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NFL

Wednesday, October 20
Playing QB is hazardous to your health

By Mark Kreidler
Special to ESPN.com

So you were figuring on a career as an NFL quarterback? What's your fallback athletic position, javelin-catcher?

Dan marino
Dan Marino took a seat after only two series in the Dolphins' loss to the Patriots.
Playing right field for the Yankees at Fenway Park notwithstanding, is there a worse Great Spot in sporting America right now than lining up behind center on a football Sunday? A roadie on the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young reunion tour has better job security.

These guys just don't last anymore. They're no longer really expected to last. A fellow gets through a single 16-game schedule without missing more than a couple of starts, he's lauded as the poster boy for consistency. At what point did this become the industry standard?

The entire concept of quarterback in the NFL needs to be taken apart and rebuilt into a hydra-headed beast, because the team that wins it all in future years will be the team that has the most decent QBs to begin with, or, next-best, the most surprising cast of backups.

The Rams rule the world right now, and they didn't have the slightest idea what they had in Kurt Warner at quarterback. Why should they have? They were counting on Trent Green doing the passing and handing-off.

Instead, Green is gone for the year, which merely initiates him into the pro fraternity. Steve Young is out, perhaps never to return. John Elway missed a solid quarter of the 1998 season and retired in 1999. Vinny Testaverde barely saw any regular-season snaps this season. Steve McNair went down in Tennessee. Jeff Blake bit it in Cincinnati. Jim Harbaugh went down in San Diego.

This past weekend in a nutshell: Billy Joe Hobert, out for New Orleans. Dan Marino, out for Miami. Mark Brunell, out for Jacksonville. Arizona's Jake Plummer, Atlanta's Chris Chandler, Detroit's Charlie Batch -- out, out, out.

It's a great time to be a backup, assuming you are able to stand long enough to do it. The Broncos went with Brian Griese and made Bubby Brister the backup, then tried to hand over the job to Brister, who promptly pulled something or the other and gave the job back to Griese.

Rick Mirer had the job with the Jets, then lost it. Jeff George has taken the job from Randall Cunningham in Minnesota, and every career indication is that George will find a way to give it back. Does anybody want to play this position anymore?

Blame it on what you will -- the size of the defenders, the bull's-eye painted on the QB's back, the schemes, the dramatic lack of depth among offensive lines around the league, general frailty. There's probably some truth in all of it. And what it adds up to is a remarkably bleak portrait of the artist as a young slinger.

In Foxboro over the weekend, the Dolphins' Marino took himself out of the second series of a game against the Patriots, thus giving Damon Huard his long-awaited moment in the sun.

Results: 240 passing yards, including the game-winning touchdown in the final seconds, and a perfectly lovely nine sacks by the Patriots defense. Welcome to the Show.

"It wakes you up," Huard said afterward. "Sometimes, when you get your bell rung, it settles you down."

This just in: Any more settling, the whole bloody foundation collapses.

Scouting around

Important to be on the record with this, and to give credit where it's due. So let's quote Philadelphia Inquirer writer and ESPN analyst Jayson Stark directly, in the wake of the stooopid stuff at Fenway Park on Sunday night: "At least now we know that Philadelphia hasn't cornered the market on idiots in the cheap seats."

You know what? This would be a minor annoyance and only a little embarrassing if it weren't part of a verifiable trend. And it isn't a Philly phenomenon, nor an East Coast thing. Ask the fans at the next Raiders game, or the folks in Milwaukee who watched the guy go onto the field to attack Houston's Bill Spiers -- this fan rage is real, it's in motion, and it needs to be headed off before it becomes positively European.

Actual sequence in the Bengals game: (1) Akili Smith throws a touchdown pass to Marco Battaglia, which is wiped out by an interference penalty; (2) Doug Pelfrey then makes a 36-yard field goal, which is disallowed because of holding; (3) Pelfrey misses the ensuing 46-yard attempt, but gets another shot because of a Pittsburgh penalty, whereupon (4) Pelfrey misses from 36 yards, his fifth miss in his last 10 official attempts. The Bengals are 1-5. Guess so.

Mike Holmgren might be right in his estimation of what Joey Galloway wants versus what Galloway is actually worth in terms of raw dollars; Holmgren might be wrong. The coach might be asking for too much in trade for Galloway from the dozen or more teams that are asking; he might, in the end, be asking for too little. The truth is, we only know this much for sure: Joey Galloway is a blind fool for absolutely giving away a season in the prime of his career just because he and his employer don't agree on money.

There is no notion of "respect" or "due" that will strike the average follower as even remotely worth hearing; it's all larded nonsense. Holmgren might well be playing the hard-line role with a tad too much gusto, but that doesn't matter either.

All that matters, at the finish, is football -- Galloway's already getting paid. All the great receiver has done so far is let another precious few weeks of peak performance go by the boards. Ask any retired NFL player who gave a damn: It isn't worth it.

The bad news: The Saints fined Mike Ditka $20,000 for using his hands to fashion too complicated a series of signals toward the New Orleans fans the other day. The good news: They'll cut the fine in half if Ditka promises never to wear the dreadlocks again. The bet from here: Even money.

Bill Russell, in the perfect summation of his evolving basketball relationship with the late Wilt Chamberlain: "We were both important to each other because we both knew what we were doing. I knew how good he was, and he knew that I knew how good he was." Only Russ could have found that way to say it, and it'll stand.

Mark Kreidler is a columnist for the Sacramento Bee, which has a web site at http://www.sacbee.com/.


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