A Sports Mystery: What Happened to the NFL Quarterback?

Today, a mystery about what some people consider the most important position in sports : What the hell is going on with the NFL quarterback? We are two weeks into the 2024 football season. And as several commentators have pointed out, the quarterback position just doesn't look right. Passing yards per game are lower than any other year in the 21st century. Passing touchdowns have fallen off a cliff. The average completed pass is shorter than any other year in the recorded history of the sport. Today's guest is Robert Mays, the host of The Athletic Football Show. We talk about the evolution of the quarterback position, why NFL passing is down, how NFL defense got so smart, and where this is all headed.

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In the following excerpt, Derek and Robert Mays explore the evolution of the NFL offense and defense over the past decade to determine why many metrics for quarterback play are at all-time lows.

Derek Thompson: In the open, I reviewed why I think something is happening in football that doesn't have the name recognition that it deserves. It's not just that this season, the 2024 season, has seen historically anemic play at the quarterback position—the fewest passing yards per game this century, fewest passing touchdowns per pass in decades—it's also that if you look at the entire history of the sport, we've never seen a shorter passing game ever. Average yards per completed catch, according to Football-Reference, are at all-time lows.

And I asked you to be on the show not only because I'm a nonprofessional football watcher who wanted to talk to a professional football analyst, but also because on your podcast, it feels to me like you've been circling this topic for a few weeks now. So before we even attempt to explain what is happening here and why, let's define what is happening here. Am I nuts, or is this a historic and significant moment for the quarterback position?

Robert Mays: I think it's a truly historic moment for offenses in general. And if you look at the cycle and how it's worked over the last 10 or so years, there was a moment where offenses were definitively ahead of defenses. And I think that defenses, over the last two seasons specifically, have closed that gap. And defenses have really made up a ton of ground in how they're attacking opposing quarterbacks and offenses. And it just feels so much harder across the entire league. We're talking about young quarterbacks, we're talking about the best quarterbacks in the NFL. It doesn't seem to matter. Everything is just more difficult on that side of the ball, and I think it's a multipronged explanation as to why that's happening.

Thompson: If you were going to tell a story about what happened to modern NFL quarterbacks and why it seems like defenses have caught up to offenses after years of historic quarterback production, how would you tell that story? What year should we begin this chronology?

Mays: I would probably start in 2011. And 2011 is where we saw a massive moment for the passing boom. All you need to know about that year is that Drew Brees threw for 5,400 yards and 46 touchdowns and did not win the MVP because of what Aaron Rodgers also did. We had three guys throw for 5,000 yards. It was really a moment in the NFL for throwing the football.

And then the next season is when we see the dawn of the Legion of Boom in Seattle. That's when Bobby Wagner gets there. Earl Thomas is there at that point. Richard Sherman comes in. And that's when defenses, I think, really started gaining a little bit of ground back. And over the next three or four years, that style of defense, that single-high Cover 3—Hawk 3 is literally what it was called—started permeating around the NFL.

Thompson: Can I just jump in right there, as you're talking about single-high? I would imagine that roughly half of my audience loves football, watches every single week, and maybe 30 percent or so has no idea what position we're even talking about when you say single-high. So I want you to be nerdy. I would not bring Robert Mays onto my podcast and say, "Don't be nerdy." Nerd out, please. But let's just in parentheticals define our coverage schemes here.

Mays: Very simple. So before a play happens, you have a number of safeties that form the coverage shell. And there was a time in the NFL, like when those Seattle teams were really dominating how the structure of defenses looked, where you had one safety at the back of your defense instead of two. And so that's, you can play Cover 3 out of that, which is just three high defenders. You can play Cover 1 out of that, which is one high defender and man coverage around it. So it's just a simple switch between having two high safeties and having one high safety. So that's what we're talking about with single-high defenses.

Thompson: Great. And right on with the chronology. Keep going.

Mays: So you had that moment in 2013, 2014, 2015 where that style of defense, those Cover 3 single-high looks that became en vogue in Seattle, those started permeating the league. Guys like Gus Bradley, Dan Quinn, Robert Saleh in San Francisco when he first got there. That became the defense du jour in the league.

Thompson: So pausing here. The story between 2011 and 2018 is the rise and fall and rise again of offensive prowess in the league. You have this boom in historic quarterback play in 2011. And then you mentioned defenses, starting with the Seahawks from Seattle figuring out coverage schemes that contain quarterbacks like Peyton Manning, but then offenses strike back and they build a better monster with young, innovative coaches like Kyle Shanahan in San Francisco, Sean McVay in Los Angeles. They're taking advantage of the fact that the new defensive schemes are powerful, but they're predictable, and now the league feels like the juice is back with the offense. So pick up the story in 2018.

Mays: Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay get hired to be the head coaches of the Niners and the Rams, respectively. And I had a conversation with the defensive coordinator last year who was on the Ravens staff in 2018, and he told me that after they had a joint practice with the Rams in 2018, he went back to his hotel room and was writing in his notebook about what that Rams offense felt like. And he said, "They have created a monster that is engineered to destroy us." And that's what Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan were doing in that moment. They had built these offenses that were perfectly orchestrated to attack those single-high coverages that had become en vogue because of those Seattle teams.

And so in 2017 and 2018, you saw this boom in offense. And obviously Patrick Mahomes won the MVP in 2018, where defenses were just too easy to get a bead on. The way that McVay talks about it, he says, "They're regulated coverages. I knew what sort of coverages they were going to be in so I could orchestrate my offense to start attacking those coverages." Well, then in 2018, over the course of that season, we start to see moments where defenses begin to fight back. The Bears with Vic Fangio, who was their defensive coordinator that year, really gave McVay a lot of problems. And there were a couple other games that season where that happened. And then in the Super Bowl, Bill Belichick employs tons of these different coverage structures that are kind of similar to what Vic Fangio and those teams do.

Well, then over the next two to three years, we see teams switch from the single-high world to this two-high world that Vic Fangio was really, not the master of necessarily, but he was the biggest proponent of. So it just made things a little bit more muddy for opposing offenses. It's not just that you have two high safeties taking away throws down the field; it's that when you have two high safeties, the coverage could be anything. So offenses just had such a harder time getting a bead on, "OK, you're lined up this way before the snap. I have a very good idea of what sort of coverage you are going to run. There's only so many things you can do with this structure before the play." Now we're in a place where it could be anything.

And so that has forced a huge shift in how offenses have to devise their plans and how specific they can get in the areas that they're attacking defenses. And I know that's a very long-winded answer, but it is coming from so many different directions.

This excerpt was edited for clarity. Listen to the rest of the episode here and follow the Plain English feed on Spotify.

Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Robert Mays Producer: Devon Baroldi