Stock up on backup QBs
Posted: Friday November 20, 1998 03:32 PM
One thing this off-season that ought to be on every NFL team's wish list --
not at the top, but awfully high -- is a dependable backup quarterback.
This has never been more obvious than here in 1998, The Year of the Backup
Quarterback. Whether by injury or incompetance, more than a dozen
opening-day starting quarterbacks are now riding the bench, and their teams
are left at the mercy of their backup quarterback.
Consider the AFC West, the NFL's best division with a combined record of
30-20. Four of the five teams played last week with a different quarterback
than they opened the season with, and the fifth team, Seattle, has won with
Warren Moon on the
sideline this year.
Those quarterbacks -- Bubby
Brister, Donald
Hollas, Craig
Whelihan, Rich
Gannon -- have records as starters equal to or better than the players
they replaced.
So while a team's starting quarterback is etched in granite during the
off-season, there's at least a 50-50 chance that during the course of a
season, he'll go down or do enough bad things to send him to the sidelines.
If a team isn't equipped with a capable backup, their whole season can go
to hell in a handbag when that happens.
On the other hand, that kind of injury can be a blessing in disguise --
three of this year's best quarterbacks, Minnesota's Randall Cunningham,
Buffalo's Doug Flutie
and New York's Vinny
Testaverde, began the season as clear backups, but they've combined for
44 touchdown passes.
What team has the best quarterback depth? I like Denver. John Elway's always a good
start, but then they have a quality veteran in Bubby Brister and two
potential heir apparents -- third-year pro Jeff Lewis, who's been
injured all year, and rookie Brian Griese, who led
Michigan to a share of the national championship last year.
On the other end might be Chicago, who traded Rick Mirer away, leaving
Steve Stenstrom and
rookie Moses Moreno as
injury-prone Erik
Kramer's backups.
Teams are starting to realize the value of a solid backup quarterback --
their market price is rising fast. Carolina gave Steve Beuerlein a contract
extension last week, as did Denver with Brister -- they might not be the
starter long, but they're the perfect backup -- talented, experienced,
mature, ready to take over the team on any Sunday.
The strange thing is that backup quarterback used to be the ultimate cush
job in the NFL -- you wear the ballcap, carry the clipboard, smile for the
cameras and pick up your paycheck. Now, too many zone blitzes and bad
passes have made every backup keep his helmet close at hand.
Football is so different from any other sport, in that injuries can
decimate a team in a short amount of time. You see Jordans and Gretzkys go
down for a few days, but nowhere near the number of season-ending injuries
that NFL teams encounter. Yet so many teams don't have contingency plans
ready for when their quarterback goes down.
And this is the quarterback -- the one guy on the team who always has a
bounty on his head, who gets hit early and late, who can change the game by
stepping on the field -- or limping off it.
As the Vikings nearly showed everyone last week, two good quarterbacks
isn't always enough. You can win a lot of bar bets trying to get people to
name the 30 No. 3 quarterbacks in the NFL -- do you know where Mike Cherry plays? Wally Richardson? Steve Matthews?
When I was a coach, I never had a good backup quarterback, but then again,
I never had a good starting quarterback either. I needed four quarterbacks
one year -- in 1990, Jeff
George, Jack Trudeau and Mark Herrmann were dinged up enough that we
had to pull 40-year-old Joe Ferguson out of retirement. He threw eight
passes, and completed two to our guys, two to the other guys. Dolphins won.
So if general managers want to be able to sleep at night, if coaches want
to be able to breathe when their quarterback is slow getting up from a
sack, they need to make sure they have a good quarterback this spring, then
go find another.
Or three or four, just to be safe. Otherwise, they're thumbing through the
Rolodex at midseason, hoping Don Strock will pick up the phone.
Start your NFL Sunday by watching Ron Meyer, James Lofton, Sports
Illustrated's Peter King and host Bob Lorenz on CNN NFL Preview. At 10 a.m.
ET, it's the day's first look at all the NFL action.
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