[h1]Luke Falk and the Air Raid Conundrum[/h1]
The Air Raid offense has produced prolific collegiate passers but few NFL success stories. The latest Mike Leach pupil, Luke Falk, has a chance to buck the trend
We’re halfway through the college football season, and when it comes to the draft-eligible quarterbacks there is no consensus to be found. Summer frontrunner Deshaun Watson has been inconsistent. Junior pocket passers Brad Kaaya and DeShone Kizer flash high ceilings, though one or both could return to school. Senior Chad Kelly remains polarizing for his play on the field and his actions off of it.
With the top-tier passers struggling to separate themselves, scouts are spending more time mining the rest of the pool of quarterbacks. And the next name for many evaluators is Luke Falk.
The Washington State quarterback is 6'4" and 203 pounds. He has completed 71.5 percent of his passes for 352.2 yards per game this season. After starting the year 0-2, the Cougars have rolled off four straight wins and emerged as a surprising Pac-12 contender. He is tough; look no further than a 42-16 win over then-No. 15 Stanford on the road. In the third quarter Falk’s jersey was smeared with grass and red logo stains. He lay on the ground after absorbing a massive hit while sliding (the defender was ejected for targeting). He sat out one play, and upon returning he scrambled for a first down on his first play back. Then capped the drive with 17-yard touchdown pass.
But there’s a familiar caveat with Falk. Yes, barring injury he’ll throw for 4,000 yards for a second straight season. But he’ll do it on about 50 pass attempts per game (last year he averaged 53.7, so far this season it’s 49.2). Falk plays for Mike Leach. He is an Air Raid quarterback.
The presumption is that an Air Raid quarterback’s production is simply a byproduct of the system. There have been former Air Raid quarterbacks drafted high who didn’t pan out: Tim Couch, Nick Foles, Kevin Kolb, Johnny Manziel, Geno Smith, Brandon Weeden. Case Keenum is arguably the most successful former Air Raid quarterback in the NFL right now, and on a micro level the argument could be boiled down to the top picks of 2016. The Eagles felt comfortable with Carson Wentz (pro-style offense at North Dakota State), so much so that he was under center in Week 1 despite transitioning from the FCS. The Rams say they need more time for Jared Goff (variation of Air Raid at Cal) to develop.
“I think the knock on the Air Raid is just a cop out,” Leach says. “If a guy who played in that system falls short, people use this as an excuse to their own convenience, saying what we’re doing is a trick or something different or whatever.”
Leach, often regarded as the Air Raid’s godfather, says his system is derived from many wishbone principles: distributing the ball to all five skill-position players. Except his offense focuses on doing that through passing. The coach also emphasizes that the NFL has borrowed from his playbook.
“It’s indisputable that most of the NFL is copying us and doing Air Raid things,” Leach says. “The Patriots have total Air Raid influences, the Saints have total Air Raid influences, the Packers, the 49ers, to a lesser degree Seattle, the Broncos for sure. It’d be easier to say the ones who
aren’t influenced by it.”
But the Air Raid alone isn’t the only reason some evaluators are skeptical of players like Falk. “Of course it’s great if a guy has big production, and you’re more likely to find that if they’re in an Air Raid system,” says an AFC personnel man. “My concerns with a guy from the Air Raid are the same as any guy who ran a spread offense. Only a fraction of the snaps they take are transferrable to the NFL.” The two biggest differences: commanding a huddle and taking snaps under center.
“No question when a guy is learning how to play under center, the footwork needs to be worked on,” says UMass coach Mark Whipple, who was the quarterbacks coach for the Steelers during Ben Roethlisberger’s rookie year and the Browns during Weeden’s first NFL season. “The verbiage is a challenge for rookies no matter where they come from. But for guys like [Weeden], you’re calling plays in the huddle you're making some checks, you might make some protection changes, and the game is different when you’re closer to the line of scrimmage.”
Weeden agrees. After winning the Fiesta Bowl with Oklahoma State in 2012, he returned to Arizona for three days of private tutoring with Marc Trestman, then known as a West Coast offense expert, to practice taking snaps under center as well as “play-action stuff” and “the huddling part of the game.”
“I found that going from a three- to a five-step drop out of the shotgun, that wasn’t a huge difference,” says Weeden, now a backup for the Texans. “Turning your back to the defense was more of a change, as well as sightlines.”
In his 2012 rookie season, Weeden led the NFL with 21 batted balls. “A lot of it was the three-step quick game,” he says. “Those defensive linemen were right in your face and you had to throw over them, whereas in college I didn’t have to worry about that because I was five yards deep. I could catch the snap, and I had a little bit of space there. So learning how to throw through windows [after lining up] under center was pretty challenging at times.”
“There’s a lot of throws these guys were making in college translate to the NFL,” Whipple says. “But it’s really what I call the hash game—the tight end throws on linebackers—that these guys have difficulty getting. The tight end throws in the middle of the field, where in the spread offense you may not be getting them as much. Then turning your back to the defense on play-action, that's something we spend a lot of time on with Brandon, kind of get your eyes on faster, reaffirming some of your pre-snap reads, and your decision making is a little different.”
Whipple cautions against knocking a player’s college system in evaluations. “Everyone wants to think they know, but if they did, Tom Brady wouldn’t have gone in the sixth round or Dak Prescott wouldn’t have gone in the fourth round. I don’t care if you came from the Air Raid, the Wing T, whatever. I think there’s a million other factors that contribute to success of a quarterback than the numbers he put up in college.”
Which brings us back to Falk. Leach recites his quarterback’s intangibles to NFL evaluators who cycle through Pullman. Falk is a former walk-on who had his scholarship yanked by Florida State and received no other offers, in part because he moved as a junior and had to sit out due to transfer rules in Utah.
The family briefly relocated to Los Angeles so Falk’s sisters could pursue careers in music, so Luke could attend the glitzy Oaks Christian High, and so his father could expand his commercial real estate business.
Leach says the Los Angeles lifestyle of “Hollywood High” was not for Falk, whose demeanor is unflappable. “I grew up in Wyoming,” Leach says. “And he reminds me a lot of farmers. Doesn’t get excited about anything. Kind of boring, but same guy every day.”
There’s the toughness factor: Leach cites his favorite road win of last year, when Falk led a 10-play, 90-yard touchdown drive to defeat Rutgers. Falk finished the game with 468 yards and four touchdowns. And he’s a student of football. “Watches film as much as if not more than any guy I’ve ever coached,” Leach says.
The coach has given his quarterback more leeway regarding checking at the line of scrimmage. Leach says Falk can check at any point on the field, and this season probably checks 35 to 40 percent of the time. Falk can take off with his feet and has, though Leach says “he’s not particularly fast, he just has quarterback speed.”
But an evaluator who has watched Falk says production aside, the one thing he has been impressed with is the quarterback’s accuracy. Yes, he throws a ton, but does so accurately and has a nice feel of both deep touch passes and short strikes. That’s something that pleases Leach.
“I get a kick out of guys who say he’s this big, he’s this strong, he’s this fast, all you need to do is work on is accuracy,” he says. “You’re not going to fix that [if somebody doesn’t have it], no matter what college system they came from.”