Remember when the biggest thing in the National Football League was the college-like read option?

Quarterbacks Robert Griffin III, Colin Kaepernick and Russell Wilson were going to revolutionize the NFL as recently as one year ago.

That is so 2012. Lombardi Avenue points out:

After two weeks there are 11 quarterbacks averaging over 300 yards passing per game. The end of the 2012 season saw only two teams average more than 300 passing yards, the New York Giants and Detroit Lions.

By comparison, the Green Bay Packers averaged 253 yards passing per game (source espn.com). But with the Pistol, or Read-Option offense being all the rave, and the big push to popularize it with players such as Colin Kaepernick,Michael Vick, Russell Wilson, Robert Griffin III and even Cam Newton to name a few, the NFL is loving it.

Add Philadelphia Head Coach Chip Kelly and there is enough ‘star power’ on enough teams to help generate more interest from fans because of its fast pace and high scoring.

However, it will need to pass the durability test of time. To help it along during that critical phase in the NFL where it will either last, or it will fall by the wayside or stay in the playbook as a gimmick, the NFL is doing all they can to make it stick.

Several things … the aforementioned read-option quarterbacks I mention earlier have one thing in common … they are all on their rookie contracts (except for Michael Vick). That leaves a huge question that has yet to be answered and may not be answered for a couple of more years:

Will franchises still be willing to put their franchise players at risk once they sign $100 million-plus contracts?

Only time can answer that one.

In the meantime, don’t look now but the top seven passing leaders in the league are drop back pocket passers. That’s not really surprising considering the Read-Option is a running offense. The leader of the group is none other than

Aaron Rodgers, the forgotten man all offseason because of the young guns being promoted to garner the attention of the young and casual fans.Rodgers leads the league in passing, while the Packers offense leads the league in passing yards and first downs.  He is tied for second in TDs with seven, and has a QB Rating of 127.2, behind only Peyton Manning.

To give some perspective on the Packers receiving numbers, consider this …  Greg Jennings has eight receptions for Minnesota for 117 yards and zero touchdowns. Those numbers would be fifth on the Packers behind Jordy Nelson (10-196-3), Randall Cobb (16-236-2), James Jones (11-178-0) andJermichael Finley (11-121-2).

The difference an elite quarterback can make will always be in demand, even if the league wants to push this new fast-paced style.

I guess they don’t realize that quarterbacks such as Rodgers, Manning, Brees and Brady can run a fast-paced offense, too. They just go about it differently. It’s called the ‘no huddle’ – a clash of the old and the new.

Two weeks is a small sample size. But Griffin has looked decidedly ordinary in his first two weeks. Kaepernick beat the Packers in the first week with his arm (and wide receiver Anquan Bolden), not his legs. Michael Vick, playing the fast-forward Eagles offense, was 13 of 30 for 201 yards and two interceptions, one of them a pick-six, against Kansas City last night.

This is rather predictable for a couple of reasons. Defensive coordinators probably spent all offseason figuring out how to stop the read option, in part by visiting college teams that see much more read option than the NFL ever would. It’s one thing to try to prepare against it in one week (as the Packers and Atlanta had before their playoff games last year), or even two (Baltimore before the Super Bowl). You could write a book about NFL rookies who have huge first seasons, and after the rest of the league figures out how to play against them, less impact thereafter. And, of course, the average NFL player is a better athlete than the average Division I college football player.

Before we go on, some definitions: The read option is where a quarterback decides to keep the ball himself or pitch the ball to a trailing running back. The quarterback “reads” the defensive end on the side of the offense the play is to be run to. There are numerous high school and college variations — the I-formation option popularized by Nebraska under Coach Tom Osborne, the wishbone run by Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer, the flexbone (also called the “slotbone”) of Georgia Tech, the “pistol” (which looks like an I-formation without the quarterback; the quarterback lines up where the fullback normally lines up in the I, with a running back behind and/or next to him) and whatever that is Oregon is running at Mach speed.

In the true triple option (which requires at least two running backs), a quarterback has three choices depending on what the defensive end does — hand the ball off to the fullback, run the ball himself around the end, or pitch the ball to the running back who is running with him as he runs around the end. Oregon’s and the NFL’s read option, which is a variation of the old single-wing (the single-wing tailback is today’s quarterback back in a shotgun-like formation), is based on just one running back with the quarterback, so it’s really a double option — keep or pitch.

The read option has almost never been seen in the NFL until last season. (Legend has it Lou Holtz, in his one season coaching the New York Jets, thought about running the option until he saw quarterback Joe Namath’s knees. The irony is that Alabama ran the option most seasons under coach Bear Bryant, with Namath and quarterback Ken Stabler, who became as mobile as a statue in the NFL.) Lombardi Avenue mentions one reason you’re unlikely to see it very much in the future. It’s one thing to have quarterbacks making a couple million dollars in their rookie contracts running it; it’s quite another to have a quarterback making Aaron Rodgers money run it with the accompanying risk of having a linebacker crush your quarterback while he pitches or runs the ball past the line of scrimmage.

Before football players became better athletes at every position, the best defense I saw to stop the option was in the 1985 Orange Bowl, which featured Oklahoma and its wishbone. The Sooners’ opponent, Washington, created for the occasion a defensive formation with just two linemen (instead of the usual three or four), five linebackers and four defensive backs. The middle linebacker was assigned to the fullback, the outside linebackers were assigned to the running backs, and the other two linebackers were assigned to the quarterback. The cornerbacks covered the receivers (usually just one split receiver), and the safeties filled in.

The number one rule of defense against any option offense is: Hit the quarterback. Every time. The NFL ruled before the season began that a quarterback running the read option is a running back, and he loses all the usual protections the NFL gives quarterbacks. In high school and college, there are no special protections for running quarterbacks other than the usual personal-foul rules. If the defense establishes the tone early by pounding the quarterback every time he keeps or pitches the ball, the quarterback is likely to become a bit hesitant to do either.

The NFL is a tremendously imitative league. In my lifetime of watching the NFL, arguably there have been two, and only two, trends that have lasted — (1) soccer-style kickers and (2) the league-wide adoption of what was called the West Coast offense three decades ago — put another way, the possession-passing game — as the basic NFL offense.

When I started watching, every team ran the 4–3 defense. Then teams started playing the newfangled 3–4. Then teams went back to the 4–3. (In the Packers’ case, after signing free agent defensive end Reggie White in 1993.) Now teams are roughly split between the 3–4 (to which the Packers returned in 2009) and the 4–3.