Full Circies and Quarterbacks

By Tom Callahan

Something between Joe Theismann and Jim Plunkett

Thirteen years ago, a couple of college quarterbacks from opposite sides of the country finished one-two in the voting for the Heisman trophy, and headed out in different directions. Both took winding trails, but somehow reached the Super Bowl. Along the way they encountered enough breaks of the game so that, between them now, they represent the total experience of the position. Soon they may make it all the way back to each other.

The Heisman winner was Jim Plunkett of San Jose, Calif, and Stanford, a blind news-vendor's son, quiet-spoken but strong-armed, as husky as a linebacker. In today's terms, he was not only John Elway, the top draft choice, but also Dan Marino, the rookie of the year. The Heisman runner-up or, the way he looked at it, the "loser," was Joe Theismann of South River, N.J., and Notre Dame, a mouthy wraith. He still says, "The classic line of the No. 2 guy is that it was enough just to be considered. That is garbage. I may have said the same thing, but deep down inside, I didn't want Jim to be successful, not then, not for a long time."

Theismann's want for himself was to star, not just play, for the Philadelphia Eagles, the team he most admired as a boy. But a chance meeting with Eagles General Manager Pete Retzlaff made that seem unpromising. "How tall are you?" Retzlaff asked. "Six foot," he replied. "You look 5-10. How much do you weigh?" "One-eighty." "You look 165." Never mind; plenty of other National Football League scouts were attentive. When Theismann was not drafted until the fourth round, he was staggered. Even then, the claimant was Miami, which already employed Bob Griese. Theismann went to Canada.

Like Elway in Denver, Plunkett was thrown instantly into the fire with the New England Patriots, but it was slow burning. "I'd have gone crazy if I didn't play right off," he says, "and it went well the first year. I quarterbacked with reckless abandon, ran a lot, scrambled around, threw on the run. But we just didn't get any better as a club. The second year was miserable. I had never been on a losing team in my life, or experienced such negativism all around me." In the dreary seasons following, Plunkett suffered a stream of injuries, but the chronic one was to his confidence.

For Theismann, who recalls thinking, "I'm not here to learn; I've learned," the first year in Toronto was a celebration: the Argonauts went to the Grey Cup. But the next season Theismann broke a leg, and the year after that, salary became a bitter issue. He liked the wild Canadian game, enjoyed fielding an occasional punt and kicking it right back for a rouge (one point). But money and celebrity are attractive to him. In 1974, Theismann came home to the U.S. to fall in behind Billy Kilmer and Sonny Jurgensen with the Washington Redskins.

His timing was poor. Training camps were struck and Theismann arrived to cross the picket line of the staunchest union members in the league. On a grizzled old team that kept its own counsel, here was a brash young quarterback who courted interviewers, probably the first third-stringer ever to put his name on a restaurant. "I was 24; Billy was 34; who knows how old Sonny was? And I was ostracized." During a game against the New York Giants, Theismann impulsively replaced an injured punt returner, and that violent work became his job and his credential. The veterans had to respect him then, but it was not until 1978 that he took his permanent position at quarterback.

That year, Plunkett was released by the San Francisco 49ers, who had fetched him home to the Bay Area two seasons earlier, a reclamation project partially sentimental. Plunkett describes the sensation as "carrying the weight of the world," and says, "I thought about quitting." Rather, he moved over to Oakland, and sat around behind Ken Stabler for two full years and Dan Pastorini for part of another. He says, "I asked to be traded at the start of the 1980 season," but did not get his wish. It was the year he was the Most Valuable Player in the Super Bowl.

"When a quarterback has been around," says Plunkett, "booed, cheered and benched, he can feel good. He has lasted. Because every lasting quarterback experiences all of that in some order." Plunkett was benched for a while again this season (in favor of Marc Wilson, who promptly broke his shoulder). One criticism of Plunkett is that he finds risky passes irresistible. "A long pass is a beautiful thing to watch," he agrees.

Last season, another one with a strike, Washington won a Super Bowl that took this year to confirm. "One reason championship teams usually slip," according to Plunkett, "is that the quarterback's tendencies have all been given away. Joe has put two almost perfect years back to back, the hardest thing imaginable." Behind Theismann's 60% completion rate for more than 3,500 yards, the Redskins are having a record scoring year. Earlier this season Washington made up 15 points in the fourth quarter to beat the Raiders, but each went on to earn favorable field position for the playoffs. "It was ironic last year," Theismann observes, "that we beat Miami in the Super Bowl, the team that drafted me. I wouldn't bet against the Dolphins again, but if we got in again, the Raiders would complete it for me. There's no one else who ever kept me from anything." That sounds a bit sharp, even for him. "I have to admit," he says, "deep down, during his hard times, I came to have a great respect for Plunkett." There would be a certain symmetry at that.

--By Tom Callahan This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.