|
|
 |
 |   |
|
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Video Plus Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities 
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
|  |
Familiar feel Grbac thinks Ravens have makings of 49ers-like dynasty
Updated: Saturday April 28, 2001 3:12 AM
OWINGS MILLS, Md. -- Pressure? Don't make Elvis Grbac laugh. As a 49ers rookie in 1993, he strolled into the San Francisco locker room and was shown to his new cubicle. The year before it had belonged to another quarterback. A guy named Joe Montana. Welcome to the big leagues, kid. Now, don't screw it up. On Friday, Grbac, now a ninth-year NFL veteran, found another new locker waiting, at the Baltimore Ravens' complex. This one used to belong to ... ah, Tony Banks. Grbac giggles at the comparison. Because there is no comparison. But then again, there's one topic Grbac can't kid himself about. His position in Baltimore this season is unique. He may be filling Banks' locker, but he's also filling the role of Ravens former starter Trent Dilfer, who was last seen three months ago carrying the Super Bowl trophy from the field at Tampa Bay's Raymond James Stadium. Never before in NFL history has a Super Bowl-winning team replaced its starting quarterback for any other reason but retirement. Then again, never before in NFL history had a Super Bowl-winning team posted a five-game touchdown drought. Welcome to Baltimore, Elvis. Now, don't screw it up.
That's Grbac's double-edged plight this season. Either he's the luckiest guy in the NFL, falling into a plum job, or he's the unluckiest, trapped in a no-win situation. He takes over an offense that has tons of room for improvement, but then again, accomplished the ultimate a year ago. Folks already have claimed that Grbac is no Dilfer, but it may take us until the end of the 2001 season to figure out whether that's good or bad. Can anyone really know what it will be like to be Elvis Grbac in 2001? To start over with a new team knowing that the entire season will have just one prevailing theme: It's Super Bowl, or you're a bust. Grbac for his part didn't shy away Friday from the subplot that will be his constant companion this season. On the first day of the Ravens' three-day minicamp, he set the stakes high and left no fuzziness around the margins. If he stopped just short of a "bring-it-on" mentality, he at least showed an acute awareness that anything short of matching Dilfer's Super Bowl ring will carry with it the ring of failure. "I think the mentality here is set, that if we don't win the championship it's not a good year," Grbac said, wearing a new Ravens baseball cap and a black Ravens shirt. "I'm going to do my job and try and upgrade this offense as best as I can. But I'm going to be disappointed if we don't get to the Super Bowl." For every Ravens fan or NFL follower who felt Baltimore was tempting fate to replace the quarterback who ended last season on an 11-game winning streak, the second-guessing will begin in earnest should Grbac and the Ravens not begin a new winning streak on opening day.
"Any time you're a starting quarterback in the league, you're going to be on the hot seat, no matter what," Grbac said. "This might be heightened a little bit just because of the anticipation and expectation we have going into the season. ... But we can be as good as we want to be, if we just focus and get on the same page. We're going to be there at the end." A new starting quarterback isn't exactly a novel idea in these parts. Johnny Unitas and Bert Jones played for that other Baltimore franchise. These are the Ravens. Grbac is third-year head coach Brian Billick's fifth starter, following such luminaries as Scott Mitchell, Stoney Case, Banks and Dilfer. Compare that to the legacy Grbac faced upon arriving in San Francisco as an eighth-round pick in 1993, where he was considered quarterback Steve Young's heir apparent. "There was such a tradition of quarterback, with Montana and Steve," said Grbac, who left Kansas City as a free agent this offseason, after four years as the Chiefs' primary starter. "Quarterbacking in San Francisco is like the ultimate in the NFL. "And coming here, I think what Baltimore has started can be a 49ers-like dynasty, or what Dallas was for a couple of years. With the 49ers, expectations of quarterbacking there were anything less than a Super Bowl championship wasn't good enough." Grbac was a second-year 49ers reserve in 1994, the year of San Francisco's most recent Super Bowl title. He is using that team as his measuring stick this season, because as he repeatedly made imminently clear Friday, he never considered Kansas City in that same league. "I was in a great situation in San Francisco in my first four years in the league and I've been looking for a place like that," Grabc said. "Is Kansas City a San Francisco or a Baltimore? In my opinion, no. As a veteran going into his last kind of run here, you want to get on a team that has a great opportunity to win a championship. "This team has what it takes to win. You can make all the money in the world in this league, but the most important thing is winning a championship. ... Defending is going to be a little harder. Do we have the ability to do that? There's no doubt." The Grbac-Chiefs marriage was one that obviously had grown stale, for both parties. In Kansas City, it is said that Grbac's somewhat aloof personality wasn't a great fit for the locker room. Others close to the situation say Grbac is a quiet, but good guy who was dragged down into the mire by a bad mix of characters in Kansas City. Whatever the truth is, this is day one of the starting-over point. His first minicamp of his first season as a Raven. He even shaved that mountain man beard he wore for most of last season in Kansas City. When asked if he found the change of scenery refreshing, Grbac laughed again, shook his head and said: "You don't even know." What he does know is this: Some how, some way, he has been thrown the keys of the NFL's current version of a Rolls Royce and asked to drive it home. The fact that the last guy navigated the trip successfully doesn't lessen his desire to re-trace the journey. It just reduces his margin for error. "I have one ring, but I'm hungry for my second one," Grbac said. "And I know if these guys are hungry enough, we'll get a second one. This system here is geared to win on Sundays, and to win the world championship, and it's a good feeling. I know. I've been there and I sense it. And I think the players all sense it." Don Banks covers pro football for CNNSI.com.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
