Happily never after
MILWAUKEE — So Peyton Manning becomes an obsession for another team and another town, and the Jets can be grateful they didn’t stumble down the same path they did four years ago. Then it was Brett Favre. This time it was Manning. Just wait until 2020, when Aaron Rodgers is looking for a new team.
Here’s one thing to ponder as we watch the shrinking gaggle of teams battle each other for to be Peyton’s new place: Theere have been 46 Super Bowls since the Chiefs and the Packers met in Los Angeles in January of 1967. There have been 30 different men who have quarterbacked those 46 champions (31, if you count Earl Morrall subbing for an injured Johnny Unitas in Super Bowl V).
Would you like to take a guess how many of those 31 quarterbacks won that big game after having previously won a championship for someone else? Let’s not even make it that hard a question: How many of those quarterbacks won a Super Bowl after having any kind of representative career for someone else?
The answer to both is the same: zero.
The closest outliers are Jim Plunkett, who was a ballyhooed (though hardly winning) player with the Patriots before flaming out with the 49ers and finally finding redemption — twice — with the Raiders; and Doug Williams, who had a rip-roaring hot-andcold run with the Buccaneers in the late ’70s and early ’80s before hooking up with Joe Gibbs and leading the Redskins to a strike-shortened title in 1987.
You know who isn’t on that list? Favre, who bombed with the Jets and fell a game shy of the big game with the Vikings. There’s no Unitas, whose cameo with the Chargers was a fiasco. No Joe Namath, whose cup of coffee with the Rams was worse. No Jim Mcmahon, who never came close to making it back to the Bowl after he left Chicago. Kurt Warner almost did, until Santonio Holmes (who ruins everything) made like a Flying Wallenda in the end zone in Tampa a few years back.
Joe Montana didn’t, either. Back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, the Chiefs of Carl Peterson and Marty Schottenheimer kept knocking on the door thanks in large part to a terrific defense and a devoted running game. And in 1993, the Chiefs decided to go for broke, importing both Marcus Allen from the Raiders and Montana — a diminished, frail, banged-up Montana — from the 49ers.
“Do you remember who Joe replaced for us that year?” one prominent member of those Chiefs teams asked recently. “Don’t look it up: Dave Krieg. Nice quarterback. But, yeah, you go and get Joe Montana to replace Dave Krieg. And his first year, what does Joe do? He leads us to the AFC Championship game against Buffalo.” He paused here for a beat. “You know, just like Mark Sanchez did for the Jets in his first year.” He laughed. “OK, look, kidding aside, it was great having Joe with us those two years. But here’s what you have to look forward to: Every time he’s sacked, you hold your breath,” the source said. “Every time. Every time he’s flushed out of the pocket, you’re praying he doesn’t pop a groin or a hamstring. Every time. Is it worth it? If he wins you a Super Bowl, sure it is. But that’s a big if.”
History says it’s an allbut impossible if. And if the Jets have taught us anything about history, it’s that they usually aren’t the ones who reverse it for the better. Better that they sat this one out. Caveat emptor to whoever prevails.