The Trouble with Mobile ... QBs, Not Phones

So your team’s hot-shot young mobile quarterback just threw another interception, huh? 

And you want to throttle him, but the closest you can come is to throw your shoe through the TV? 

That’s too bad. That was a nice TV. 

Well, I’m here to try to calm your nerves. Don’t hate him, because he’s insanely athletic!

The common perception is that mobile quarterbacks are mobile because they have to be. Because, if they weren’t mobile, they would suck as quarterbacks.  But I’m here to tell you that that logic is backwards. That would imply that the mobile quarterback actually attempted to be the standard, classic, stand-tall-in-the-pocket quarterback first, only to learn that he sucked at it, so he decided to run more than he threw.

But the simple truth is that mobile quarterbacks have to learn/realize that they actually have skill at being a mobile quarterback before perfecting the skill and earning the moniker of mobile quarterback. So when they were young, in their earliest days of youth football, when they got the chance to play quarterback, they ran. And ran. And it worked! A mobile quarterback was born.

So what then, you ask, explains their suckitude when it comes to throwing the football? Is it because they spent so much time running that they didn’t learn the fine art of throwing? Not quite. Simply put – it’s less physical and more mental.

Mobile quarterbacks, by sheer nature of playing the position, know how to throw the ball. They know proper mechanics. But they greatly differ from their immobile brethren in that they don’t know how to take a sack. Immobile-ites know that sometimes a sack is okay. Mobilians are under the directive to “never go down.” 

Usually, “never go down” means “run!” 

However, sometimes “run!” isn’t an option. But “never go down” remains the internal mantra. So what do they do? 

“Throw.” Awkwardly. Inaccurately. Poorly. Wrongly. To a player in a different uniform. And that makes you mad.

The best quarterbacks are the ones who can combine an athleticism to avoid sacks with a wisdom that tells them sometimes a sack is better than forcing a bad pass.

I’m lookin’ at you, Johnny Football.

A lesson to be learned. We’ll see how long it takes him.