Tough? You Want Tough?

What has happened to NFL quarterbacks? Why aren't they as good as they were 20 years ago? They are as good, you say? Puh-leeze! Sure, you've got Dan Marino, Steve Young, Brett Favre, Troy Aikman and John Elway, as well as a few guys who got hot for a season, such as Chris Chandler, Randall Cunningham, Doug Flutie and Vinny Testaverde. But if you look past that group, all you see is a gray mass of multimillionaires. Some teams can't even decide who their starters are. Twenty years ago a team was defined by its quarterback. He had identity, a personality. "They were men in those days," says former New York Giant Phil Simms, who does his quarterbacking for CBS now.

Let's go down the line, team by team, 1978 versus 1998, and see which year had the better quarterbacks. I give '78 a 15-10-3 edge (chart), and while you can argue about some of my choices, I think I was pretty kind in my evaluations of some of the men who lined up under center in '98.

"When you look at that roster of quarterbacks 20 years ago, you get excited," says Simms. "That was just a tremendous group of real tough guys, people who were consistent week after week, who could kill you downfield. Real throwers. Quarterbacks were always looking to hurt you downfield. Now what do you get? Five receivers into the pattern, you dump it off in the flat for two yards, and the guy runs for three more. Oh, boy, a five-yard gain!

"Take a guy like [Dan] Pastorini. A tremendous thrower. Put him in the right offense with the right coaching nowadays and he'd just kill people. The guys of 20 years ago could play in the offenses of the '90s, but a lot of the quarterbacks now couldn't play then. Why? Because they can't go downfield. They're not asked to."

Go by the playbook. Take what the defense gives you. Run the horizontal offense. Don't make mistakes.

"What's lost today is personality," Simms adds. "It's lost in the system. This is all the quarterbacks hear: 'Let the system work for you.' I watched [Terry] Bradshaw and [Roger] Staubach; they were always talking to their players. Now no one talks. They just stand around waiting for the play to come in."

"Offenses have been made too complicated," says Mike Giddings, director of Pro Scout Inc., a scouting service that is used by 13 teams. "The quarterback has too many reads. His spontaneity is being taken away. The playbook is just too damn thick."

San Francisco 49ers general manager Bill Walsh, who was never accused of having a slender playbook when he coached the Niners to three Super Bowl victories, points to another problem: lack of continuity on a team. In the past, he says, "the quarterback and his receivers were together longer. Offensive lines were together longer. Now, with free agency, that's impossible."

Free agency has brought wealth undreamed of by those poor slobs who took their lumps 20 years ago. Mediocrity is being rewarded like never before. Kerry Collins bombs out with the Carolina Panthers, quarterbacks the New Orleans Saints to a 2-5 finish and cashes in with a four-year, $16.9 million package from the Giants. Rich Gannon, a part-time starter with the Kansas City Chiefs, collects $16 million over four years from the Oakland Raiders. Trent Green goes from the Washington Redskins to the St. Louis Rams for a four-year, $16.5 million deal, and the guy whose job he took in D.C., Gus Frerotte, gets a three-year, $3 million package to be a backup with the Detroit Lions. Even quarterbacks who have done little more than carry the clipboard are seeing seven figures. Doug Pederson goes from the Green Bay Packers to the Philadelphia Eagles for $4.5 million over three years, and Stoney Case, who watched Jake Plummer do his tiling for the Arizona Cardinals, signs a two-year, $2 million contract with the Indianapolis Colts to watch Peyton Manning. Can you find a potential Hall of Famer in the bunch?

"I never dreamed of that kind of money," says Ron Jaworski, one of our crop from '78 and a Super Bowl signal-caller for the Eagles. "What kills me about these guys now is their lack of fundamentals in game conditions. That's why I think the guys were better 20 years ago. I'm talking about the little things, stepping away from the center, dropping back into the pocket, setting and throwing. It's just not there.