Gase on the QB Position in the NFL - NFL.com

Below is an excerpt from a longer piece (Author - Michael Silver) about the QB in the NFL today and onward into the future. Gase (along with others) is quoted in a section and that's reproduced here. For the full article go here - 'An Education in Quarterbacking' (NFL.com).


""Where will the desk go?"

Adam Gase asks his wife, Jen, as they tour the second floor of the home they're renting in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. "Are you putting me in here, or is this one of the kids' rooms?"

It's move-in day, and the Miami Dolphins' rookie head coach wants to know where he'll be sitting while watching film on those rare occasions when he's not grinding away at the team's training facility. He's not hauling a whole lot of boxes on this humid June afternoon, but in a figurative sense, Gase has a lot of experience getting his house in order. As an assistant coach in Denver and Chicago, he helped a dramatically diverse collection of quarterbacks -- from Tim Tebow to Peyton Manning to Jay Cutler -- optimize their talents. A couple of hours before checking out the new digs, he sat in his office going over play sheets with his latest obsession: Ryan Tannehill, the Dolphins' fifth-year quarterback, a player Gase believes is poised to make the jump from good to great.

Even before taking the Dolphins' job, as part of his interview process at the team's digs, Gase spent some time alone with Tannehill. They sat in a small meeting room and talked briefly, during which Gase assured him, "If I end up being the coach here, you're my guy -- end of story."

Recalls Gase: "I just wanted to make sure that if I ended up being the guy, he'd have no worries about it. I always look at it as, like, you want great alignment between the quarterback and the head coach [and/or] offensive coordinator, because that guy's gonna have to be kind of the torch carrier for what you're doing on offense. He needs to be almost like an extension of the coaching staff, because that's how involved these guys are now. I mean, there are very few guys that are probably not involved in game planning somehow, or not involved in some of the things that you do in practice. Every team's either looking for that guy, or trying to make the guy they have better."


Because that coach-quarterback collaboration is so comprehensive, and because the scrutiny of the men in both positions has become increasingly pronounced (and their respective shelf lives more tenuous), getting That Guy to run an offense has never been trickier. Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator Greg Roman has, over the past five seasons in San Francisco and Buffalo, had success coaching Alex Smith, Colin Kaepernick and Tyrod Taylor. Ask him why it's so hard to find an elite quarterback in 2016, and he replies, "Well, you're not asking me a hypothetical question; you're asking me a factual question. Because, what is it, 10, 12, people on this Earth can do it at a high level? It's a fact. So, why is that? Well, part of that is the speed of the game. That's never changed; it's always been a tough adjustment for most people. But now, the college game's so different than the pro game. The coverage is different; there's so much more multiplicity of defenses, and you have to read coverages instantly. Some of these spread systems that teams are running [in college] don't work on an NFL field with NFL players and NFL hashmarks. And the windows are so much tighter."

As Gase points out, so, too, are the employment windows for coaches and quarterbacks alike -- a reality that can have devastating effects on a young passer's development.

"What happens sometimes is, there's a coaching change, there's a system change, all of a sudden, he's learning something completely different -- starting over, almost," Gase says. "And you've seen good players have to take steps back because they're learning a new system. Now he can't get everybody else lined up; he's gotta worry about himself. It puts that guy in a worse position. I just keep thinking about Alex Smith -- how many systems did he play in? Then all of a sudden, Jim [Harbaugh comes to San Francisco], and they do a great job as far as using him to his strengths. And now he's in Kansas City, and he's part of the reason why they're able to do what they do. If you ever look at guys that stay in the system a long time, you'll see the turnovers going down, because they know where to go with the ball. It's almost like their offense is in the back of their mind, and they're more focused on what the defense is doing, and, What does the situation call for?"

To reach that level of mastery requires a combination of mental sharpness and a near-constant commitment to the craft -- eventualities that aren't always easy to predict when assessing young players.

"It's definitely a position you can't play if you're not all in," says Taylor, who got his first shot as an NFL starter with the Bills last season after four years as an unheralded Baltimore Ravens backup. "You're basically the coach on the field. You're the offensive coordinator -- you're him orchestrating stuff and going out and executing. And that requires a lot of preparation."

Adds Bills center Eric Wood, an eighth-year pro who, like Taylor, played in last January's Pro Bowl: "It's a lot for them to handle. It's not always the biggest and strongest and hardest throwers who make it; it's the quick processor."

Of course, handling NFL offensive concepts tends to be especially hard for quarterbacks who've spent their college years in systems that don't require a ton of processing. ESPN analyst Trent Dilfer, an NFL quarterback from 1994 to 2007, puts it bluntly: "The majority of quarterbacks coming out of college these days are as football remedial as you could possibly be."

Schneider sees the same issue from a scouting perspective: "When you look at college football now, it's harder to evaluate these guys, because the position is so much easier to play. In so many systems, guys are just looking at the sidelines, waiting for the coach to give them a play with minimal options."

Adds Roman: "Nobody can really figure out [if they can thrive in an NFL offense] until you get your hands on them, 'cause they're not being trained to do that. They're being trained to win the next game in college so the college coach can keep his job."

Says Indianapolis Colts general manager Ryan Grigson, whose first draft pick after arriving in Indy in 2012 was Andrew Luck at No. 1 overall: "It is such a challenge to get quarterbacks right [in evaluations]. The greats, a lot of times, are undrafted or low, low picks, while some top-five picks never even scratch the surface of their once-perceived potential from the college tape. [Late Colts Hall of Famer] Johnny Unitas' picture hangs in my office front and center to remind our personnel department that greatness somehow goes unnoticed sometimes to the naked eye. He was a ninth-round pick [by the Steelers] that was cut and out of football. Kurt Warner was stocking grocery store shelves after being cut [by the Packers]. I then watched him do the unthinkable when I was a fortunate member of the Rams during that era of greatness."

Over the last decade, rookie quarterbacks have been fast-tracked into service with increasing regularity. Does this trial by fire impede long-term growth?

Complicating matters for higher-profile quarterbacks coming out of college is the fact that, since 2008 -- when Matt Ryan (drafted third overall by the Falcons) and Joe Flacco (drafted 18th overall by the Ravens) had surprising success as rookie starters -- there has been a growing trend toward throwing upper-echelon draft picks immediately into the fray. While there have been many subsequent success stories, including Cam Newton, Luck and Wilson, others have struggled and/or had their growth severely stunted.

In Grigson's eyes, another reason "the QB position is so hard to evaluate as a whole [is] because, many times, you go into that evaluation looking for physical traits when, a lot of times, history has clearly shown it's more about intangibles than flashy physical ability and body type. When you get great intangibles that converge with great physical talent, then you're probably going to be right more than wrong. But again, there are a lot of unseen factors, too. Does the player fit the offense like a glove, or is there a learning curve? Because if that curve is too steep, then that player may take too many lumps and lose his confidence. That's why raw intelligence is so critical to a rookie having any success."

"I get all the arguments for playing them early," Dilfer says, "but none of them trumps this: You also risk destroying them."

Says Gase: "I've heard Peyton say all the time, 'The best thing that happened was I played right away.' That's how he developed. But then you look at a guy like Aaron Rodgers, who [the Packers] had the luxury for him to not only not play in the regular season, but he was able to take all the reps in the spring. So when they made the transition, he wasn't like, 'Oh, I've never practiced with these guys.' I'm sure it was hard for him at the time, cause he's sitting here going, 'I wanna play.' But I doubt now he would argue with the fact [that when] it was time for his turn, he took advantage of those years he didn't play." "

Credit to Michael Silver and NFL.com