Through courage and fortune, Jay Cutler is not likely to become a statistic.
The Broncos quarterback is expected to take the first snap today against the Kansas City Chiefs and when he does, he will not become the NFL’s 17th starting quarterback to not start a game this season.
A few of these opening-day chuckers, like Rex Grossman, Charlie Frye and Joey Harrington, were demoted by ineffective performance. Injuries at least partially caused the other changes at football’s most important position.
All these quarterback injuries deepen the astonishment of Brett Favre’s consecutive game streak. It’s at 245 in a row, 265 including playoffs. Every game since Week 4 of the 1992 season.
“If you watch him, he never really takes a big hit,” former Broncos quarterback John Elway said recently. “When the rush is coming, you’ll never see him really plant both feet and throw. That’s where you’ll see him throw off his back foot, which he can do because he has the arm strength. He does a good job of recognizing that one pass is not going to make or break your season.”
Favre may have mastered the art of staying alive for the next play, but it’s become a mystery to the NFL. The league’s protective policies all but drape don’t-touch sashes across the star passers, yet quarterbacks miss more work than an $8-and-hour clerk with allergies.
“You can’t hardly touch the quarterback anymore when he’s in the pocket,” said Kansas City coach Herm Edwards. “Guys are nervous about hitting him. But all the sudden he goes outside the pocket. And he’s running and gets himself in a bad way. Injuries happen. That hurts you in this league.”
Edwards lost so many starting quarterbacks in his two previous seasons as coach, he finally surrendered to the plague by making career-long backup Damon Huard his starter. It got so bad for Edwards and offensive coordinator Mike Heimerdinger when they were with the New York Jets in 2005, they were forced to play Kliff Kingsbury in a game against the Broncos.
Kingsbury made his only NFL completion after he was cut from the Broncos’ practice squad earlier that year, and after four other Jets quarterbacks – Chad Pennington, Vinny Testaverde, Jay Fiedler and Brooks Bollinger – were knocked out with injuries.
Scarred by the experience, Edwards escaped to Kansas City, and Heimerdinger found a new gig in Denver, where he nearly faced an even scarier predicament last week in Detroit. It wasn’t so much watching Cutler get carted off the field with a badly bruised leg that terrified Heimerdinger and coach Mike Shanahan. It was watching Cutler’s replacement, Patrick Ramsey, take a 340-
pound, full-steam-ahead blast from Lions defensive lineman Shaun Rogers.
Seconds later came perhaps the most preposterous sight in the Broncos’ season: long snapper Mike Leach practicing his three-step drops and throwing overhand spirals on the sideline.
“We’ll definitely have 10 people on the line of scrimmage if he goes in,” Shanahan said.
Which is not a bad idea given the occupational hazards of the position. Why are so many quarterbacks going down when the NFL keeps instituting new safeguards to protect them?
“Defensive players are bigger, stronger, faster,” Shanahan said.
“Defenses are confusing offenses more and it’s tough,” Cutler said. “I mean, if you can make it through a 16-game season as a quarterback – I mean any position – it’s a hard thing to do. You’ve got to be in great shape and you’ve got to get a little lucky from time to time. I’m going to try.”
The odds wouldn’t have been all bad had the Broncos been forced to start Ramsey today instead of Cutler. Backup quarterbacks are a collective 8-9 in their first starts this season. (Carolina has started two backups, David Carr and Testaverde.) That’s better than the 3-5 mark the Broncos are taking into their game against the Chiefs and starting backup quarterback Huard.
