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On The Run

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By ROY CUMMINGS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 4, 2007

Updated: 11/03/2007 11:23 pm

TAMPA - Perfection is an unattainable objective. It is in football, anyway. That's part of what sets football apart from so many other sports.

Think about it for a second. A pitcher can throw a perfect game, a shooter in basketball can be perfect from the field or the line, a gymnast can post a perfect score.

Football doesn't work that way. There are too many moving parts. And in order to execute even a single play, all of those must move in perfect syncopation with one another.

When that doesn't happen, which is often the case, plays break down. When plays break down, quarterbacks such as Jeff Garcia take over. Quarterbacks such as Garcia fix broken plays. Sometimes they even make them better.

It's early in the first quarter of the Bucs-Jaguars game last Sunday. Raymond James Stadium is still filling up when Garcia lines the Bucs up in the shotgun formation for a third-and-6 play from his 34-yard line.

Garcia's hope is to throw to a receiver downfield. He'll settle for a short throw to a tight end or a dump-off to a back - anything that nets him a first down. When those options evaporate and the play breaks down, Garcia runs. The result: a 21-yard gain to the Jacksonville 45.

One play later, the same thing happens. The play called in the huddle breaks down around him and Garcia decides to tuck the ball and run. The result is another first down to which another 15 yards is added when Jaguars safety Reggie Nelson lands a late hit on Garcia.

Four plays later, the Bucs take a 3-0 lead on Matt Bryant's 44-yard field goal. Bryant gets the plaudits, but it's a lead the Bucs probably don't have were it not for Garcia's ability to scramble from trouble, fix a broken play and make something out of nothing.

"Anytime you've got a quarterback who can move around and buy time with his feet like Jeff does, you've got a distinct advantage," Arizona quarterback Kurt Warner said.

Warner can only imagine what it's like to provide such an advantage. Even in his prime, he didn't have the scrambling skills necessary to get out of the pocket and make plays the way Garcia does. He's not alone, though.

With Michael Vick gone and Donovan McNabb's scrambling skills dissipating, Garcia, even at age 37, ranks as one of the best scrambling quarterbacks in the game.

His 85 rushing yards through eight games put him on a level with top-level scramblers such as Tony Romo of Dallas, Jason Campbell of Washington and Vince Young of Tennessee. But some believe he belongs in an even higher class.

"Ben Roethlisberger is probably the best I've ever seen at being able to scramble and make plays," said former Steelers offensive coordinator and current Cardinals coach Ken Whisenhunt. "Jeff is similar. When he moves around in the pocket, he knows where the guys are that he wants to get the football to. He just knows how to find open receivers and extend plays, and that's an invaluable commodity in this league."

He Has All The Assets

The commodity has a lot of unique requirements. The first, of course, is superb athleticism, particularly speed and quickness. A good knowledge of the offense and good field vision are two others.

Garcia has them all. He's as quick as he is fast, as smart as he is tough. And his field vision, something he has sharpened during a pro career now in its 14th season, is as good as anyone in the league.

"His ability to see as he's running really is not normal," said Bucs quarterbacks coach Paul Hackett, who has worked with some of the great scramblers of all time, including Joe Montana and Rich Gannon. "A lot of guys just run. But he sees things when he runs. That's what makes him so good."

Garcia also possesses a unique instinct, a feel for the game and for what's happening around him, that Bucs coach Jon Gruden likens to an alarm clock ticking away inside his quarterback's head.

"You have to be able to feel the congestion around you, know when it's time to get out of the pocket and try something else," Gruden said. "Jeff Garcia can do that.

"A lot of other guys, the so-called pocket passers, if a play's not there, they just throw the ball away. This guy, if the play isn't there, he'll run around until he finds it."

There has to be something to find, of course. That's where the receivers and running backs come in. Their job when plays break down is to keep moving until they find a soft spot in the defense that the quarterback can exploit.

As for the linemen, they just keep hitting people until they hear the whistle blow or see Garcia run past them. When that happens, right guard Davin Joseph said, all they can do is follow him.

"It's hard as a lineman to know what to do when he's back there, because you've got your back to him for the most part," Joseph said. "You just have to kind of play with it and hope you're doing the right thing."

Receivers have an easier time doing the right thing, because they have some rules to follow. One calls for the speed receivers to come back to a scrambling quarterback while the slower receivers go away from him.

Running backs, meanwhile, try to find an opening in the flat. But backs also have blocking responsibilities, so the drill often ends up looking like organized chaos.

Still Learning The Drill

It has been that way for the Bucs this year. Though time is spent in practice working on scramble drills, the Bucs under Garcia have yet to perfect the art of running them during games.

"We're not particularly good at that," Hackett said. "We've probably left a number of plays on the field because of that. We're only in the infant stages of it. By the time we get to 16 games, we should be a lot better. But right now, it's still a matter of guys getting used to the fact that, 'Oh, he's still alive back there.'"

Every team Garcia has played for has had to get used to his ability to keep plays alive. He has played the same style for as long as he has been playing. Of course, it's a style born partially out of necessity.

Garcia is 6-foot-1, a few inches shorter than the ideal quarterback in the NFL, where taller linemen sometimes make it hard to see downfield.

As a result, Gruden said, Garcia sometimes will scramble out of the pocket just to get a better look at the play developing in front of him and to determine his best option.

"It's just always been a part of my game," Garcia said of his scrambling style. "It's a feel that I sense when I'm on the field. I just try to not get caught up in overdoing it."

Sometimes he can't help himself. Garcia tends to play the game desperately, like a deer trying to escape a team of hunters. That's where the head-first dives for first downs or touchdowns come from.

Coaches and teammates can't help but marvel at Garcia's determination, but they also can't help but cringe. Garcia already has lost his helmet during plays three times this season.

The good news is Garcia has learned through the years how to protect himself from serious injury. He knows how to turn his body so he doesn't take a hit head-on and how to slide so the impact of the hit is lessened.

"Young guys have a tendency to go out there and just flail away. Jeff doesn't do that," Hackett said. "He's smart about it. He's an experienced scrambler."

He's a dangerous one, too. The Bucs' record is proof. Garcia's teammates have long since lost count of the number of broken plays he has fixed and turned into big plays.

"He's done a lot of things for that offense, made a lot of plays for them," Whisenhunt said. "Preparing to defend him, it's very difficult. If you stop the play initially, there's no guarantee it's going to be good enough.

"But that's what having a guy like Jeff does for you. You can do a lot of things with him, because when things don't happen the way you want them to, he still finds a way to make things work."

Reporter Roy Cummings can be reached at (813) 259-7979 or rcummings@tampatrib.com.

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