Supposedly, this is the guy...take it for what it is worth...
Playoffs show new QB wave lapping at NFL
January 7, 2003
When I want to know about a quarterback, I have this question I like to ask:
"Would Sid Gillman like him?"
Sid, may he rest in peace, had very definite ideas about what quarterbacks should look like and what they should have for breakfast and how they should brush their teeth. What I'm saying is that there wasn't anything about quarterbacks and quarterbacking that Gillman did not consider of monumental importance.
"He had such a dynamic impact on the NFL and how the game is played," Tom Walsh was saying. Walsh talks pretty well, being that he does it for a living as a football analyst for the Westwood One broadcasting network. He also knows something about quarterbacking, having served the Raiders as their quarterbacks coach from 1988-1994. When Gillman was acting as the athletic director at what then was U.S. International University, he chose Walsh as the school's head football coach, which says something about Walsh.
Anyhow, we were talking and I mentioned how the NFL playoffs are supposed to represent such a searing experience for quarterbacks who have not been exposed to them. In the weekend just past, I said, Chad Pennington, Michael Vick, Tommy Maddox and Kelly Holcomb, all parties to the eliminations for the first time, had not only not been consumed but had positively thrived.
For a reason, according to Walsh. "You're seeing the new wave of quarterbacks," he said. For too long, he noted, the NFL had a void in this area. There just weren't quarterbacks coming along in the image of Joe Montana, John Elway, Dan Marino and Steve Young, all of whom had retired.
Now there is, according to Walsh, and they are making the playoffs their theater. "The crossing of the threshold," in Walsh's words.
How, I wondered, would Gillman have felt about Pennington, who to me looks as if he might be Jan Stenerud's little brother. Very Nordic. Very much of a winner, too, as the New York Jets have been since they took the football from Vinny Testaverde and handed it to the third-year player from Marshall.
"I love him," said Walsh, "and Sid would love him. Great ball mechanics. He throws an assortment of passes with varied trajectories and velocity. It's like an artist's brush on a canvas. He does the same thing when he throws the football. He has touch."
Passes should be propelled, in Walsh's thinking, as if they were coming out of a well and going into another well. "Or out of a chimney into a chimney," said Walsh. Point to point, and the points are not large ones. Pennington is able to put them in the preferred places.
"I just think he has an uncommon sense and a feel that just comes along once in years," judged Walsh. "And he has a total grasp of the game."
Consider Vick, I invited. "Phenomenal tools, tremendous skills," said Walsh. "Great improvisational skills. His feet are able to buy him additional time."
On one of his impromptu flights, Vick this season dodged about for 16 seconds, Walsh said, and the Atlanta quarterback often has eluded capture for nine or 10 seconds.
"He takes away the rush," said Walsh. "Defenses are so afraid of him that they go to four-man lines and in order not to leave any lanes have the defenders 'bull-rush' (attacking the man in front of them). That way, no one gets any penetration."
Vick's presence also plays on the minds of rival pass defenders, Walsh believes. "It's hard to feel secure," he said. "This guy can escape from a phone booth."
Walsh recognized that Vick has profited from Dan Reeves having torn a number of pages from his playbook in order to simplify matters for his young quarterback. In Philadelphia on Saturday, Vick is going to be opposing an Eagles defense that won't be as fragile against the run as was the Green Bay defense last week in Lambeau Field. Andy Reid's defensive coordinator is Jim Johnson, an innovative individual who can be expected to introduce some exotic alignments meant to confound Vick.
The Pittsburgh Steelers' Maddox and the Cleveland Browns' Holcomb have been around. Maddox is 31, Holmcomb 29. "But not every player reaches a level of excellence at the same time," argued Walsh, sounding like the former Raiders coaching lieutenant that he is.
To support this point, Walsh pointed to the Raiders' Rich Gannon, out of football in 1994, the NFL's MVP in 2002. Gannon is 37.
"Some quarterbacks make it at 24, some at 28-29, some at 32," said Walsh. "They mature as players."
When Maddox left UCLA before what would have been his junior season, he was leaving too early, in Walsh's belief.
"This is a game that requires repetitions," said Walsh. "Maddox excluded about 4,000 snaps when he left early. But it's a testimony to his strength and conviction that he has stayed with it."
He certainly stayed with it when he escorted the Steelers to their come-from-behind 36-33 conquest of the Browns. Holcomb threw for 429 yards in that game, Maddox for 367.
"I thought he played well," Walsh said of Holcomb. "He made the intermediate throws, and he made the deep throws. And he had just enough mobility."
For Holcomb, this was only his fourth NFL start; he had been sitting at the feet of the Indianapolis Colts' Peyton Manning before the Browns acquired him. With the Browns, Holcomb played behind starter Tim Couch.
Holcomb did not attempt to be another Manning against Pittsburgh, which Walsh appreciated. He brought up the New Orleans Saints' Aaron Brooks.
"The guy's a physical talent," said Walsh, "but he tries to be like a Brett Favre Jr., and it's killing him."
Walsh does not include the San Francisco 49ers' Jeff Garcia among the quarterbacks he believes are arriving. "He started his move up a couple of years ago," said Walsh of the former Canadian Leaguer.
The members of the Pennington-Vick-Maddox-Holcomb group are the ones who excite Walsh. "They're the next cycle," he contended. "They're going to become mainstays in the NFL."