All-American CFL QB busts
BILL LANKHOF, QMI Agency June 28, 2010
In a perfect world, Andre Ware could’ve been a Doug Flutie clone; T.J. Rubley would’ve been Anthony Calvillo before anyone this side of Utah State knew there was an Anthony Calvillo, and Jason Gesser should’ve been a household name today beyond his own living-room walls.
Woulda.
Coulda.
Shoulda.
They are the all-American kids and along with such luminous college football icons as Eric Crouch, Akili Smith, Don McPherson, Tommie Frazier, Tony Rice and Major Harris, there was every indication that they were perfectly suited to conquer the Canadian Football League.
The scouting reports said they had it all — strong of arm and will, quick or fast or both. They should’ve been able to capture a country’s football ideals.
Instead, they flashed through our universe like a phoenix that could not raise itself beyond mediocrity in a game they often never grew to understand.
Instead, they are just names on a long list of Heisman Trophy winners and contenders, superb, all-American athletes who could thrive in front of a hundred thousand screaming faithful in the temples of U.S. college ball but floundered on a Canadian prairie pasture or in Hogtown and Steeltown in front of family and friends and half-empty stadiums.
Tales of Cinderella turned Medusa.
How can this happen?
Not just once to the oft-impugned refugee from the NFL, Vince Ferragamo, but to the brightest and the best of U.S. college football.
Over. And over.
Generation to generation.
To NCAA champions such as Tee Martin, to first-round NFL picks such as Smith, to Heisman winners such as Crouch and to Brad Banks, winner of a Davey O’Brien Award presented annually to the best quarterback in U.S. college football.
“Players may have tremendous success in a high-profile university. They may become household names just because their games are being televised all the time and they may be on very good teams. And, as personnel people (scouts) we do get enamoured at times by great athletes, by players who have name recognition. But that doesn’t always translate into a good pro football player,” says Jim Popp, general manager of Montreal’s Alouettes.
If it did translate, then Ware, coming from the University of Houston’s run-and-shoot offence, should’ve been the perfect candidate to orchestrate a pass-happy CFL offence.
But as a CFL quarterback he makes a great colourman on ESPN.
If Heisman translated into hoser-speak, Crouch or Cody Pickett would be the Argonauts’ starting quarterback today.
But, notes former CFL quarterback and CFL hall of famer Matt Dunigan in pithy grace: “There’s a bunch of guys who roll up here with all kinds of athletic ability and they just (dirty) the bed.”
The reasons are many and varied:
One reason many college or NFL players never find success and glory in the CFL is because they can’t play outside a mould.
They were “system quarterbacks” in college, says Jim Barker, who spent the past five seasons scouting U.S. colleges for the Calgary Stampeders before signing on as head coach in 2010 to rebuild the Argonauts.
“In college, and sometimes in the NFL too, they build systems that suit the quarterbacks. Here we usually don’t. We ask quarterbacks to adapt to the system,” says Barker, “and at the pro level, a quarterback needs to be in a system that suits his abilities. When I got Tommy Maddox (in Los Angeles when they won the XFL championship) he had played for years in Dan Reeves’ (Denver) offence which didn’t suit what he does — play action, deep drop. His whole deal is getting the ball out of his hand quickly. That’s when he’s most effective. When he went on to Pittsburgh in the NFL and they put him in that situation, he flourished.”
Paul Masotti reached the zenith of his success in the CFL in the Toronto catching passes from Flutie, who made the leap from Boston College to the CFL without a hitch. But Masotti also saw a lot of great athletes who went on to careers as high school coaches.
There was Mike McMahon who went from setting records at Rutgers to the Detroit Lions to the Argonauts to unemployed. And Syracuse great Marvin Graves. Great skill sets. But ...
“That’s the thing. They could get away with just being great athletes in college when they had the system built around them. The perfect example would be (Crouch),” says Masotti. “They ran the option, some designated pass plays, but when players come up here the defences and offences are more sophisticated and there’s one less down to get it done ... ”
Crouch survived less than two seasons in the CFL. He is a free agent, a CFL refugee with nowhere to go at last check.
Major Harris was twice a Heisman contender and such a great talent that he left West Virginia University early.
“I thought he’d be a star up here,” says Masotti.
Instead he was gone after one season, played a few years of Arena ball and retired. All those glitzy numbers in the NCAA didn’t add up to success in the CFL.
“The college co-ordinators will gear their entire offence towards what a guy can do. That was the case with Harris,” says Masotti. “They adjusted their offence to suit his assets. Whereas when he went to B.C., it was tough. He came in as the backup and now he’s got to adjust to a system he’s not used to, something that isn’t his forte.”
Too often American players think they’re just too good for the CFL.
Harsh, maybe. But true.
More than once an All-American has arrived with talent exceeded only by their ego. But seldom does someone step from the college, or even the NFL ranks, into a starting role as a CFL quarterback.
Ricky Ray and Doug Flutie were anomalies. Most successful starting quarterbacks in the CFL spend three to five years in apprenticeship as backups. Calvillo became one of the CFL’s greatest quarterbacks but it took years before he got a job as a starter and eight years before his first all-star nomination.
“If they are big-time stars in the NCAA and all of a sudden they have to take a back seat as the backup quarterback, a lot of guys can’t handle it. A lot of guys don’t want to handle it,” says Popp, “they want out.”
Going from big man on campus to holding a clipboard for someone playing ahead of them that they’ve never heard of can be a harsh reality check.
“I’ve met a few guys who come up here who are just disappointed that they didn’t make the NFL and that they’re in the CFL. They get down, depressed and maybe don’t work so hard,” says Argonauts backup QB Dalton Bell.
Texas-born, he was the third-stringer last year in Saskatchewan after leading West Texas A&M to a 20-4 record in two seasons as a starter. American kids, he says, never see Canadian football and few understand what it’s all about until they get here. It’s difficult to respect what you don’t know.
“It’s a different game than we grew up with down there. I maybe saw one CFL game when I was growing up. Where I’m from, it’s football, football and our way of playing football is the way it is. At least that’s how people think.”
So, too many arrive believing that what works in the NCAA will work even better in the football hinterland of Canada.
“There are players who come up here and have no idea of the calibre of this league,” says Barker. “They expect, ‘Oh, I’ll sign with the CFL, play there for a year and then go to the NFL.’ That happens more often than the NFL or college guy who comes up here and embraces the game. If a guy can do that, he can have a great career.
“It’s the guy who thinks he’s coming up here for a year to show his stuff and then go on to something better — that is never succesful. He just doesn’t have the right mindset.
“The guy who does that usually gets cut and often they never get another chance down there either. It happens all the time.” Dunigan, who threw for a little more than 43,000 yards and had 306 passing TDs during his 14-year career in the CFL, remembers McMahon as a player who had the skill set to play up here. “But if you don’t respect this game and you come up here and think you will master it, you’ve got another thing coming. “That’s been the case with quite a few people. “They come up here not respecting the game and thinking they’re going to own it. “That it’s going to be just a stepping stone.”
Ready, set ... Duh! Canadian football can make a college kid’s head spin. It’s big-play oriented. The motion can be confusing, the field is bigger and there’s an extra player on each side. “I just think it’s a different kind of offence. They can’t get their head around it. It’s just such a big jump,” says Masotti.
Throws have to go farther, defences are different. There’s more room to run, but with the ball in the air longer, there’s also more time for defensive backs to intercept inaccurate throws.
“It’s a big adjustment for any quarterback. When they get on the field the first time with all the motion and guys running all over the place, it’s a big shock,” says Bob O’Billovich, general manager of the Hamilton Ticats and a player, coach and CFL executive since 1963. “It does take time to get used to the nuances and how to be effective. Being tagged as a Heisman candidate doesn’t mean a lot except that you don’t win the Heisman unless you have some ability. “You have to gauge that against what we do in our league. We’re a big-play league with aggressive offensive systems.
“Some guys take advantage of their opportunities — and with other guys it never happens. Andre Ware was a guy with whom it never did click and he came out of a passing offence in college. He wasn’t consistent enough.” Masotti says on the surface the CFL looked like a league made for Ware, who retired in 1999 after three nondescript CFL seasons. “It should’ve been perfect. But he came up and just didn’t make the adjustments. (The run-and-shoot offence) is also a tough offence for linemen to protect because you need a quarterback who can get rid of the ball quickly. It’s a couple steps and it’s got to be gone. If you don’t have a quarterback who can read it properly the guy is going to get hit a lot.” Goodbye, Andre.
The Canadian game may actually be more complicated for a quarterback than the NFL or NCAA.
Cleo Lemon, in his first training camp with the Argonauts after eight seasons with four NFL teams, says with one fewer down with which to work “there’s definitely more pressure. One small mistake and it’s a turnover or you’re kicking field goals or punting — instead of scoring touchdowns.”
In Montreal, Popp has watched for three seasons as Calvillo, the future CFL Hall of Famer, has been mentor to Chris Leak, who led the University of Florida Gators to a national title and Adrian McPherson, a superstar at Florida State.
There are those in the U.S. who simply cannot understand how either could be playing behind a guy from Utah State, who once auditioned for a pro-quarterback job in a Las Vegas parking lot and whom they’ve barely heard of but, says Popp:
“The CFL game is different especially for the quarterback. When you get under centre in major college or the NFL, there’s only one guy who can be in motion. Everything is pretty stationary and you can predetermine and make your decisions based on where people are placed on the field. When you snap the ball, you know where you are going with the ball. “In the CFL you have to do a lot of reads on the run. I don’t care how long you’ve played quarterback, the issue is a lot of times guys come to our league and they have NEVER seen anything like this. “They get under centre, there’s four guys in motion. There’s four DBs running all over the place and the ball is snapped and now they’re trying to figure out what the coverage is (zone or man-to-man). “A lot of guys get eliminated right there because they can’t handle it.”
There are moments in football, as in life, that do not make sense. So, looks can be deceiving. Successful college quarterbacks aren’t necessarily great quarterbacks. As Popp notes, “There are a lot of college quarterbacks every year who get drafted but can’t play in the NFL or the CFL.
“Some guys play for such great schools that their weaknesses are covered up because their teams were so strong,” says Popp. It likely didn’t hurt Tee Martin in 1998 when he led Tennessee to its first national title since 1951 to have Jamal Lewis in the backfield or Peerless Price and Jeremaine Copeland at receiver.
Players such as Crouch or Harris may have looked the part of a CFL player but Dunigan suspects that what separates the successful quarterback from those who fade into footnotes has less to do with speed, agility or physical talent — and more to do with what’s between their ears. “I’ve thought about this for 27 years since coming up here. Being a quarterback in this league is a job. I’m not saying those guys didn’t treat it as one. But it’s an approach. “Some people seize opportunities and others don’t. What’s missing? I don’t think you can categorize all those guys as missing the same thing. But, with each one, something was missing.
“The best way to describe their lack of success is to describe what it takes to be successful. You look at someone like Damon Allen, (Tommy) Clements, Tracy Ham, (Dave) Dickenson, Calvillo, back to Condredge Holloway and Warren Moon; these guys brought some athleticism with them. Their arm strength varied, but every one of those guys had a sense of toughness. “They were physically tough, but what set them apart was their mental toughness, their willingness to learn and understand the mental aspect of the game.”
When it comes to a CFL quarterback the only sure bet is that there is no such thing as a sure bet. It was May of 2005 and Barker, then in his first season scoping talent for the Stampeders, had earlier seen Gesser at Washington State tie with Carson Palmer for Pac-10 offensive player of the year honours. “I liked him so much I traded a first-round draft pick to get the rights to him,” says Barker. “I thought he’d make a great CFL quarterback.” He started the season as Henry Burris’ backup, started two games and finished the season with four touchdown passes. He was also intercepted five times, completing 23 of 42 passes and the next season was in the Arena Football League. Today, Gesser is head football coach of Eastside Catholic School in Sammamish, WA. Carson Palmer is in the NFL and Barker is a smarter, more cautious man.
“The only way you can tell if a player can be successful here is to bring him up and let him play. (Vince) Ferragamo was a very successful QB (in the NFL) and couldn’t do it up here. “Akili Smith was a quarterback who with his skill set I thought would be very successful here. Maybe kicking around the NFL a few years he hasn’t had success and he comes here and things go wrong, maybe he questions how good he really is and it all caves on him. “You just don’t know how a guy is going to react mentally and what he is going to do when he comes up here. “From a scouting perspective it’s impossible to know who is going to be successful.”
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