The Spread in the NFL
by Sam Monson
8/1/2009
As some of you may have noticed (and since the Diner has already written about it here: ), the Kansas City Chiefs spent much of 2008 operating a mix of college style offenses with some impressive production. They employed a version of the 'spread' offense that is so prevalent in the college ranks, and is making scouting such a nightmare every year for NFL personnel people.
You'll hear every year that guys are being downgraded because they come from spread offenses, which traditionally inflate offensive statistics and make it tough to thoroughly evaluate talent.
Running backs can put up monster numbers because they're running through gargantuan holes , caused by Defenses being spread so thinly trying to cover all the receivers put into patterns by the offense.
Quarterbacks are putting up massive numbers throwing quick passes to receivers based on how the defense has lined up before the ball is even snapped. Without needing to read, diagnose and exploit coverages after the snap a quarterback can make quick, high percentage passes and put up colossal numbers in a spread offense, making it difficult for NFL scouts to look beyond the production and analyse the skills.
Receivers are putting up mammoth figures because they're catching balls in a system where the receiver has been dictated by the way the Defense lines up before the ball is snapped, and they're catching passes before they have to beat anybody. Offenses that put the ball in the air 60 times a game are producing collections of receivers with huge stats by any ordinary offensive standard, but they're compiling them without always, or even often, displaying the skills that NFL scouts are looking for: the ability to beat a man covering them, to set the defender up for a move, to make fluid cuts, and to get separation.
In short, the spread offense is making a mess out of college scouting, but only for one reason: The NFL doesn't run the spread. Or didn't.
The standing wisdom throughout the football world was that the spread offense wouldn't work in the NFL. The level of athleticism is too different. Whereas your college QB can throw routinely to wide open targets in the spread, in the NFL those targets would be covered. If the QB can't freeze the defender with his eyes, he'll have a chance to break on the ball and blow up the play.
The O-line would be under too much pressure as well. NFL players are bigger, stronger, faster (uh… no reference to the steroid film intended…maybe) than their college counterparts, and would be able to blow through wide line gaps and make mincemeat out of the QB before he got the ball away.
Since the 1990s when the Run n Shoot offense, or several variations of it were used, the NFL has shied away from that kind of system, believing it to be unviable in today's league. You can't win with it, based on the experience of watching Houston, Detroit and Atlanta struggle to get beyond making the playoffs. The trouble with that is that most team's don't do any better than that. What's to say it was the offense that caused those teams to stop short of more success or simply the team reaching its talent ceiling?
 The Chiefs proved last year that a variation of those offenses CAN function in today's NFL, and they did it despite a young team, and featuring a QB that wouldn't start barring cataclysmic disaster at any other team in the league. Thigpen was taken to be moulded into an NFL QB, having come from a college spread system. The Chiefs decided to hell with that, and decided to try him out running a system they knew he could run – it worked. Thigpen and the Chiefs' version of the spread offense was productive against the NFL competition supposedly too fast for the system to function.
The New England Patriots have been employing an offense using the same principles as the spread for a few seasons now, and used it to record the most points scored in a single season in NFL history in 2007. The NFL seems to be such a copycat and conservative league that nobody wants to take a chance on something different in case it doesn't work and you're out of a job. Better stick to the system you're familiar with, that way if it doesn't work you at least stand a fighting chance of blaming somebody else for the failure – if you throw the established system out and start again the buck stops with you, the crazy guy with the radical system.
So what could the Chiefs 2008 experiment mean for teams, scouting, and the NFL Draft? Well it would mean that anybody willing to try and run this type of system wouldn't need to take a successful spread QB and spend a few years trying to develop him, to convert them to 'Pro Style Offenses'. Colt Brennan could have been drafted on Day 1, not in the 6th round, and started immediately, not expected to learn from the bench for a couple of years before he is ready, or capable to orchestrate an NFL offense. As one of the most successful college spread offense QBs of all time, Brennan might have been a viable franchise QB option for a team willing to risk this type of offense.
If Tyler Thigpen can make it work after passing for 6,598 yards, 53 TDs, 25 picks, at a QB rating of 82.9, think what Colt Brennan could manage after throwing for 14,193 yards, 131 TDs, 42 picks at a rating of 167.6 as the leader of June Jones' offense.
2009 could see one of the most interesting quarterback drafts in a long time, with guys like Graham Harrell, and Chase Daniel, both dominant spread offense quarterbacks available, and the possibility of Tim Tebow coming out, not to mention a prospect like Pat White, the West Virginia QB who isn't even being seen by the NFL as a QB, but is expected to switch positions to wide receiver at the next level.
All of these QBs operate some variation of the spread offense, and all are being dramatically downgraded because of it, with some scouts expecting Tebow to switch positions to fullback, or even tight end.
 Chase Daniel has been working from the spread since High School, and has been dominant with it during his college career at Missouri, but he's undersized for the NFL, and scouts question his ability to operate a pro-style offense. But a team running a spread offense wouldn't need to concern itself with that. His production in the spread speaks for itself. Similarly Harrell is struggling for draft stock, being ranked well behind QBs he dramatically out-performed in college because of the system he ran at Texas Tech, and the time teams would need to spend teaching him how to play in a pro-style offense, under centre, not from the gun, reading after the snap, not before it.
With the rest of the NFL unlikely to fall over itself in a rush to join in on this experiment, in a league where convervatism rules, any team that did adopt this kind of offense could revolutionise the draft for themselves. Instead of needing to spend high, valuable draft picks on a QB they feel sure can be the guy they need, or spending years developing a guy to mould him from a former spread QB to a guy capable of operating a pro-style offense, teams could draft guys like Harrell, Brennan, Daniel, Tebow, that other teams don't want to touch until later on in the draft, because of the time and work they will need to invest in them to become viable in their system.
Teams devalue spread QBs so much because they've learned the lessons of Tim Couch, Joey Harrington and Ryan Leaf. It's just too hard trying to predict whether the skills these guys have will project to a conventional NFL offense. Any team willing to tweak its offense to suit the signal caller they acquire could draft one of the available spread quarterbacks in the mid to low rounds of the draft, freeing up their top picks for other impact players, and making the art of scouting QBs for the NFL much less of a gamble, because the system they would be playing in would be almost the same as the one they came from, and dominated in college.
Teams would be no longer trying to project how a guy's skills would translate to a different system, they would simply be evaluating the skills they saw already producing in the system, or something very close to the system they would be running at the next level. Is this guy accurate enough, can he zip the ball with his passes? Does he always go to the right place with the football?
If there's one thing NFL personnel people would kill for its certainty when it comes to the draft. If the NFL was willing to take a chance on a system that some teams are showing CAN in fact work, despite the prevailing wisdom, they could remove giant swathes of doubt and guesswork when it comes to the draft, with QB remaining one of the toughest positions for teams to evaluate.
Here's an idea for you Lions fans:
0-16, #1 overall pick in the Draft. You could take Sam Bradford, assuming he comes out, or whoever else winds up being the #1 Pro-Style QB available, and then try and use the rest of the draft picks to patch together some of the other holes in your team.
Or, with a new GM, and a gutsy new Head Coach you could try and trade out of the #1 overall spot, patching multiple holes with multiple early draft picks, and with a lower round draft pick take one of the available spread QBs, choosing to let them start from day 1 operating a spread offense in the NFL.
I know which I'd rather see happen, and sadly I also know which is more likely to happen.
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