Sunday, January 23, 2000Looking for a quarterback? Check Aisle 3
BY PAUL DAUGHERTY
The Cincinnati EnquirerST. LOUIS — What do you suppose they told Kurt Warner at that Hy-Vee supermarket in Cedar Falls, Iowa, five years ago? “Put a tight spiral on that canned ham, kid, and we'll make you assistant night manager for produce.”
How did the NFL geniuses miss on this guy? Was the computer down that day? Did someone forget the stopwatch? We've been led to believe finding good football players is a tough job. A science, actually. All the men who do it are brilliant. Just ask them.
Why, then, was this year's MVP stocking groceries five years ago? Why did the St. Louis Rams leave him off their protected list last spring, during the expansion draft? Why didn't the Browns take him?
Warner threw 41 touchdown passes in the regular season. Last weekend, he threw five more, in his first postseason game. It looked so easy, Warner could have been filing his nails or sitting in the jacuzzi drinking cognac from a crystal snifter.
AP coverage
After college, five teams worked him out. Green Bay signed him for $5,000, then cut him in training camp. Packers General Manager Ron Wolf is regarded as one of the game's best. Wolf brought Brett Favre to Green Bay.
Wolf knows what he knows. Why, then, did Warner say the Packers “used me as a practice dummy, a camp arm, pretty much somebody to throw the ball in practices so they could save the other guys' arms.”
Kroger combine
Half the teams in the league need a QB right now. The other half are holding their breath. Kurt Warner had to play three years of Arenaball, and another in Europe, to earn the right to ride the bench in St. Louis two years ago, behind the immortal Tony Banks.This year, if Trent Green hadn't been hurt in August, Warner would have spent more anonymous time in Clipboard Land.
It makes you wonder about the geniuses. It makes you think: How many other Kurt Warners are out there, waiting like Lana Turner at Schwab's Drugstore for some NFL mastermind to call their name?
I know this kid David at Kroger. He doesn't look like much. He didn't go to a big-time college. If you don't count Madden 2000, David didn't even play football. But you should see him sling a cantaloupe. Good god, he's Unitas.
When I saw David dead-lift the Dog Chow bag while dodging the M&M's some ill-mannered rug rat had dumped in the cosmetics aisle, I said, “Whoa, Dave. Play any ball?”
I mean, the agility. David once went deep with a six-pack of Keystone Light. Threw it from the milk section to the bread department. Coast to coast, on the fly.
This is where the NFL scouts need to be. The supermarket. You wanna go to Michigan to work out some 900-pound lineman with size-24 feet and a bad case of heartburn, go ahead. Count his squat thrusts and report back.
Take your stopwatch to Florida State. Interrogate some straight-A QB at Stanford. Rave about his “aptitude for the game.” Draft him. Watch him get pureed by a raving lunatic linebacker who runs 40 yards in 1.2 seconds. Tell the reporters off the record that you were stunned at how slow your smart QB's feet were.
Not me, geniuses. I'm heading for the meat department.
No competition
The Rams should absolutely destroy Tampa Bay today. The Bucs will be thrilled to hold St. Louis to 21 points. That would be great, except it takes Tampa about 14 days to score that much. The Bucs are leather helmets in the Space Age.Minnesota was the only team with a chance of staying with the Rams, and we saw what happened to the Vikings. St. Louis got them for 35 points in 22 minutes last week. Warner was dropping canned hams all over the Vikes' secondary.
“They apparently do this every damn week,” Mike Brown said. I asked the Bengals emperor how Warner could have escaped the combined brilliance of the NFL's personnel men. “The answer is, sometimes there is no answer,” he said.
Sure there is: Meijer. Alert your scouts.
Paul Daugherty welcomes your comments at 768-8454. Fair Game, a collection of his columns, is available at local bookstores.
