| |
The Class Of '83 Six QBs picked in first round shared history
By Lars Anderson John Elway | Todd Blackledge | Jim Kelly | Tony Eason | Ken O'Brien | Dan Marino
From his home in Weston, Fla., Marino, the only other member of the group still in the NFL in 1998, became dewy-eyed as he viewed the game on his big-screen TV. "I was pulling for John because he's my friend, but in a way I was jealous," says Marino, whose Miami Dolphins fell to the San Francisco 49ers in his only Super Bowl appearance, in January 1985. "When I saw him holding that trophy, I almost cried."
From Buffalo, as he watched Elway standing atop the victory podium, Kelly felt a sense of relief. "Finally, nobody could say the Class of '83 didn't win a Super Bowl," says Kelly, who as a member of the Buffalo Bills went winless in four appearances in the big game and retired after the 1996 season. O'Brien, who had made the trip to San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium for the game, cheered on Elway, his close friend, in full throat from his seat on the 40-yard line. "It was very rewarding to see one of us get it done," says the former New York Jet. Though still mildly haunted by his lone, woebegone Super Bowl experience with the New England Patriots, in 1986, Eason watched the game enthusiastically from his brother's home in Los Angeles. "The third-quarter play in which John went spiraling over a few defenders made me want to get back out there," he says. "I was thrilled for him." Blackledge, the former Kansas City Chief, savored Elway's triumph from the living room of his Canton, Ohio, home. "I was really happy for John,'' he says. "But if no one from our class had won a Super Bowl, it wouldn't have meant we were less successful. I think everybody knows how special our class was."
Indeed, the '83 group, like a bottle of fine wine, has become more treasured as the years have gone by. History will remember it as the best quarterback class in perhaps the best NFL draft of all time, one that also included such nonquarterbacks as Eric Dickerson, Willie Gault and Darrell Green. Elway, Marino and Kelly are surefire Hall of Famers. O'Brien was the highest-rated passer in the NFL in 1985. Though Eason and Blackledge never lived up to the promise they showed in college, well, few first-round quarterbacks in recent memory have. If you did a roll call of quarterbacks drafted in the first round after 1983, you'd be tempted to file a series of missing persons reports. Where have you gone, Kelly Stouffer, David Klingler and Dan McGwire? And you, Andre Ware, Todd Marinovich and Tommy Maddox? The numbers are staggering. Combined, the six members of the '83 crop have thrown for 187,377 yards (or some 107 miles), started 11 Super Bowls and been named to 23 Pro Bowls. By comparison, the 22 quarterbacks selected in the first rounds of the 15 drafts since '83 (not counting top picks in the NFL's supplemental draft) have thrown for 242,420 yards, started in four Super Bowls and been chosen for 13 Pro Bowls. "Nothing compares to that class," says Don Shula, the NFL's winningest coach. "I don't think any class will ever top it."
If there is a stain on the group's legacy, it is this: Before Elway won his first Super Bowl last season, the '83 quarterbacks, each of whom was drafted by an AFC team, were 0-9 in the Big One. Which raises the question, Were they somehow to blame for the AFC's run of 13 straight Super Bowl losses from 1985 through '97? "When six quarterbacks were drafted in the first round, it looked like that was going to make the AFC the conference of the future, and I think the AFC relied on that too much," says Fox television analyst and former AFC coach John Madden. "They became a passing conference." AFC defenses adapted to the conference's changing offensive philosophy by deploying smaller, quicker players. But when those defenses went up against the NFC's run-oriented, smash-mouth attacks in the Super Bowl, they were invariably overpowered and overwhelmed. Indeed, Denver only exorcised its Super Bowl hex when it started to rely less on Elway's passing and more on the powerful between-the-tackles running of halfback Terrell Davis. Suddenly, the best quarterback in the best quarterback class of all time was no longer the most important player on his team. Elway in a supporting role? We all must be getting a little older.
Slowly, they have disappeared. First it was Blackledge, in '89. Then Eason, in '90. Then O'Brien, in '93. Then Kelly, early after the '96 season. Only Elway and Marino remain, and now that the Denver quarterback has won a second consecutive Super Bowl, it's possible that he has thrown his final pass. Turn the clock back to an extraordinary spring day in 1983. On the morning of April 26, the sun had yet to rise over the Rocky Mountains when the wheeling and dealing began at the NFL's 48th annual draft. At 5:30 a.m., less than eight hours before the start of the draft, then Denver coach Dan Reeves took a call from Baltimore Colts coach Frank Kush, who held the top pick and had been leaning toward selecting Elway. Kush wanted to know if Reeves was willing to make a deal for the draft choice. "We talked, but the price was too steep," Reeves recalls. "I thought that was it." Although Elway had told Colts general manager Ernie Accorsi numerous times that he wouldn't play for the autocratic Kush, Baltimore drafted Elway anyway. Elway then threatened to sign a contract with the New York Yankees, who had picked him in the second round of the amateur baseball draft two years earlier. Still, Accorsi, who was seduced by the thought of Elway's becoming the franchise's next Johnny Unitas, refused to blink.
Six days after the draft, however, Colts owner Robert Irsay traded Elway to Denver for quarterback Mark Herrmann, lineman Chris Hinton and a first-round pick in 1984 (who would turn out to be guard Ron Solt) without consulting Accorsi. "I was home watching the NBA playoffs on ESPN," says Accorsi, now the general manager of the New York Giants. "They broke in to say that the Denver Broncos had called a press conference, which would begin in the next few minutes." So began the demise of the Colts, who the next year would bolt Baltimore for Indianapolis, where they have had five winning records in 15 seasons. The Kansas City Chiefs, who had the seventh pick in '83, had little reason to believe a similarly disappointing future awaited them when they selected Blackledge, who had no qualms about the team that drafted him. During Penn State's national title run the previous season, Chiefs coach John Mackovic was smitten by Blackledge's leadership and poise. A week before the draft, Mackovic took a private jet to Blackledge's hometown of Canton to have lunch with the Nittany Lions' star. He then flew to meet Marino, who had played at the University of Pittsburgh. In Mackovic's mind, there was no comparison: Blackledge was the better player. Alas, aside from meeting his future wife in Kansas City, Blackledge's five seasons as a Chief were utterly forgettable. He had trouble reading coverages and his arm was relatively weak, which explains why he was so inaccurate (.481 career completion percentage) and so prone to the pick (38 career interceptions versus 29 career touchdowns) during his seven NFL seasons. He retired with a 15-14 record as a starter and the Chiefs no closer to the Super Bowl than they had been when they drafted him. Still, Blackledge has no regrets. "I count it as a privilege to be a part of the group," he says. "As John and Dan continued and progressed, a part of me was with them."
Kelly, who was taken by Buffalo with the 14th pick, would forge an altogether different legacy. As a senior at the University of Miami, he had suffered a severe shoulder separation, and his throwing arm was in a sling as draft day approached, which scared off many suitors. The Bills, however, liked Kelly's toughness and the fact that he had hands the size of waffle irons, attributes they figured would serve him well when playing in the cold and the wind at Buffalo's Rich Stadium. However, six weeks after the draft, Kelly received a five-year, $3.5 million contract offer from the USFL's Houston Gamblers. It was an offer he couldn't refuse. Kelly spent two seasons playing for the Gamblers and in 1984 was named the league's MVP. After the USFL folded, in August 1986, he signed with Buffalo and from 1990 to '93 led the Bills to four straight Super Bowls--and, of course, four losses. "Me, John and Dan always talked in the off-season about how, hopefully, one of us could win it, not only for ourselves but for the whole Class of '83 and for the AFC," says Kelly. Though he played in only one Super Bowl, in 1986, Eason's memories of the event are in some ways more painful than those of Kelly. Perhaps the most enduring image of Eason's eight-year career with New England and the New York Jets is that of the Chicago Bears' defense nearly decapitating him in Super Bowl XX. In the Patriots' 46-10 loss, Eason missed on all six of his pass attempts before he was replaced by Steve Grogan. To this day, Eason is the only quarterback in NFL history to start a Super Bowl and not complete a pass. That ignominy, however, apparently has not scarred the former Illinois star too deeply. "I've really enjoyed being a part of the class because it's been fun to keep track of each other and see the different paths our careers have taken," says Eason, the 15th pick in the '83 draft. "It's made us all unique." Next up in the draft was O'Brien, whom the Jets drafted out of the University of California, Davis, a Division II school, with the 24th pick. Though he was not a mobile quarterback, O'Brien used a soft touch and a quick mind to cobble together a solid career, finishing with 128 touchdown passes (versus 98 interceptions) and 25,094 yards. "I had no idea who the other guys were in the draft," says O'Brien. "That's why I wasn't intimidated about being associated with the likes of Elway." The last to go was Marino. He slipped to the 27th slot because of a dreadful senior season at Pitt (17 touchdowns versus 23 interceptions) and rumors--none of them proven--of drug use. But Dolphins coach Don Shula was convinced that the rumors were not true, so when the Los Angeles Raiders selected offensive tackle Don Mosebar with the 26th pick, it took Shula a nanosecond to decide on Marino, who has only gone on to set more than 20 NFL passing records, including most yards (58,913) and touchdown passes (408). Not bad for the 27th pick--or the sixth quarterback taken in the draft. By the time the 1998 season rolled around, only two of them, Elway and Marino, were left. The two are buddies, their friendship dating back to an ABC-sponsored tour that whisked six top college football players around the country in the summer of 1982. "Herschel Walker was ABC's guy [he would go on to win the Heisman that year], so we'd go out and have him sign for everything," Marino recalls with a laugh. Marino has insisted for years that he'll be satisfied with his career even if he retires without a championship ring, but that's what Elway said before he won his first Super Bowl. Not surprisingly, Elway has rethought his position on the issue. In the days leading up to his second Super Bowl triumph, he took time out to watch a tape of the breakthrough victory over Green Bay a year before. "It's hard to explain," Elway said of that happy occasion. "I didn't realize what a relief it would be." His '83 classmates can only imagine. Issue date: February 10, 1999 Special Collector's Edition: 1998 Denver Broncos | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Copyright © 1999 CNN/SI. A Time Warner Company. Terms under which this service is provided to you.
|
