Prior to this year’s NFL draft you probably read or heard new Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Mason Rudolph characterized by several analysts as being statuesque in the pocket and not very mobile. While Rudolph certainly won’t be confused with Michael Vick as he enters the NFL, he did enough damage with his legs during his college career at Oklahoma State to show he’s more than a Peyton Manning when comes to avoiding sacks and running with the football.
To give all of you a better idea as to how Rudolph used his feet at Oklahoma State, I decided to contextualize all of his runs from the 2017 season. Keep in mind that sacks are counted as quarterback runs at the NCAA level in the official stats so I made sure to pick out Rudolph’s true designed runs and scrambles for this contextualization exercise.
Oklahoma State obviously ran an extensive amount of RPOs with Rudolph under center and this led to the quarterback using his legs as part of a read-option. Most of these read-option runs came near the goal-line. In total, Rudolph scored 10 rushing touchdowns in 2017 with 9 coming on read-option plays. The other touchdown came via a traditional quarterback sneak, something Rudolph didn’t do a lot of in 2017.
In total, I have Rudolph down for 18 read-option runs in 2017, 12 scrambles to avoid pressure and 2 quarterback sneaks.
These plays linked below along with their contextualization should give you a very good idea as to what kind of mobility Rudolph has. In a future post, I will contextualize all of his sacks from 2017 season for you to use as a comparison means.
