The Nfl

Better Late...
Doug Flutie, ahead of his time in '89, finally fits an NFL mold

You'd think Doug Flutie would be on top of the world. Ten years after being run out of the NFL by teams who thought he was, at 5'10", too short to play quarterback, Flutie's on the verge of taking the Bills to the playoffs for the second year in a row. Yet he still can't shake the heartbreak of his earlier rejection.

Understand that Flutie loves the Bills. He's grateful that the organization gave him an opportunity in 1998, when nobody else in the NFL would, and after that eye-opening season had enough faith in him to offer a four-year, $22-million contract extension, which included a $6 million signing bonus. But Flutie, who starred for eight seasons in the Canadian Football League, can't stop harking back to his earlier trip through the NFL, when he appeared in 21 games over four seasons for the Bears and the Patriots.

"When I left for Canada after the '89 season, I had no discipline. I couldn't stay in the pocket. I was a poor quarterback," Flutie says with a smirk. "Today, I'm exciting. I'm instinctive. I make plays. I'm a winner. What a bunch of b.s. You want to know what the difference is now? It's more acceptable to be me. Steve Young, Mark Brunell, Brett Favre—they made teams see how successful a mobile, instinctive quarterback could be. In the NFL, first you have to prove you can do it their way, then you can regain your identity."

Flash back to '89. The NFL's model quarterback was 6'4", 215 pounds, a tough guy who didn't stray from the pocket. The top-rated passers that year—Boomer Esiason, Jim Everett, Warren Moon, Mark Rypien, Jim Kelly, Bobby Hebert, Bernie Kosar and Phil Simms—almost all fit that mold; only Joe Montana and Don Majkowski were mobile types. Flutie ran only 69 times in those four seasons. As his NFL career was ending in New England, he felt a noose tightening around his neck.

He remembers calling an audible, changing a play from a run to a pass and hooking up for a touchdown with wideout Irving Fryar. "I got reamed out for changing the play, even though we scored," Flutie says. "I was trying so hard to read defenses and stay with the play and stay in the pocket. I was trying to please the coaches. At the end they had no faith in me to throw. Once we had a third-and-five, and a quarterback draw was called. The defense lined up eight across to stop us, so I called time. I went to the sideline and told the coaches the play would never work. They told me to run it anyway. I did, and I came up just short of the first down. When I went to Canada, the freedom I got from coaches made football fun again."

Bobby Grier, the Patriots' vice president of player personnel, was the team's running backs coach in '89. He admits the coaching staff had little faith in Flutie's arm. "But Doug back then was the player he is now," Grier says. "What's happened is the game has changed. The defensive fronts, the [ascension of] quickness over size, puts a premium on the quarterback's escapability. He probably had to go to Canada just to wait for the game to change."

Flutie won two Grey Cups and six MVP awards in Canada. Just as important, the experience north of the border made Flutie unflappable. "When you're in Saskatchewan, like I was in 1992, and you have to score three touchdowns to win in the final 2½ minutes and you do it, nothing here scares you," he says. "God knows how many two-minute drills I ran there with the game on the line and the crowd screaming. Those years helped make me what I am."

Last season he was 11th in the NFL in quarterback rating, and though he has slipped to 24th this year, he is the league's eighth most productive quarterback when you combine passing and rushing yards. More important, among quarterbacks Flutie is third in winning percentage since the start of the 1998 season (chart, left).

He hasn't put up the numbers he did a year ago because defenses are using a spy more effectively and sticking with downfield receivers longer. But even though he's completing only 55% of his passes, his feet make him as dangerous a quarterback—running and passing—as the game has.