 |
Ken Stabler
|
Before San Diego traded the first pick in the draft to the Atlanta Falcons, Chargers
coach Mike Riley repeatedly said, "You don’t want to be the team that passes on
Michael Jordan."
The reference has been made before: The Portland Trail Blazers picked Sam Bowie in the
1984 NBA draft when Jordan was available. Bowie was frequently injured and never helped
Portland much. You know about Jordan.
The comparison is not an exact one, though. Jordan was already a polished player when
he came out, a product of excellent coaching by Dean Smith at North Carolina.
With Michael Vick, the evaluations are all over the board because what’s being
evaluated is raw ability and potential. The offensive system in which Vick played at
Virginia Tech was not even close to the systems used in the NFL. Bill Walsh, who could be
objective because the San Francisco 49ers never had a chance to draft Vick, said he
thought Vick was better served coming out two years early because playing more in the
Virginia Tech system would have retarded, not improved, his NFL chances.
For me, a better comparison would be one from the second year in which I covered pro
football, 1968. That year, the Oakland Raiders drafted Eldridge Dickey in the first round
and Ken Stabler in the second.
Every time I hear a description of Vick, I hear an echo from the description of Dickey
in ’68. He probably wasn’t as fast as Vick — only receivers and running
backs were actually timed at that time — but Dickey was very fast. He was a great
athlete with the size and ability to play other positions and the ability to throw the
ball 60 yards with a flick of the wrist.
But he never became an effective NFL quarterback. He had played at Tennessee State,
where he had total freedom in running the offense. He could run, he could pass. He often
made spectacular plays just on sheer ability.
Stabler had neither the arm nor the legs of Dickey, but he was a very good NFL
quarterback because he was an accurate passer. He also understood how the game was played,
and that made him a great leader.
Al Davis paid no attention to the biases of the time, including the most obvious: That
blacks weren’t smart enough to play quarterback. So Dickey got his opportunity, but
he couldn’t take advantage of it. The Raiders finally moved him to wide receiver, but
he was cut after he dropped a potential TD pass in a ’71 game against Kansas City
because he heard footsteps.
Chargers general manager John Butler wasn’t involved in pro football until the
’80s, and he may never have heard of Dickey, but I’m convinced he was trying to
avoid the same kind of mistake.
Right now, the Chargers are looking smart. They got the running back they badly needed,
LaDainian Tomlinson, and a productive quarterback in Drew Brees. It would not surprise me
if Brees is starting by midway through his second season.
For Vick, it’s a very difficult situation. If he’d gone to the Chargers,
he’d have been able to learn behind Doug Flutie. Now, he’s behind Chris
Chandler, who is only one hit away from the end of his career. When — it’s
probably not a question of if — Chandler goes down, the pressure will be on the
Falcons to play Vick long before he’s ready, and on a coach, Dan Reeves, who has no
patience with young quarterbacks. Ask John Elway.
Butler helped build the Buffalo Bills into a near dynasty (the qualifier is necessary
because the Bills kept losing Super Bowls) because he knows what to look for in players.
So many teams now are overwhelmed by the physical measurements — how fast a player
runs, how high he jumps, how much he can bench-press — without realizing that the
most important factor is how many good football plays he makes. Brees can’t run as
fast as Vick, nor throw as far, but he consistently makes good football plays. Vick makes
spectacular plays, but he also makes bad ones, and his ratio will suffer in the NFL.
Walsh and his successor as 49ers general manager, Terry Donahue, also value production
over workout numbers. Some draft analysts, for instance, downgraded California DE Andre
Carter because his weight fell to 249 pounds in the offseason. But that didn’t affect
the 49ers’ evaluations.
"We figure he’ll be up to 265 before the season," Donahue told me before
the draft. "You don’t want to line him up opposite the tight end, where the
tackle and tight end could double-team him, but you can play him on the other side without
trouble. He can handle the run, he’s a very good pass rusher and he’s a great
kid."
The 49ers considered Carter the best defensive end in the draft, and to make certain
they got him, Walsh made a draft-day trade with Seattle to jump two spots into the No. 7
slot.
In earlier years, teams didn’t have to be quite so precise with their draft picks
because there were so many more rounds and fewer teams. In ’68, there were 17 rounds;
now, there are seven. Because there were only 18 teams picking in ’68, compared to 31
this year, there were more good players available early. Players taken in the seventh
round this year are equivalent to 12th-round picks in ’68.
The money is different too. There’s more bonus money paid now, and there are
salary-cap implications with contracts.
For all these reasons, teams have to be more certain they make the right picks in the
draft. Some teams have chosen to pay more attention to workout numbers, but the smart ones
value production. That’s the reason I think the Chargers will never regret their
decision to pass on Michael Vick.
He’s not Michael Jordan.
Glenn Dickey is a columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle and has covered pro
football since 1967. He can be reached via e-mail at dickey@sfgate.com |
