"The guy behind me ain't going to catch me, he's behind me, Michael Vick's home."
Green Bay cornerback Al Harris puffed out these words, referring to Seattle quarterback Matt Hasselbeck's vain effort to tackle him after Harris took an interception to the house in overtime of their 2004 divisional playoff game.
Harris was right: Vick would have caught up with him and saved the touchdown. This accidentally provocative quote raises the question of Vick's defensive potential. And Harris' speed, comparable to that of a fast wideout, raises the question of his offensive potential.
At a time when Babe Ruth was sporting a slugging average twice his ERA, the NFL was a league of "ironmen," players contributing regularly on both offense and defense. Nowadays both species are endangered, although glimmers of old-fashioned versatility make stories now and again, and always impress. Examples in football include James Hodgins, an elite blocking fullback for the Rams during their glory years, with pro experience at linebacker and receiver. His style harkens back to greats like Jim Thorpe, Sammy Baugh and Bronko Nagurski.
Ironman football is fairly common in high school, though this is due in part to the fact that finding one's niche takes time and, for many, high school is the first step in that process. Positional versatility tapers off in college, and those players who still play multiple positions seldom do it in a single game. By draft day, anyway, virtually all players have narrowed their repertoire of positions down to one.
But players like Hodgins remind us that, although much has changed, good athletes are still good athletes. And although ironman football is used sparingly in the NFL, it has been used more recently, sometimes in surprise-attack form. Cornerbacks Champ Bailey and Charles Woodson have dabbled at receiver, linebacker Mike Vrabel has caught touchdowns in the past two Super Bowls and defensive end Warren Sapp has, on occasion, made his presence felt at tight end.
It might be argued that there have always been a few token ironmen in the league - William Perry powered it up the gut once in a while back in the '80s - and the increase seen in the last five years is negligible or null. But there have indeed been more such cases of late, and the pace of these kinds of sweeping game-changes is always glacial. The reasons for its disappearance are less powerful than they once were.
Although players condition themselves for their specific positions, there is indeed some overlap: wideout Peter Warrick and safety Brock Marion have exactly the same dimensions and similar skill sets. The same goes for wideout Tim Brown and cornerback Troy Vincent. Tight end Kellen Winslow is a clone of defensive end Jason Taylor, and he'd definitely take to tackling. Generally, as player conditioning improves, it is no longer impossible to "have it all" in a physical sense - new linebacker prototypes, say, are sturdy and speedy both. The current trend of 3-4 defenses, a linebacker-driven scheme, reflects this.
One reason why two-way players have faded into twilight is that twice the playing time means twice the injury risk, a much greater concern in the modern game. The potential benefit of sending Vick on a blitz is obviously not worth the risk of losing the Atlanta Falcons' chief offensive threat. Given rate of injury today, quarterbacks must be exempted from this experiment. On the flipside, increased positional versatility would thicken the depth chart without the risk of going over the salary cap.
Another disadvantage is unnecessary fatiguing. The only prudent course would be to make specialties out of players' secondary roles. Modern offenses and defenses certainly provide the opportunities: Warrick can play in dime packages, Winslow in two- tight end sets. This scheme would also remove some of the difficulty of learning two skill positions. And, of course, these scenarios represent the extremes in positional versatility. The two-way lineman is a much more natural pairing of tasks, for which experience on both sides of the ball might even prove a virtue ('know thy enemy').
Economically, we can expect players' agents to demand higher contracts and policies friendlier to injury for their increased workload. (A Pizza Hut commercial from the nineties. Jerry Jones: "So what's it going to be? Offense or defense?" Sanders: "Both." Jones: "So what's it going to be, Deion? Ten-million or fifteen-million?" Sanders: "Both.") But this would evidently save owners money too, as position specialists would command less bargaining power, being more expendable than in the past. Deion's then-groundbreaking contract was still less than wide receiver Alvin Harper, cornerback Troy Vincent, and kick returner Tim Dwight made in sum. And Deion was a better cornerback than Vincent, a better kick returner than Dwight, and, arguably, a receiver of higher potential than Harper.
In an age of increased specialization and excess in most fields, it is no surprise the NFL has gone the way it has. Contracts keep breaking new ground, the league continues to expand, and ticket prices have gone through the retractable roof. But even as the NFL spirals out of control, there may perhaps be a few things that still move in cycles. It will take time for training and conditioning to be recalibrated to prepare players for this kind of career, but it will happen.
Gabe Sokoloff '06 is a co-captain of the legendary Flipmode Squad flag football team.
