FIGHT OR FLIGHT: RUNNING QBS VERSUS PASSING QBS

That’s a matter that doesn’t only apply to quarterbacks, Mr. Swindle. Jerome Bettis altered his style of running after his first couple seasons in the NFL because he wasn’t managing his contact very well, and he was threatening to run himself out of the league before his rookie contract was up.

Jerry Sportsradio has a point about QB’s avoiding contact when they’re dumb enough to seek it out or stand still in the pocket for more than four seconds in a row. Most running QB’s are smarter than that about taking hits, and survive a lot longer.

“. . . Bradlee Van Pelt at quarterback for the Rams, another non-slider brain damage fiend who rocked the mullet pre-hipster revival and had a face like a disgruntled vampire bat.”

Amen to that. I enjoyed watching that kid. Roethisberger played with a similar mindset at Miami, but he was big enough to knock over most college defenders anyway.

Vince Young has still never taken a hard hit.

Vince Young.

Size matters. That’s something we should have put into the sketchily arranged formula here.

Jared Lorenzen endured hellacious punishment during his time in the SEC. Being big as a Narwhal helped.

Running QBs do live longer as long as they use common sense. Look at it in a fighting aspect. If you know you’re going to get punched, you’re not going to get knocked out that often. Sure, there are a few Trevor Berbicks and Sonny Listons out there, but for the most part you won’t get knocked the fuck out. But if you sit back there and don’t get ready to get hit, sooner or later you’ll end up getting Brasic’d or Theisman’d.

When you know how to get hit it hurts less.

I would imagine that most of those running QB’s are more agile and flexible. Thus, they don’t pop an ACL anytime a defender looks at their legs.

Running QB’s are also a pain in the ass to deal with on any edition of NCAA Football.

Hate to do it, but… sites versus sights?

Corrected, AfDawg. We type very quickly.

I gotta stop reading this post right now and fess up that I went to the world finals in that Odyssey of the Mind shit 2 years in a row – 4th and 5th grade bitches. No one can defeat my balsa wood structures. Year one was at U of MD, and year two was at Iowa State, and even in my youth I knew both were dumps. There was no year three because our town got asked to stop competing due to shear dominance, no lie.

Anyway back to the football:
Reggie Ball was a running QB with no common sense. I think drop back passers are better than scramblers, because scramblers don’t have patience. They just run at the slightest hint of danger. Drop back passers are unfazed, and sometimes complete passes sitting down, like Tom Brady did once for the Pats.

Its not so much about the big, Head-Wound Harry style injuries so much as the little nagging ones — the (dreaded) high ankle sprains, pulled groins, sprained shoulders, fingers and stuff of that ilk that can limit a quarterback’s effectiveness.

Plus, its kind of like the old saying that you’re safer flying than driving. Yeah, planes may crash a lot less than cars do, but you don’t tend to walk away from a plane crash like you might a car wreck. Running quarterbacks might not get hurt as much as pocket ones, but when they do get hurt it tends to be a bigger pain in the ass.

Or head. Shoulder. Whatever.

Doesn’t the injury level depend on who is playing safety as well? I mean reggie nelson/greg blue (insert hard hitting safety here) is much more likely to tear a running QB apart than the drop back guy hiding behind the line.

Kerry Meier was very much a running quarterback last year, though the degree to which that was due to the shoulder injury vs. his poor/undeveloped passing skills is still a matter of debate among (the few) serious Kansas football fans.

Roethisberger played with a similar mindset at Miami, but he was big enough to knock over most college defenders anyway.

It’s one of the great tragedies of the Internets that neither YouTube nor Google Image Search has a visual of Roethlisberger going headfirst into Marshall’s Gladstone Coke and knocking him on his ass to convert a 4th-and-14 on a scramble from the opening drive of the shoulda-been-66-to-6 game back in 2003.

“Ragone would actually look progressively dumber over the course of the game–we would have paid Adrian Karsten (god rest his tax-cheatin’, suicidal soul) good money to play him in Connect Four over the course of the game. First quarter: Dave wins in three moves. Second quarter: Karsten thrashes him in six moves.”

I don’t entirely remember the game, but I thought the board was empty when you started. Pretty damn impressive to win Connect FOUR in 3 moves.

(not trying to nitpick in my previous post)

“Its not so much about the big, Head-Wound Harry style injuries so much as the little nagging ones…”

That’s Massive Head-Wound Harry.

Make complete SNL references, please.

ah the running QB…I miss you so Matt Jones

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen Pat White slide. Then again, defenders are usually chasing him from behind.

Here is the real question:

 If you could be a drop back passer or an Athletic QB what would you be???

Anyone who played NCAA football on PS2 with Antwon Randel El at Indinan should know the correct answer.

Way more fun to be the athlete. Spread options, jukes, half back passes….. the list could go on and on.

1. Actually, Vince Young took some pretty good shots early in his college career, including one against KState that messed his ankle up for a couple of games.

You’re dang right size matters. Miss. State’s starting QB, Michael Henig, played at around 5’-11", 185 lbs. He broke his collarbone. Twice. In the same season.

Video proof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJYFJG1XWSY

Supposedly he wieghs 215 lb now, but do we really want him to be slower?

The guy from Tech did well at Odyssey of the Mind? I am shocked.

I remember participating in those things and hoping we would get done with “practice” early so that we could go play basketball before my mom picked me up.

I missed attending the semis of the ACC Tournament one year because of that douchebag competition.

I will burn in hell before I force my son to attend to one of those things over a sporting event.

That is just not kosher.

Coop’s right. Yea I know that shit wasn’t cool guys, but I figured I’d fess up anyway, to see if there were any other fellow wanks in the audience. At least it was pre-puberty so it didn’t take me down in that respect.

Honestly I was surprised someone else had even heard of the thing.

So Florida is going to win the MNC again this year. Tebow will win the first of his 7 Heisman Trophy’s.

Is that the logic behind this research?

But during Young’s junior and senior year, I only remember one real hard hit….

That was Ohio State at the Horseshoe where he was wobbly woblly. Aside from one time getting his bell-rung, Vince avoids hard hits

How could you NOT include the video of Matt Ryan getting hit by the Clemson defender?!

I was at the NU-Iowa game. E. Crouch won the starting QB title after that hit. The whole stadium watched that corner get mashed.

Eric almost left the program that summer (few people know this) because Bobbby Newcombe was favored that spring.

Glad he stuck around. Sad that he never got a NC.

“Contradictory point: Weinke was durable as hell! Helps to have FSU’s offensive line, too”
Clarification: FSU’s old offensive line. The current version will kill you faster than making out with Andrew Speaker.

Being a Georgia fan who watched D.J. Shockley get hurt before the 2005 Florida game, I feel like we do much better when we’ve got a drop back passer. Stafford can run like a mother, but fortunately for us, he seems to enjoy sitting behind the line and throwing the bomb.

Also, Florida fans still need to be sending thank you cards to Arkansas for hurting Shockley. God, we should have owned you that game, and of COURSE he gets hurt the game prior to the showdown in Jax…

Tommie. Frazier.

That is all.

1. “God, we should have owned you that game…”
   Have you watched any of the Florida-Georgia Rivalry for the past, oh, say 18 years?

Like a lot of science research, the outcome reflects the predisposition of the author a great deal of the time.

It will be interesting indeed to see UM’s option versus the greatest and fastest defenses in CFB.

Final thought, Tebow is going to get rocked in October in Baton Rouge. Hard rocked, like me whupping Orson at Guitar Hero at my tailgate. It will bear striking resemblence to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l77XWzi26q0

Kind of appropriate the grim reaper is in that video. Tebow will end up fast friends with him when Glenn Dorsey and the rest of the Fightin’ Tigers are done with him.

#32,

 I’m assuming you mean Urban Meyer when you say UM?

 Have you not been watching college football the last two seasons?
 Did you see Florida win the national championship?

 Meyer’s offense is doing fine.

If you think Leak was the embodiment of Meyer’s spread option, you are not the fan of football in general, and possibly Florida in particular, that you think you are, Beergut.

First of all, not to nitpick even more, but it’s eight games lost to the injuries to the drop-back QBs, not seven.

Now, to a couple of points that are actually relevant to the debate: I think it would be more interesting to figure out if these QBs were injured by being hit (granted, the most likely scenario), by throwing a pass at a bad angle or what.

Second, the sample is horribly skewed by the fact that two of the drop-back QBs accounted for seven of the eight games lost to injury … and there are two more drop-back QBs than running QBs in the survey.

You also have to consider that any injury that does occur to a running QB — especially a leg injury — is even more devastating because he needs to be closer to 100 percent to run an offense effectively.

However, I will grant that running QBs have one big advantage over drop-back QBs when it comes to injury: They’re probably less likely to get injured because they can run away. What would worry me about Tebow is that he’s just as likely to run into someone. Which might be okay and less likely to cause permanent brain damage in C-USA of a few years ago than in the SEC of today.

IF we really are talking about Tebow here, then the great thing of this is that we all get to sit back and watch and find out, what will happen, you know, how we watched and found out that Urban was way over his head in the SEC, or that Leak would never win anything, etc.

1. - Ltrain.
   you know UGA would have wooped ya’ll’s if they had D.J. Shockley playing. The feild general went down a week before his biggest rival…I mean hell they almost beat ya’ll with their shitty back up qb.