Griffin Will Help Introduce 'a New Dimension' - New York Times

Bill Polian was at the draft last week, wondering about the future of the N.F.L. Just a few months removed from his job as the president of the Indianapolis Colts, Polian is still familiar with the players who are entering the league, the ones he was scouting not long ago. He remembers the first time he saw in person Robert Griffin III, the second overall pick.

The Colts, under a new regime, settled long ago on Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck to rebuild around, but Polian was startled by what he saw from Griffin, who dazzles so completely that fans at Radio City Music Hall began chanting his name Thursday night, even before Luck had left the stage and the Washington Redskins’ pick was official.

“This is a new dimension,” Polian said he told the Colts’ owner, Jim Irsay.

But now Polian ponders how long we will consider Griffin’s combination of skills â€" speed of a sprinter, power arm of a pitcher and accuracy of the best quarterbacks â€" to be unusual. With Griffin joining Carolina’s Cam Newton, who is coming off a rookie season in which his quick acclimation and rapid success surprised those who expected him to have a rockier transition to the pro game, Polian suspects that the N.F.L. is entering a new era, with a small influx of quarterbacks who are running threats on every down, whether from an option or a bootleg, or a pure run out of a pass formation when the pocket breaks down. As spread offenses overwhelm colleges, they will cultivate and polish more players with diverse talent who will then enter the N.F.L., which has all but abandoned the traditional run formation but is still befuddled by quarterbacks who present a dual threat.

Polian’s ESPN colleague Steve Young, to whom Griffin is often compared, told Polian that 40 percent of the San Francisco offense when he played for the 49ers included the quarterback running in some form â€" on a bootleg, a rollout or a play-action pass. Mike Shanahan was the coordinator for that offense from 1992 to 1994, Young’s three All-Pro seasons, which included one Super Bowl championship.

“You look at R. G. and picture in your mind a Houston Texans offense because that is Kyle and Mike Shanahan-designed,” Polian said of the son and father who now run the Washington Redskins. “If you now look at the Houston offense and say that every time Matt Schaub comes off the bootleg in the stretch play, which is the staple running play in their offense, you now have a threat of a guy who can put his foot in the ground and go by everybody or stop and throw it 60 yards across the field on the money â€" even worse. How do you defense that?”

That is the problem facing opponents of the Redskins and of the Panthers. Newton ran for 706 yards last season and is a shiftier runner than Griffin, but the Panthers would seem to prefer a more conservative power running game. Michael Vick has long presented the threat of the run, but he is smaller than the others and therefore more susceptible to injury.

To a lesser degree, Tim Tebow presents the same challenge. Although he is a deft and dangerous scrambler, Tebow does not have Newton’s size to take repeated hits, or Griffin’s breakaway speed, or the accuracy that makes Newton and Griffin dangerous passers. In 2009, when Tebow played for the University of Florida, his coach Urban Meyer figured that the spread, with the inclusion of a running quarterback, would work in the N.F.L., despite the resistance of those who worry about exposing franchise quarterbacks to repeated hits.

“I think it would have worked years ago,” Meyer, now at Ohio State, said at the time. “No one has had enough â€" I don’t want to say courage â€" no one has wanted to step across that line.”

And no one could find enough quarterbacks to run it. For each Griffin there is a Pat White, a successful dual-threat quarterback at West Virginia and second-round pick by the Miami Dolphins who lasted only one season in the N.F.L. because of a startling lack of accuracy.

If a team builds an offense to support a running quarterback, it must have a similar backup. Otherwise it will have to revamp the offense if the starter is injured. Think of how drastically the Denver Broncos’ offense would have changed if Brady Quinn had had to enter the playoff game when Tebow was hurt against the New England Patriots.

Polian said the pool of talent would probably grow. A few years ago, Jon Gruden said that at his son’s high school football tournament, just one of 77 teams had used the traditional center-to-quarterback snap. Everyone else was in the shotgun, running the spread option. Some of those players are in college now, part of the pipeline that will eventually deliver perhaps a handful of players who might tantalize scouts looking for the next Newton or Griffin.

Gil Brandt, a former personnel executive for the Dallas Cowboys who now analyzes the draft for NFL.com, said West Virginia’s Geno Smith could be the next elite running quarterback. Kansas State’s Collin Klein is another mobile quarterback.

Smith and Klein will be seniors. If they and others follow Newton and Griffin into the N.F.L. with a reputation for running, others will be forced to have the same conversation Polian had with Colts’ defensive coaches last year.

“How are you going to contain him?” Polian asked his coaches about Griffin. “With a defensive end who weighs 280 pounds? He’ll go right by him.”

“I can’t wait to see Washington in action and see what he does,” Polian said. “Carolina wants to be a power team, but Mike is going to run that guy up there with the zone blocking. We’re going to get more RGIII on the outside. Gone, baby, gone.”