It may feel a little gluttonous to ask, after these last two weeks, what might happen next in the NFL, but there are still too many loose ends around the league remaining for the whole operation to go dark. Another wave of transactions could be coming before the draft, which gives us an opportunity to address some of the tidbits that were reported before Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson, Tyreek Hill, Davante Adams and the rest turned the NFL sideways—stories that, at the time, felt like earth-shattering news comparatively.
Specifically, there were reports of both Saquon Barkley and Christian McCaffrey potentially being dealt. Both of the players could be on the move, and from a broad perspective, it seems like the kind of asset dumping we would normally praise as a football community. Running backs are among the most overvalued assets in recent NFL history, and general managers who have spent significant capital at the position—Les Snead (Todd Gurley), Jerry Jones (Ezekiel Elliott), Tom Telesco (Melvin Gordon), Dave Gettleman (Barkley)—have largely regretted doing so.
But what if we told you that was about to change, at least slightly, at least for a little while?
Bob Donnan/USA TODAY Sports (McCaffrey); Danielle Parhizkaran/NorthJersey.com/USA TODAY Network (Barkley)
Recently, I was talking to a smart football coach who had taken home a bundle of film to study this offseason consisting of what was happening across the league defensively. As we’ve seen, more teams are dropping seven or eight players into coverage. Coordinators have figured out ways to show pressures that dictate the ideal protections they want without sacrificing the bodies to do so. Defenses can match and leverage most of the downfield routes. While it frustratingly stymies quarterbacks who desire to go vertical more often (ahem, Patrick Mahomes) and allows defenses to die by papercut instead of massive knockout blow, it also opens up opportunities for teams that have talented playmakers out of the backfield, versatile tight ends or coaches who are smart enough to take their most talented playmaker (Kyle Shanahan and Deebo Samuel) and place him in the backfield.
I was talking to another smart football coach who mentioned one of the best pieces of advice for breaking in young quarterbacks and maintaining the rhythm of good, contemporary quarterbacks was hitting checkdown passes. Year after year, Rodgers and Tom Brady, and Philip Rivers and Drew Brees when they were in the league, led the NFL in passes to the running back. It seems like most quarterback coaches would like to see more of their younger players becoming comfortable with checkdown options.
Among the quarterbacks who have been league leaders in checkdown passes since 2016: Carson Palmer, Cam Newton, Eli Manning, Brees, Ben Roethlisberger (both the efficient and inefficient Roethlisberger).
The more these random metrics are available to us, the more they become a part of the modern philosophy. Brady especially, but also Palmer, Brees, Rivers, Manning and Roethlisberger, have informed the latest wave of young quarterback coaches who are advising the latest wave of young quarterbacks.
So, when we overlay these thought processes together, where do we imagine a lot of win-now general managers and coaches are going to focus their crosshairs from a personnel perspective?
Running backs, or receivers with backfield versatility who can catch the ball out of the backfield and make the most of a play after the catch, are going to be immensely valuable in the coming year, assuming that league trends hold, blitz rates continue to go down and more coaches from different coverage-focused trees (like Vic Fangio) are empowered. This was likely one of the reasons the Dolphins went all out to acquire Tyreek Hill. Tua Tagovailoa already has one of the quickest release times in football and is largely averse to a vertical passing game. The Hill trade is not going to help the Dolphins get more vertical so much as it’s going to allow the Dolphins to get more out of their short-yardage passing game with Hill forcing defenders to miss in space, turning what was a three-yard gain into a five-yard gain.
Like when Pete Carroll’s Cover 3 scheme became popular and was then cribbed by almost every team in football, most NFL teams now are running a version of Fangio’s defense, which helped Brandon Staley rise to power as a Rams defensive coordinator and quickly earn a head-coaching job. At its best, the defense forces quarterbacks off their markers and disallows them from seeing any feasible throwing lanes. Consequently, the rise in the defense seems to have kept snap-to-throw times down, especially when considering so many offenses are trying to imitate the 49ers’ boot-action heavy outside-zone looks.
The absence of throwing lanes could—and should, according to at least one offensive coordinator—prioritize the checkdown on a quarterback’s set of reads. And it makes sense from a basic physics standpoint: A checkdown against defenses dropping eight in coverage allows you to get the ball to a player with some relative heft (or, in the case of Hill, supreme athletic ability) moving forward with greater momentum toward a sea of defensive backs, who are lighter by comparison and will likely give a yard or two in attempting to make a tackle. When McCaffrey was healthy last year, the Panthers’ average passing play went almost 2.5 yards longer. While Barkley’s passing net yards over average differential was only 0.13 yards, he was in an unimaginative Jason Garrett offense that only began to explore Barkley’s role in the passing game later in the season. His body size, when healthy, would be potent when coming out of the backfield at full speed against a smaller set of defenders.
It is decidedly unsexy for the masses to accept a swarm of Brady-like offenses to counter the Fangio defensive evolution, but offensive coordinators aren’t really going to care if they’re gaining more yards per play, improving their overall efficiency and keeping their defenses off the field for longer stretches of time. Quarterbacks, especially those who have already been paid for their stunningly beautiful off-platform throws and play-expanding, mind-bending backfield wandering, aren’t going to care about getting the ball out faster, keeping their interception rate down and taking fewer hits.
When it comes to McCaffrey and Barkley in particular, it would seem ludicrous to trade them now. The NFL is opening up for them schematically, both have (or will likely have) young quarterbacks in need of rapid improvement and neither will net an overly satisfying return on the open market.
Carroll’s Cover 3 lorded over the NFL for almost a decade before Andy Reid and Sean McVay found a way to tear it apart. The current defensive norm will likely have a much shorter shelf life. But in that time frame, it’s best to keep quarterbacks surrounded by as many intermediate weapons as possible. It’s—oddly enough—counterintuitive to ship away your running backs.
