SuperJohn96
RPS World Champion
He is absolutely nuts.
“If I was in Minnesota,” George said, “I guarantee I’d be wearing a ring right now. I just can’t get over why somebody like [coach] Brad Childress wouldn’t take a look at me and have me as the third guy on their roster. Put me in and I’ll pick up right where I left off in ’99, but this time with Adrian Peterson, so I wouldn’t have to throw it nearly as much.”
Here's the entire Michael Silver article...
“If I was in Minnesota,” George said, “I guarantee I’d be wearing a ring right now. I just can’t get over why somebody like [coach] Brad Childress wouldn’t take a look at me and have me as the third guy on their roster. Put me in and I’ll pick up right where I left off in ’99, but this time with Adrian Peterson, so I wouldn’t have to throw it nearly as much.”
Here's the entire Michael Silver article...
Jeff George swears he hasn’t lost his fastball, even as he dreams, at 41, of an unlikely comeback into a league that last saw him throw a pass eight years ago.
He certainly hasn’t lost his sense of humor.
George, mindful that he has served as a point of reference in recent weeks for critics of disgruntled Denver Broncos quarterback Jay Cutler, was asked Tuesday in a telephone interview whether he viewed such a comparison as insulting or complimentary.
“Oh, that’s a huge compliment,” George said, drawing out his Indiana drawl for sarcastic effect. “I mean, you can’t get any better than that.”
Photo George, left, watches preseason action from the sidelines in ’06.
(Elaine ThompsonAP Photo)
Lest George be accused of taking a shot at Cutler, the strong-armed passer who became steamed at his superiors after they contemplated trading him for former New England Patriots quarterback Matt Cassel last month, the first overall pick of the 1990 NFL draft believes Broncos coach Josh McDaniels is to blame for the conflict.
“Really, it’s unfortunate that a team would do that,” George said. “I know people say he’s a crybaby and needs to suck it up, and I understand a coach saying that every position is open for competition. But it’s different when it comes to quarterbacks. You need to be a little sensitive to that position.
“The quarterback position is so fragile, and people just don’t understand what goes into it. It’s not just on Sundays that you’re on the spot. You’re the leader of the team. You’re the face of the franchise. The minute it comes out that they’re thinking about getting rid of you for someone else, you feel like the coach isn’t on your side, and there’s a trust issue.
“If your teammates are seeing that the coach is already putting you on the trading block or trying to push you out, in the back of their minds they’ll wonder if the team is committed to you, and it’s tough for you to lead. Can Jay go back to Denver and lead that team and have everybody believe in him? It’s gonna be tough.”
In fairness, George also believes that Cutler is wrong to boycott the team’s offseason training program, saying, “I would tell him to just go in, bust your butt and work as hard as you can over the offseason. Go in and be a leader like you think you can be. Don’t give ‘em any excuse to say you’re a crybaby.”
Besides, as much as he would like to counsel Cutler not to repeat some of his mistakes, George has his own issues. He wants one more shot at NFL glory, and he can’t even scare up so much as a tryout.
“I’ve been trying to figure out how to get back in, and it just amazes me that I’m not on somebody’s roster,” George said. “I’ve been throwing two or three times a week, and every time I go out there to throw, I can’t believe I’m not a backup somewhere. I know it’s a young man’s game, but you can’t tell me I’m not better than some of the quarterbacks that are out there. I look at teams like Minnesota or Chicago, and I want to scream at the people in charge, ‘What are you thinking?’ ”
George, who last got a sniff from the Oakland Raiders – he spent five days on the team’s roster shortly before the start of the 2006 season, his second stint with the Silver and Black – isn’t bitter about his plight. For the most part, he’s happy watching his 12-year-old son, Jeffrey, tear it up on the suburban Indianapolis youth-sports circuit (“He was the quarterback of his seventh-grade team,” Jeff says, “and they just went undefeated for the first time in the junior high’s history”), with daughter Jordan, 10, and son Jayden, 8, also occupying his and wife Teresa’s attention.
Yet the competitor in George can’t let it go, especially when he sees teams like the Vikings, for whom he put up huge numbers while going 8-2 as a starter in 1999, and the Cowboys, who struggled last season when Tony Romo missed several weeks with an injury and 40-year-old backup Brad Johnson was ineffective.
“If I was in Minnesota,” George said, “I guarantee I’d be wearing a ring right now. I just can’t get over why somebody like [coach] Brad Childress wouldn’t take a look at me and have me as the third guy on their roster. Put me in and I’ll pick up right where I left off in ’99, but this time with Adrian Peterson, so I wouldn’t have to throw it nearly as much.”
Yet when Childress, during the 2007 season, was asked if he had any interest in George, the coach was dismissive, saying, “Probably maybe [he could] go to a fantasy camp or something like that. ‘Downside’ would probably be, I think, kind.”
Similarly, though George yearns for a spot on the Cowboys’ roster – “If Tony Romo goes down,” he said, “who’s better out there to run the Dallas offense than somebody like me – someone who knows how to throw to veteran receivers and get the ball downfield and keep them happy?” – it’s clear that his love is destined to be unrequited.
“I would think it’s way past his time,” Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones said Thursday. “Being that he sat out all those years, plus he’s [over] 40, and he wasn’t exactly what everybody was looking for to start out with, I just don’t see it. I’d say his chances are slim and none. I know we wouldn’t be interested, but you never can tell with someone like Al Davis, so maybe the Raiders would bite.”
George understands that his reputation as a selfish, divisive presence with a penchant for pouting isn’t helping his quest, and there’s not a whole lot he can do about that now. It’s a subject I first explored nearly 12 years ago while reporting a Sports Illustrated feature that ran after George signed a five-year, $27-million contract with the Raiders. George had landed in Oakland after unhappy endings in his hometown of Indianapolis (the Colts traded up to draft him but shipped him off after four seasons) and Atlanta (where he infamously engaged in a sideline spat with coach June Jones that led to his being suspended and released).
Having done my share of due diligence over the years, I’ve concluded that while George might have displayed some immaturity and petulance at times (hey, I can relate), he’s far from the locker-room cancer he’s often portrayed to be. If there are a few players and coaches that feel that way, they are vastly outnumbered by a base of supporters as diverse as devout Christian Steve Wisniewski, the ex-Raiders guard, and polarizing Patriots wideout Randy Moss, one of George’s prime targets in Minnesota.
As for his relationship with Jones, who is now the SMU head coach? “June’s one of my best friends,” said George, who suggested the two of us speak. (Jones and I played phone-tag on Thursday.)
I asked George about the disastrous end to the 2000 season, when the Redskins fired Norv Turner and George – replacing Brad Johnson – started the final two games for interim coach Terry Robiskie. Stories soon circulated that George, a gifted play-caller by reputation, had been a rebellious saboteur who recklessly called audibles against his coach’s wishes.
“Everybody tries to use you as a scapegoat in an effort to save their jobs,” George said. “That’s the way it is. When Norv was in Washington, you weren’t even allowed to call audibles – that’s the way the offense was set up. So at the end of the year after Terry came in we were in Dallas and we were losing late in the fourth quarter and had a third-and-20. I said to [wideout] Irving Fryar in the huddle, ‘If you get one-on-one coverage I’ll put it up and we’ll try to get a first down.’ Sure enough, I saw man-to-man on the outside, and I threw it to Irving and it was incomplete. That was it. But people ran with it to try to save their butts.”
The next year George lasted only two games as new Redskins coach Marty Schottenheimer’s starter before being released, and despite subsequent signings by the Seahawks (as an emergency quarterback late in the ’02 season), Bears (as a backup for the second part of the ’04 season) and Raiders, he has yet to take another snap.
It’s not for lack of persistence. “I can honestly say that if it doesn’t work out for me, I have exhausted every avenue,” George said. “Guys like [ex-Broncos coach] Mike Shanahan, I used to wear him out. I’d bug him just about every week, and he was the nicest guy – he always returned my calls. But I wore him out.”
Photo George will likely always be remembered for his run-in with Jones, left.
(Curtis Compton/AP Photo)
When I saw George in Tampa the day before Super Bowl XLIII, he was excited about Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner’s surprising revival at 37 and hopeful that it could help persuade teams to take his comeback efforts seriously. “If your job is on the line,” George said, “wouldn’t you trust a guy who has been there over some 23-year-old, at least as your backup?”
George, who runs daily, said he is 20 pounds lighter than he was as a player (he was last listed at 218) and is about as fast – yes, it’s a relative term – as he was coming out of college. As for his incredibly gifted right arm, George insisted it’s nearly as potent as it ever was. “I can probably chuck it 78 yards,” he said, “compared to when I was coming out [of college] and could throw it 85.”
On Tuesday, an unseasonably warm day in Indy, George went to a local high school, where one of his receivers from back in the day at Warren Central High is now the head coach, and enlisted the services of some eager juniors and seniors from his buddy’s team. The eager targets laid out for balls in an effort to please their famous guest. It was, George agreed, a scene that conjured images of Warren Beatty’s Joe Pendleton, having inhabited the body of deceased multi-millionaire Leo Farnsworth, throwing to the hired help in the backyard of his mansion in “Heaven Can Wait.”
In the movie, of course, Pendleton winds up returning as ex-teammate Tom Jarrett and winning the NFL’s biggest game in dramatic fashion. George harbors similar fantasies, saying, “I know if someone just gives me a chance, I know I can realize my dream of taking a team to the Super Bowl.”
At the same time, he’s a realist – and a man who, at the very least, knows how to goof on his own image.
“Hey, the economy’s struggling,” George said, laughing. “If you threw me into a preseason game to see how I’d do, there are a lot of people who’d be curious, even if a lot of them were rooting for me to fail. I think it would generate some excitement.”
At this desperate stage – as George would say – you can’t get any better than that.
http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=ms-t...o&type=lgns
I'm sure if coach put you in, you woulda took state...
Came here to post exactly that.
Best arm the league ever saw.
