Franchise QB History

[Captain Hindsight]

I think that's a realistic analysis as far as players. I would put the root cause for the "rise of the Franchise QB" in the early '70s and Bill Walsh developing the horizontal spread passing attack later called "West Coast offense", that fueled Montana. Notable and forgotten by many are the two QB Walsh coached in Cleveland, set completion percentage records and went to multiple probowls (Carter, Anderson). The key innovation that fueled the change from "Franchise RB" to "Franchise QB" was IMO the use of short, high-percentage passes to set up the long ball and the running game, rather than using the running game to set up a low-percentage, high-reward vertical passing game. Most people don't realize it's so old because Walsh was driven out of the NFL and didn't implement it until he took over the '49ers HC gig in the early '80s.

 

Ironically, the driver for the "Rise of the Franchise QB" was an offense originally built for smart, reasonably mobile QBs who threw accurate short passes and lacked the super-arm to succeed as "mad bombers"!

 

The "second wave" driving the "rise of the Franchise QB" were rule changes favoring the QB and the WR. Again IMO these rule changes started really in the late '70s with the >5 yd LOS contact restriction on WR and accellerating in the '90s.

 

JMO of course.

 

 

 

Allegedly Bengals coaches are concerned that despite taking the Bengals to the playoffs as a rookie, Dalton isn't the "long term solution". I'm not sure the coaches have this concern, but a visit to Bengals message boards will reveal that fans certainly do. Some of their threads are eerily reminiscent of threads here a bout Fitz - yeah, he's smart, knows his football, can extend a play with his legs, doesn't really have "the arm" to be "the Man" and take us to "the game".

 

 

 

I could be mistaken, I think Hindsight was perhaps parodying a popular viewpoint in the media (and on this board) that measures a QB quality by wins and esp. championships.

 

I think the original question was when the switch occurred from building an offense around a star running back, to building an offense around a star QB.

You are correct sir

[Sisyphean Bills]

For argument's sake, I'll submit a different definition for "franchise QB". A franchise QB is the QB that the football brass decide to bet their current jobs with the franchise upon. That is, the guys that make the decisions place the franchise in the hands of their franchise QB and build the team around his strengths. In some cases, notably the Ravens under Billick, the franchise is continuously looking for a franchise QB year in and year out and has a revolving door at the position. In other cases, the franchise QB may not be the best choice, say a Ryan Leaf. In other cases, a franchise QB can come out of nowhere, like Tom Brady or Kurt Warner. And of course, there are the ones that come off like they were on rails like Peyton Manning.

 

Under this definition, Ryan Fitzpatrick is the Bills franchise QB. Not everyone will agree that is the best decision, but that's why we have a discussion board.