The quarterback quandary

A cadre of 'experts' is still working on a formula

What is it about the quarterback position that seems to fog the finest minds in football? Why are the most dramatic mistakes made in the area of evaluating QBs? I mean, why can't they tell?

"Just too many variables," says ex-Cowboys QB Troy Aikman, now an announcer for Fox-TV.

"It's not an exact science," says the Patriots player personnel director, Scott Pioli.

"Very few NFL people really understand the position," says another former-QB-turned-announcer, Phil Simms of CBS.

Every 20 minutes you read about another quarterback controversy. Or to put it more euphemistically, an unsettled situation at the quarterback position. Cincinnati coach Dick LeBeau just announced his starter for opening day. Gus Frerotte. It'll be the fifth differerent Bengals starter for the opener.

In Tampa Bay they've been mentioning that Rob Johnson, to whom they were only too happy to bid farewell in Buffalo, is making a serious run at Brad Johnson's job. Drew Brees just won the shootout over 39-year-old Doug Flutie in San Diego. Who's it gonna be in Washington? One of Steve Spurrier's Florida Gators, Shane Matthews or Danny Wuerffel, or the owner's personally mandated "sexy pick" in the draft, Patrick Ramsey? If the Lions really loved Joey Harrington so much that they made him the third pick, overall, in the entire draft, then why can't he unseat Mike McMahon, who's average at best?

And so on and so forth. NFL history is filled with colossal blunders, but why do so many involve quarterbacks? Not only the legendary busts, à la Ryan Leaf, but the truly talented guys who get shuffled right out of the deck?

Kurt Warner, who has Hall of Fame written all over him, went through three years with the Iowa Barnstormers of the Arena League. Do you mean to tell me that of all the great offensive minds of the NFL -- Bill Walsh, Bobby Beathard, Norv Turner, etc. -- none could see anything there for three years?

"I was a TV announcer for the Arena League in those days," says former Raiders tight end Todd Christensen, who will be a Hall of Fame candidate this year.

"I watched Warner, and I said this on the air ... I can play you the tape. I said, 'You can't tell me there are 100 better quarterbacks in the NFL than this guy.' Everything was effortless with him, everything was a flip. You know, sometimes you a see a player that just does things differently than other guys. O.J. Simpson running, Lawrence Taylor when he hit someone. Warner was like that throwing the ball. Why no one in the NFL could see that amazes me."

My own feeling is that there are only a handful of people in the league who really understand the position and know how to coach it. Walsh, Turner, Jim Fassel when he was an assistant. But even they have their downers. In Washington Turner stuck with No. 1 draft Heath Shuler when the whole world -- fans, media, washroom attendants -- knew that Frerotte was simply a better player. Turns out they were all right, and a couple of years later Turner grudgingly made the switch.

Joe Montana was Walsh's greatest monument, but the rumor persists that he really wanted to draft his Stanford QB, Steve Dils, and Tony Razzano, the personnel guy, had to talk Walsh into the Montana selection. Walsh always has vehemently denied this, but just as vehement are the old-time personnel people, who wink and say, "Don't believe him. It was Tony's pick."

"I was with Oakland at the time," Christensen says, "and I had a buddy who was trying to stick with the Niners as a quarterback. I asked our special teams coach, Steve Ortmayer, who also did a lot of scouting, what my friend's chances were.

"'Good,' Steve said. 'All they've got is this Notre Dame kid named Montana who just can't throw.'"

Strength of arm is the biggest coach-breaker in football, with height closely behind. Ryan Leaf: Broke a coach and sent a famous talent scout, Bobby Beathard, into retirement. Jeff George: not uncommonly tall, but what an arm! The ultimate coach-breaker. The beach is littered with the wreckage. Actually broke two coaches on the same Redskins team, Turner and Marty Schottenheimer, both of whom were forced by the owner to play him.

The height thing seems to have a mesmerizing effect. Would Jim Druckenmiller ever have been drafted in the first round if he weren't 6-foot-5? People used to ask me to name a quarterback under 6-foot who ever won a championship. My counter was, name one over 6-3 who ever won one. Well, Doug Williams ruined that, so now I have to say, name one over 6-4.

Phil Simms was caught in a big-guy sandwich at both ends of his career. In his early years with the Giants, Bill Parcells benched him for 6-5 Scott Brunner. Brunner was big, naturally, and tough and courageous, a lot tougher than that Simms kid, so the coach's reasoning went. Simms, a Hall of Fame candidate these days, had to fight his way back into the lineup. And then at the end, after a fine season on a playoff team, Simms got the hook in favor of 6-6 Dave Brown, a first-round draft. Maybe the Giants were looking for rebounders for their offseason basketball team.

At first Simms was very bitter. Then he bit the bullet and decided to help the kid and work with him.

"He's lifting, he's working hard every day," Simms told me at the time. "You know, I think his arm is strong enough to throw in that stadium, with all the wind."

Brown became another stork who flunked. "I forgot about one thing," Simms said later. "He just wasn't a very accurate passer."

"Ask a bunch of offensive coaches or scouts what they're looking for in evaluating a quarterback," Aikman says, "and what do they tell you? Arm strength, leadership skills, toughness, height, mobility. Down on the list somewhere is accuracy. To me that's No. 1. If you can't throw the ball where you want to throw it, nothing else matters."

Do they consider personality, I mean really consider it? Well, a few do. It's hard to find one of Leaf's Chargers teammates who liked him at the time, who didn't think he was the ultimate jerk. Now, in hindsight, scouts tell you that they knew all along that he would be a problem. Yeah, sure. Look back at the clips, when he and Peyton Manning, were vying for who would be the first player taken, and all you read is about Leaf's "unlimited potential," and "great upside," and the rest of the blah blah.

I remember when George was the first player chosen in the 1990 draft. Only one personnel man I talked to offered any negatives about his personality, Mike Hickey of the Jets.

"I wouldn't draft him in any round," Hickey said. "I wouldn't want him on my team."

For a while I tried keeping my own tabs on quarterbacks I really liked and didn't like, to see how I stacked up against the scouts. I was very big on personality, on the intangibles. One year I struck it big with Rich Gannon, a fourth-round choice, one of my "sleepers of the year." I wasn't wild about Rick Mirer, a first-round draft. Too inaccurate. And thus ends my roster of success.

I really liked the University of Washington's Hugh Millen, an action QB with a whiplike arm. He had a nondescript career as a perennial backup. The guy I liked best of all of them was Georgia's Eric Zeier. Wow, what a winner, what a leader! All he did was bring his team back from behind. He retired after a lackluster half-dozen years in the league.

"Don't feel bad," Pioli says. "I really liked him, too. Actually drafted him in the third round in Cleveland."

My biggest wipeout, though, came in 1983, the great Year of the Quarterback, Dan Marino, John Elway, etc. Others were also a bit fooled, though. Elway, of course, was chalk. A can't-miss. But I remember like it was yesterday, sitting poolside at the league meetings with Jim Finks, the GM who became famous for restoring moribund franchises, himself a former NFL QB, and Jim gripping my arm and saying, "Twenty years from now, one name will stand out from all the others in this draft. Tony Eason."

I was at the anchor desk for ESPN during that draft, and when Marino's name came up, I mindlessly repeated something a scout had told me. "Mechanics are wrong. Pushes the ball." For years afterward, every time Don Shula would see me he'd go bonkers. "Pushes the ball, huh? A pusher! Well, what do you think of my pusher now, Mr. Quarterback Expert?" Finally, after about five years of this, I attached a white handkerchief to a pencil and hoisted it in the air and waved it at the coach. "Surrender. I surrender." So he finally let up.

Who knows? Maybe at another time, with another set of coaches, Marino would have been a guy who handed the ball off 40 times a game and Eason would have had a magnificent career. Some organizations were simply quarterback-breakers. Tampa Bay, for instance. Vince Testaverde was booed there, but he made the Pro Bowl twice after he left. Doug Williams escaped and became Super Bowl MVP. Steve Young went from the Bucs to a Hall of Fame-type career with the 49ers.

"If Norv Turner hadn't have come to Dallas, I wouldn't have had the career I did," Aikman says. "Sometimes a young quarterback just isn't put into a situation or a system that lets him be productive. Sometimes he just doesn't have the coaching. It's a shame."

But still, scouts seem to make the same mistake every year, going for the big, strong-armed guys and neglecting the winners, the ones with the intangibles, the Tom Brady 's.

"You get seduced by the pretty ones," says Pioli, who took Brady -- but in the sixth round. "Why do you keep making the same mistake? Put it this way. Say you're walking down the street with your wife, and a good-looking woman passes and you turn your head to look. Now you just know it's gonna make your wife mad, and it does, but you do it anyway. You'd think you'd learn something, but you don't. And next time a good-looking woman passes, you turn and look again."

I'll never forget something former Jets and Colts coach Weeb Ewbank once said: "You know what's the greatest thing about coaching a Johnny Unitas? For 10 years he keeps you from making a fool of yourself."

Sports Illustrated senior writer Paul Zimmerman covers the NFL beat for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. To send a question to Dr. Z's Mailbag, click here.

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.

 

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