National Football League

Coaches too cute on offense

Published Oct. 11, 2010 10:11 p.m. ET

foxsports

This message is for all head coaches and offensive coordinators, on both the NFL and major-college level, who have an inkling to put a quarterback's reliable arm on the shelf: Stop the madness!

All these football geniuses are doing is disrupting offensive flow. Pulling quarterbacks in favor of a wildcat package, or asking a pro-style quarterback to run the option for the sake of achieving "balance," carries too little reward. It's sometimes the equivalent of spiking the ball.

This reached a breaking point for me Monday night when the Miami Dolphins' coaching staff, the godfathers of NFL wildcat operators, lost their collective minds. They took out quarterback Chad Henne on the opening drive - on a third-and-6, no less - in favor of a direct snap to running back Ronnie Brown. Henne had marched his team 44 yards to the New England Patriots' 36. Why dial up the wildcat in that scenario?

Never mind that Brown lost 2 yards. I don't care if he picked up a first down. It's a dumb, low-percentage call.

I'm not suggesting the wildcat should be discarded from every team's playbook. If you have a back guaranteed to get a tough 2 yards off a direct snap, the gimmick has its place.

But let's not get carried away with the wildcat, particularly when NFL quarterbacks are being paid big bucks to move teams through the air. Take Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow last month against the Jaguars. What's the point of Tebow twice running the wildcat on first-and-10 from the middle of the field? All it did was interrupt the rhythm quarterback Kyle Orton had going on both drives.

"If I was an offensive coordinator, I'd just be calling [the wildcat] on third-and-short," Jaguars quarterback Trent Edwards said. "Maybe just to mix it up if your offense is stalling a little bit. Beyond that, I don't know about the longevity of it."

It should be a rare instance when the quarterback's arm is put on ice. Whether it's Florida asking pro-style passer John Brantley to run the option, or the Jaguars running a draw play from the Indianapolis Colts' 49 on third-and-12, stop handcuffing the quarterback.

UF offensive coordinator Steve Addazio can talk about Brantley's keepers being part of the Gators' identity all he wants. That call serves no purpose unless Brantley produces an explosive play once in a while. Asking him to be Trey Burton only stalls UF's sputtering offense.

The Jaguars' third-and-12 call to Maurice Jones-Drew, while leading the Colts 21-14 early in the fourth quarter, nearly cost them the game. Not just because Jones-Drew was thrown for a 2-yard loss, but because you took the ball out of David Garrard's hands to get a potential first down and gave it back to Peyton Manning.

The ensuing punt pinned the Colts at the 4, which sounds logical if the Jaguars had a stout defense with a history of containing Manning. Instead, he drove 96 yards for the tying touchdown, a sequence easily forgotten when Josh Scobee saved the day with his 59-yard field goal.

I wish football coaches would stop trying to be cute. Let rocket-armed quarterbacks be who they are. Save the wildcat and quarterback keepers for teams who struggle to move the football any other way.