You Herd Me!: I'll Say It If Nobody Else Will (16 page)

There used to be a time when quirky, nonteam, nonmainstream sports found a sizable audience. The flagship show was called
Wide World of Sports
, and you could find everything from barrel jumping to cliff diving. Comedian Norm McDonald once cracked, “There’s only two types of cliff divers: successful ones, and stuff on a rock.”

That’s how most NFL fans probably feel as they watch their team try to find its next franchise quarterback through the draft. You either hit the lottery with Aaron Rodgers (our figurative successful cliff diver) or you spend several years trying to convince yourself that David Carr (our figurative … well, you know) will eventually flourish.

You wouldn’t think it would be that difficult. You’d think great quarterbacking would follow a linear progression. The best high school quarterbacks go to the top college powerhouses and usually get the benefit of the best coaching. By this logic, it figures that simply drafting the star signal-caller from your top fifteen to twenty collegiate juggernauts would result in a predictable line of success.

And yet it’s anything but predictable. In 2013, there are as many starting NFL quarterbacks (one) from Eastern Illinois,
Utah, Nevada, Delaware, and Miami of Ohio as there are from Oklahoma, Michigan, USC, and Virginia Tech. There are two from North Carolina State (Philip Rivers and—for most of his career—Russell Wilson) but none from Alabama, Boise State, Oregon, Florida, Texas, or Nebraska.

This is one of those quirks in sports—and life—that make no sense. On first glance, it seems outrageous that so many quarterbacks who were ignored by big-time college programs have gone on to become not only NFL starters but Pro Bowl players and Super Bowl winners.

Let’s take a look at the top fifteen college-football programs in America over the past five years (2008–13) based on an admittedly subjective criteria of wins, big wins, national profile, momentum, and stability. In alphabetical order: Alabama, Boise State, Florida, Georgia, LSU, Nebraska, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Oregon, Stanford, Texas, USC, Virginia Tech, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

In a league of thirty-two teams, there are only six quarterbacks from those fifteen schools. Several of them, including the Jets’ Mark Sanchez, the Cardinals’ Carson Palmer, and the Eagles’ Michael Vick, appear to be on the verge of breathing their last NFL breath.

This isn’t a recent trend. Dan Fouts, Terry Bradshaw, Brett Favre—all products of lower-tier programs, all Hall of Famers. Brady Quinn, Matt Leinart, Colt McCoy—all products of marquee programs, all journeymen.

For a three-year period, Kurt Warner was the best quarterback in the NFL. He went to the University of Northern Iowa, played in the Arena League, and bagged groceries. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, he was better than any quarterback produced by Florida State, Alabama, or USC.

Seems almost impossible, doesn’t it? However, if you dig a
little bit and explore some of the underlying reasons, it makes perfect sense.

I can relate it to a study on human physiology released in the fall of 2012 by the University of Copenhagen. The study showed that people who exercised for thirty minutes a day lost more weight and were healthier than people who exercised sixty minutes a day. Wait … how could that be? Obviously, more exercise is better—burns more calories, increases cardiovascular strength, tones the body. It seems utterly counterintuitive to believe that less exercise can produce more results.

But, looking deeper, you see the researchers’ findings were backed by common sense. Guys who worked out for sixty minutes didn’t do anything the rest of the day; those who worked out for thirty were less tired and, therefore, more active. Exercising for sixty minutes increases hunger, and many of those study members ate their way past their workout.

Work out less, lose more weight. It would seem to make absolutely no sense, and yet it’s absolutely true.

Along those same lines, it makes absolutely no sense that the University of Delaware, with Rich Gannon and Joe Flacco, has produced two Super Bowl–winning quarterbacks, the exact same number as Notre Dame.

Makes no sense.

And yet absolutely true.

Just like the exercise study, the small-school quarterback phenomenon makes more and more sense the deeper you dive into it.

Here’s one obvious and slightly pedestrian reason: in high school and college, practice and workout times are limited because of NCAA rules or the practicalities of schoolwork. This puts a disproportionate emphasis on talent at those levels. But once a quarterback arrives in the NFL, he can work as long and hard as he
wishes. He can sleep in the film room and be in the weight room at 5 a.m. As NFL schemes—both offense and defense—grow more complex, a quarterback’s talent becomes less important as his work ethic, study habits, and intellectual dexterity become more crucial. Workaholics tend to do better. An elite talent with a questionable work ethic (JaMarcus Russell and Ryan Leaf, to name two famous examples) can spell disaster or just underachievement (Jeff George and Michael Vick).

JaMarcus Russell was the ideal college quarterback. He was 6 feet 6 inches, 270 pounds; moved like a running back; and could throw the ball 70 yards from one knee. Playing with all the speedy receivers at LSU, he looked like a guy who could be great for a decade. I was doing the NFL Draft for ESPN when he was picked No. 1 by the Raiders in 2007, and when I shook his hand I was amazed at how big it was. It seems crazy, and it blew me away at the time, but Russell was bigger than Gaines Adams, a
defensive end
from Clemson who was drafted three picks later. Russell failed, though—he failed in that part of the game that requires a guy to spend sixty hours a week learning his craft. He failed in the film room.

The second factor became apparent to me when I was spending time in the locker room covering Trent Dilfer. He was a quarterback of his time: a guy who wasn’t particularly fast, didn’t leave the pocket unless it was necessary, and had a reputation for being able to stand strong against a pass rush. Even though he didn’t move much and wasn’t susceptible to open-field hits, his body was a mess after games. If you looked at his arms, neck, and chest, you would have been convinced he got into a fight with either a barbed-wire fence or a cat on meth.

I’ve interviewed plenty of college quarterbacks after games, too, and I’ve never noticed the same physical toll. In the NFL, a
quarterback faces three hours of contact from bigger and stronger athletes. It’s an integral part of the job. From the first exhibition game forward, he’s playing with some degree of injury. His ability to deal with those physical challenges goes a long way toward determining his success.

When Dilfer came to work at ESPN years later, he confirmed my observations. He told me toughness is the most underrated part of being an NFL quarterback. That led me to the following theory: many of the big-school stars aren’t prepared for the next level because they haven’t been subjected to the same physical test. In relative terms, they’ve been coddled.

At the premier programs, a quarterback spends three or four years surrounded by the best high school offensive linemen, backs, tight ends, and receivers. He is sacked infrequently—in fact, he’s rarely even put in an uncomfortable position. He has a strong running game, so defenses don’t often have the luxury of a balls-out pass rush. His receivers create separation against inferior defenders, and his pass protection is unlike anything he’ll ever experience in the NFL.

Let me ask you this: Didn’t Matt Barkley, at USC, have better wide receivers than the Browns, Jets, and Bills have right now?

Big-school quarterbacks are like trust-fund kids. When they jump from their college programs to the NFL, it’s like going from a life sailing on the Cape to a sixty-hour-a-week job. A lot of them can’t handle it, and NFL teams see that right away. They don’t have any patience with that, so you see guys like Matt Leinart bounce around and never reach their potential.

Conversely, at the smaller and less-heralded schools, the quarterback plays with mediocre talent. He doesn’t have anything close to the same pass protection or running game or receivers. He’s already accustomed to delivering the football through tighter
windows. Improvisation—out of necessity—has been woven into his DNA. This creates a toughness and resilience that is paramount to success at the NFL level.

There’s a psychological aspect to this, as well. The guy who’s been overlooked throughout the process, from the college-recruiting side to the NFL draft side, is pissed off. He sees the guys who were recruited to the bigger and better programs. He sees the guys who were drafted ahead of him. He’s got something to prove. The chip on his shoulder is big, and he can use it to his benefit.

Tom Brady started at Michigan, but he was constantly fighting off Drew Henson and the hype that surrounded him. His draft snub—taken in the sixth round—resulted in him playing with a level of anger that remains inside him to this day. Even the NFL’s most talented and highest-paid quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, was forced to go the junior-college route because he was a late-bloomer who grew up in a place (Chico, California) scouts rarely visited. He ended up at Cal only after Jeff Tedford came to one of his junior-college games to scout a tight end. The competitiveness you see in Rodgers is the product of all of that. (After everything he’s accomplished, teammates say he still gets testy when teased about his height.)

What are NFL teams seeking when they scout a quarterback? Guys who can make plays. That’s exactly the quality sought by second-tier college programs. Jim McIlwaine was the offensive coordinator at Alabama before becoming head coach at Colorado State. He told me his hopes for the quarterback were modest: don’t lose the game; let the defense win it.

Could you imagine Baylor’s defensive coordinator telling Robert Griffin III the same thing before a game with Texas? It would be outrageous to even consider. Yet at the top programs, ball control and game management are often primary concerns.

Greg Cosell has been watching tons of film for years as a producer for NFL Films. He says one of the best attributes a quarterback can have is the ability to throw in a muddied pocket. If a guy can sidestep a defensive end and pump-fake a nose tackle and still keep his eyes downfield, that guy has a chance to make it in the NFL.

Think about how many times Roethlisberger is praised for his ability to improvise inside the pocket, to avoid the rush and free himself just long enough to get off a pass. Where do you think he learned that? Not in the NFL, that’s for sure. He learned that playing at Miami of Ohio, behind an offensive line that didn’t have any five-star recruits.

Matt Ryan saw a lot of muddy pockets at Boston College. So did Flacco, at Delaware. So did Eli Manning, at Ole Miss. They were constantly under duress, being pushed one direction or the other, forced to go through their progressions as they dealt with chaos in front of them.

The only times Barkley and Leinart saw muddy pockets at USC was when they were watching Ryan or Roethlisberger or Manning on television. They weren’t watching Flacco; his team wasn’t on TV.

This trend doesn’t figure to end anytime soon. At least not before 2014, because most NFL draft gurus predict Louisville’s Teddy Bridgewater—the best football player at a basketball school—will be the first quarterback taken in the 2014 draft.

Nobody believes the path to future NFL stardom should begin in the Mid American Conference. The big programs are still going to get the highest-rated high school quarterbacks and surround them with the highest-rated offensive linemen, wide receivers, and running backs.

But the evidence
does
suggest something fascinating: the guys who dominate our television screens on Saturdays aren’t the ones who will dominate them on Sundays.

First, an experiment. Please indulge me for a moment; it won’t take up much time, and you’ll see the results rather quickly.

The next time your wife asks you to run a few errands, I want you to change it up a little. Ad lib, improvise, think outside the box. Consider it your version of a double reverse on third and inches.

When you’re asked to pick up milk, eggs, and bread, stop by Home Depot instead and grab a garden hose. Buy a rake on your way out even though you’ve got a good one at home and no use for an extra one. Stop at the grocery store and grab some olives and licorice. The idea is to seek value over need.

Obviously, this could create some tension at home. She’s going to wonder what you were thinking and how she’s going to make dinner with a rake and a garden hose.

“Wait a minute,”
you will say in your best lecturing tone,
“let me explain how much value you got in return.”

Tell her you found a coupon for the garden hose, the olives were buy one get one free, and the licorice was 60 percent off. And the rake? Oh, the rake.

“Honey, they were practically giving that thing away.”

How does this pertain to sports? Easy: it’s the exact same brand of nonsense NFL teams shovel down the media’s throats after every draft.