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interesting QB piece from WSJ


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Most Important Quarterback in the NFL Playoffs: Brett Favre

Joe Montana was long the archetype for the best quarterbacks. But the young stars taking over the league idolized 

 
 
 
 
By 
Andrew Beaton and 
Jonathan Clegg
Updated Jan. 4, 2019 8:11 a.m. ET

Andy Reid was combing through college football tape two years ago when he saw something that once astounded him three decades earlier and that he hadn’t seen again since.

Back then, Reid wasn’t the Chiefs’ coach. He was an assistant at UTEP where he squared off against a relatively unknown quarterback from Southern Mississippi who ran around the field like a scalded wildcat, making plays so crazy nobody believed it would be possible at the next level.

 

Brett Favre played the position unlike anybody Reid has ever seen. Until he saw Patrick Mahomes do the exact same thing.

“He was compared to Brett Favre a lot,” said Adam Cook, Mahomes’s high school coach. “Even as a younger kid.”

He isn’t the only one. As the NFL playoffs begin this weekend, Mahomes headlines a new generation of passer. Six of the quarterbacks in the playoffs are 25 and under—and what unites these emerging stars is how they play nothing like their older counterparts in the playoffs, but like an even older quarterback they grew up idolizing. They play like Brett Favre.

Deshaun Watson, the Texans quarterback, wears No. 4 because of Favre. Dak Prescott, of the Dallas Cowboys, cites Favre as an inspiration. Bears quarterback Mitchell Trubisky played so much like Favre in high school that his coaches called him Favre. Trubisky liked the nickname so much that he put Favre’s name on the license plate of his green Buick LeSabre.

What makes this a monumental shift is that, for the last two decades, a very different Hall of Fame quarterback has been the model for NFL postseason success. Tom Brady, Drew Brees and Philip Rivers have ruled the league by imitating the precision passing of their own childhood hero: Joe Montana, the archetypal pocket passer—and Favre’s polar opposite.

 

The Joe Montana vs. the Brett Favre Generations

The younger quarterbacks, in the mold of Favre, hold onto the ball longer and throw the ball farther down field looking for big plays. The NFL’s older ones are traditional pocket passers, like Montana.

Joe Montana and Drew Brees  Throw time-2.59 sec, Air Yards-7.1 yds

Brett Favre and Patrick Mahomes Throw-time: 2.91  Air yards: 9.2

“When you talk about Montana and Brady, you talk about quarterback clinic tapes. This is how you do it from the pocket,” said Steve Mariucci, a former head coach and now an NFL Network analyst. “Favre is the gunslinger, the tough guy, who takes some chances, makes some spectacular plays—and sometimes maybe not.”

Montana, who won four Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49ers, defined the textbook fundamentals that coaches instilled in young quarterbacks for years. He stayed in the pocket and surgically dissected defenses.

Brady, who was raised in the Bay Area, wore Montana’s jersey as he learned how to throw a football. He was at Candlestick Park when Montana authored one of the greatest comebacks in NFL history with a play known simply as “The Catch.” He worked so hard on emulating Montana that he went on to win even more Super Bowls than his idol.

Brady’s peers weren’t any different. Rivers had a poster of Montana on his bedroom wall. Ben Roethlisberger was so overwhelmed when he met Montana before the NFL draft that he struggled to form a complete sentence. “I was kind of star-struck,” he said.

No one was star-struck by Favre when he entered the NFL. He was such an unknown quantity that he fell to the 33rd pick of the 1991 draftand, when he was announced as the selection, his name was mispronounced as “Brett Favor.”

But it wasn’t just Favre’s surname that was unknown. The way he played quarterback was foreign, too. To some, it was so improvisational that it bordered on heresy. He scrambled every which way looking to make big plays happen. He launched the ball downfield whenever possible. He wasn’t afraid to throw interceptions. He eschewed everything Montana typified.

Favre was so unusual that he even practiced the unusual. He worked on throws other quarterbacks are warned off—underhanded, falling down and off-balance passes. It seemed cuckoo, until he completed underhanded throws while he was falling down and off balance.

There was one person with an especially keen appreciation of Favre’s wildness, and that same person happens to be coaching one of the NFL’s best teams this postseason. The same year the Packers traded for Favre in 1992, Andy Reid became an assistant in Green Bay. Together, they won a Super Bowl while Favre collected three MVPs.

Reid learned to accept that Favre’s playing style was like a roller coaster—some spectacular highs accompanied by some nauseating moments in between. In the middle of the 1998 season, Packers coach Mike Holmgren stormed into the team’s quarterback room and played a tape that showed all of Favre’s growing number of interceptions that year.

The video finished, Holmgren left the room and Reid pulled out another tape. “It was the same thing. Bad decisions, risky throws. But they were all touchdowns,” said Matt Hasselbeck, the ESPN analyst and backup to Favre in Green Bay at the time. “Andy’s point was ‘Listen: I’m not going to coach this stuff out of you because it’s who you are as a player.’”

Two decades later, the NFL has evolved in a way that encourages Favre’s swashbuckling style. Offenses pass the ball more than ever. They play out of the shotgun more. And the rules have changed drastically to protect quarterbacks.

These changes haven’t merely produced gaudy passing stats. They have also made it more advantageous to play like Favre, manufacturing more opportunities to create big plays. It’s safer than ever for quarterbacks to dance around outside the pocket while waiting for a receiver to break free downfield.

The numbers underline this shift. The six 25-and-under quarterbacks in the playoffs, who wait longer to try something ambitious on any given play, hold on to the ball for 2.9 seconds on average before throwing. That’s 11% longer than the 2.6 seconds that the three older quarterbacks—Brady, Brees and Rivers—wait to throw.

It’s also quantified in the types of passes they throw. The younger ones throw deeper, just as Favre did in his heyday. Their passes average 8.6 yards through the air beyond the line of scrimmage. The older quarterbacks average 7.5 yards—or 14% shorter. In other words: They are much more Montana-esque.

There are other, stylistic gambits that numbers can’t show like passes—passes thrown off the back foot or across their bodies, which can produce brilliant—or terrible—results.

Favre, on the sidelines of a game, once remarked: “The only thing I ain’t done is throw one left-handed in my career.”

Earlier this year, the Chiefs trailed the Broncos late in the fourth quarter and faced a critical third down. Mahomes scrambled outside the pocket and knew there was only one way he could complete the pass—by throwing it left-handed. He pulled it off, and the Chiefs won.

The play said just as much about Mahomes as it did about his cohorts. They have become more Favre than Favre.

Write to Andrew Beaton at andrew.beaton@wsj.com and Jonathan Clegg at jonathan.clegg@wsj.com

 
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