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Duane Sampson -> RE:NFL News (11/15/2007 7:14:23 PM)
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Where have all the good QBs gone? Ian O'Connor Special to FOXSports.com, Updated 16 hours ago On Sept. 23, 2001, I was standing 20 yards from the spot where Mo Lewis delivered the hit on Drew Bledsoe that would bring the NFL to its knees. With Bledsoe bleeding internally and his scarecrow of a backup trotting onto the field, I turned to a credentialed colleague on the Patriots' sideline and said the following: "Tom Brady? This guy stinks." He could barely hold off Drew Henson at Michigan, after all. There were reasons Bledsoe was working on a $103 million contract while Brady was getting by on a $298,000 wage. Compromised by a sheared blood vessel, the Patriots appeared booked for a 3-13 season. Nobody could see Bledsoe in the role of Wally Pipp back then, not even Bill Belichick. But six years later, the old Jets linebacker, Morris "Mo" C. Lewis, represents as significant a reason as any that the quarterback play in today's NFL isn't an unmitigated disaster, a cross between the Hindenburg and the Exxon Valdez. Lewis and a couple of football men named Dick Rehbein and Jim Hess. The quarterbacks coach for the Patriots, Rehbein pushed his employer hard to take Brady with the 199th pick of the 2000 draft. A college scout for the Cowboys, Hess implored his employer to take a shot on an undrafted free agent out of Eastern Illinois named Tony Romo three years later. Now close your eyes, remove Brady and Romo from your field on any given Sunday, and what do you see? I see Peyton Manning and a flowering crisis at quarterback in the NFL. Which makes absolutely no sense. Quarterback remains a bright-lights, big-bucks proposition, the one job in pro football that offers the kind of guaranteed deals scored by shortstops and shooting guards. The man who occupies that position is almost always the face and voice of the franchise. Long before Romo started appearing with an endless parade of starlets, it was understood that the quarterback always got the girl. So why does it seem that the sport can't find 32 competent players to take the snaps, weather the blitzes and throw the requisite spirals? OK, injuries have depleted the ranks. Quarterbacks deal with more occupational hazards than their teammates. They are a bruised, battered, oft-concussed lot. But that can't fully explain the lack of presence, charisma and talent that defines so many starters and regular contributors at that position. Brooks Bollinger. Joey Harrington. J.P. Losman. Josh McCown. The two-headed mediocrity of the Midway known as Brex Griese-man. Is anyone supposed to get excited about the youth movement switches from Chad Pennington to Kellen Clemens, from Damon Huard to Brodie Croyle? Does the return of Kyle Boller get your blood flowing? How pumped are you about the long-term prospects of Trent Edwards and Cleo Lemon? Personally, I can't watch another down of football played by Alex Smith. He was only the No. 1 overall pick in the 2005 draft, a bonus baby who commanded a $49.5 million deal. Smith has thrown 193 passes for the 49ers this season, two for touchdowns, leaving him with a quarterback rating of 57.2. Little help can be offered by the Jurassic set, the Vinny Testaverdes, Kurt Warners and Steve McNairs, dinosaurs one blind-side hit away from extinction. Of course, Brett Favre is still slinging it in Green Bay, padding his Hall of Fame stats. But despite the Packers' record and the weekly images of their Old Man Winter running about with his clenched fists in the air, Favre is still a golfer putting out on the 18th green. The younger generation of stars? Ben Roethlisberger is approaching his old championship form, and Vince Young is clearly a big-talent keeper. Carson Palmer is one No. 1 overall pick who was worth the investment, but the same can't be said — not yet, anyway — of Eli Manning. All in all, there just aren't enough very good quarterbacks to go around. And without enough very good quarterbacks, pro football isn't easy on the eyes. When I watch the NFL these days, I often feel the way I did when I watched the NBA Finals in 1994, the year Michael Jordan went off to play minor-league baseball. Knicks-Rockets was an all-out assault on the senses, a seven-game series with no redeeming aesthetic value. Defense wins championships and loses something in the process: Pro football is reduced to a sour science when quarterbacks can't move the ball. Maybe defensive coordinators have gotten too smart. Maybe defensive ends and tackles have gotten too big and fast. Or maybe the people paid to develop and evaluate quarterbacks are doing a lousy job of developing and evaluating them. Consider that Brady, who might go down among the five greatest quarterbacks of all time, was drafted after the likes of Gio Carmazzi, Chris Redman, Tee Martin and Spergon Wynn. Consider that Romo, an improvisational genius, didn't rank among the 13 draft-worthy quarterbacks of 2003, a list including Dave Ragone, Brian St. Pierre, Henson and Gibran Hamdan. So a debt of gratitude is owed to the late Rehbein of the Patriots and the retired Hess of the Cowboys. Against the grain of conventional wisdom, Rehbein was the one who predicted to his wife, among others, that Brady would someday be the equal of Joe Montana. The Patriots finally called Rehbein's bluff in the sixth round. Three years later, Hess was selling the merits of a barely known Eastern Illinois quarterback to Bill Parcells in Dallas. Hess had watched Romo at the pre-draft combine. Sean Payton, the Cowboys offensive coordinator at the time, was also impressed by Romo, but there was a catch: Payton was a former quarterback at Eastern Illinois, and some Dallas officials were wondering if this was his idea of an alumni donation. The Cowboys offered the undrafted Romo $10,000 to sign on Hess's recommendation. And thank heavens they did. Imagine the NFC without Romo. Imagine the NFL with Brady buried on another team's bench, waiting for a Mo Lewis hit to liberate him. Go ahead. I'd rather not.
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