FRESH PRINCES OF NFL QUARTERBACKING SHOULDN’T BE RUSHED
Past evidence says so: Patience is the wisest approach for hotshot rookies — Fields, Lance, even Lawrence — despite the crusades of impulsive fans who ignore pitfalls and want them to start instantly
When I grow up, which seems a life impossibility at this point, I want to be a rookie quarterback during an NFL preseason. That way, everyone will love me. I can kill 12 puppies and they’ll still worship me. I can support the Taliban and they’ll still lobby for me. In a country divided by politics, race and vaccines, I will be universally adored as the first-round-drafted darling who unequivocally should start in Week 1.
It has become a season within a season, the frenzied devotion to fresh QB princes without considering that some ultimately will sputter and fail. In Jacksonville, fans are letting their hair grow shoulder-length in homage to Trevor Lawrence. In New York, Zach Wilson’s arm and swagger make him the next Joe Namath … they just know it. In Chicago, which poet Carl Sandburg meant to define as the City of Weak Shoulders, Justin Fields is the franchise QB lacking since Sid Luckman wore a leather helmet. In the Bay Area, Trey Lance is Steph Curry in shoulder pads. And don’t tell New England fans that Michael McCorkle Jones, Mac for short, isn’t the next Tom Brady.
Never mind that Patrick Mahomes waited a season before starting. And Aaron Rodgers waited years before Brett Favre went away. And Brady, the 199th pick, required an injury to Drew Bledsoe before launching his G.O.A.T. legacy. For every Russell Wilson, who started from Day One and is headed to the Hall of Fame, there is a Jameis Winston, who started from Day One and continues to offset touchdown passes and fine games (see: Monday night) with inexplicable games and brutal interceptions. If there is any tried-and-true method to a crazily inexact science, it’s to let the rookie sit and watch, even for a regular-season game or two or six or eight, so he acclimates and prepares to a point of readiness when the wobbly veteran incumbent either struggles or succumbs to injury. For evidence, see Ben Roethlisberger, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Justin Herbert and Deshaun Watson, who still hasn’t been suspended despite 22 civil lawsuits and 10 criminal complaints from massage therapists.
It wasn’t long ago when Andy Dalton was the Red Rifle, Cam Newton was the league MVP for a 15-1 team and Jimmy Garoppolo was Jimmy G and positioned to win a Super Bowl. Now they’re targets for get-out-of-the-way loathing. Already, Bears fans are booing Dalton, convinced Fields is a branch of the Mahomes Tree and has been gifted to Soldier Field by football gods sorry for Jay Cutler, Rex Grossman and all the rest. They want him to start the opener, in Los Angeles, in front of a rickety offensive line that will give Aaron Donald and the Rams defense a license to maim. What’s fascinating is that Bears head coach Matt Nagy is in a playoffs-or-pink-slip predicament and personally is served by starting Fields right away. But the front office is playing it properly, placing hope in an incubator while Dalton is pummeled as the sacrificial lamb.
“We have to see what Andy can do during the season with this team and with these guys. This has been our plan this entire time,” said Nagy, whose declaration made him Internet meat. “At the same point in time, we also need to evaluate and see where Justin is at and what he can do, and again, he’s doing everything that we are asking him to do. He’s doing great. I truly understand the — I don’t know what the word is — for people to want to see more of Justin. I get that. But we also understand where we’re at.’’
In the process, Fields is showing maturity perhaps more important than anything he could produce on the field right now. When Dalton said, “Justin is gonna have his time, but right now it’s my time,’’ Fields could have joined the fan chorus about a 33-year-old who, honestly, has the appearance of a red-headed barista with a trying-too-hard hipster haircut. Instead, the kid showed remarkable leadership in asking Chicago fans not to chant his name when Dalton is playing. “I really think it’s kind of disrespectful to Andy, them cheering my name out like that,” Fields said. “Just cheer him on, you know? That's not helping Andy play better, to cheer my name. That’s not doing none of that. My advice to them would be just cheer whoever’s on the field. The fans are awesome, but they also have to realize Andy is a human being too.’’
The Bears aren’t Super Bowl contenders, meaning they can wait for the inevitable Dalton injury before handing Fields the reins. The San Francisco 49ers are in the trophy hunt, which makes the Lance vs. Garoppolo contest especially significant. Lance is the modern-day, dual-threat ideal, but he’s also given to raw, uneven play that can be spectacular or maddening at any moment. Problem is, Garoppolo has a history of injuries and ill-timed errors. Kyle Shanahan no longer is the league’s boy coaching genius, needing to get past two self-inflicted Super Bowl losses or fade into humdrumdom. Can he win a championship with Jimmy G? He doubts it, as we do, or he would have named Garoppolo the starter by now. He refuses to do so.
Asked when that might happen, Shanahan said, “Whenever I feel like it. Not tonight. Nice try, though.’’
Like Dalton, Garoppolo should be starting the opener. Having played only one real game since 2019, thanks to the pandemic and his program’s lesser status at North Dakota State, Lance isn’t ready for an NFL September. After he engineered a victory over the Chargers’ defensive scrubs, Shanahan said Sunday, “I talked to him a couple of times during the game. Just don’t try to overreact on anything. You want everything to go perfect. I know a lot of eyes are on him. That’s what I tell him before each game, ‘Don’t go in there to try to impress anyone or prove anything. Just go in there and try and get better and whether it’s good or bad, this is your second game in about 500 days or something like that. Just soak it all in and make sure you learn.’’
That might be the keenest advice for Lawrence, who at times looked lost as he was pummeled by the Saints’ swarming pass rush in a gruesome first half Monday night. Urban Meyer didn’t make his long-overdue jump to the NFL so Gardner Minshew II can be his starter, but that might be logical for the same aforementioned reasons — let the mustached Minshew or C.J. Beathard take lumps while Lawrence watches and grows for a few weeks. Before declaring him the best quarterbacking prospect since Andrew Luck, you might consider he’s facing challenges with the beleaguered Jaguars that he didn’t experience at Clemson, where he lost two games in three seasons.
“People have to earn whatever they’ve been given,’’ Lawrence said of the starting job.
“’We’ve just got to keep swinging,'' said Meyer, stlll falling short of naming Lawrence as QB1. “I’m looking for fighters and competitors. We will have a locker room of competitors. But I'm learning a lot about them.''
Newton’s downfall, as usual, might be personal recklessness. Still not vaccinated for COVID-19, despite an infection that derailed his 2020 season, he violated league protocols by receiving a test outside the Patriots’ facility. The “misunderstanding’’ will keep him from the team until Thursday, which could give Jones an edge — if not yet in the eyes of rookie-leery coach Bill Belichick, then in a locker room weary of interruptions. “As far as how the team views that, and how we go forward, that's a Bill Belichick question,’’ veteran Devin McCourty said. “I feel like he would tee that up, and knock that out of the park. I'm going to leave that for Bill and let him handle that."
Jones, while playing against second-teamers, has looked sharp and thrown no interceptions in 77 preseason snaps. Newton is still the starter, but he never has represented the Patriot Way. It’s clear Jones already does. “We’re not just going to take a job and say, ‘OK, here, this is gift-wrapped for somebody,'” Belichick said. “Training camp is all about competition. There’s an element of who the starter is, but there’s also the competition, and in the end, the competition is going to decide how things go in any given year.” He isn’t ruling out a QB platoon, a delicate way of saying Jones is close to a positional takeover.
The most electric possibilities are in New York, where Wilson has a piece of arm artillery that blew away even the unimpressionable Rodgers. After watching the Jets rookie from the sideline in Green Bay last weekend, he said, “That kid can throw the heck out of that ball. I’m so excited for what he can do in this league.” Even the team’s first-year head coach, Robert Saleh, refuses to lower expectations, saying of Wilson, “His process is light years ahead of what a normal rookie’s process would be.’’
The smartest call of all is to project immediate stardom for Wilson. Then again, the same assumptions were made last year about Joe Burrow, who looked fantastic … until he tore his ACL and spent the offseason rebuilding his knee. Now, no one knows what to expect, which in due time could make him a journeyman like his Cincinnati predecessor, Dalton, and lead to future boos elsewhere from fans who want a rookie to start.
That fresh prince in waiting, wherever he might be, is 11 or 12 years old right now.
Jay Mariotti, called “the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes sports columns for Substack and a Wednesday media column for Barrett Sports Media while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts in production today. He’s an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and radio talk host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects. Compensation for this column is donated to the Chicago Sun-Times Charity Trust.