you know randall had some incredible seasons, two mvps. randall was an underrated passer and if vince can pass like cunningham at his best, look out. where vince separates himself from randall is that he accepts his superstar status. randall was never comfortable in the spotlight, he didn't have the poise. but when he was in a zone he threw some beautiful passes.
i agree, i always liked watching him play, i think he's a bit underrated in the grand scheme of things. i also agree with you about his poise, just didn't have that killer instinct i suppose.
Agreed, but the point is how race factors... Do you really believe that if a white QB did everything exactly as VY did it at UT he would be compared to Randall instead of say- Elway...
Interesting discussion...I tend to agree, althought I'd like to think in this day and age it is impossible... Look, VY is great and will continue to be for many years to come...Coming out of college, Carr had no where near the numbers that Vince put up or won the big games, yet hear we are... It was a joke to think Brady Quinn even won an award this year as a QB, let alone the Maxwell Award...He shouldn't have even been in the Heisman hunt, but he was...If Vince played in college this year and had half the success, he would have won the Heisman, hands down...
I think racism had something to do with who Vince was compared to, but had nothing to do with where he was picked. He was compared to other mobile, black QB's. It's similar to how white players are compared to Larry Bird (see Morrison). If a white player came out with Vince's skill sets (most important, his athletic ability) then he would be compared to previous athletic white QB's like Young or Elway. Vince was the #1 QB off the board and might have been the #1 pick if we didn't have seamonkeys drafting for us.
If Troy Smith were 6'4" and had a great former pro coach coaching and touting him and were Brady Quinn a 6'1" fomer running back now playing quarterback with 1 and 1/2 seasons under his belt would it still be racism?
People are saying that 6'1 for Troy Smith is generous. People think he'll measure out at 5'11 at the combine.
Also one of the greatest early Madden Football players. I always thought that he'd be considered a Hall of Famer if he won the superbowl in 1998. As I recall, some Viking kicker blew it for them in the Championship game.
Ironically that Viking kicker, Gary Andersen, is one of the greatest kickers ever and that season only missed one field goal. Of course the one that counted the most. Anyway Cunningham had a great season that year but most of that was due to Randy Moss. Cunningham just happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right arm. In the NFC Championship game and next season people figured out that Cunningham couldn't handle pressure and he was promptly benched in favor of Jeff George early in the season.
Code Words Can Only Sell a Quarterback Short By WILLIAM C. RHODEN Published: December 12, 2006 I want to reclaim the word “athlete” from our sports scrap heap, once and for all. No word in the last 25 years has been so misrepresented, so loaded with double meaning. We use it, but we really don’t mean what we say. When I was young, being called an athlete was one of the greatest designations a kid could receive. It meant you were fast and quick, and had skills and instincts. You were someone who could play any game with relative ease and minimum training. You had a high athletic I.Q. For the last 25 years, athlete has been a buzzword. Highly charged with a double meaning: fast but slow; sharp but dull. The word is used as a backhanded compliment that simultaneously praises and diminishes. The term came up again recently during a conversation with Mike Farrell, a recruiting analyst for rivals.com. Rivals is a college football network that tracks coaching hires and games, but it specializes in recruiting. I’m not sure how we got on the subject, but Farrell predicted that Troy Smith, Ohio State’s senior quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner, would be picked lower than Michael Vick (first over all) and Vince Young (third) had been in their respective N.F.L. drafts, because he was not as good an athlete, though a better quarterback. “Vince Young and Michael Vick are considered great athletes but not quarterbacks,” Farrell said. “There are guys considered great quarterbacks but not athletes. Perception is reality in a lot of cases.” Judging from what Vick and Young have done, apparently there are times when it’s best to be more of an athlete and less of a quarterback. On its recruiting Web site, Rivals designates two quarterback categories: pro style and dual threat. I wasn’t sure what pro style was, but I could guess what dual threat was. None of the top 10 pro style prospects was black. Five of the top 10 dual threats were black. A pro style quarterback can throw. That’s pretty much it. “When you look at the traditional dropback guys, they’re usually bigger — 6-3, 6-4, 6-5, 215 pounds,” Farrell said. Ryan Mallett, a 6-foot-7, 235-pound quarterback from Texarkana, Tex., and one of the nation’s top prospects, has committed to Michigan. Why can’t a quarterback be a quarterback? Why create distinctions and designations? You play the position or you don’t. Farrell said the distinction let college recruiters know the type of quarterbacks they were scouting. “Is he a guy who can run the freeze option at Virginia Tech, or is it a guy who’s going to go to Virginia Tech and be a statue?” he said. “We just think it’s a position that needs to be specifically branched out,” Farrell said. “It’s hard to justify that a kid who’s 5-foot-11, 185, is a dropback quarterback. With 6-foot-8-inch offensive linemen or 6-5 offensive guards, this kid is not a dropback guy.” Farrell brought up Chris Leak, Florida’s outstanding quarterback, who is 5-11. “He has had success as a dropback passer, but a lot of what he does is between gaps,” Farrell said, comparing Leak to another successful quarterback who was under 6 feet, Doug Flutie. “He’s like Flutie was a dropback passer, but he knew how to throw between people rather than over them; that’s how Leak is.” Leak and Smith are different types of quarterbacks, although I doubt either will do what Young did last January in the Bowl Championship Series title game: 467 total yards and 3 touchdowns in leading Texas past Southern California, 41-38. For all the talk about Vick’s skills and Young’s mechanics, the game continues to be headed in their direction, with mobile— if not fleet-footed — quarterbacks running the offense. “In high school, a lot of coaches use their best football player, their most athletic guy at the quarterback position,” Farrell said. “That’s because they want to win football games, and that’s the way it is.” Farrell said the Vick-Young effect was being felt across the country. College coaches want players who can move outside the pocket while they move the offense. “Now over the last five or six years, it’s really sort of hit the high school level as far as the top quarterbacks in the country,” Farrell said. “Now it seems that all of the traditional dropback quarterbacks, or many of them, can also run with the ball or at least are mobile enough to escape pressure when they need to. That’s why the 40 times for quarterbacks have become much more important than it used to be.” Major college programs want a quarterback who, at a minimum, runs a 40-yard dash in less than 4.9 seconds. • “That’s not blazing speed,” Farrell said. “But it shows that you have the ability to do some things as far as escapability. They want someone who can at least move around. Our No. 1 dual threat quarterback in the country this year is a white kid from South Carolina, Willy Korn. He happens to run in the 4.5, 4.6 range.” The immobile Drew Bledsoe-type quarterback is a relic: Athletes are in. Who needs statues? http://select.nytimes.com/2006/12/12/sports/ncaafootball/12rhoden.html?ref=sports
