QB Croyle has the look of a starter
All signs point to the Chiefs’ second-year player taking the reins from Trent Green.
By ADAM TEICHER
The Kansas City Star
In the next five weeks, Brodie Croyle will get married in Mississippi and begin in earnest the process of trying to win the starting quarterback’s job at Chiefs training camp in Wisconsin.
Compared to the wedding, he said, “football is a piece of cake.”
That’s no reflection on his July 14 nuptials but more on Croyle’s offseason, which has gone about as smoothly as the Chiefs could hope. With only today’s practice remaining among their offseason work, Croyle has shown the Chiefs nothing that would shake their view that he’s the top candidate to replace the departed Trent Green.
Croyle may have in fact raised himself in the eyes of the Chiefs and coach Herm Edwards with some sharp throws and intelligent decision-making. If he continues to play well in camp and the preseason, the job is probably his no matter how well the other candidate, veteran Damon Huard, fares.
The Chiefs will withhold final judgment on a starting quarterback until the preseason. But there was the unmistakable feeling at practice Tuesday that as the offseason is winding down, so is the quarterback competition.
Even Huard acknowledged it.
“Everybody would love to find the young quarterback to be the starter for the next 10 years,” Huard said of Croyle, a third-round draft pick last season. “Might everybody be rooting for the young guy to win? Maybe in some ways. But the old guy will go out there and compete, too.”
The feeling was fortified Tuesday when Croyle got all of the first-team snaps. Huard was mostly a bystander at practice. In the absence of Casey Printers, rookie Jeff Terrell took whatever work Croyle didn’t get.
“(Terrell) has been standing out here for 11 practices and all he gets to do is warm-ups and throw to receivers in drills,” Edwards said. “I told him for these two days he was going to get to play football. He was excited about that.”
These final two practices were designed for the younger players anyway. Several key veterans, including Larry Johnson, Tony Gonzalez and Donnie Edwards, were absent Tuesday and the Chiefs don’t expect them today.
Still, these plans fit in nicely with the ones the Chiefs have for Croyle, among the most important of their younger players.
“He’s progressing,” Edwards said. “We’ve put him in a lot of situations in practice — blitz periods, red zone, third downs. Now he’s going to have to do that in competition with Damon.”
Croyle has adequately handled much of what the Chiefs have thrown his way. They fully understand tougher tests are coming soon.
“I’m feeling more and more comfortable and more and more confident and getting used to where my receivers are going to be,” Croyle said. “I’ve gotten a lot better since day one.”
The Chiefs were expecting no revelations about Croyle from a month’s worth of offseason practices. Such workouts are conducted in shorts and T-shirts, contact with the quarterback is strictly off-limits, and they are frequently carried out at something far less than game speed.
“There’s not anything about him I didn’t already know,” wide receiver Eddie Kennison said. “I know how competitive he is. He’s just an old country boy that likes to hunt and play football. He’s not an outrageous guy, he’s not a flamboyant guy.”
From last year’s practices, they knew Croyle was capable of making all of the necessary throws. They knew from watching him in college at Alabama that he had the commanding huddle presence every team looks for in a quarterback.
Still, they discovered some qualities, some subtle and others not, and most to their delight.
“You can tell he was around Trent Green,” safety Bernard Pollard said.
“A lot of the things Trent did and the way he carried himself, you can see that in Brodie. The way he looks off from a receiver. He’ll look at one receiver and then come back to his left and you thought he was going right with the ball and he went the other way.”
on both here.KC wants to re-tool the passing game, and getting rid of Green is a move to make room for Croyle, not Huard.
There was an article stating he got most of the snaps one day during minicamp, but that was just one day.
he was good last season, 11 td - 1 int...!!just remember, Gannon was a career backup until he landed in Oakland and won an MVP awardand went to a few pro bowls..so just because Huard has been a career backup does not mean he can't be a quality starting QB..
