Pettine: Teams want Eagles, Mariota to fail because they're anti-spreadBy Jared Dubin CBS SportsSeptember 19, 2015 
Marcus Mariota is the latest spread QB to be subject to criticism. (USATSI)One of the most discussed topics in today's NFL is the transition that must be made by a college quarterback that spends his time in the spread offense. It comes up nearly every year around draft time.Two of the quarterbacks for whom it's been labeled a "concern" are Johnny Manziel and Marcus Mariota, who will square off against each other when the Browns take on the Titans on Sunday. Manziel played for Kevin Sumlin at Texas A&M while Mariota plied his trade at Oregon, which still runs the system installed by Chip Kelly before he left for the Philadelphia Eagles. Even after drafting Manziel in 2014, the Browns reportedly went hard after Mariota in advance of this year's draft.It shouldn't come as a surprise, then, that in recent days Browns head coach Mike Pettine and GM Ray Farmer have both been vocal on the issue of spread quarterbacks."He is the kind of guy you root for from a personal standpoint," Pettine said of Mariota, per Cleveland.com. "But I think the football purists who want it to be a true pro-style game are not going to cheer for a guy like him because that would only encourage teams to blow this up and bring in college coordinators. That's why I think there are teams who are rooting against the Philly's of the world and Mariota doing well for that very reason."As we wrote in the aftermath of this year's draft, many of the spread's principles are already taking hold in the NFL. Yet, as Pettine alluded to, we still hear the familiar refrain that spread QBs need time to adjust -- that they're not "pro ready" and that they can't find success at the NFL level. Indeed, a recent Wall Street Journal article about the NFL's "quarterback crisis" saw many coaches and executives attribute said crisis to the rise of spread offenses in college. But Farmer had a different opinion.Cleveland's Farmer has one idea: What if you could design an offense to minimize the passing deficiencies of modern quarterback prospects? Farmer used the example of Auburn's Nick Marshall, who threw 20 touchdowns last season but was projected to transition to defensive back in the NFL. What if, Farmer said, you devoted resources to designing an offense where Marshall could thrive? He would cost you almost nothing—Marshall went undrafted—and “you might get your franchise quarterback in the later rounds, and that's unheard of these days.”“Whoever cracks this code the soonest is going to have a huge, huge advantage,” Farmer said, adding he and his coach, Pettine, have had broad discussions on the topic.That idea of designing an offense where Marshall, or (insert spread QB's name here), could thrive is essentially what Kelly's plan for the Eagles boils down to. It's what the Shanahans did for Robert Griffin III as a rookie -- before trying to shoehorn him into a more traditional system the following year -- and what Titans coach Ken Whisenhunt at least appeared to be doing for Mariota in the team's Week 1 win over the Buccaneers. (Go watch Kendall Wright's first-half touchdown and try not to have Oregon flashbacks; you won't be able to do it)."I think you always try to do things that fit what your players do well," Whisenhunt told Cleveland.com on a conference call. "You incorporate some of those things into what your plan is, what you're trying to do. But there are things that you have to do in this league to play that position and you work hard to get him up to speed with those."Intuitively, this just makes more sense than asking a quarterback to completely alter his skill set to fit a more traditional offense just because that's what the coach is used to. If you're going to make a quarterback your franchise player (and quarterbacks essentially have to be franchise players these days for all but a few teams given the position's importance to determining wins and losses), making his adjustment to the pro game smoother by incorporating aspects of the offensive style he ran in college should only help.Putting your quarterback in a position to succeed is arguably the most important job an offense has. Making him comfortable often helps with that. We've seen it with young QBs, and we've even seen it with legends like Peyton Manning in the early part of this season.If making your quarterback comfortable means running more shotgun, run more shotgun. It's more efficient anyway. If that means designing more quick throws, design more quick throws. They're completed at a significantly higher rate. If it means using packaged plays (plays that can be a run or pass depending on how the defense reacts immediately after the snap), use packaged plays. Plenty of NFL teams -- the Eagles, Patriots, Packers and Steelers, to name just a few -- have had succeed with them.Teams are already doing a lot of this stuff anyway. The average NFL team is now in shotgun more than 60 percent of the time, and that number is steadily rising. Nearly 60 percent of throws now leave the quarterback's hand within 2.5 percent of the snap, and that number is rising, too. Even no-huddle usage is increasing in frequency. Not only are those trends real, but they have uniformly helped NFL offenses. Execs and coaches might as well just admit it and drop the stigma that is for some reason still associated with the spread.
