open. He also doesn’t design many plays with strategic progressions, often rolling his QB out on a bootleg with just one or two viable targets available. Personnel packages and formations are overall fairly transparent. The Cowboys offense isn’t that hard to plan for nor are they tough to read on the field.
Finding a head coach, or at the least an offensive play-designer, who adds value to the offense and makes things easier on his most important player, should be Objective No. 1 for Jerry Jones and Co. this offseason.
Very few people believe Brock Purdy, Tua Tagovailoa, Goff, Darnold, and Mayfield are elite NFL talents, yet players such as these have found ways to repeatedly post elite level performances. Prescott, someone who by his own rights rates higher than all of those examples, stands to gain enormously if just put into a similar situation of supportive coaching.
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