The Packers are not the only ones in the NFL threatening to make history with their 13–0 start (and 19-game winning streak, second longest in NFL history) — three quarterbacks are, reports the Wall Street Journal:

It’s not that there’s one quarterback threatening to smoke Dan Marino’s 27-year-old single-season passing record. There are three.

Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints, who’s averaging 336 passing yards per game, and Tom Brady of New England, who’s at 329, are both on pace to surpass Marino’s mark of 5,084 yards. Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers, who’s arguably having the best season by a quarterback in NFL history, is projected to come within eight yards.

The trend of footballs filling the air shows the influence of the NFL and college football on each other:

Starting in 1978, the NFL tried to open up the skies by enacting a rule that prohibited defensive players from making contact with receivers more than five yards downfield. The rule sent passing totals soaring over the next five seasons, culminating in 1982 when San Diego’s Dan Fouts averaged 321 yards passing per game—another record that’s in jeopardy. Defenses have caught up at various points, but later rules tweaks (many of them designed to protect quarterbacks and wide receivers) continue to make passing better. The way the rules are, says Fouts, now a CBS analyst, defense may never regain the advantage.

Still, the performances of this season’s three virtuosos can also be traced to something many NFL coaches and players are too haughty to mention: the powerful shaping influence of the college game.

Brees, Brady and Rodgers—who are all between 28 and 34 years old—are products of a time in college football when offense was being reshaped by the spread: a scheme that features the quarterback taking shotgun snaps with as many as five receivers and an empty backfield. The 1990s—after decades of buttoned-up militarism—were college football’s version of the psychedelic ’60s. Free-thinking coaches finally stepped away from the bedrock values of the power-running game to fully embrace the pass.

What prompted the NFL to liberalize the passing rules? It probably reveals itself in a comment to the story:

As a fan, the passing game is a lot more fun to watch than seeing a tailback run into the wall at the line of scrimmage and gaining 2 or 3 yards. … Passing equals action, and action is what fans want to see.

For all those purist football fans who actually enjoy games like the LSU–Alabama grim defensive struggle of earlier this season (LSU won 6–3 in overtime), one need look only at the NFL’s TV ratings to see that fans like the most passing- and offense-dominated NFL in league history. Most football fans are probably agnostic about what the correct run-to-pass ratio is, but they do like to see big plays, and big plays are easier to accomplish through the air than on the ground.

Think of it as free markets and competition at work in two different areas, the entertainment dollar being the first. Want to get people to spend thousands of dollars on season tickets, mandatory–voluntary contributions for said season tickets to college athletic departments, and logowear? Give them something more exciting to watch than three yards and a cloud of dust. (Or rubber pellets, in the world of artificial grass.) But it’s competition for players too in a world of 12-month one-sport athletes. One of the newer NFL trends is signing college basketball players to play tight end, most notably San Diego’s Antonio Gates and New Orleans’ Jimmy Graham.

This season’s offensive trend initially was credited to the NFL lockout, which banned coaches and players from meeting from after Super Bowl XLV until a settlement was reached and training camps hastily opened. Consider that last weekend the Packers set a single-season scoring record, in their 13th game. (That’s more points in 13 games than any Glory Days team, in the days when NFL teams played 14-game regular seasons, or any Packer team since 1978, when the season grew to 16 games.)

Today’s NFL passing game is the merger of two NFL offensive schools of thought — the Sid Gillman vertical passing game of the ’60s American Football League (traditionally seen in the Oakland Raiders teams of Al Davis, a former Gillman assistant), and the Bill Walsh “West Coast Offense,” which used the pass to not just move the chains (usually by finding the holes in the opponent’s defense) but control the ball through short passes and screen passes. Running the ball now seems limited to two situations — when your quarterback can’t throw very well, and when you’re trying to maintain the lead. The third ingredient comes from the college spread offense, the concept of widening the field by putting receivers everywhere and forcing defenders to not only cover the whole field, but worry about receivers bunched together.

Packer fans may think the Packers as a premier passing offense began in the Ron Wolf–Mike Holmgren era. But the early ’80s Packers under coach Bart Starr were at least entertaining to watch because of quarterback Lynn Dickey, receivers James Lofton and John Jefferson, and tight end Paul Coffman. Holmgren’s predecessor, Lindy Infante, had teams that could similarly move the ball through the air, but could do nothing else.

Well before then, the Packers had Don Hutson, who even 65 years after his retirement is still in the conversation about the best receivers in the history of pro football, catching passes from Hall of Famer Arnie Herber, the NFL’s three-time single-season passing leader, and Cecil Isbell, who threw touchdown passes in 23 consecutive games. Vince Lombardi is known for “run[ning] to daylight,” but his two Super Bowl wins came not because of running backs Paul Hornung (who was injured and about to retire) or Jim Taylor (who departed for New Orleans), but because of Starr’s arm and play-calling abilities. (Starr was known for successfully throwing deep on third-and-short plays. And the Ice Bowl-winning 68-yard drive featured five passes for 59 yards.)

UW Marching Band members and alumni have an alternative verse of “On Wisconsin” that, believe it or not, was created before the Don Mor(t)on Veer from Victory Reign of Error; it starts with …

On Wisconsin, On Wisconsin,
Bounce right off that line!
Run the ball three times a series,
Punt on fourth and nine!

Barry Alvarez’s UW football teams were exciting to watch because they won (including over teams UW wasn’t used to beating, such as Michigan and Ohio State), not because of the points or yards they put on the scoreboard. Winning tops all, of course, but in today’s entertainment world sports fans will not pay good money to be bored at the stadium. (Are you paying attention, Milwaukee Bucks?) Mor(t)on failed not merely because he won just six games in three seasons, but because his Veer from Victory offense was boring to watch, yet unsuccessful. That meant that UW games between 1987 and 1989 lacked both success and, except for the UW Band, entertainment value, which explains the precipitous attendance drop that threatened to destroy the entire UW athletic program.

(Side note: In a fit of … I’m not sure what, I purchased the book written by Mor(t)on and his former boss, former Minnesota coach Jim Wacker, The Explosive Veer Offense for Winning Football. This shows the value of the book: By the time Wacker got to Minnesota, he had dumped the veer for the run-and-shoot. I wonder what I should do with their book.)

While everyone thinks of the Badgers as a white-bread pound-the-ball team, it should be noted that four of the five Rose Bowl teams in the Alvarez–Bielema era wouldn’t have gotten to Pasadena without their quarterbacks. Darrell Bevell (1993) and Scott Tolzien (2010) were smart quarterbacks with enough arm to find their receivers. Brooks Bollinger (2000) and Russell Wilson (2011) were dual threats, able to beat teams with their arms or their legs.

Wilson, one of the best stories of college football this year, is the one player, I’d argue, that got the Badgers to Pasadena. Running back Montee Ball is about to set the single-season touchdown record, but if this play doesn’t happen, we’re talking about a bowl game somewhere other than sunny southern California:

When Alvarez coached the Badgers, they had one receiving threat at a time — Lee Deramus (who briefly played for New Orleans), Tony Simmons (who played for New England), Chris Chambers (who played for Miami) and Lee Evans (who plays for Buffalo). Under offensive coordinator Paul Chryst (a former Badger quarterback and tight end who played for the aforementioned Mor(t)on and son of a former UW assistant), teams now have to defend both the run and the pass, which makes either easier. Football is still about execution, but if defenses don’t know what’s coming, that leads to uncertainty, and uncertainty leads to tentative play.

The aerial trend has even reached Wisconsin high schools, in a state with football weather frequently inhospitable to passing, or so you’d think. Football-power states such as Texas have had seven-on-seven summer passing leagues for several years. And yet earlier this year I saw something I hadn’t seen in 23 years of covering high school football in this state. I announced a game in which one of the teams opened with seven consecutive passes, throwing on 12 of its first 13 plays and 17 times (as opposed to seven runs) in the first half. And scored 28 points on offense, by the way.

I’m not sure that Fouts is right that NFL defenses will never recover from the current offensive onslaught. Every so often a team comes along that, due to players or superior coaching, appears unbeatable — the 1985 Bears, the 2003–04 Patriots, or the 2007 Patriots, for instance. (For that matter, the 1996–97 Packers.) The NFL should stand for “Not For Long” given how long dynasties now last. (The term “dynasty” now should apply to teams getting into the playoffs, not winning Super Bowls, given that exactly eight teams have ever won consecutive Super Bowls.

The offense vs. defense trend could be described by mixing your sports metaphors, as a jiujitsu match, a tug of war, or a two-person race. with continual back-and-forth. The difference is that offensive coaches figure out ways to respond to defensive plans, and defense always trails because, after all, offensive players know where they’re going; defensive players have to react to what the offense does. Enjoy the games, and bet the over.