WSU’s Anthony Gordon thanks previous QBs for debunking Air Raid criticisms at NFL combine
Anthony Gordon has five reasons he’s on the cusp of the NFL.
Gardner Minshew. Nick Foles. Jared Goff. Patrick Mahomes. And Mike Leach.
That’s four quarterbacks—Gordon’s predecessor as Washington State’s starting quarterback, plus starting QBs in the last three Super Bowls)—plus the coach who recruited Gordon to WSU. They have in the last four years changed the belief across the NFL that prolific throwers from Leach’s Air Raid offense can’t succeed in the league.
“Right. The whole Air Raid-quarterback stigma has kind of been getting broken down the last few years,” Gordon said last week at the NFL’s annual scouting combine.
“I think the last few years there’s been a Super Bowl representative from the Air Raid, each of the last three years. Very fortunate for the guys that have been breaking that stigma down.”
He’s right. Foles with the Philadelphia Eagles, Goff last year for the Los Angeles Rams and Mahomes last month for champion Kansas City have been Super Bowl quarterbacks the last three seasons after playing in the Air Raid in college.
“You know, Gardner’s has been doing a great job breaking that down, as well,” Gordon said.
Minshew wowed everyone this past season as a rookie when he replaced the injured Foles as the Jaguars’ starter. Minshew was so impressive as a fifth-round pick coach Doug Marrone on Tuesday at the combine left open the possibility big-bucks, healthy-again Foles, the MVP of Super Bowl 52 for the Eagles, will back up Minshew in Jacksonville in the 2020 season.
Thursday, Gordon impressed scouts, coaches and GMs in Indy with his consistency and accuracy on throws, even down the field and on seven-step drops. Those are two aspects Leach rarely had Gordon do at Wazzu.
Former NFL quarterback Sage Rosenfels, covering the combine for The Athletic, said Gordon has “the quickest release in the 2020 draft.”
Gordon is indeed on the positive, more-appreciated side of the wave of Air Raid quarterbacks into the NFL.
Besides the system in which he played and being relatively smaller (6 feet 2, 205 pounds as measured at the combine), there’s another knock against Gordon: his lack of big-time experience. It’s why most see him as a third-day, late-round pick this spring.
Gordon completed over 69 percent of his passes, among the best rates in the country last season. But that was his only year as a starter in college. He redshirted one year. He watched Minshew and Luke Falk start for the Cougars for two more years on their ways to the NFL.
Yet Gordon had a ready answer for that lack-of-experience question at the combine, too.
He emphasized the fact he threw a whopping 689 times last season in Leach’s offense. That and his 493 completions led top-level college football in 2019. His 5,579 yards passing and 48 touchdown throws were second in the NCAA.
“Learning from Coach Leach, he allows you...the amount of reps I got in one year is equivalent to two years for most guys,” Gordon said. “A lot of downfield throws.
“And I think it equates to the next level in terms of dropping the ball in over next-level defenders and driving the ball down field.”
Gordon detailed the benefits to throwing so many passes in 14 games last season.
”I think you’ve kind of seen every defense. We’ve seen every defense from cover zero to drop eight, and everything in between,” he said. “The amount of reps I got, you can’t really replicate those throws in any other way, other than live reps. I am very thankful for being able to start that one year and getting over 500, 550 attempts. You know, that’s a lot of attempts.
“A lot of people knock the Air Raid for that, but, I mean, I don’t think you can beat that in terms of being a one-year starter. So I think the amount reps that I have is very beneficial for the next level, being able to throw the ball from all three different levels of the field.”
Gordon was so ready for the Air Raid questions at the combine he gave his answers as quickly as he threw to Cougars receivers at WSU.
He said NFL teams asked him the same questions about the AIr Raid that I did.
“Yeah, definitely,” he said. “Not something that’s new to me. I know it’s going to be a question that comes up a whole bunch.
“And I am lucky for the guys who have come before me who have kind of been able to kind of break that stereotype down.”
There’s another belief around football about the Air Raid: that it is too simple for quarterbacks to transition to the intricate reading of defenses on the fly required in the NFL. That idea comes from the fact the Air Raid exploits open gaps in defenses rather than individual match-ups that offenses seek to create in their favor during the in-game chess matches of the NFL.
Not surprisingly, Gordon isn’t buying that knock against Air Raid QBs, either.
“Coach Leach uses progression-based schemes, where you start on one and you’ll go to two, three, four and five. And then, depending on what you see against the defense you can audible, based off the leverage, space, pretty much attacking space,” Gordon said. “It’s simple football—but it’s also complex. You are attacking. You are looking for numbers and you are looking to attack them any way that you can, and getting to run plays when the box is light. If not, then you are probably going to air it out.
“That’s what I love about Coach’s system. ... )it’s) the ability to just react to spots on the field. We don’t really read coverage that much. We are more into routes and taking advantage of space and different areas, finding different areas to attack. Coach breaks it down in different ways so that everybody is on the same page. So everybody is expecting the ball on every, single play. When we are reading routes, whether it’s a specific coverage or something, everybody’s running 100 miles per hour. So just being able to attack the space on the field and just being able to trust the leverage.”
Thanks to Leach, who recently took the head job at Mississippi State, plus Foles, Goff, Mahomes and Minshew, Gordon is already thinking about what it will be like if a team calls to draft him next month.
“I mean, it would be a dream come true, something my family and I have dreamed about my whole life,” the Bay Area native said. “I’ve worked very hard for the opportunity to be here, and (I’m) very blessed.
“And I know I’ve had a lot of great teammates and coaches who have helped me get to this point. And they mean a lot to me.”
This story was originally published March 2, 2020 at 6:51 AM.
