Hard knocks in the NFL
Manning, Leaf face the curse of the rookie starters
Posted: Monday August 17, 1998 01:08 PM
| |
The big question in San Diego: Can Leaf stay
calm when the going gets rough? AP
|
By John Donovan, CNN/SI
ATLANTA (CNN/SI) -- Sometime in the opening week of this NFL season -- or
maybe it won't be until Week 2 or Week 3 -- Ryan
Leaf will lift his
sore bones off the turf once again, walk up under center, take another snap
...
And get turf-planted yet again.
For a rookie quarterback, it's as inevitable as interceptions and screaming
coaches. Teams will blitz him, secondaries will shift coverages before his
eyes, some ham-handed defensive lineman will give him a late pop to the
facemask. He'll be piled on and cursed at. He'll be lectured to. He'll get
hacked off.
And he'll lose. And then lose some more.
From there, he can become either Troy Aikman or Rick Mirer.
"It's going to happen," says Bobby Beathard, the San Diego Chargers
general manager who, many feel, has mortgaged the team's future and given
the note to Leaf to pay off. "Maybe he will get frustrated. Those are the
things we'll have to find out: Can he still perform when things get rough?"
Leaf, the No. 2 choice in last April's NFL Draft, and top pick Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts are the
latest rookie quarterbacks to be forced into starting roles as their team's
savior -- probably before their time. NFL history shows that rookie
quarterbacks who start their team's first game don't do well.
At best, they get beat up and, years later, win the Super Bowl. The Dallas Cowboys' Aikman,
for instance.
At worst --like the Chicago
Bears' Mirer -- they get beat up and never recover.
"You have to be real careful," admits June Jones, the Chargers'
quarterbacks coach. "There's been a few guys who I think have suffered by
getting thrown in there, that it has stunted their growth. Unfortunately,
in this system of free agency, when you sign a quarterback, you almost have
to play them, 'cause you only have them for so many years."
One thing rookie quarterbacks almost never do is win. Dan Marino did in 1983 with
the Miami Dolphins,
but he sat behind David Woodley for the first five games. In the past 20
years, of teams who started a rookie in the first game (and started him at
least nine games), only the Denver Broncos,
with John Elway, finished with a
winning record (see chart).
|
Welcome to the NFL |
In the past 20 years, only seven
rookie
QBs have started the first
game of the season and lasted at least
nine starts. Only one of them has
a winning
record: |
| Yr | Player,
team |
Starts | Record |
1983
1993
1993
1978
1990
1982
1989
|
John Elway, Den
Rick Mirer, Sea
Drew Bledsoe, NE
Doug Williams, TB
Jeff George, Ind
Mike Pagel, Bal
Troy, Aikman, Dal
|
10
16
12
10
12
9
11
|
9-7
6-10
5-11
5-11
7-9
0-8-1
1-15
|
|
More often, rookie quarterbacks who start the first game wind up like
Aikman (whose Cowboys went 1-15 in his rookie year) or Mirer (his Seattle Seahawks went
6-10) or Doug Williams (whose Tampa Bay Buccaneers
went 5-11).
At least Williams and Aikman, though, rebounded to win Super Bowls.
That may yet be the case for Mirer. The No. 2 pick in the 1993 draft (he
went behind New England quarterback Drew Bledsoe), Mirer has
had to fight his way through the league, first with the Seahawks and now
with the Bears. He reportedly had to take a 30 percent pay cut earlier this
year and is currently No. 2 behind veteran Erik Kramer.
Mirer is not the only one who has struggled. The league is full of
quarterbacks who got substantial playing time in their rookie years and
never got over it -- players like Heath Shuler and David Klingler and Andre
Ware and Jeff George.
"More often than not, it probably doesn't work out," says Ken Anderson,
who played quarterback for the Cincinnati Bengals from
1971-86 and is now the team's quarterbacks coach. "I think sometimes, from
a confidence standpoint, you go out there and good things don't happen and
you begin to question yourself a little bit."
The road has not always been so rough on rookie quarterbacks. When Anderson
came into the league, the draft was held in January, players signed their
contracts almost immediately and they had months to prepare for their first
camp. Defenses, too, weren't as complicated, and neither were offenses.
In today's league, teams don't have those kinds of luxuries. With
multi-million contracts, jobs on the line and impatient fans, rookie
quarterbacks -- especially ones that are picked high -- are expected to
produce immediately.
It's the rare case when a quarterback can be brought along slowly, like the
Minnesota Vikings did
with their starter, Brad
Johnson, or the Denver Broncos will try to do with rookie Brian Griese. And those
players are never high-round picks.
That doesn't always work out, either.
"Everything that is happening to you is happening for the first time. This
guy blitzes. That guy covers someone else, or whatever," Anderson says. "I
don't know if overwhelmed is the word. Sometimes, you're just unsure."
That's why pre-draft evaluations have become such a critical part of the
league. Both the Chargers and Colts spent countless long hours poring over
tapes, looking for signs of how Leaf and Manning, both of them just 22,
will react when all hell breaks loose.
Jones remembers seeing a tape of last year's game between Arizona State and
Leaf's Washington State team. At halftime, the Cougars were down 24-7 and
Leaf had hit on only four of his 14 passes. He was as out of sorts as Jones
had seen him.
Then the Cougars stormed back, taking the lead in the second half, with
Leaf throwing two touchdown passes (he had 447 total yards).
"That showed me a lot," Jones said. The Cougars, by the way, eventually
lost the game.
Still, the ability to bounce back, either from a bad play, a bad half or a
bad game, will be crucial to these guys' success.
"Each one of them [Manning and Leaf] is going to face the same thing.
They're going to see things they've never seen before -- and see things
happen at a much faster speed," Beathard says. "You hope that the preseason
gets them ready for the regular season, but I haven't heard a quarterback
yet, once the preseason is over, say that the game didn't speed up even
more.
Peyton Manning not only must learn a lot his
rookie season, he must survive itAP | |
"The danger is that you throw a young guy in there and he loses his
confidence and he's actually set back. But, if the evaluations are correct,
and you have two quarterbacks like Peyton and Ryan ... We think both of
these guys will be able to handle the knocks."
Leaf got off to a good start in his first preseason game, beating the San Francisco 49ers, 27-21.
In his second game, a win over the St. Louis Rams, he was
13-for-22 for 200 yards, passed for one touchdown and ran for another. He's
sporting a 93.0 passing rating for the exhibition season.
Manning threw a 48-yard touchdown on his first NFL pass in a loss to
Seattle. He gets his second crack at game-type competition when the Colts
play the Bengals on Monday night.
Both the Colts and Chargers are happy with the progress and the toughness
of their picks. "I think he's (already) passed some guys who have been in
this league 10 years," Colts quarterbacks coach Bruce Arians said of
Manning.
Both teams know, too, that there are rough times ahead for their projects.
In fact, they're looking forward to it.
That's when the teams will find out whether Manning and Leaf -- who meet
next week in a preseason game and on October 4 for real -- have the ability
to fight through the bad times and break the mold of rookie quarterbacks
who have been asked to immediately win. "Some guys just can't,"
Beathard said. "But if you're going to be great, it's a quality you have to
have."
| 
