Bickley: Blame college football for NFL's quarterback shortage

America's favorite sport has a fundamental problem. There aren't enough professional quarterbacks to go around. The demand far outweighs the supply.

The 2015 NFL draft is just the latest example of how college football fails to fill the workforce.

Seriously. Of all the students leaving school to ply their trade, Division I quarterbacks might be the most poorly trained and ill-equipped for their future occupation. Is that any way to pay them back for all the money and glory they bring to these institutions of higher learning?

This year, there are two marquee prospects — Florida State's Jameis Winston and Oregon's Marcus Mariota. They could be the first two players selected on Thursday night. They might be total busts, crippling the franchises that choose to employ them.

Nothing would surprise you at this point.

Winston has all the physical tools, but has a questionable work ethic and makes poor decisions, drawing at least one comparison to JaMarcus Russell. Mariota is just the opposite — a kid with flawless character, but someone who played in a spread offense at Oregon. And this is where the story gets complicated.

Spread offenses are the rage in college football because athletic quarterbacks can become dual threats, smaller players can be very effective, coaches have far more control, limiting a quarterback's mistakes and opposing defenses can be easily worn out.

Problem is, spread quarterbacks don't run huddles. They don't take snaps from center. They have never mastered five- and seven-step drops. They don't read the entire field, going through a series of visual progressions to find the right target. They step and throw. Or they take off.

But in the NFL, they can't wear out a defense, and they certainly can't run the ball recklessly without serious consequences.

Cam Newton was famously exposed on Jon Gruden's television show, where he couldn't spit out a single play he voiced at Auburn. There are Senior Bowl stories of how Baylor quarterback Bryce Petty struggled taking snaps from center, having spent most of his career in a shotgun.

These players are so undertrained that some high-dollar draft picks reach the NFL without mastering the simple center-quarterback exchange, the most rudimentary play in football.

Wonder why so many NFL teams are still looking for a franchise quarterback?

"So many times, you're evaluating a quarterback who has never called a play in the huddle, never used a snap count," Cardinals coach Bruce Arians said during the NFL combine. "They hold up a card on the sideline, he kicks his foot and throws the ball.

"That ain't playing quarterback. There's no leadership involved there. There might be leadership on the bench, but when you get them and they have to use verbiage, and they have to spit the verbiage out and change the snap count, they are light years behind."

Not that long ago, these quarterbacks were rumored to be the future of football. After the embarrassing struggles of Robert Griffin III and Johnny Manziel, that myth has died hard. Even the handful of spread quarterbacks who have been successful — Newton, Alex Smith, Colin Kaepernick — still have their share of struggles and critics.

Kaepernick is now being mentored by Kurt Warner, attempting to master subtleties he should have learned a long time ago.

Technically, the problem starts in high school. According to an ESPN survey, nearly 50 percent of all quarterbacks since 2010 have played in a spread offense system. That's understandable.

But the problem never gets corrected in college, where spread offenses are viewed as the great equalizer, bringing an unprecedented level of parity to the sport. And if hurts the NFL, so be it.

That's not to say Mariota won't succeed. Meanwhile, there are plenty of quarterbacks trained in pro-style offenses that also go bust after the NFL draft. The Cardinals took a flier on Logan Thomas, who couldn't even run a practice by the end of his rookie year.

But in an age of specialization — when young quarterbacks have personal coaches, attend passing academies and have access to unprecedented technology — there are too few that can actually play the game at its highest level.

Too few can find a job and keep it. That has to change.

After all, the clock is ticking in Arizona. The Cardinals have a three-year window to replace Carson Palmer, whose contract expires after the 2017 season. And they don't want to end up like the Browns or Redskins.

Reach Bickley at dan.bickley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8253. Follow him at twitter.com/danbickley. Listen to "Bickley and Marotta," weekdays from 12-2 p.m. on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM.