Auxiliary players not a proper replacement

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This article was published 16/07/2018 (2641 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

We all appreciate the athlete that is multi-faceted, the player that can do his job and also dabble in the realm of another position. While it is a luxury to have such a player on a football team, we should never confuse or task a player with auxiliary skills with the responsibilities and abilities of a positional player.

For instance, let’s look at the comparable skill sets of running back Andrew Harris and quarterback Chris Streveler. Both are fast and seem to handle the physical challenges of the game with ease and even eagerness. That’s about where the comparison stops. One has reached the pinnacle of this game carrying the football, reading, anticipating and following the blocking schemes that unfold in front of him, avoiding and powering through would-be tacklers.

The other one — Streveler — has spent most of his time in collegiate football working on all the mechanics and nuances of throwing the football and reading and understanding defensive coverages and pictures. He knows how to run the rock, for sure, but mainly in two scenarios. One, when the pocket around him breaks down and he has to scramble for his life, and two, on the few designed plays — such as a quarterback draw, sneak or a zone-read option — where he tries to catch a defence off-guard by using his legs as a weapon and not an escape mechanism.

So while Streveler is very adept at running the football for a quarterback and in quarterbacking scenarios, as a running back, he wouldn’t make it out of training camp. Which brings us to the crux of the discussion: why is Streveler sometimes tasked with carrying and running the football in critical scenarios that would otherwise be best left to the one who has built his entire career doing it?

A defining moment of Saturday’s loss by the Winnipeg Blue Bombers at BC Place against the Lions was in the third quarter with the Bombers up 17-0. After Harris carried twice for 11 and seven yards, respectively, the Blue Bombers were second down and three yards to go on the B.C. three-yard line. Instead of staying with the back who was on all night and ended up averaging 10.7 yards a carry on only 13 touches for 139 yards, the team had Streveler run the football two times consecutively and turned it over on downs once. If Harris gets one of those touches, he probably scores. If he gets both, he definitely scores and this game is over at 24-0.

This moment brought me back to a few games ago against the Montreal Alouettes when wide receiver Darvin Adams threw Andrew Harris a beautiful touchdown strike on a little flea flicker-type deal. It was a wee bit under-thrown, Harris had to wait on it for a moment, but not many players could even come close to pulling that off in a live-game scenario. So why haven’t we seen Adams throwing footballs every week to different targets? Because he’s much better at catching them than throwing them and we’d all rather have a professional tossing the pigskin, than a cameo performance. It was a different look designed to catch the defence off guard, and it worked, but to continue to have Adams throwing the football downfield would be pushing your luck and inviting disaster into the equation.

These inches are not suggesting that Streveler should be taken off the short-yardage crew, or even that small package of plays he gets as a changeup from the pocket-passing ways of Matt Nichols. He is a welcome tempo differentiator who can catch defences off guard with his aggressive scrambling and running style, who can tax a defence in different ways than Nichols. But to hand him the football in critical scenarios — outside of a QB sneak behind centre — instead of handing off to a player who has made his living running the football into the end zone, is a lower-percentage play.

Streveler should indeed be leading the short-yardage duties and be getting a couple of series a game to continue his development as a future pivot. But inside the red zone, or inside the 10-yard line when the game is on the line and when it’s anything more than third and inches? Give the football to the player who has experience scratching, kicking and clawing his way into the end zone.

The guy who knows what the offensive line is doing and the guy who the O-line knows how to block for. The player who has done incredible athletic feats to keep his balance and stay up when the game was on the line and the team needed him to get to pay dirt. After all, it’s what he’s been trained to do and the thing he excels at.

Doug Brown, once a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears weekly in the Free Press.

Twitter: @DougBrown97