Steve Young and Dan Marino are out with injuries, but it turns out they are not the Last Quarterbacks on Earth.
That was the fear as the 1995 NFL season began. Aging quarterbacks and the retirement of Joe Montana left the league with what? Vinny Testaverde and Super Bowl were mentioned in the same sentence.
Nobody was grooming quarterbacks anymore. The new salary-cap/free-agent system prevented teams from committing either time or money to development of the most important position. The win-now, pay-now approach left young quarterbacks on the street, on the bench, or in Germany floating around another session of the World League.
With only a couple exceptions, quarterbacks weren’t even being drafted anymore, at least not high enough for anyone to notice.
“It’s too bad,” said former coach and quarterback guru Bill Walsh. “When you see people sign Jim McMahon, my God . . . trying to go back to 35-, 38-, 40-year-old quarterbacks trying to win now and not building for the future, it’s too bad, really unfortunate.”
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But it turns out the present is actually pretty good.
There are more good passers at this point of the season than there were last year. There are nine quarterbacks this year with passer ratings over 90; last year, there were six. They are throwing more touchdown passes and fewer interceptions.
This is true despite the absence of Montana and the aging of Warren Moon, John Elway and Jim Kelly. It’s true despite the disappearance of young Drew Bledsoe, who threw his first touchdown passes last week. It’s true because quarterbacks like Testaverde, Jim Harbaugh, Steve Bono, Erik Kramer and Chris Miller are playing a lot better than most experts ever believed they would play.
The most telling statistic is the ratio of touchdown passes to interceptions, always the most obvious measure of success.
After seven weeks (96 games), the top-10 ranked passers have thrown 106 touchdown passes and only 30 interceptions. After seven weeks last year (89 games), the top 10 had thrown 95 touchdown passes and 52 interceptions.
Overall, there have been 260 touchdown passes and 196 interceptions this year compared with 237 touchdown passes and 209 interceptions last year.
A closer look at the top 10 reveals a “coming of age.” All but the Cowboys’ Troy Aikman (28) are between the ages of 30 and 34, which may be the golden years for golden arms.
Young (34) has enjoyed all his great years beyond 30. Bono (33) is the latest to find happiness after waiting for Montana and is in fact playing better for the Chiefs than Montana did last year.
Harbaugh (31), Testaverde (31) and Miller (30) are finally paying dividends from the lost draft class of 1987.
Jeff Hostetler (34) has bloomed in his 30s after waiting, like Young, for a chance to move out from under a shadow (Phil Simms, when both were with the Giants).
Eight of the top 10 passers–all but Aikman and Marino–left their original teams as free agency spread the talent.
What are the reasons for quarterback improvement? Could it be that new rules are making it easier to play the position? Contrary to popular belief, the number of sacks is up this year, so rules aren’t slowing down the rushers. There have been 432 sacks in 96 games this year compared with 399 sacks in 89 games last year.
Maybe it’s the offensive coordinators and their commitment to efficiency. Hostetler and the Raiders, for example, have gone to the shorter passing game.
Marino suffered a knee injury that will delay his pursuit of Fran Tarkenton’s records for a few weeks. Young has a shoulder injury that will cost him about a month’s work. But it doesn’t look like the league will fold while they are away.
Maybe a new lease on life is important. Maybe some quarterbacks are finally just getting a chance to play. The Jets cut sixth-rounder Jeff Blake and the Bengals started him last year only after injuries to David Klingler and Don Hollas forced them into discovering him.
The Redskins’ Gus Frerotte, a seventh-rounder who has supplanted top pick Heath Shuler, indicates the so-called quarterback shortage may be no more than a shortage of imagination.
“You just have to go out and get your chance and when you do, you can’t let it slide,” Frerotte said.
Age? Blake is 24 and Green Bay’s Brett Favre just turned 26. They currently rank 11th and 12th among passers. Favre came from Atlanta. Green Bay then didn’t have room for Mark Brunell, who celebrated his 25th birthday in Jacksonville.
Ask the Bears, whose defense Brunell shredded last Sunday for a career-high 302 yards, if there’s a shortage of young quarterbacks.