The new game: Pass
If LaDainian Tomlinson began his NFL career today, it wouldn't end with him fifth on the all-time rushing yards list. Even he admits it.
'If I was drafted now, I wouldn't have carried the football the way I did,'' says Tomlinson, the NFL Network analyst who retired in 2011 after 11 seasons.
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'But I probably would've been used more in the passing game. I can't say I would've shared the duties with another running back. I would've had a place in the game-but I wouldn't have 25 carries a game. Maybe 15 carries a game, eight balls thrown my way.''
It's what running backs do today, even great ones-because it's what football, in the NFL and elsewhere, demands in the 2010s. It defers to the unprecedented, and still-growing, emphasis on passing. The ripple effect is felt at every position-including tight end, where the Jimmy Graham franchise-tag arbitration battle has shed light on the drastic change in how those multi-skilled players are defined.
Graham may have lost his bid to be labeled as a wide receiver, but it doesn't mean he will do anything less on the field from now on.
'No matter where you line up, who lines up next to you, how far you're split, what routes you run, it doesn't change your position,'' said Hall of Famer Shannon Sharpe, who held all the major receiving records for tight ends when he retired in 2003.
'But,'' he added, 'there are more guys who do all of that than ever before ... The cat's out of the bag. The genie's not going back into the bottle.''
As the game tilts more toward passing every day, these positions, on both sides of the ball, are changing with the times:
Tight end
'For a long time,'' Sharpe said, speaking of tight ends who broke the traditional mold of the position, 'it was just Ozzie (Newsome) doing it. Then there was me. Ben Coates did it a little, but it was never more than four or five snaps per game. Then along came Tony Gonzalez.
'Now you have a majority of guys who are capable of catching 50, 60, 70 balls a season ... Now you have all these basketball guys coming into the league, guys who didn't have a future at the next level in that sport, but who can get put to use in this one.' Sharpe rattled off the names: 'Jimmy Graham, (Rob) Gronkoski, Julius Thomas, Vernon Davis, Antonio Gates.''
Sixteen tight ends caught 50 or more passes in 2013, with Graham, the now-retired Gonzalez and the Browns' Jordan Cameron catching more than 80. Twelve had at least 10 catches each of more than 20 yards. They now stretch the field vertically and horizontally and operate anywhere from split wide to the backfield (as Gronkowski has often done).
'Now you've just got to find ways to get as creative as you can with them,'' Sharpe said, recalling that in his Broncos days, he routinely ran the same practice routes as his receiver teammates, against cornerbacks instead of linebackers.
Evaluation has to be just as creative, as it was when Graham, Gates and Thomas, among others, were signed with their basketball backgrounds in mind. 'If I'm a scout, I go watch the NCAA tournament,'' Sharpe said.
Running back
The job description no longer asks one back to carry 300 times a season, generally the standard of the classic workhorse back for the previous four decades. It asks them to split the snaps, to catch the ball, to line up wide sometimes, and to pass-block always.
'There are certain running backs who have great skill sets, but if they can't protect their quarterback, their quarterback doesn't trust them, they can't get on the field,'' said Charles Davis, who calls college games for Fox Sports and analyzes the draft for the NFL Network. 'They become one-dimensional, and if you can hand it to them and they run you over, that works out great. But that's a very difficult thing.''
Only one current back fits that description, the consensus says: Minnesota's Adrian Peterson. But this era of passing has taken a toll even on his numbers. Excluding the year he tore his ACL, he has three career 300-carry seasons in six years. Tomlinson had at least 300 in each of his first seven seasons-and he caught 50 passes each time, too, including a 100-catch season. Last season, Philadelphia's LeSean McCoy, the NFL's leading rusher, also led the league with 314 carries, the fewest to top the NFL in a non-strike year since the schedule went to 16 games in 1978. Only seven years earlier, in 2006, the Chiefs' Larry Johnson set the NFL record with 416 carries.
McCoy, though, did catch 52 passes, and four backs caught at least 70 in 2013. The Eagles' Darren Sproles, then with the Saints, had more receptions (71) than carries (53). On the other hand, both Matt Forte of Chicago and Jamaal Charles of Kansas City each had at least 70 catches and 1,200 rushing yards.
'More and more, teams are going to the scatbacks, who can do it all,'' said future Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner, now an analyst for the NFL Network. Warner adds that the single back pounding the ball and making defenses adjust to him will get phased out: 'It's gonna be more and more rare the longer the game stays the way it is.'
Quarterback
While the pure passer in the mold of a Peyton Manning and Tom Brady is still the ideal, the ones who make plays on the move, outside of the pocket, and are a threat to run at any time on designed plays or not, are making inroads.
'The bottom line is that to be a successful quarterback in the NFL, you have to succeed from the pocket,'' Warner insists.
Yet he cannot deny what Russell Wilson, Colin Kaepernick, and Robert Griffin III have accomplished without having become consistent pocket passers yet. It is also why he is intrigued by rookie Johnny Manziel and by what the Browns will ask of him.
'Does he have to make all the plays for them, or does he have to make seven or eight plays a game?' Warner wondered. 'The quarterbacks who can make those seven or eight plays, whether with their legs or their arm, are the ones who will succeed.'
Linebacker
Take the new versatility of quarterbacks, the multiple skills of the running backs and tight ends, the spread and the use of the no-huddle, and defenses can't afford to use specialists and situational players anymore. So linebackers who can only play the run, or cover, or rush the passer, are being phased out. It factored into this year's draft as the abilities of Khalil Mack, Anthony Barr and C.J. Mosley were debated-who could stay on the field all three downs, who can slide from inside to outside and even to defensive end.
'The way the game is being played now-people worried about size, (but) I don't think we're as worried about size as much anymore,'' Davis said, 'because you don't have as many teams that are just so heavy run that you're worried about all that downhill stuff coming at your (middle) linebacker. His ability to run, his ability to diagnose, his ability to hit, supersedes everything else.''
Safety
The same change in the way offenses play affects how all defensive backs are evaluated. Never mind four- and five-receiver sets; tight ends and running backs can line up wide and in the slot at any time. Corners often have to play like safeties, and vice versa.
Tyrann Mathieu of the Cardinals could be emerging as a hybrid corner-safety. Before tearing his ACL in December, he had played slot corner, but started at safety as well, with coverage responsibility far outweighing what was asked of him against the run, traditionally a priority for any safety.
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