Boynton’s Jackson poses conundrum
Quarterback evaluators still don’t know what to make of high-flying 2016 Heisman winner.
After this weekend, former Boynton Beach High quarterback Lamar Jackson will all but certainly have a multimillion-dollar check to cash.
The NFL draft’s first round is today, meaning the University of Louisville’s high-flying Heisman Trophy winner has a few more hours of battling an imperfect science guiding a slow-changing sport and the decision-makers who run it. He is not the first to do so.
Jackson totaled the fourth-most rushing yards of any major-conference quarterback this century, but he breaks the mold of his peers.
This may, in the end, be the most intriguing case study yet: What is the value of being a mobile quarterback in the NFL? And how much will Jackson be able to capitalize on that value?
That is Jackson’s challenge: Can he be a star in a league that de-emphasizes his greatest skill?
The run for dollars
Jackson has largely made a career with his legs. They brought thousands of fans to stadiums, landed him in TV highlight reels and forced two different coaches to transform their offenses to fit him.
But the NFL team that drafts Jackson will almost certainly depend more on his arm.
“It’s a passing league, so you’ve got to be able to make plays from within the pocket,” said Chris Landry, a former pro scout and coach in the NFL and in college. “To be able to work the entire field, you’ve got to make plays, drop back in the pocket, survey the entire field and be able to get the ball out quickly.”
Mobile quarterbacks can be No. 1 draft picks and succeed in the NFL, as Michael Vick and Cam Newton have proven. At the NFL scouting combine last month, Baltimore Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome predicted that trend would continue, citing Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota, the top two picks in the 2015 NFL draft.
Three years earlier, in 2012, the Seattle Seahawks drafted Wisconsin’s Russell Wilson in the third round and he has led them to two Super Bowls.
“I think it has to do with the coach’s background and how much appreciation they have for that style of play,” Seahawks coach Pete Carroll told reporters at the combine. “Do they have any experience with it? Guys that haven’t had those guys, they would be more reluctant, maybe more hesitant. … You just have to embrace the dynamic of that player and what he can do and what he’s capable of doing and figure it out.”
In the history of the NFL, only one quarterback has reached the 1,000-yard rushing mark in a season. Vick, to whom Jackson is often compared, rushed for 1,039 yards in 2006. Jackson won a Heisman Trophy in large part by scrambling from the pocket and making plays on the run, totaling 1,571 rushing yards.
His new team is unlikely to be as interested in that skill. College teams build their offenses around a quarterback’s running ability. The NFL almost neutralizes it.
“So then the question becomes, if there’s at least a baseline of ability to win from the pocket, how much do you value that extra running ability?” said Steve Palazzolo, a senior analyst at Pro Football Focus. “And I think teams are mixed on it.”
But why?
A different game
One day in practice, Rick Swain, Jackson’s coach at Boynton Beach, put his quarterbacks through option drills. He saw Jackson cut upfield and run 60 yards for a touchdown and went back to his office to remodel his entire offense.
Louisville coach Bobby Petrino made a similar but less drastic transformation after Jackson enrolled.
“The college game is about recruiting and putting guys in space,” said Landry, who worked as a scout for the Houston Oilers and Tennessee Titans. “The pro game is about having talent, developing talent, but being able to use that talent and make defenses defend the entire field.”
Swain illustrated that division when he said, “You got the best athlete on the field, he needs to have the ball in his hands.”
The NFL tends to disagree. In that league, the athletes are better at every position. When a quarterback rolls from the pocket, a college coach sees a player who can cause problems for the defense in space. A pro coach sees one who limits the area of the field the team can use to attack the defense.
Palazzolo and other analysts have used metrics to compare passing and rushing, placing more value on an 8-yard pass than an 8-yard run. If a quarterback throws 8 yards through the air, the receiver could still turn it into a bigger gain. If he rushes 8 yards, it’s an 8-yard gain.
Passing is “just more valuable,” Palazzolo said.
The receiver question
At Louisville’s pro day, Jackson waited in shorts and flip-flops as his former teammates did the vertical jump and ran the 40-yard dash. At pro day and the NFL scouting combine before it, Jackson threw passes, but he otherwise avoided performing any drill that might prompt NFL teams to label him as a potential wide receiver.
Jackson’s concern was valid. This century, of the 15 players with the most career rushing yards among major-conference quarterbacks, three have been drafted as quarterbacks and seven have been drafted at other positions: running back, wide receiver or defensive back. Four of the top six entered the league as wide receivers.
Former Louisville offensive coordinator Garrick McGee said on the NFL Network’s “Move The Sticks” podcast that Louisville’s coaches considered moving Jackson to wide receiver during his freshman season.
Petrino denied that, saying he never thought about moving Jackson to wide receiver, and that he didn’t believe speculation that NFL teams had, either.
“We liked him playing right where he did, right where he led us,” Petrino said. “He’s just such a great player. And he can make all the throws. He understands the game schematically. I’m looking forward to seeing whoever takes him and him having a great, long career.”
When he spoke at the NFL scouting combine — his most recent interview session with reporters — amid rumors he would be asked to play wide receiver in the NFL, Jackson maintained that he was a quarterback. He repeated it like it was part of him since he was a child, because it was.
“Whoever likes me at quarterback, that’s where I’m going,” Jackson said. “That’s strictly my position.”