Whither Kaepernick in the game of musical quarterbacks?

March 13, 2016

So I’m sitting in a sports bar in Tallahassee that has, according to my nephew James, 59,000 TVs, most of them tuned to college basketball, this being March madness. But a few are checking out the NFL Combine and the new prospects like Ohio State defensive star Joey Bosa, all glorious 6 foot, 6 inch, 276 pounds of him.

But there was no time to measure his defensive pulchritude as the networks quickly moved on to the game of musical quarterbacks. With Peyton Manning retired from the Denver Broncos, Brock Osweiler would’ve seemed to have had a lock on the job, but no, he bolted – a favorite verb of sportswriters – to the Texans. The Broncos then traded for Mark Sanchez, formerly of the New York Jets and Philadelphia Eagles, but no one thinks he’s a permanent first-string solution (except probably Mark Sanchez). ...

Can the Broncos stop Cam Newton, er, the Panthers?

January 25, 2016

A good defense stops a good offense like good pitching stops good hitting – or so running quarterback Quinn Novak wonders in my forthcoming novel, “The Penalty for Holding.”

Anyone who thinks that, he reasons, has never considered Alexander the Great taking it to the Persians in 331 B.C.

And indeed, while the Denver Broncos’ defense surely stopped Tom Brady and the New England Patriots in the American Football Conference Championship, that defense is going to be hard-pressed to stop the Carolina Panthers’ electrifying running game as encapsulated by their QB Cam Newton in Super Bowl 50 Feb. 7. ...

QBs vs. haters in digital duels

February 20, 2015

The latest tempest in a teapot comes courtesy of Washington Redskins’ quarterback Robert Griffin III and his San Francisco 49ers’ counterpart Colin Kaepernick, who recently took on critical fans via Instagram and Twitter respectively.

In RG’s case, he was jamming to Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” on Instagram when a fan called him out for not acting like a quarterback.

Colin meanwhile tweeted a litany of “recovery day” activities – 1,000 abs, arm workout, 10 minutes straight on the jump rope, a two-hour study session. To which fan Stephen Batten replied, “ab workout won’t help find open receiver.” Which in turn led to a verbal pummeling from Colin that ended with “get better at life.”

My first reaction was, Why bother? Why bother to respond? In a 35-year career as a journalist, I’ve been praised and vilified, even threatened. Rarely have I responded, preferring instead to follow the dictum of my favorite British prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli: “Never complain, never explain.”

And yet, I can understand. The fluidity and anonymity of the Internet are such that people respond with immediate, unfiltered vehemence. You’re punched, you counterpunch.

I think, however, this is about more than the culture of hatred bred by the web. It’s about our expectations of the quarterback, perhaps the most traditionally masculine occupation in the United States – expectations that weigh heavily on the gay, biracial quarterback at the heart of my upcoming novel “The Penalty for Holding.” ...

Stand and deliver

January 8, 2015

The big news for us Colin Kaepernick fans is that he’s spending the off-season in Phoenix, Ariz. – working on his quarterbacking skills with Kurt Warner, two-time NFL MVP and Super Bowl champ for the St. Louis Rams and Arizona Cardinals.

So it’s all good, right? Someone who’s talented wants to improve on that. We should be cheering him on, no?

No: Let the hating begin.

“Warner should teach him how to bag groceries” is among the milder thoughts in the blogosphere. The rap is that Colin is a running quarterback who will never be a traditional pocket passer. And that may – or may not – be true.

For the uninitiated, and I must confess that Yours Truly counts herself among them, a pocket passer, like the Broncos’ Peyton Manning or the Patriots’ Tom Brady, stands and delivers, that is he stands in the “pocket” – presumably protected by his great offensive line, or O-line – to throw the ball to various teammates whose locations on the field he quickly “reads” under great pressure.

Then there is the new breed of running quarterback – led by Colin, the Redskins’ Robert Griffin III (known as RG III) and the Panthers’ Cam Newton – all of whom have struggled this season. The exception is their contemporary, the Seahawks’ Russell Wilson, who, though a running quarterback, can deliver from the pocket and read the field. He is considered more of a hybrid like the Colts’ Andrew Luck, another contemporary, and the Packers’ Aaron Rodgers, an established superstar. The thinking is that though it’s fine to be able to scramble, you have to be able first and foremost to stand and deliver in the NFL, unlike in college ball.

All this is fascinating and serves as a great subtext in my novel “The Penalty for Holding,” about a gay, biracial quarterback’s search for acceptance in the NFL. My protagonist, Quinn Novak, is more of a hybrid like a Wilson, Rodgers or Luck – what former Niners’ star Steve Young, a great running quarterback who became a great pocket passer – would call a multi-threat.

RG III sacked

November 26, 2014

Big pre-Thanksgiving sports news: Robert Griffin III is out at quarterback for the Washington Redskins’ Nov. 30 game against the Indianapolis Colts and Colt McCoy is in.

Head coach Jay Gruden, who has publicly lambasted RG III, made the announcement Nov. 26, so this is not a surprise. But it is a shame. When he blazed across the draft in 2012 – in the same QB class as the Colts’ ascendant Andrew Luck – RG brought an excitement and promise to the beleaguered Redskins. Maureen Dowd even compared him to Mr. Darcy – perhaps the highest compliment from we women of a certain vintage. But now injuries and the sense among some of the team’s Powers That Be that RG has hit a wall have made the Baylor University star’s stock plummet.

I have to laugh – bitterly, but laugh nonetheless. When I was plotting my forthcoming novel “The Penalty for Holding” – the second in my series “The Games Men Play” – I wrestled with how psychologically acute it was to create a coach who has no confidence in the team’s quarterback, my main character. I guess I now have my answer. It turns out you can’t make this stuff up.

The NFL, Colin Kaepernick and the R-word

October 21, 2014

Well, thank God Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos beat Colin Kaepernick and the San Francisco 49ers on “Sunday Night Football,” with Manning breaking Brett Favre’s record for most touchdowns thrown (508). All’s right with the universe – the universe that sees Colin Kaepernick as such a threat, that is.

All last week we had to hear how Manning, legend, is an elite pocket passer who knows how to read the field when he throws to receivers while Kaepernick, overrated upstart, is a hybrid QB – part running back, part major league pitcher – who may be excitingly unpredictable and talented enough but no Manning.

That may very well be the case, but what grates is that the argument seems to extend beyond football to the realm of the personal where race and sexuality intersect.

Let’s stay with football for a moment, shall we? In three seasons thus far, Kaepernick has put up numbers comparable to the first three seasons of the Niners’ last great quarterback, Steve Young, who was also a running QB. Indeed, Kap was about the only one who kept his injury-riddled team on the field at all in the abysmal 43-17 loss to the Broncos. So he’s the real deal.

But he’s not the real deal in a traditional way. He’s a QB who’s a brilliant runner in a sport where “running quarterback” is code for “black” (Michael Vick, Russell Wilson, Robert Griffin III, Cam Newton) and “elite pocket passer” is code for “white” (both Mannings, Peyton and Eli, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, etc.) ...