Washington following golden rule for backup QB
With McCoy taking reins for injured Smith, it’s about finding comfort with plays
ASHBURN, VA. — In the days after Philadelphia Eagles coach Doug Pederson was forced to give his offense to backup quarterback Nick Foles last December, he handed Foles something even more vital: the chance to say no.
The Eagles had to change their offense from what worked best for previous starter Carson Wentz to what Foles preferred. This is the hardest part of the adjustment when a starting quarterback gets hurt and the backup has to take his place. The coaches must adapt, too. Priority is no longer the beauty of squiggling lines in their playbooks, it’s what the quarterback likes most.
In the case of Foles, Pederson realized his new quarterback did a good job of executing run-pass option plays, or RPOs, when Foles played for the Eagles a few years before. And so a Philadelphia offense built for a quarterback who sometimes scrambled on his own, turned into one where the quarterback’s runs were more calculated.
“We had to go back and sort of find his rhythm within the offense and then just keep repping that over and over again,” Pederson said.
The Eagles were 10-2 when Wentz fell to the ground in Los Angeles last Dec. 10, his ACL torn and season over. Wentz had been a favorite to win the league’s MVP award before he went down. Many predicted Philadelphia would collapse without him, Instead, with the Foles running his RPOs, the Eagles went on to win the Super Bowl.
When the Redskins meet the Eagles on Monday night, it is Washington’s Jay Gruden who faces a similar challenge to Pederson’s. Much like Philadelphia, last year, the Redskins were in first place in the NFC East when starting quarterback Alex Smith broke his leg and was lost for the season. Washington’s hold on first was far more tenuous at 6-3, it has since dissolved to 6-5 and the team has tumbled into second place following the Cowboys’ win over the Saints Thursday night. But the basic principle is the same. An NFC East contender has lost its quarterback and people are predicting doom.
Since there were only three days between Smith’s injury and Washington’s next game, a Thanksgiving loss to Dallas, his replacement Colt McCoy had little time to properly prepare. It wasn’t until this past week that McCoy was able to throw to the first-team receivers, tight ends and running backs as the starting quarterback. It was also the first week he could properly prepare with his coaches — points Gruden has emphasized in recent days.
“Now, you really have time to put a game plan together,” Gruden said this week.
But the most important part of that plan is not what Gruden or his assistants want, it’s what McCoy says he wants.
Coaches and quarterbacks always discuss plays in the days before games and those quarterbacks usually have a final say on what plays are eventually used in the game. In the case of Smith and Gruden or Wentz and Pederson, they were likely in agreement about what plays to run since they had worked all season on game plans. With a replacement, however, the comfort of the replacement quarterback becomes ever more essential.
“Never call a play the quarterback doesn’t like,” said former Colts and Cardinals coach Bruce Arians, now an analyst for the NFL on CBS.
This is one of the most sacred rules of head coaches, one emphasized this past week by Gruden, who proclaimed that he had “never, ever put in a play that a quarterback is uncomfortable with,” before adding, with a chuckle: “You can believe that if you want, but it’s true.”
For some coaches this can be a hard concept. Coaches, especially offensive ones, can fall in love with plays. They spend months designing them, fine-tuning them, getting them exactly right. They believe in them. But if the quarterbacks don’t feel right, the coaches have to put them away.
“It doesn’t matter how much you love it, the quarterback has to run his stuff,” Arians said. “You don’t work with systems, you work with players. You have to do what he wants. If you don’t, you’re a bad coach.”
For now, with his team’s once-solid playoff hopes now teetering, Gruden said he looks to last year’s Eagles for inspiration. “You can learn a lot from that,” he said. As he works with McCoy in the days and hours before Monday night’s game, he will listen as much as he will talk. This is the first rule for coaches and quarterbacks, after all: Never call a play the quarterback doesn’t like.
“It’s tough,” Pederson said of making the midseason adjustment. “You have to worry about the other members of your offense and you can’t necessarily change your offense midstream. But I think you can find things that would be very beneficial whether it’s shotgun or under center or whatever it is.”
Just make sure it’s what the new quarterback wants most.