Football has become the most popular sport in America by a large margin. The NFL is talked about throughout the year, and college football is not far behind it. And the most important position in football is the quarterback. In both NFL and college, the quality of your quarterback is the largest deciding factor in whether your team is good or not.
In a country where the most popular sport is football, and it is generally accepted that the quarterback is the most important position in that sport, with access to the highest quality training equipment and techniques, producing good quarterbacks should be easy. But it's not. Why?
The first thought that comes to mind is that maybe we're underestimating how hard it is to play quarterback at a high level. To even qualify for the position, a person has to have a certain amount of athletic talent. They must be able to throw a ball quickly, accurately, and down the field with ease. There are just certain throws you have to make if you want to play quarterback in the NFL. But there are also mental attributes needed to play quarterback, and they may be even more important. Quarterbacks have to read coverages, know what every player on the field is supposed to be doing, recognize tendencies, and make small adjustments at the line of scrimmage. And they only have ten to fifteen seconds to do a lot of that. Throw in the fact that they must lead the offense, if not the whole team, and it becomes clear that the quarterback position is much harder than a lot of people think.
Secondly, maybe high schools and colleges aren't preparing players for the NFL as well as they used to. This seems wrong at first glance, because teams in high school and college are passing more than they ever did. But they're not playing the passing game the same way the NFL does. In high school and college, quarterbacks line up in the shotgun the majority of the time. They typically make one read before passing or running. The playbooks are much simpler. The NFL passing game is much more complicated, requiring multiple reads on complex route trees. There are more plays in a typical NFL playbook. What I'm saying is that just because high schools and colleges are passing more, doesn't mean they're doing the same kind of passing as teams in the NFL.
Finally, defenses have gotten so much better. Even bad defenses in the NFL are really good. With so much film, so many coaches, and analytical data at their fingertips, defenses can hone in on any weakness a quarterback might have and pick away at it until the quarterback looks bad. The margin of error for quarterbacks is very low, and most don't have the natural talent or want to put in the work to gain back the edge that defenses have taken.
There might be some other reasons, but this is what comes to mind for me. What do you think?
In a country where the most popular sport is football, and it is generally accepted that the quarterback is the most important position in that sport, with access to the highest quality training equipment and techniques, producing good quarterbacks should be easy. But it's not. Why?
The first thought that comes to mind is that maybe we're underestimating how hard it is to play quarterback at a high level. To even qualify for the position, a person has to have a certain amount of athletic talent. They must be able to throw a ball quickly, accurately, and down the field with ease. There are just certain throws you have to make if you want to play quarterback in the NFL. But there are also mental attributes needed to play quarterback, and they may be even more important. Quarterbacks have to read coverages, know what every player on the field is supposed to be doing, recognize tendencies, and make small adjustments at the line of scrimmage. And they only have ten to fifteen seconds to do a lot of that. Throw in the fact that they must lead the offense, if not the whole team, and it becomes clear that the quarterback position is much harder than a lot of people think.
Secondly, maybe high schools and colleges aren't preparing players for the NFL as well as they used to. This seems wrong at first glance, because teams in high school and college are passing more than they ever did. But they're not playing the passing game the same way the NFL does. In high school and college, quarterbacks line up in the shotgun the majority of the time. They typically make one read before passing or running. The playbooks are much simpler. The NFL passing game is much more complicated, requiring multiple reads on complex route trees. There are more plays in a typical NFL playbook. What I'm saying is that just because high schools and colleges are passing more, doesn't mean they're doing the same kind of passing as teams in the NFL.
Finally, defenses have gotten so much better. Even bad defenses in the NFL are really good. With so much film, so many coaches, and analytical data at their fingertips, defenses can hone in on any weakness a quarterback might have and pick away at it until the quarterback looks bad. The margin of error for quarterbacks is very low, and most don't have the natural talent or want to put in the work to gain back the edge that defenses have taken.
There might be some other reasons, but this is what comes to mind for me. What do you think?
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