“Quarterback Rex Grossman is one of the least-accomplished quarterbacks to make the Super Bowl, and played down to his reputation by concluding every comeback attempt with an incompletion or interception.”

……………..

“But conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh had his own incendiary take. “The media, the sports media, has got social concerns that they are first and foremost interested in,” Limbaugh said during his show Monday. “They are dumping on this guy, Rex Grossman, for one reason and that’s because he’s a white quarterback.”
No, we’re first and foremost interested in sports. We’re dumping on Grossman because he fumbled two snaps and threw two interceptions, the way we would have dumped on Martian Manhunter J’onn J’onzz (who is green) if he had fumbled two snaps and thrown two interceptions. And we’re dumping on Limbaugh for being a hateful, boring blowhard.” — NORM COHEN
[…]

It’s time for Sports!  Why?  Because Friday greeted me with two comments relating to sports.  One appears to be a job request to Paul Allen.  That, all I can do is scratch my head at.  The other one I didn’t want to involve myself in at that time, so I responded with what amounted to a punt, the response “I agree that Aaron Brooks sucks.”

Apparently there is a sentiment out there that black quarterbacks are being over-hyped and given the benefit of the doubt whereas White Quarterbacks are being unfairly burdened with criticism.  Rush Limbaugh is the most visible proponent of this.  This commenter has followed this one opinion up, and has brought Aaron Brooks into the equation.

But looking at the comment, I’m left with the complication that even Aaron Brooks brings to this equation.  His case against Aaron Brooks is that the New Orleans Saints became better this season once the team dumped him, exiled him to the Oakland Raiders, whose offense is probably the worst unit in professional football.  Not to celebrate the career of  Aaron Brooks, but the season before he became the starting quarterback, the team was 2-14.  The year he became the starting quarterback, the team was 10-6, and then winner of their first playoff game in franchise history — the details of this season’s comment about this being just the second playoff victory in New Orleans team history.

For me, what defines Aaron Brooks’s career is two seasons that eerily mirrored each other — one being an anomolie, two being a pattern.  12  games saw the Saints rolling along, play-off contenders, to records of  about 8-4.  Then, the bottom fell out completely, and he lead the team  to four straight blow-out losses.  Hence, Aaron Brooks sucks.  And nobody ever said he was terribly great.

But he was legitimately thought of as good, the savior for the Saints for a spell.  The nature of the NFL is that pretty much every quarterback shows enough flashes so that they’re considered potentially the answer to a teams’ prayers.  When they fall out of favour, they will more than likely get a second chance to redeem themselves.

Take Jeff Garcia.  If I extend the logic of this reasoning to Donvan  McNabb, the latest example of the “Patrick Ewing Rule”, the superstar falling to injury and the team improving — here under the tutelege of quarterback Jeff Garcia.  In a previous life, such as at the beginning of the season and the past couple of seasons with the Cleveland Browns and his final season or so with the San Francisco 49ers, he was considered a not particularly good quarterback.  His pro-bowl seasons with the 49ers, extending the reign of the 49ers if not to the level of Montana and Young then at least coating over a hollowed out franchise, were long forgotten by a fickle public. 

Rush Limbaugh had to have been the world’s biggest Jeff Garcia fan.  He probably hoped that Garcia would lead the Eagles to the Superbowl, thus feeling a degree of vindication — undeserved though it would have been — about his comments about McNabb being overhyped for the sake of political correctness.

I don’t feel inclined to track us back to the careers of Randall
Cunningham and Warren Moon.  Warren Moon at least breaks us away from the sterotypical black quarterback, the “athletic running quarterback” whose running makes up for some relative defeciencies with passing.  Listing this type of quarterback — and the inherent problems of this quarterback
— injury proned and tending to hit a wall where they either need to adapt to more conventional quarterback play or not advance in terms of the career, you stop in the middle of the list, realize you’re listing black quarterbacks, and so toss in “Jake Plummer”.

Michael Vick, mentioned here as someone who’s done nothing but is still hyped up, and thus I guess another example of the Black Quarterback who we want to believe in, is an extreme example of the problem.  Supposedly he’s “Redefining the position of quarterback”, somebody as easily shuntering the traditional role of quarterback to become a defacto running back.  And in doing so, shows the limitations of this”changing the role”, a style of play that devolves into a gimmick — and one that doesn’t age well.  He was a legitimate pro-bowl selection a couple of years ago, as good as any with his selection last year, and justifiably passed over this year — not that anyone cares about the pro-bowl.  His career high-lights remain largely single-handedly winning a playoff game at Lambeu Field — the only visitor to do so — and any number of spectacular Sports Center highlights.  Do Not Pass Go.

Steve McNair?  After a highly productive career with the Tennesse Titans (and Oilers) — with a Superbowl appearance and an MVP selection in hand — he has been hopped over to the Baltimore Ravens.  And it is difficult to find a better quarterback who can give that team as good a chance at the Superbowl as McNair, giving the defense enough breathing room as the brilliant minimalist quarterback Trent Dilfer did a few years’ ago (passed over for Elvis Grbac, who had just had a season with healthy stats for a 6-10 team, and was thus mistakenly thought of as an upgrade).  The game of inches did him in, and the call of him “choking” would be as moot as the criticism levelled at Rex Grossman if a single touchdown had been pulled through.  In Rex Grossman’s case, he would not be “the least accomplished quarterback to appear in a Superbowl” but would instead fall into line behind luminaries such as Jeff Hostetler and the aforementioned brillaint minimalist Trent Dilfer as — not exactly Hall of Fame contending quarterbacks who managed their offense well in the Superbowl to a victory.  And McNair would have probably had the Ravens in the Superbowl, defeating the Bears, and thus not “a choke artist”.

The argument proferred about Grossman is that “this is his first full year”.  Which only suggests he may be better in the future, and doesn’t take into account that … he had a few games where he was beyond awful.  The Superbowl wasn’t one of them — in that game, he fell short of those depths and was just bad.  Come back next season, I guess.

There.  I’m done with this topic.  I think.

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