In April 2001, as a right-handed relief pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals facing the Colorado Rockies, Chad Hutchinson hung a curveball to Larry Walker. Hutchinson recalls the ball traveling so far off Walker’s bat it required postage.
“He was probably the toughest hitter I ever faced,” Hutchinson recalled. “I hated going against lefties.”
Hutchinson gave up baseball before the end of that season. Twenty months later, as the Dallas Cowboys’ starting quarterback, he spent one frustrating Sunday afternoon trying to solve the Philadelphia Eagles’ defense. He was sacked seven times, threw an interception that was returned for a touchdown and had only 128 passing yards in a 27-3 loss.
“They had such athleticism and an amazing scheme,” Hutchinson said. “I couldn’t make sense of it. It was the best defense I ever [faced].”
Hutchinson is now with the Bears as a backup quarterback, trying to master the position general manager Jerry Angelo calls “the toughest job in sports.” The Bears’ struggles at the position this season and in the last decade especially underscore his point. The Bears have made 24 quarterback changes in their last 80 games.
Is it the toughest job in sports?
“That’s a good question,” Hutchinson said. “In baseball, being a pitcher, it’s all on you, and there’s nobody else out there. If you throw a meatball up there and it goes out of the ballpark, you can’t look out and say, `Well, he should have run this route,’ or, `My linemen didn’t pick that up.’ So as far as that’s concerned, I think pitching is a little more difficult.
“In football, you’re relying on everybody, so a lot of it is out of your hands. I always think a quarterback gets too much praise and too much criticism. In some aspects, yeah, it is one of the toughest jobs, but not in every aspect.”
Angelo joined the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ front office in 1987, just after the team traded future Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young to the San Francisco 49ers, having concluded he could not play. The Bucs drafted Vinny Testaverde in the first round that year but came to the same conclusion about Testaverde five years later and dealt him to the Cleveland Browns.
Testaverde is now playing his 18th NFL season and starting for Dallas. “I remember saying before we traded Vinny, `I just don’t think this guy can play anymore,'” Angelo recalled.
Undeterred, the Bucs tried to find their quarterback of the future again in 1994 and took Fresno State’s Trent Dilfer in the first round with the sixth pick of the draft. Dilfer spent five undistinguished years in Tampa before the organization lost patience . . . and Angelo started gaining perspective on a question that long had nagged him.
He embarked on a study of 60 successful quarterbacks at the college and professional level, seeking to find out what traits were shared by players who excelled at the position.
“I came up with a simple formula after I found three things that stood out in them all,” Angelo said. “No. 1, they all had toughness. You can’t play without it. No. 2 was ball placement. You have to be accurate. And No. 3, they all had instincts that gave them a great feel for the game. Notice I didn’t say size, speed, height, weight, arm strength, intelligence. It’s about intangibles irrelevant of skill level. If he doesn’t have those intangibles, he’ll fail.”
Angelo recently asked Cowboys coach Bill Parcells, an old friend, if he agreed that intangible qualities accounted for 50 percent of his evaluation of quarterbacks.
“Parcells said it’s more like 60 [percent],” Angelo said. “That can make it hard. Usually we’re looking at quarterbacks through a showcase window, and you really don’t know them until you live with them.”
That can make projecting success as hard for the front office as producing it is for quarterbacks.
Joe Theismann, a Washington Redskins quarterback from 1974-85 and now an ESPN analyst, believes most college quarterbacks are ill-prepared for the NFL. Theismann blames NCAA rules that limit college football players’ practice time to 20 hours a week and says they’re responsible for an alarming lack of fundamentals.
“We’re getting an inferior throwing product,” Theismann said. “It’s because of the college presidents’ inability to understand that college football is an educational process as important as any other. You don’t see chemistry majors limited to 20 hours a week in the lab.”
For a job that demands so much at the pro level, that’s too little time spent on development, Theismann said.
“There’s a toughness required, a skill level and an intelligence level to remember game plans, and then there’s the aspect of leadership,” Theismann said. “I think it’s harder to do than anything else in sports.
“In baseball you get a lot of chances to make mistakes. In basketball you get a lot of chances to make mistakes. But in football, if you have a slump, you’re out of a job.”
The high cost of NFL quarterbacks creates a low level of tolerance for mistakes. Theismann linked the exorbitant bonuses paid high draft picks with the decline in overall quarterback play because teams rush their big investments onto the field before they’re ready. Thus, the toughest job in sports looks a lot tougher when given to an inexperienced player.
“Why is Carson Palmer playing now for the [Cincinnati] Bengals? Because they’re paying him $14 million,” Theismann said. “You pay these so-called young superstars so much money, they’re not afforded the luxury of waiting and learning the position.”
Boomer Esiason, a 14-year pro veteran of the position who is now a CBS analyst, believes the increase in salaries has precipitated a decrease in production.
“Nowadays, the money these guys are making has taken away their hunger,” Esiason said. “That’s why you see guys like [the New England Patriots’] Tom Brady, a sixth-round draft pick who had something to prove, emerging.”
Like Theismann and Angelo, Esiason mentioned personality traits before physical characteristics in describing the most important qualities in an NFL quarterback.
“You’ve got to have a guy who after [Baltimore linebacker] Ray Lewis hits you seven times in a row, he comes back in the huddle and says, `Somebody block that [guy],'” Esiason said. “That quality is getting harder to find in guys who can throw. [Miami’s] Dan Marino had it, [Buffalo’s] Jim Kelly had it, [Denver’s] John Elway had it. But not many guys have it in them anymore to play quarterback.”
Justin Gage is not so sure many guys want the headaches of playing quarterback, even those who have what it takes.
Gage starred at quarterback at Jefferson City (Mo.) High School and played three games at the position as a freshman at Missouri before switching to receiver. He never felt so relieved, even though he enjoyed his time under center.
“As far as knowing your stuff and being smart, the quarterback is the toughest position in the world to play because you have to know where the other 10 guys are going and what the offensive line is picking up, account for what the receivers are doing, what the backs are doing,” Gage said.
“On the flip side, a quarterback has to know the alignment of the defense, how much they’re stunting, the keys, tendencies, where the linebackers are going, what coverage is being played. And that’s all before the snap. Whew.”
Gage also played college basketball at Missouri but said nothing in his athletic career compared with the challenge of playing quarterback.
“In basketball, you only have four guys on your side to worry about and five guys on the other team,” Gage said. “A quarterback has 21 positions that he has to know exactly what they’re doing. He has to be a smart guy who throws with accuracy and still provides leadership. It’s not easy to find a quarterback.”
Harder to find a good quarterback than a good pitcher in baseball or a good shooter in basketball?
“Heck, yeah,” Gage said.
Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher can relate. He was a quarterback as an 8th-grader in Lovington, N.M.–for one season.
“They switched me to receiver,” Urlacher said. “I guess it is pretty hard.”
Nobody would agree more heartily than Angelo.
“We have only 16 games, and the magnitude that one position has in determining the outcome of each game is huge,” he said. “No question it’s the hardest to play, to coach and to project.”
