Bruce Dowbiggin
NFL Run/ Pass Maestros: Can’t Catch This

There was a time when the CFL was the league of Air-Raid football. Mobile quarterbacks throwing off the run to receivers spread across the field. Think Warren Moon. Doug Flutie. Jeff Garcia. As we saw in the recent Grey Cup game, CFL teams still spread around the ball, producing last-minute dramatics.
The NFL, by contrast, was always the league of pocket passers, riveted in place throwing rockets to receivers like Lynn Swann or Jerry Rice running proscribed routes. Think Terry Bradshaw. Ben Roethlisberger. Tom Brady. Running from the pocket was never a designed scheme but one of survival from defensive lineman with malicious intent.
NFL QBs have a running tradition going back to Fran Tarkenton in the 1960s, but their rambling was more of a survival instinct in a brutal time. Even when the NFL stuffed shirts allowed Robert Griffin III, Cam Newton, Randall Cunningham, Daunte Culpepper, Vince Young and Michael Vick to break from the pocket their careers were compromised by injuries.
The most notorious might be San Francisco’s Colin Kaepernick, who did much to start the read-option craze in the league but ultimately was broken down by injuries in his fourth year as a starter— with three surgeries following the 2015 season. (Kaepernick left football to become the John The Baptist of BLM.)
Then, in act of mercy or perhaps to juice offence, the NFL took pity on the athletic QBs. “It feels like the NFL is in a moment when a defender can get called for roughing the passer or unnecessary roughness simply by breathing hard on the QB,” writes Joe Mahoney of SB Nation. “It’s a reason why the career longevity for running QBs like Lamar Jackson, Kyler Murray, Jalen Hurts, Justin Fields, Josh Allen, and Taysom Hill should be much longer the career lengths of some of the previous elite dual-threat QBs.”
Today’s NFL is indeed a changed beast at the QB position. Call it the attack of the Run/ Pass Option. The League is now Brady’s Bunch versus Pat’s Ma-Homies. Traditional maestros of structured football like Tom Brady against the chaos artists led by Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Kyler Murray and Jalen Hurts. They bob and weave and double back, improvising as they go, forcing defensive backs to cover receivers for as long as 10 seconds.
The Chiefs’ genius Mahomes is like a welterweight, rambling from sideline to sideline to keep himself from hard hits as he makes time till Travis Kelce or Marquez Valdes-Scantling get open. Buffalo’s Allen, by contrast, is a heavyweight bruiser like Mike Tyson who buys time and crushes opponents by running them over with his 6-3, 235 pound frame. Baltimore’s Jackson is a sly middleweight who uses the field the way Floyd Mayweather used the ring.
As the expression goes, “If it’s not one thing it’s another”. Paul Domowich 33rd Team has the numbers: “For the first time in the modern era of the NFL, there currently are seven quarterbacks among the league’s top 50 rushers – the Ravens’ Lamar Jackson (9th, 480 yards), the Eagles’ Jalen Hurts (17th, 432), the Bills’ Josh Allen (39th, 269), the Bears’ Justin Fields (43rd, 243), the Giants’ Daniel Jones (44th, 241), Washington’s Taylor Heinicke (45th, 232) and the Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes (48th, 229). Last year, there were six in the top 50.
Six quarterbacks are on pace to have 80-plus rushing attempts this season, including four – Jackson, Hurts, Allen and the Cardinals’ Kyler Murray — who are on a 100-carry pace. And a record 11 quarterbacks are on pace to have 25 or more rushing first downs.”
Judging by current statistics The Mahomies are in the ascendance while the Brady Bunch is just holding on. Quarterback rushing yards accounted for 15.4 percent of all rushing yards in 2021 (9659 of 62,694 yards). While the percentage of rushing TDs from QBs came down from its record high in 2020, QBs still accounted for 19.4 percent of all rushing TDs in 2021. Through the midway point of the 2022 NFL season quarterbacks have run for 3310 yards which is 14.7 percent of the 22474 rushing yards so far this season.”
Brady and the stick-in-the-pockets like Jared Goff, Kirk Cousins and Matthews Stafford are still viable threats, but it’s clear that to stay one step ahead of defensive coordinators a QB needs the option of rolling out, isolating a defender and making him choose between the run or pass.
And that requires the athleticism previously left to running backs and receivers. For a glimpse of the future look no further than Caleb Williams of USC, the favourite to win the Heisman Trophy in U.S. college football. Williams is a hybrid of Mahomes and Lamar Jackson who makes wine from Gatorade. His two-TD performance as USC crushed Notre Dame this weekend was his defining moment in capturing the Heisman.
According to CBS: “His 267 total yards are certainly good enough, but his impact clearly went beyond his yardage total. Williams was a force. Entering this game, Williams was already one of the frontrunners for the Heisman Trophy with 3,480 yards passing, 316 yards rushing and 40 total touchdowns. This showing against Notre Dame may have just sealed the deal.”
NFL teams will have to wait one more year for the sophomore Williams— who transferred from Oklahoma. But you can bet that— injuries aside—when his time comes he’ll go No. 1 in the 2024 draft. He won’t be alone, either. There is a posses of mobile QBs circling the airport. Because, as they’ve learned from this generation of NFL wizards: Catch Me If You Can.
Sign up today for Not The Public Broadcaster newsletters. Hot takes/ cool slants on sports and current affairs. Have the latest columns delivered to your mail box. Tell your friends to join, too. Always provocative, always independent.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
2025 Federal Election
How Canada’s Mainstream Media Lost the Public Trust

Breaking: CBC News admits that host Rosemary Barton was wrong on April 16 when she said “remains of indigenous children” have been discovered.
Call it the Panic Election. From The Handmaid’s Tale to Quebec alienation to plastic straws, the dynamic is citizens being stampeded in a brief six weeks by Big Brother. (There’s no Big Sister. That would mess with the narrative.) Prompting Covid Part Deux from the Laurentian media scolds.
Nowhere is this panic more keen than among aging Boomers who’ve pronounced themselves willing to ignore a decade of Justin Trudeau’s clumsy, unethical and sometimes criminal behaviour in the wake of Big Bad Trump. Even the threat of losing the country’s AAA credit rating can’t sway them from full-throated panic about being the 51st state.
The 51st state gambit is the window dressing. The real Trump panic is over him exposing the inadequacies of a Canadian society penetrated by China, dominated by globalist fanatics and more indebted every day. Specifically, Trump labelled Canadians defence dead-beats and entitled snobs who’d be crazy not to join the U.S. The insulting Trump framing has been a lifeline to those most recently in office— Liberals— to point at the Big Bad Wolf outside the door rather than the Frozen Venezuela inside its walls.
Integral to this panic is the role of Canada’s legacy media, a self-serving caste saved from bankruptcy (for now) by generous wads of public money. The 416/613 bubble ponies operate as if it were still 1985, not 2025. They’ve managed to preserve their status while society changed around them. For instance, CBC’s flagship At Issue panel features three people from Toronto and a fourth from Montreal.
It has worked perfectly in Boomer Canada. Until this past week, when the media guardians finally lost the plot. The combination of TV panel hubris and the incompetence of the Elections Commission exposed an industry more interesting in protecting its own turf than protecting the truth.
The meltdown was the notion that conservative social media— with its intrusive reporters and tabloid tactics— had no place in their sandbox. This hissy fit came after Wednesday’s French debate. Members of Rebel News, True North and other outfits dominated the party leaders’ scrums with obtrusive questions about Mark Carney’s opinions on same-sex sports and what constitutes a woman— questions the French moderator had neglected to ask.

For legacy reporters and hosts who take it as given that they be allowed the front pew this was an affront to their status. As purveyors of the one true political religion the talking heads on CBC, CTV and Global began speaking of “so-called journalists” and “far-right” intruders elbowing into their territory. Their resentment was all-consuming.
This resentment spilled into Debate Night Two when a shouting match ensued in the press room. A CBC source claimed (incorrectly) that Rebel Media leader Ezra Levant had been barred from the press room. A writer from the Hill Times screamed at members of their raucous rivals. The carefully chose panelists suggested that these outfits were funded by dark right-wing sources.
Before the debate had ended Elections Commission organizers— reportedly goaded by the Liberals— called off the post-debate scrum citing “safety” issues that seemingly included a Rebel reporter conducting a hostile walking interview with a furious Liberal official. This unleashed another torrent of Media Party vitriol about its position as the keepers of Canadian journalism.

In a show of irony, these complaints about right-wing misinformation came from people whose livelihood is dependent on Liberal slush funds or whose organizations have accepted government funds to stave off bankruptcy or whose union is an active shill for non-Conservative parties. The conflicts are never mentioned in the unctuous festival of privilege.
What makes this rearguard action against new media risible was the 2024 U.S. election where Donald Trump acknowledged the new day and rode the support of non-traditional media back to the presidency. His shunning of the legacy networks and hallowed print brands heralded a new reality in American elections. Poilievre has struggled to find this community in Canada, but for those with eyes it remains the future of disseminating political thought.
A perfect example of alternative media scooping the tenured mob on Parliament Hill has been the sterling work on China by Sam Cooper, a former Global employee who has independently demonstrated the ties between Chinese criminal gangs and the Canadian political structure going back to the 1980s. Working with others outside the grid he’s shown the scandal of a Liberal candidate urging Chinese Canadian voters to reap a bounty for turning his Conservative opponent to the Chinese Communist Party. A disgrace that Carney has forgiven.
Predictably Cooper’s work and the independent story by two retired RCMP investigators who implicated nine Liberal cabinet members in compliance with the Chinese communists has gotten the ‘tish-tish” from the Laurentian elites. Like the Democrats who buried the Hunter Biden laptop story to save his father in the dying days of the 2020 U.S. election the poodle media hope to delay the truths about China long enough to get the compliant Carney over the finish line.
For contrast to how it was— and could be— one only had to witness the moderator performance of journalist Steve Paikin of TVO. Largely unknown outside Ontario, Paikin overcame the skepticism of Westerners by playing it straight down the middle. Such was his honest-broker performance that Poilievre was heard telling him after the debate that he had no idea how Paikin might vote. (Ed. note: Paikin is a former colleague and longtime friend.) In other words, it’s still possible.
It’s a cliché that this election is a hinge point for Canada. Will it face itself in the mirror or indulge in more denialism about its true self? No wonder unaffiliated journalists joke that their stories today will be the lead on mainstream media in three months. Carney has promised to continue bribing the mainstream media, but their day is done. It’s simply a matter of fixing a date for the next panic.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
Bruce Dowbiggin
Is HNIC Ready For The Winnipeg Jets To Be Canada’s Heroes?

It’s fair to say everyone in hockey wanted the Winnipeg Jets back in the NHL. They became everyone’s darlings in 2011 when the Atlanta Thrashers, the league’s second stab at a franchise in Georgia, were sold to Canadian interests including businessman David Thomson. (Ed.: Gary Bettman’s try number three in Atlanta is upcoming.).
Yes, the market is tiny. Yes, the arena is too small. Yes, Thomson’s wealth is holding back a sea of inevitability. But sentimentalists remembering the Bobby Hull WHA Jets and the Dale Hawerchuk NHL Jets threw aside their skepticism to welcome back the Jets. The throwback uniforms with their hints at Canada’s air force past were an understated nod to their modest pretensions. It was a perfect story.

The question now, however, is will the same folks get dewey-eyed about the Jets if they become the first Canadian team to win the Stanley Cup since (checks his cards) Montreal and Patrick Roy did it in 1993. It would be helpful in this election year if something were to bind a nation torn apart by politics. The Gordie Howe Elbows Up analogy is more than shopworn, and Terry Fox can only be resurrected so often. So a Cup win might be a welcome salve.
But the approved script has long dictated that the Canadian team to break the schneid should be one of the glamour twins of the NHL’s Canadian content, the Edmonton Oilers or the (gulp) Toronto Maple Leafs. The Oilers and their superstar Connor McDavid barely lost out last spring to Florida while the Leafs, laden with superstars like Auston Matthews and William Nylander, are overdue for a long playoff run.
Hockey Night In Canada positively pants for the chance to gush over these two squads each week. When was the last time Toronto played an afternoon game so HNIC could showcase the Jets? Like, never. Same for the Oilers, who with their glittering stars like McDavid Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent Hopkins are the primary tenants of the doubleheader slot, followed by Calgary. Winnipeg? We’ll get to them.

But there’s going to be no ignoring them in the spring of 2025. The Jets in the northern outpost in Manitoba were the top team in the entire league in 2024-25. They’ll comfortably win the Presidents Cup as the No. 1 squad and have home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs. They have the league’s best goalie in Connor Hellebuyck (an American) and a stable of top scorers led by Kyle Connor and Mark Schiefele. Because Winnipeg is on a lot of No Trade lists, they have built themselves through the draft and thrifty budgeting.
But will the same people who swooned over the Jets in 2011 now find them as adorable if they ruin the Stanley Cup plot lines of the Oilers, Leafs and Ottawa Senators? Will the fans of Canadian teams in Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal not making the postseason take the Jets to their hearts or will they be as phoney as the Mike Myers commercials for the Liberals?
In addition, the Jets will be swamped by national media should they proceed through the playoffs. It’s one thing to carry the expectations of Winnipeg and Manitoba. It’s another to foot the bill for a hockey crazy county. We remember Vancouver’s GM Mike Gillis during the Canucks 2011 Cup run bemoaning the late arrivers of the press trying to critique his team as they made their way through the playoffs.
It will be no picnic for the Jets, however strong they’ve been in the regular season. No one was gunning for them as they might for the Oilers or Leafs. They will now get their opponents’ best game night after night. Hellebuyck has been a top three goalie in the NHL for a while, winning the Vezina Trophy, but his playoff performance hasn’t matched that of his regular-season version.
Already the injury bug that sidelines so many Cup dreams is biting at the Jets. Nikolaj Ehlers collided with a linesman in Saturday’s OT win in Chicago. Defenceman Dylan Samberg is also questionable after stopping a McDavid slap shot with his leg. A rash of injuries has ended the run of many a worthy Cup aspirant in the past. Can Winnipeg’s depth sustain the churn of seven weeks of all-out hockey?
As always for the small-market Jets time is of the essence. Keeping this core together is difficult with large markets lusting after your players. With the NHL salary cap going up it remains a chore to keep their top players. Schiefele and Hellebuyck are tied up longterm, but 40-goal man Connor is a UFA after next season while Ehlers is not signed after this season. Young Cole Perfetti will be an RFA in 2026. Etc.
So how much do Canadians love the Jets if they sneak in and steal the hero role by winning a Canadian Cup? Lets see Ron MacLean pun his way through that one.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
-
2025 Federal Election22 hours ago
Ottawa Confirms China interfering with 2025 federal election: Beijing Seeks to Block Joe Tay’s Election
-
Energy2 days ago
Indigenous-led Projects Hold Key To Canada’s Energy Future
-
Energy2 days ago
Many Canadians—and many Albertans—live in energy poverty
-
2025 Federal Election22 hours ago
How Canada’s Mainstream Media Lost the Public Trust
-
2025 Federal Election11 hours ago
BREAKING: THE FEDERAL BRIEF THAT SHOULD SINK CARNEY
-
2025 Federal Election22 hours ago
Real Homes vs. Modular Shoeboxes: The Housing Battle Between Poilievre and Carney
-
Business2 days ago
Canada Urgently Needs A Watchdog For Government Waste
-
International2 days ago
Pope Francis has died aged 88