Michael Sowers’ move from running back to quarterback

Sitting at his locker, Michael Sowers could hear the Utah Archers celebrating through the walls of Subaru Park. A year ago, it had been him and his teammates showering each other with champagne in that exact same locker room. The Waterdogs had cut down the nets. The Waterdogs had posed for photos with the trophy. Teammates had trusted Sowers to map out their marching parade path through Philadelphia.

Now, it was the Archers’ turn to plan their night out. And Sowers was already planning his offseason training.

“I felt like I was plateauing,” Sowers said.

Hearing that makes no sense at all, yet somehow it makes complete sense.

How could someone who had won PLL Championship MVP honors and a gold medal with Team USA in the past year believe he was plateauing? But then again, how could someone become an All-Pro attackman without that drive to be better?

Sowers reached out to Jamie Munro that fall for an assessment of his game. Munro, who founded 3d Lacrosse, focuses on coaching deception and creativity. He compared Sowers’ game to a running back in football. He’d hit the hole, run as fast as he could and – too often – put his body on the line.

“If I continued to play the style that I was playing … I just wasn’t going to play for as long as I want to play,” Sowers said.

From that point on, Sowers’ training shifted toward maximizing his longevity. Instead of playing like a running back, he started playing like a quarterback.

He has taken steps to extend his range, so that he can be a scoring threat without threatening his health. His average shot distance has increased every year since: from 6.8 in 2023 to 8.2 in 2024 to 9.1 in 2025.

Sowers has observed Kieran McArdle’s approach to the recovery process and learned from the veteran. Now in his 12th professional season, McArdle is a model of consistency and discipline. It starts with nutrition. Sleep is key, too — though harder now than ever for McArdle with two kids at home. The biggest factor for McArdle’s longevity: stretching.

For McArdle, that stretching routine involves a half-hour session, five times per week. It’s been that way since a month before the bubble in 2020 when McArdle aggravated his back and was searching for solutions.

Sowers’ recovery features less stretching and more compression therapy. Post-practice and post-game, you can find him wearing NormaTec boots. A standard recovery session can last up to an hour. We often see Sowers setting up teammates on the field; when the NormaTec boots come on, it’s time for them to assist him.

“[Zach] Currier gets the worst of it,” McArdle laughed.

“He’ll invite people over to the room. There will be four people that knock at the door. He can’t go get it. So I’m the one having to go get it,” Currier said. “You name it. Uber Eats. Everything. ‘Zach, can you go get that?’”

The knocks come from McArdle, Christian Scarpello and Dillon Ward. All share a passion for true crime documentaries. Their binges began at the 2024 Lexus Championship Series, when Sowers estimates they watched five or six docs in a week. They haven’t slowed down since. They’ve seen “Amy Bradley Is Missing,” “A Body in the Snow: The Trial of Karen Read” and anything else Netflix or HBO has to offer. Sowers is worried they’re running out of docs; Currier, who would rather be watching sports, is less concerned about that.

“Half of them don’t even get solved,” Currier said.

Sowers is intrigued by that aspect of it. He wants to hear all the theories. Constantly digging deeper to find what others may have missed, it’s reminiscent of the way he studies lacrosse. He thinks about the game nonstop. He watches a “[expletive] ton” of film, according to Currier. And he isn’t shy about sharing film with teammates.

“He’ll send me clips throughout the week and be like, ‘Ah man, I missed you on that play,’” McArdle said.

“Even after the game, I’ll try to get him to come hang out with the boys,” Currier said. “He’s usually 20-30 minutes behind because he’s got ESPN+ up and checking out plays where he could’ve done some stuff better — which aren’t many times in the game if you’re Michael Sowers.”

Sowers studied the two-man game more than ever before following the 2023 season. A big component of his game since his time at Princeton, the two-man game has made reads easier for the Waterdogs’ quarterback. Instead of sprinting off the pick as fast as possible in hopes of drawing a switch, Sowers is splitting the field into two: the on-ball two-on-two and the off-ball four-on-four.

Like an NFL QB counting the defenders in the box pre-snap, Sowers is able to make quick decisions based on simple math. If the defense sends a slide, then his teammates are playing four-on-three away from the ball. That’s a massive advantage. Unlike a quarterback who needs to wait for the routes to develop, Sowers’ receivers are already downfield and in shooting position.

Since 2019, two-man games have created more assisted shots than dodges (44.0% assist rate compared to 37.6%). They’ve also created better assisted shots than dodges do (29.9% shooting percentage compared to 24.2%). Few attackmen understand that better than Sowers does.

The running back you remember from 2023 used to run off picks as fast as possible, squeezing underneath on the near side and soaring airborne regardless of whether a coma slide was on its way or not.

Sowers slow plays those now. He’s a pocket passer who understands he can gain more yards through the air, and he can gain yards through the air for longer.

“Fearlessness over the years is replaced by intelligence and experience,” head coach Bill Tierney said.

Some things can never be replaced, though. Two years later, it’s still often Scarpello picking for Sowers. Roommates at training camp during Sowers’ rookie year in 2021, the two had chemistry right away. Both Sowers and Scarpello’s favorite athlete as a kid was Allen Iverson. It’s easy to see why.

“[Scarpello]’s got a little of the ‘I’ll show ya’ undersized mentality,” Tierney said. “That puts a little fire in him.”

The son of a coach, Scarpello is a short-sick defensive midfielder who can stay and play – especially when he has an opposing attackman trapped. Rutgers’ NASCAR offense ran a heavy dose of razor picks when Scarpello was in school; more often than not, it was him picking for Jules Heningburg. Sowers trusts Scarpello, who played attack for Team England in 2023, more than any attackman trusts a defensive midfielder.

Sowers is playing the best lacrosse of his life. He’s a finalist for the Jim Brown MVP Award after finishing second in the league in points (41) and assists (23) — both career highs. Patience and deception helped him climb past the plateau-that-never-was.

When the Waterdogs face off against the two-time champion Maryland Whipsnakes on Saturday, it’ll be the team’s first postseason game since that 2023 Championship loss. Like Sowers, the Whipsnakes took their 2023 postseason exit as a look-in-the-mirror moment. Except they didn’t expect Sowers to plateau. They expected the postseason to go through him and the Waterdogs for years to come — and they built their draft board on that assumption.

“We’re also looking for guys that can go out there and match up with someone like Michael Sowers,” Stagnitta told Glenn Clark Radio after the 2024 College Draft. “To be perfectly candid, at the end of the day we felt like there was one guy who could do that.”

That guy: No. 3 overall pick Ajax Zappitello.

In their first meeting of 2025, the Whipsnakes played their worst defensive game of the year. They abandoned their gameplan, allowing Sowers to dish a season-high seven assists and complete a season-high 41 passes in a 16-12 win. They stuck to their gameplan the second time around, trusting Zappitello to match feet with Sowers. While Sowers got his (4G), it came at a cost. He attempted a season-high 10 shots and made a season-low 13 passes. The Waterdogs lost 10-7.

If Sowers has developed into a quarterback, then the Whipsnakes’ defense is a two-high safety shell. They dare him to run the ball. And while their front seven might be light, it’s fierce with Zappitello on-ball.

Sowers chooses his opportunities to tuck it and run. And when he does, he’s safer. Those long lefty sweeps across the crease might be the lacrosse equivalent of sliding. The defense can’t hit him as hard when his momentum is carrying away from the cage. Plus, his left hand is lethal. Sowers shot 34.6% (9-for-26) with his left, leading all players in weak-hand goals.

For the Waterdogs to win on Saturday, they’ll need Sowers to make more than 13 passes. He knows that, and he probably knows what the exact passes are. There are probably three to four reads he missed in July that he clipped and sent to McArdle while teammates were waiting for him to grab dinner.