When Canadian metal band Strapping Young Lad wrote its song “Bring on the Young,” it probably didn’t know the title could be applied to the NFL playoffs 11 years later.
This year’s playoff picture is loaded with young, play-making quarterbacks striving to realize their full potential. Russell Wilson, Andrew Luck, Cam Newton and Colin Kaepernick – simply listing their names creates a mental highlight reel of masterful passes and crafty scrambling, full of the flair and swagger fans have come to expect from these rising stars.
They’re all cut from the same cloth, save Luck’s passing prowess and Wilson’s diminutive stature. Each one fits the same criteria as hyper-athletic, rocket-launcher-for-an-arm quarterbacks who can thwart defenses with their legs if they have to.
These near-clones are befitting of a quarterback-driven league that banks on the big plays. But while the young foursome basks in the glory and attention from the media and fans, the other four postseason quarterbacks have gone largely unnoticed.
Maybe it’s because they’re aging. The average age of Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees and Philip Rivers is about 35, and a decade separates them from the average age of the aforementioned youngsters. To put things in perspective, Manning was 13 years old when Luck and Newton were born.
Maybe it’s because they’ve been here before. The veterans have 62 playoff games and five Super Bowl wins between them, so their postseason appearances never shock the world.
Or maybe the focus on the young guns tells us more about the current state of football than anything else. Trends come and go – the triple-option attack was in its death throes as the pro-style West Coast offense took flight, and it wasn’t long before football masterminds took it one step further with the spread offense.
The game is currently at one of those critical stylistic crossroads where the influx and innovation of young coaches inevitably forces the older class to adapt or get left behind. This weekend’s divisional round will put that on display for all to see.
The champions and contenders of the 2000s embodied the schemes of the time. They adhered to a formula that called for an extraordinary quarterback surrounded by large, talented receivers. New England, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, New Orleans and Green Bay all looked the same, and they all brought home the Lombardi Trophy during the previous decade.
But this season’s playoff field looks quite different. Seattle, San Francisco and Carolina are built the same and are serious title contenders. They’re led by young and electrifying dual-threat quarterbacks, have a potent running game and top-five caliber defenses.
These teams have scripted the new blueprint for winning championships that’s actually not that new. They call to mind the old age of football when running the ball 40 times a game and having a strong defensive front seven was all anyone needed. Sure, they feature spread-style quarterbacks gushing with gusto, so let’s consider them a hybrid of everything good from every era of the sport.
But as football evolves, so do its fans, and the exorbitant amount of praise heaped on the young gunslingers reflects that.
What once excited us is now boring and old-school. The time of the immobile quarterback is over, no matter how precise their execution was. Football is fanfare, and that’s just what the young foursome provides.
Fans long for the big play, be it by land or by air. They crave the improvisation of the athletic quarterbacks, and the uncertainty brought on by their ability to scramble makes every play exciting and unpredictable.
This weekend’s playoff action will affirm our devotion to the dual-threat quarterback. Most people I’ve talked to don’t want to watch Rivers square off with Manning when San Diego pays a visit to Denver on Sunday. Instead, the focus is on Kaepernick versus Newton and San Francisco against Carolina.
But we’ll see the shifting ideologies go head-to-head during New Orleans and Seattle’s matchup this afternoon. Two quarterbacks with different styles from different eras will lead two teams whose offenses seem split by the decades.
Do the old pocket-passers have another hurrah in them? Will the young scramblers usurp the seasoned veterans?
We’ll find out this weekend, and the results will impact the game for years to come.