Innovation in football

A post titled Read-option star QB Reggie Collier missed NFL stardom, but at peace after conquering addiction casts present-day 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick as a later-day Reggie Collier.

Within the post, one finds text relating to Collier as an invention before his time:

He seemed destined to change football forever. Only he didn't. In a large part because football wasn't willing to change. He threw 22 passes in the NFL and by the middle of the 1987 season he was done.
"I think he was ahead of his time, I really do," Cook says.
"He was Michael Vick long before Michael Vick," says Cox.

AND

Collier has been watching football in this season of the running-passing quarterback. How could he not? When he sees Kaepernick, he's seeing himself 30 years before. He loves these coaches now, men like San Francisco's Jim Harbaugh, who took a chance on Kaepernick and Washington's Mike Shanahan with Robert Griffin III and Pete Carroll who thought Russell Wilson was the best quarterback for the Seahawks. They're the ones with the imagination. They get it.


Curiously, the post omits Collier's time with the Orlando Renegades, during which time Collier passed for 2,578 yards and 13 touchdowns, while being intercepted 16 times. He also rushed for 606 yards and 12 touchdowns. [wikipedia]

An invention does not become an innovation until it changes the way things are done. Xerox invented the mouse, but the non-inventor innovator Steve Jobs changed our lives.