Rookies Under Siege

By STEVE LOPEZ

It is going to sound as if the great football prophet John Madden is talking about mathematics, but he isn't. He is talking about a subject of far greater interest to the American public--why so many quarterbacks, including a couple of hotshot college studs whose rookie National Football League contracts add up to roughly $75 million, look like your grandmother out there.

"You remember how, back in school, some kids got geometry?" Madden asks. "You worked at it, worked at it, worked at it, BOOM! You finally got it! And if you got geometry, you remember how then you went on to trigonometry?"

Same deal with learning to read defenses, says Madden, the TV commentator and ex-coach. The NFL's constantly evolving defenses are tougher to decipher than tax forms, and the consensus in jockdom is that quarterbacking is the hardest thing to do in all of sports, right after remembering where you left the needle to inflate the balls. "I'd say 90% of the quarterbacks never get it," Madden says.

Which brings us to Peyton Manning (Indianapolis Colts) and Ryan Leaf (San Diego Chargers), the top two picks in this year's draft. In the first third of their first season, they've been in long division on their best days. But on most Sundays it has looked as if the dog ate their homework. Both 22, they've been at or near the bottom of ratings for quarterbacks, and it's fair to say there has been nothing this ugly on a football field since the leather helmet.

Leaf, who left Washington State University a year early, committed 11 of his team's first 12 turnovers, went ballistic on the media and had one game in which he completed more passes to the wrong guys (two, to the Kansas City Chiefs) than to his own teammates (he was 1 for 15). Charger fans, questioning the wisdom of the front-office dolts who gave an $11.25 million signing bonus to a guy who completes fewer passes than Bill Clinton, even booed a televised public service announcement by Leaf at a home game.

Former University of Tennessee golden boy Manning has been slightly less inept and much less flammable than the backward-hat-wearing Leaf. But his glue-horse Colts had empty oat bags after four games, and Manning's 11 interceptions were the most for a Colts team, over that span, since the Cuban missile crisis.

San Diego at least won its first two games, but after a Sept. 27 loss to the New York Giants in which Leaf was yanked out and chained to the bench, the once cocky pup whimpered, "You just wonder, 'Are you good enough to do this?'"

Truth be told, it's easier to look like Joe Mantegna than Joe Montana out there when you're surrounded by meatballs, and the polite sports term for the situation in both San Diego and Indianapolis is "rebuilding." And so, revealing the most compelling evidence of an afterlife since true believers saw the image of Jesus on a tortilla, the scheduling gods gave both the Chargers and the Colts a break Oct. 4 by having them play teams they had a prayer against--each other.

Manning vs. Leaf in Indianapolis. The Dog Day Afternoon Bowl. The nice boy you'd want your daughter to marry versus the one she'd probably rather torment you with. And the result? Nobody on the field should have been paid more than $40 before taxes. Manning and Leaf were characteristically bewitched, bothered and bewildered at times, and mediocre overall, which was a step in the right direction. The Colts got their first win (17-12).

"It's a marathon," the relentlessly polite Manning drawled afterward, saying he feels a little more comfortable with each game. Leaf said he wasn't convinced that what's happening to him can be called a learning experience. "It feels pretty terrible. I don't feel good about anything right now."

During the game, ex-Super Bowl quarterback Ron Jaworski said that's the NFL today. "You pay these guys, and you throw them out there" whether they're ready or not. Back in the days before remote control, promising young quarterbacks sat on the bench for a while, and went to school on the crew-cut masters.

"Free agency has made it a different world," Colts president Bill Polian said, adding that people foolishly expect big contracts to translate into instant success. Polian was delighted by the wisdom of a comment made by ex-quarterback Phil Simms about the chatter over who's better, Manning or Leaf. "Phil said neither one has a clue."

"There's no way any rookie quarterback can have a clue," agrees Madden. Charlie Batch, an unheralded Detroit Lions rookie, has at times looked better than Manning or Leaf, but he's still working in the dark too. Madden says it's partly because college defenses are run oriented and NFL defenses, which are pass oriented, change drastically from one down to the next and one team to the next.

You've got your blitzes and your zone blitzes. You've got your base defenses, your nickel Ds and your dimes, in which six defensive backs with incentive clauses for interceptions are waiting for you to blow a synapse and launch another clay pigeon. Meanwhile, you've got to learn your own playbook, which looks like the manual to the space shuttle, and know exactly what 22 guys are doing at all times when the only thing you can be sure of is that four of them, who happen to be the biggest and ugliest, are eager to tear your head off.

"I say it takes five years to figure it out," says Terry Bradshaw, who had the snot knocked out of him as a young quarterback, lost games as if he'd invented it and went on to win four Super Bowls. "With big money comes big responsibility, but these guys are kids."

Madden says the long learning curve explains why so many grayhairs who should be regaling bowling buddies with stories about the good old days are still putting on helmets. The league will have three quarterbacks in their 40s as of next week, when Tennessee backup Dave Krieg enters middle age. Seattle Seahawks starter Warren Moon is 41, and Atlanta Falcons backup Steve DeBerg, at 44, is the age of Manning and Leaf combined. Oakland Raider backup Wade Wilson is 39; Denver Bronco John Elway, 38; and Minnesota's Randall Cunningham, 35, came out of retirement two years ago and threw for 442 yards and four touchdowns Oct. 5 to slay the Green Bay Packers. "Elway talks about retiring," Madden says, "and I said, 'John, why retire? You can play another 10 years.' Once you get it, it's easy."

As for learning from the bench, Madden says it's a moot point with Manning and Leaf because their teams don't have better quarterbacks. For better or worse, they are the future of each franchise, and both Madden and Bradshaw say that although Leaf can throw the football to Hawaii, Manning is further along in geometry class. He's the son of Archie Manning, a heck of a quarterback who played for the Saints when they were called the Aints and fans wore bags over their heads, so Junior might have inherited some poise, a quality everyone is very big on in athletics.

We'll know more after the two have lost a few teeth, won games they should have lost and lost games they should have won. But even if they end up selling aluminum siding, they get to keep the money.