Jim Kelly is trying very hard. Too hard. He is talking too loudly to a creature from rock television.
”No, I don`t think I`ll be making the bar scene,” he says. ”I might go out for a drink here and there.”
Kelly is policing questions from acquaintances and strangers (”No, wait. You`re next,” he says, scowling at a man twice his age who had covered him in college), and then he launches into his mission to become the first quarterback from the Class of `83 to win a Super Bowl:
”Elway has been to three. Marino has been there. O`Brien . . . ”
(I must have missed that one.)
” . . . Eason. None of us has won one yet. Who knows if I`ll be the last, but I`d like to be the first.”
Mark Rypien, the Washington quarterback, will come along later, sit in the same seat as Kelly and avoid mentioning anything on his personal menu. The rock TV creature will not bother with Rypien.
”Finishing second would put a void in our season,” Rypien will say.
”But if we don`t win the Super Bowl, then we will have something to look forward to.”
What is obvious here is that Kelly is ready for fame and Rypien is not. Kelly hungers for it. Rypien is tasting it cautiously.
”Losing the Super Bowl is the most devastating thing that can happen to you,” Kelly says. ”It`s a five-month bummer until you can begin to do anything about it.
”For us, it has been 12 months. We`re back, we want it and we`re ready for it.”
Maybe you don`t need passion in your quarterback. Maybe dishwater is a perfectly good fuel, if you can figure out how to light it. I`ll take the combustible Kelly in this matchup.
Washington has not had a history of coming to Super Bowls with the best quarterback. The only clear advantage ever was Joe Theismann over David Woodley of Miami.
Otherwise, Billy Kilmer was no Bob Griese, or Theismann any better than Jim Plunkett or Doug Williams a match for John Elway.
(This brings up an interesting aside. One of the greatest Super Bowl questions ever asked was of Williams: ”Have you always been a black quarterback?” I wondered, in the relentless scratching for sound bites, if someone would not ask Rypien if he had always been a Canadian quarterback. Alas, the obvious has passed from fashion.)
”You throw all the stats out the window when it comes to a Super Bowl,” Kelly blathers on. ”My 300-yard passing games, us 27th in defense-all out the window. Throw the point spread out the window.”
One imagines quite a pile outside Kelly`s window.
”This is the limelight, this is it,” he says. TV lights reflect from his hair like neon off a short-order grill.
Season performance numbers between the two quarterbacks are numbingly similar. Kelly has a few more yards and a few more touchdowns, Rypien fewer interceptions and fewer sacks. Rypien`s passing rating was the highest of any Redskin quarterback since Sammy Baugh.
”Mark hasn`t been through this,” says Kelly of the first of three days of distractions. ”He won`t know what to expect.”
”I`ve been to a Super Bowl (as a third-string rookie), just never under scrutiny,” Rypien says. Even miked, his voice is soft.
Not that it is likely to make much difference in the game, which shows how much this all means to him, but Kelly may be penalized for being offsides even before the kickoff.
”This is a circus, but it`s, you know, good for the endorsement factor,” he says.
He takes a question about NFC dominance in the last seven Super Bowls.
”The way the NFC has been kicking the AFC around in Super Bowls, well, I`d like to be the quarterback who stops that,” he says.
And playing on climate-controlled turf?
”A quarterback`s dream, a receiver`s dream, a kicker`s dream,” Kelly says.
Winning the big one?
”What makes a quarterback is a Super Bowl ring,” Kelly says. ”If you have that ring, you can do all the talking you want.”
Hasn`t stopped him so far.
”This is something every person dreams of,” Kelly says, speaking up for the guys in the back. ”This is definitely awesome.”
One quarterback is ready. Maybe both.
