Rich Miano’s football career was nearly all on the defensive side of the ball.
“I’m told I’m a quarterback apologist,” he said.
That seems strange, since Miano played 10 seasons as a defensive back in the NFL and was the University of Hawaii’s defensive backs coach and defensive coordinator from 1999 to 2011 before two seasons as head coach at Kaiser, his high school alma mater.
Doesn’t he think the game has changed too much?
“I can see the big picture of the game,” said Miano, who is the color analyst for UH football telecasts. “The game has evolved so much. You always had to be a great athlete to play quarterback, but now it’s even more true.”
As Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs showed again Sunday—with their third Super Bowl win in five years — it’s way more involved than throwing passes from the pocket or handing off to a running back.
“Those two runs by Mahomes and everything the Chiefs did on that last drive is a thing of beauty,” Miano said. “Very few guys can beat you with their arm, beat you with their legs, and beat you with their mind.”
There is plenty of intricacy, but the most important math of it is simple: With a quarterback who is always a threat to run there are no more 10-on-11 plays.
And rule changes to make the game safer have also made playing defense more difficult.
“As a parent and a coach and someone who cares about health, yes, it’s a better game,” Miano said. “It’s still a collision sport, and there are still risks.
“On defense, you have to be well-trained, and accept the fact that once in a while you will have your shoulder in the right place, but because of the way the offensive player moves you will end up getting penalized (for making an illegal hit). You have to teach tackling in a whole different way than when they had bounties for knocking players out.”
Gone are the days when the NFL celebrated and marketed big hits.
“There’s definitely a delicate balance. You look at the rules, and yes, they have made a difference. After 5 yards you can’t be physical with receivers,” Miano said. “And it changes things when you can go across the middle and know you won’t be decapitated.”
Spread offenses featuring plenty of horizontal motion force the defense to cover the entire field. Speed has never been more important at every position, including quarterback.
Miano has another name for what others call dual-threat quarterbacks: plus-ones.
Randall Cunningham, his Philadelphia Eagles teammate from 1991 to 1994, was one of the first.
Cunningham retired as the all-time rushing leader among quarterbacks with 4, 928 yards in a 16-year career, including 942 in 1990. Cunningham, who also passed for 29, 979 yards, was a three-time runner-up for NFL MVP, but never made it to the Super Bowl.
“Phenomenal athleticism,” Miano said. “He could throw the ball all the way across the field without opening his hips and giving the defense a read.”
Like Cunningham’s, Steve Young’s skill set was ahead of its time. But Young was fortunate that after two years in the USFL and two more with Tampa Bay he was traded to the 49ers.
He had to wait behind Joe Montana for four years, but Young had enough time to earn his way into the Hall of Fame. The highlight was the 1994 Super Bowl, in which Young threw a record six touchdown passes and became the first player to lead a Super Bowl in both passing (325) and rushing (49) yards.
The two-time MVP was one of the most efficient passers in NFL history — and he ran for 4,239 yards with 43 touchdowns, averaging 5.9 yards per rushing attempt.
Young’s talent as a runner is remembered by many from one play : a fourth-quarter, 49-yard touchdown in 1988 that gave the 49ers a win over the Vikings. It wasn’t a bootleg or quarterback draw, and there was no RPO then; the run defined the word scramble, as Young avoided a sack and eventually out-ran or eluded all 11 defenders, some of them twice, on his way to the end zone.
“Whenever I read about records broken, I wonder what Dan Marino, Steve Young, Barry Sanders, guys like that, would do now, with the way the game has changed” Miano said. “Especially since they play more games now.”
Miano appreciates the greatness of today’s players, combined with coaches and systems designed to get the most out of their talent.
“Andy Reid’s a genius, and there are coaches who didn’t play but know how to use analytics,” he said. “Everything is multi-layered now. Horizontally, vertically. Now every successful quarterback is a plus-one, and you have to defend against the quarterback (running) , you have to have a spy. It’s giving defensive coordinators headaches.”
