It's the best time of the year. The weather is warm, Oktoberfests are pouring steins and blasting polka music across the country. Most importantly, our Saturdays and Sundays (and, to a lesser extent, Thursdays and Mondays) are filled with football.

You'd think this would be enough to power daytime sports media. You can discuss the games being played. You can preview the ones coming up. You could even pivot to Major League Baseball's playoff push, the WNBA's actual playoffs or the upcoming NBA and NHL seasons.

Or, you can bring in a renowned NFL Draft expert to reminisce on the good ol' days and yell at some clouds.

That's Mel Kiper, ESPN's long-tenured draft expert, engaging in the lowest form of conversation: remember when. For him, however, the golden age of quarterbacking hasn't been dulled by rules that make it easier for receivers to get open or protections for passers in and outside the pocket. Instead, it's because... uh, opposing defenses understand deep balls are bad and are leaving their safeties high in the secondary to prevent them?

"Hit the receiver in stride. 65-yard touchdown. It's a beautiful thing to watch. That's what I want to see brought back," Kiper lamented, days after Justin Jefferson scored a 97-yard touchdown on a deep route against the defending NFC champion San Francisco 49ers. "Check down kings, bubble screen sensations, boring football. Uh-uh. I want to see those deep shots."

"Don't tell me you can't have those safeties closer to the line of scrimmage than they are," an animated Kiper continued. "I was at games thinkin' 'hey, two high? They're out in outer space!' I couldn't even find 'em. They're playing with nine guys! The other two, they're so far back you don't even know they're part of the damn play! I'm telling you, we gotta change this thing."

Having two-high safeties is a basic strategy that takes the two players who serve as the last line of defense -- the aptly named safeties -- and leave them far behind the line of scrimmage to make it easier to chase down these deep throws. It is not a new or innovative strategy in the NFL. It's simply a deterrent for high-powered passing offenses. While it may be seen more in recent years it's a function of good quarterbacking and a rising tide of great receivers more than anything else.

Which makes how Kiper prefaced his argument a little stranger.

"I grew up with Johnny Unitas, Fran Tarkenton, Ken Stabler, Daryle Lamonica. Yo, you talk about quarterbacks," Kiper ranted, trying to make a case for passing offenses by listing players who threw for at least 30 touchdowns in a single season three times combined between them -- the same amount Eli Manning did as a pro. "You think about those quarterback who would throw the ball down the field. What [Terry] Bradshaw did with [John] Stallworth and [Lynn] Swann. Roger Staubach. That's what I want to see brought back."

But that ignores the fact those quarterbacks didn't need a rule change to create space for their deep game. They just ran the hell out of the ball. In 1979 -- arguably the peak of the Bradshaw-Stallworth-Swann Pittsburgh Steelers -- the average NFL offense ran the ball 34 times per game while throwing 29. In 2023, the balance was 34 passes against 27 runs each week.

Running the ball limits your big play production in the present, but it also forces those safeties Kiper hates toward the line of scrimmage and bruising runners crash through light boxes. NFL coordinators understand this, which is why rush attempts per game have increased slightly since the late 2010s. If teams really feel like high safeties are an issue, they'll just spam runs in hopes of trapping that deep help in a vacuum to create space downfield.

This is hardly a problem, let alone one the NFL's rules committee needs to take a crack at. Fortunately, NFL analysts across social media disagreed with Kiper's hyperbolic take.

This article originally appeared on For The Win: Mel Kiper Jr.'s nonsensical rant against high safeties reminds us its a long way to the 2025 NFL Draft