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Revolution Quarterbacks continue to defy age-old thinking
There is something strange going on with the quarterback business in the National Football League. Don't you think? From Aaron Brooks in New Orleans to Donovan McNabb in Philadelphia to Rich Gannon in Oakland to Damon Huard and Jay Fiedler in Miami to Daunte Culpepper in Minnesota to Gus Frerotte in Denver ... a succession of new faces and retread never-beens have taken control of this strange year. It all is both a revelation and a revolution. Gone are those celebrity matchups, John Elway vs. Steve Young, Dan Marino vs. Jim Kelly, Harrison Ford vs. Charlton Heston. The celebrity names are off the marquee. Quarterback has become a character actor's position. The whole thing began last season with Kurt Warner in St. Louis, when he started as nothing more than a name at the bottom of the roster in September and finished as the MVP and a Super Bowl champion in January. He challenged the traditional idea that calling signals in the NFL is the most complicated job in sport, that a winner has to be spoon-fed experience, has to sit next to some Yoda for five years, maybe travel to India for enlightenment, before he can burst onto the scene. Warner, zoom, did it all in a year. Less than a year. Now quarterbacks are coming from everywhere. Starters go down and backups arrive and teams keep rolling. Gannon might be the MVP in the AFC and McNabb -- or maybe Culpepper -- might be the MVP in the NFC. And now there's this Brooks guy in New Orleans. It's a different, different world. Somewhere Joe Namath might be scratching his razor-cut head. Sports Illustrated senior writer Leigh Montville appears regularly on CNN/Sports Illustrated. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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