Kyler Murray and Tua Tagovailoa just completed two of the best seasons in college football history. They led the country’s two best offenses according to S&P+. They combined for 8,488 yards at better than 10 yards per touch. They contested one of the closer Heisman votes in recent years. Soon, they’ll meet in the Orange Bowl Playoff semifinal.
How all 4 Playoff QBs fit into college football’s QB-run revolution
The best teams are coming closer to a consensus on how often it’s smart to run the quarterback. In different ways, the four Playoff teams have gotten there by getting the balance right.
Ben Queen-USA TODAY Sports
What makes Murray and Tagovailoa so dangerous is that they combine lethal passing accuracy with the threat of running the ball. Murray is a more adept runner than Tagovailoa, but both of them create possibilities on the ground that force defenses into bad situations.
Neither Alabama nor Oklahoma would have been able to put historically good offenses on the field without QBs who could run.
Once Rich Rodriguez stumbled onto the zone read in 1991, offensive football evolved in such a way that using the quarterback in the running game — and thereby gaining a one-man numbers edge — became a virtual necessity.
Nick Saban, the preeminent coach of his generation, has reached this realization, as evidenced by his transition from largely indistinguishable game managers to QBs who can run the ball (and throw it). Meanwhile, Lincoln Riley has coached Heisman winners in each of his two seasons, using both Murray and Baker Mayfield as runners.
Still, it’s possible for the quarterback to run the ball too much.
With respect to running backs, the clear trend has been towards the committee approach, where individual backs do not take the pounding that we expected in the Earl Campbell and Herschel Walker days. It would not make sense to ignore the wisdom learned about the correct approach for running backs when giving carries to the quarterback.
Plus, the tailback will generally be a better runner than the quarterback, so pushing too many carries to the quarterback would be inefficient.
In short, quarterback carries have evolved into another example of the Goldilocks Principle.
There can be too little QB running. An offense without a running threat at QB gives up the numerical advantage that comes from using the signal-caller in the running game.
There can be too much QB running. An offense that runs the QB too often gives the most important player more injury exposure and takes carries away from better runners.
And there can be just the right amount of QB running.
The country’s best teams seem to have come to more consensus lately on how much their QBs should be carrying the ball — usually between around three and seven times per game, with a few QBs outside that range.
In 2008, the top 10 teams in the final BCS standings had their primary QB carry the ball between 1.9 times (Kellen Moore at Boise State) and 11.5 times per game (Tim Tebow at Florida), with sacks filtered out.
Tebow, Colt McCoy, and Terrelle Pryor all ran more times per game than this year’s most frequent running QB for a top-10 team (Murray at 8.3 per game).
In the current Playoff top 10, every team’s top QB has carried between 1.7 and 8.3 times per game, and seven of the 10 QBs have gone between 4.2 and 8.3.
Georgia’s Jake Fromm is the least frequent runner in either top 10 at 1.7 carries per game, but this year’s group has both fewer statues and fewer guys who run a ton.
Among primary QBs for top-10 teams, five of this year’s carry between 3 and 7 times per game. A decade ago, the same group was between 2.2 and 8.6.
Put another way, the best teams aren’t comfortable with their QBs just sitting back and throwing. But they’re also not comfortable with running them all the time. Meanwhile, if a team has special running talent like Murray, it might have him take off a little bit more.
Oklahoma and Bama have found the Goldilocks Zone in how they’ve deployed two special talents at QB. The other half of the Playoff bracket also got there in part by finding the right balance.
Both Clemson and Notre Dame improved on offense when they switched from quarterbacks who were heavy runners to QBs who were closer to the Goldilocks Zone: Kelly Bryant to Trevor Lawrence for the Tigers, Brandon Wimbush to Ian Book for the Irish. Lawrence is a five-star talent, but Book’s just been the right fit:
What Book is bringing to Notre Dame is conceptually similar to what Tua Tagovailoa is bringing to Alabama. With a versatile skill set that includes the ability to distribute the ball in spread-option schemes, RPOs, and play action, the defense gets into a bind. It has to either confuse Book about where the ball’s going or beat some talented player man-to-man.
The confusion angle is difficult, because Notre Dame can always just use the read game to run the ball, and the receiving group means he’ll often have matchup advantages. When an offense has Notre Dame’s line and blocking tight ends, it’s hard for a defense to stop the run without pulling numbers from the secondary. And when that offense has powerful, skilled wideouts with size advantages, a defense runs out of options in a hurry.
And there are plenty of examples throughout the year of teams benefitting from finding just the right amount of QB running:
- In the SEC Championship Game, Alabama struggled for three quarters because Tagavailoa couldn’t run the ball as he fought various injuries. Fromm looked mobile by comparison. This affected Bama’s running game, which disappeared in the second half until Tua was knocked out of the game. In came Jalen Hurts, who brought a run threat along with passing ability he had rarely shown against Georgia-level opponents in his first two seasons. The Bama offense clicked into gear and won the Tide another SEC title.
- Michigan had its best offense in Jim Harbaugh’s four years in Ann Arbor because Harbaugh finally had a quarterback who could run the ball like Andrew Luck had at Stanford and Colin Kaepernick had with the 49ers. (Don’t laugh. Luck had almost 1,000 yards rushing in his career, sacks included, and 4.3 carries per game.)
- Ohio State struggled to run the ball for much of the season, in part because Dwayne Haskins was not a threat on the ground. But among the factors that saved Ohio State’s season was Haskins’ willingness to keep the ball against Maryland and Michigan.
- Florida’s offense improved significantly in 2018 as Feleipe Franks joined the run game more.
- UCF hasn’t lost a game in two years with McKenzie Milton carrying 7.5 times per game in 2017 and 5.8 in 2018, again with sacks filtered out.
To design a perfect offense in 2018, you could take a lot of approaches, but all of them would involve having a balanced running threat at QB.
That quarterback doesn’t need to be, and shouldn’t be, the focal point of the running game. Players like Tebow and Cam Newton are exceedingly rare. But he should run enough to create the numbers advantage that’s become indispensable in modern football.
See More:
