BORGES: QB Battles Shaping Up in AFC West

Aug 05, 2007, 7:22:39 AM

By Ron Borges

George Allen would be proud of the way the AFC West quarterback races are shaping up this summer. Allen always insisted, “The future is now.’’ From Kansas City to Denver and from Oakland to San Diego that seems to be the case for the men who likely to be slipping under center this fall. Unless, of course, it is not.

Denver and San Diego have already turned the offensive controls over to young quarterbacks and there is no retreat from those decisions. The Broncos handed the ball to Jay Cutler with five games to go last season and now retired Jake Plummer struggling but still 7-4 at the time, while the Chargers made an even bolder move when they allowed Drew Brees to leave the previous off-season in favor of untested former No. 1 pick Philip Rivers. To that point, Rivers’ only claim to fame was that he had been the quarterback the Chargers got in the deal that sent Eli Manning to the New York Giants but one 14-2 season later and Rivers is flowing in San Diego. Now the Chiefs and Raiders are trying to decide if youth must be served as well now that the Broncos have also committed to making their future “now’’ in the person of Cutler.

For the Chiefs the issue is more complicated than for the lowly Raiders, who scored only 12 touchdowns last season during the most inept offensive performance in franchise history. After a year like that, Oakland can do what it wants and few will object. They can go with overall No. 1 pick JaMarcus Russell, once he ends his holdout and signs, or they can hand the ball to either newly added Daunte Culpepper or nearly as newly added Josh McCown because anything has to be an improvement over last year’s combination of young Andrew Walter (who is not the future) and departed Aaron Brooks (who turned out not to be the present).

Things are not so simple for Chiefs’ head coach Herman Edwards however. Kansas City reached the playoffs in Edwards’ first season in Kansas City with a late-season surge, winning its final two games and a wild-card entry into the post-season. Much of the credit for that has to go to 34-year-old career backup quarterback Damon Huard, who stepped in after 37-year-old Trent Green went down with a severe concussion and managed the Chiefs’ run-first offense so soundly they were still playing when the majority of the league’s teams had gone home.

Now Green is gone to Miami and the battle is between experience and youth, the latter represented by Brodie Croyle. A former third round pick out of Alabama, the second-year quarterback has never been portrayed as a sure thing by Edwards or anyone else but he represents, like many young quarterbacks, hope for the future, although Edwards has yet to determine if he is the Chiefs’ future or not.

What he has determined is it’s time to find out and that’s what hot summer days in River Falls, WI. will be about this year. As Edwards said last spring, before the battle between Huard and Croyle began in earnest, “I don’t know what he can do but I’m going to find out. I can’t keep waiting. He’s the guy we drafted. He’s the guy we thought would be a pretty good player so we’ve got to find some way to get the young guy the reps.

“The future is with the young guy. You’ve got to give people an opportunity. Someone’s got to give you a chance. Maybe it’s not going to work out. He might do well. He might not. We’re going to find out.’’

That process has begun in the early days of training camp and will continue through the pre-season knowing that Huard has long ago proven he can operate an offense efficiently. Huard went 5-3 as a starter a year ago and had an 11-to-1 touchdown to interception ratio, which means he does what the defensive-minded Edwards insists upon most from his offense – which is to not get his defense into trouble by turning the ball over. Can the same be said of Brodie Croyle? That’s what August will be all about because Croyle has thrown only seven passes in the NFL, two of which were intercepted.

Edwards will make his decision as soon as possible but not a day before he believes he has enough information because he is confident he has a reliable veteran presence to lean on if Croyle proves to be in need of more seasoning. That being the case, to a degree at least, Edwards can take his time, watch carefully and see how things unfold.

The situation is far different in Oakland. There the Raiders know who the future is. It’s former LSU quarterback JaMarcus Russell because if it isn’t they have no future. But the present is a muddled mess with Russell falling farther behind every day he holds out while Culpepper is trying to rehabilitate both his surgically repaired knee and his battered reputation after falling off in Minnesota and failing so completely in Miami last year that the Dolphins ultimately let him walk out the door. Or rather limp out the door.

The strong-armed Waters remains, as does McCown, who was 10-12 as a starter in Arizona before going to Detroit last year and being unable to win even one snap away from journeyman Jon Kitna on a team that went 3-13. With Walter 2-6 as a starter last season in Oakland in relief of Brooks, the future is not looking “now’’ but Kiffin has little to lose but games no matter who he selects, which makes his position far more comfortable than Edwards’ for the latter must balance the assessment of the future with the needs of the moment for a team that views itself as a playoff contender in the highly competitive AFC West.

While the Chargers seem set at quarterback after Rivers made the Pro Bowl last season in his first year as a starter by completing 61.7 per cent of his throws and leading the highest scoring offense in the league, Broncos’ head coach Mike Shanahan has done what Edwards has yet to commit to – casting his team’s lot with youth as well.

Jay Cutler took over last season when Plummer was benched after 11 games and struggled initially before becoming only the second rookie and fifth player in NFL history to throw multiple touchdowns in each of his first four starts. Although Denver finished 2-3 under Cutler and missed the playoffs, Shanahan is in love with his young quarterback’s shotgun arm, which reminds him of John Elway, as well as his reputed leadership qualities, which were clearly on display during his years at Vanderbilt before Denver traded up to make Cutler the 11th player taken in the 2006 NFL draft.

Cutler will surely have a better running game to work with this season with the addition of Travis Henry, whose rushing style is perfectly suited to the Broncos’ zone blocking, one-cut and go scheme. The fact he’s so clearly The Anointed One won’t hurt either for his teammates know there’s no Plummer, or much of anyone else, to fallback on if Cutler wavers. For what it’s worth, he has the endorsement of the guy every Bronco quarterback is judged by.

“I think Jay’s the guy,’’ Elway said. “I think Jay’s got a chance to do it.’’

Certainly he’s being given that chance by Mike Shanahan. The kind of chance Philip Rivers was handed a year ago in San Diego and it couldn’t have worked out much better for him, at least until the playoffs began.

Now Herman Edwards, and to a lesser extent Lane Kiffin, face the same question this summer. Do they stay rooted in the past or reach for the future? In Oakland, JaMarcus Russell may not arrive soon enough to have a say in that but in Kansas City, Brodie Croyle is getting the chance to determine that for himself. In the end, Herman Edwards will select who his quarterback will be this fall but Brodie Croyle will decide it by the way he plays.

Ron Borges retired from the Boston Globe after covering the NFL for the past 30 years. He was the paper’s national football columnist and boxing writer. He writes for Pro Football Weekly and serves as one of the voters for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He is currently working on a book about the NFL’s first black coach, Art Shell.

| 2007 Training Camp | More news… | Roster
Chiefs.TV RSS | Subscribe to Chiefs.TV in iTunes