It’s
September and a man’s thoughts are turning to football. This year, I’m thinking
about quarterbacks again.
A couple of
years back in this spot, I wrote a piece criticizing the tendency of sports
writers to blame a quarterback for not winning championships. I pointed out
that teams win championships, not quarterbacks, and that the best predictor of
Super Bowl victory is having a future Hall of Fame defensive player on the
team.
Lately,
I’ve been reflecting on another quarterback issue: Statistical evaluation. Ken
Stabler, the great quarterback for the Raiders in the 1970s, died earlier this
summer, and is now up for consideration for admission to the Pro Football Hall
of Fame by the Veterans Committee.
One sports
writer, and I can’t recall who, wrote a piece in Sports Illustrated online,
saying, in essence, that though a case could be made, Stabler’s overall
statistics just weren’t good enough.
True, But Wrong
I’ll
concede the statistics, while arguing that in some cases the numbers are behind
the point. And it seems to me that in sports these days (and particularly in
baseball) we’re trusting the numbers too much and our own eyes too little. How
do you quantify a great game or a great play that takes your breath away?
Two Stabler
stories, recalled from memory:
In the late
1970s, the Raiders were playing New Orleans on Monday night. With about five
minutes to go in the third quarter, they were trailing 28-14 on the road, when
Stabler, trying to avoid a sack, threw up a wounded duck that was intercepted
and run back for a touchdown to make it New Orleans 35, Oakland 14. I turned
the game off, did a couple of chores, then called home a half hour later. My
father answered.
“Aren’t you
watching the game?” he asked. I told him I’d turned it off, and he said the
Raiders were coming back furiously. We talked briefly, and I turned the TV on
again to see Stabler lead the Raiders to a 42-35 win, with four touchdown
drives in the last quarter and a third.
Then there was the game against Miami in the
1975 playoffs. Trailing 26-21 with almost no time left, and facing fourth and
goal, Stabler broke out of the pocket moving to his left (he was left-handed)
and threw up an absolutely terrible
pass as he was being tackled.
Hey, It Worked
Terrible,
that is, in every way but one. As it sailed over the goal line, the Raiders’
Clarence Davis leaped up and took it away from two Miami defenders for the
winning touchdown.
That’s the
thing about Stabler. He was a gunslinger and a gambler who took chances other
quarterbacks didn’t take. It drove down his stats, but also won his team a lot
of games it might otherwise have lost. John Madden, who knows a thing or two
about football, has said that if he could pick one quarterback to lead the
drive for a winning touchdown in the closing minutes of a game, it would be
Stabler. Isn’t that more important than completion percentage or
touchdown-to-interception ratio?
My favorite
Stabler story involved the 1976 playoff game where the Wild Card Raiders were
playing the Baltimore Colts in Baltimore. The game was tied 31-31 in
regulation, and still tied after a quarter of overtime. At the start of the
second overtime, Madden turned to see Stabler looking at the stands and
laughing out loud.
“What’s so
funny?” Madden demanded.
“I was just
thinkin’, coach. These fans sure got their money’s worth today.” Then he went
out and threw a touchdown pass to Dave Casper to win the game.
That,
alone, should be enough to get him into the Hall.
