A dear Marvin letter

Drops of draft wisdom without raining on a parade

An open letter to Marvin Lewis, head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals:

Dear Marvin:

Well, you wanted the big job and the big responsibility. Now you have both. You'll do well -- very well, I think -- in the Siberia of NFL franchises. The Bengals need you to lead them out of the wilderness, and you're off to a good start. Plus, you're a good man. The league is rooting for you.

But God help you with the first pick in the upcoming NFL draft. I bring up God because mortal man has not done such a good job drafting quarterbacks, and I believe the Almighty would do a better job than your Bengals have. Your new team has a nightmarish history (Jack Thompson, David Klingler, Akili Smith) of first-round quarterback selections. In fact, your team has done a better job with the second-rounders (Boomer Esiason) and third-rounders (Ken Anderson).

I realize, however, that you probably have to take a quarterback at No. 1 this year. There simply isn't a great player out there without warts. The more we hear about Michigan State wideout Charles Rogers, the more we wonder if he has a skeleton or two we don't know about. The best corner available, Terence Newman, has a dinged shoulder that my colleague Don Banks reports may be worrisome. Ace pass-rusher Terrell Suggs would be a bit of a reach because of his lack of size (he's 6-foot-3, 251 pounds) -- even before you consider his iffy speed.

So I sat down in the wee hours of this morning and analyzed the quarterbacks picked in the first round since 1990 to see what we could learn about your pending decision. Since 1990, 26 quarterbacks have been picked in the first round. Because it's too early to make any sort of judgment on the three chosen in 2002, I've eliminated them from this analysis. Of the 23 remaining, I set up a system to rate the quarterbacks. It's a three-tiered rating system. For fun, I'll call the tiers the Manning Division, named after Peyton, for the stars; the Couch Division, named after Tim,for the so-so quarterbacks; and the Druckenmiller Division, named after Jim, for the busts. To be considered a success, in my opinion, an NFL quarterback should win, but I've decided for the sake of this exercise against including winning percentage, because too many quarterbacks in recent drafts would not have had enough of a chance to turn bad teams into consistent winners yet. A Manning Division quarterback should have these minimum qualifications:

1. He should have started at least 70 percent of his team's games since being drafted or, in the case of a quarterback drafted within the past three years, should have at least one season in which he started at least three-quarters of his team's games.

2. He should have more touchdown passes than interceptions.

3. He should have a career quarterback rating of at least 77, which was about the NFL average last year.

I'm sure you would agree that one wouldn't have to be a great player to have achieved those qualifications. But that will at least eliminate the ones who don't belong in the discussion of franchise quarterbacks.

A Couch Division QB would have started at least half of his team's games, own a mediocre rating between 70 and 77, and not more than a minus-10 touchdowns-to-interceptions differential. The Druckenmillers would be the remainders. Unfortunately, there are too many of those, Marvin. I don't mean to scare you, but picking a quarterback means you enter the Twilight Zone of drafting, and no one will be there to hold your hand.

A breakdown of quarterbacks drafted in the first round since 1990, with the team that drafted them, the overall number they were picked and the year in parentheses:

THE MANNING DIVISION

1. Peyton Manning, Colts (1st pick, 1998). Exclude playoff failings for a moment. If you can start 100 percent of your team's games for five seasons, have an 85.8 rating and a plus-38 TDS/INT differential, you're a success by any measure.

2. Donovan McNabb, Eagles (2, 1999). Needs to increase his 79.3 rating, but he's a great run/pass quarterback on a very good team.

3. Steve McNair, Titans (3, 1995). Patience, patience. He'd never be plus-32 if Jeff Fisher didn't wean him into the lineup with as much care as he did.

4. Drew Bledsoe, Patriots (1, 1993). Barely makes the rating grade at 77.1, and his final three seasons in New England were shaky. But he redeemed himself with a new beginning last season in Buffalo.

5. Michael Vick, Falcons (1, 2001). Hard to judge yet, but you know the old saw about Vick staying healthy. He has to become more efficient throwing the ball, but that should get better with the addition of Peerless Price.

6. Chad Pennington, Jets (18, 2000). Marvin, this one's important. Pennington's 2002 season (including his 103.7 rating) showed how valuable it can be for a kid to sit for a couple of years. Moral of this story: Stick to your guns about playing Jon Kitna for the vast majority of 2003, and maybe beyond. It'll pay off in the long run.

7. Daunte Culpepper, Vikings (11, 1999). Along with his offense in the past two seasons, he has struggled more than the Vikings would like. But you can't knock his run-pass production and his potential and his zeal to learn and win.

8. Jeff George, Falcons (1, 1990). Well, no rating system's perfect.

THE COUCH DIVISION

9. Kerry Collins, Panthers (5, 1995). Surprised? He started fairly well and has been in the success range throughout the past three seasons, but the middle of his career was pretty awful. He's finally plus-one in TDS/INT.

10. Trent Dilfer, Buccaneers (6, 1994). His 71.2 career rating shows he'll probably never be able to fully erase his struggles with the Bucs.

11. Tim Couch, Browns (1, 1999). Think Carmen Policy would like to have this one back?

THE DRUCKENMILLER DIVISION

12. Rick Mirer, Seahawks (2, 1993). After some early success, he has been nothing more than a good backup. Not a very good investment (63.4 rating) for the second pick in the draft.

13. Tommy Maddox, Broncos (25, 1992). He's finally showing signs of competence. Good for him.

14. Dave Brown, Giants (supplemental draft, 1992). Swell guy, disappointing player.

That's it. Why rate Akili Smith versus Andre Ware? Who cares? The final nine (Ware, Todd Marinovich, Dan McGwire, Klingler, Heath Shuler, Druckenmiller, Ryan Leaf, Cade McNown and Smith, mercifully, will have to settle for a 15th-place tie.

Marvin, I have presented a pretty stark reality, which is this: A third of the quarterbacks drafted in the first round since 1990 have been good to very good. A third. A measly third. And that means you probably aren't sleeping very well right now. I imagine you have a bit of Carson Palmer/Byron Leftwich/Kyle Boller dilemma going on right now, though I'm sure Palmer is in the lead. In past years, the following men have been considered for the first pick in the draft: Rick Mirer, Akili Smith, Ryan Leaf.

Good luck. You're going to need it.

I would offer further advice, but all I can say now is let the kid percolate for a while and don't give in to the cries of the fans and columnists and talk-show folks to play him early. Dumb idea. It has only worked with players of Manning's caliber, and it has destroyed more than a few others.

Best wishes,
Peter King

On the Merritt Parkway last Wednesday, at 4:51 a.m., just outside Greenwich, Conn., a roadside sign blinked:

UCONN WOMEN
2003 NCAA BASKETBALL CHAMPS

The national championship was six hours old and the road crew already had that up. This state is a little bonkers for their Auriemmas.

Surprise! More mail about the Miguel Tejada foul ball. I'm going to let it go this week, but I will give you a chance to bash the living tar out of me before I do.

IT'S STILL INCREDIBLE THAT YOU DIDN'T GIVE THE KID THE FOUL BALL. From Carlos Sires of Coral Gables, Fla.: "First, the disclaimer. You are one of my favorite sportswriters and I read your online and magazine columns every week. It's ironic that I write you for the first time taking you to task on a non-football item -- your justification for having taken the ball and not giving it to a kid. There are a lot of questions I could ask, including why you were let into the restricted area, while the kid was not; and why you think the usher/guard had the authority to allow you to take team property. But the real question is not one of laws or regulations, but of doing the right thing. I read your initial column on this and, apparently like many of your readers, thought you did the wrong thing. The right thing would have been to give the kid the ball. You don't need it. You can get as many as you want, probably autographed to boot. The kid did nothing criminal, unless you are going to characterize as criminals the thousands of kids who through the decades have jumped fences to retrieve stolen property hit into restricted areas that only famous sportswriters can get into via the permission of a gate guard. I just wonder why, despite all the technicalities you can cite in your favor, you just did not have it in you to turn around and lob the kid the ball."

There's more.

YOU ARE A CLASSLESS, CLUELESS, SELFISH LOUT. From Chris Boyle of Los Angeles: "Despite your keen football insight, which we actually appreciate, you have never been more clueless than you are now. So let's see if we can get through to you this time. Seven-year-old boys who sneak through gates to get a foul ball at spring training aren't possessing stolen property. They're being 7-year-old boys at spring training. Middle-aged star football writers who make a point of telling everyone that they're star football writers are egotistical and self-indulgent. When a middle-aged star football writer, one who could quite easily call Miguel Tejada himself and get a signed ball, dupes a kid and then boasts about the greatness of it all, it plays rather poorly. The icing on the cake, though, is that not only do you feel the need to defend your actions (thus legitimizing our criticisms), but you do so by characterizing the kid as a delinquent. Utterly classless. When you cannot see how pushing your weight around at spring training might be a distasteful way to beat a 7-year-old, it's time for some self-assessment."

And ...

ONE MORE. From Greg of Dallas: "It's childish to justify your actions. You can almost be guaranteed that the classmates at this kid's school have taken the opportunity to inflict some type of juvenile abuse on him for not getting the right ball. You had no duty to give the kid the ball, but to act as if you had some legal right based on the guard's clearly discriminatory decision to permit a public figure rather than a kid onto the field shows, at the least, a lack of judgment. Of course, you could have originally told the story without including the kid and your supposedly correct determination of which was actually Tejada's ball. That would have been the best decision."

To Carlos and Chris and Greg, and to my editor's doorman in Manhattan, and to the hundred or so others who have written similar letters whacking me upside the head until I am unconscious, I would like to say thank you for reading and thank you for taking the time to write and thank you for being passionate. I know how you feel. I suppose this will paint me as more of an ogre than before, but my opinion of the incident has not changed. And so I am going to, with all due respect to you and the others, move on.

YOU GIVE THE BROWNS NO RESPECT. From Michael of Dover, Ohio: "I am sick and freakin' tired of the Browns getting no respect. In your Colts' synopsis last week you say it's a stretch to consider the Browns to be a playoff team, 'although they did make it.' Gee, thanks for the disclaimer. That's all right. Keep keyboarding away about the wannabes. We'll see if there is room on the Browns bandwagon for you around Week 12."

What I said about the Colts was that every one of their non-division road games will be against a team that will seriously contend for the playoffs, and I included the Browns, saying it might be a stretch this season, but they did make the postseason last year. When you've had the kind of offseason Cleveland has had -- and you, as a Browns diehard, must agree it has been a rough one -- I can't see how you work up the indignation you do about the Browns not being favored to make the playoffs this year. I could be wrong. My predictions usually are.

BOO-HOO. From Michael Garcia of Oceanside, Calif.: "I have held off complaining about the Cowboys' schedule this coming season because I didn't want to seem as if I was crying, but now that you have cemented my thoughts. What is up with the schedule? Did I miss something? I thought the two best teams should have the most difficult schedules. I understand that you can't do much about a weak division schedule. Does the league have it out for the 'Boys?

There has never been a rule that says the two best teams, whomever they might be, should have the most difficult schedules. The NFL has set the basic schedules for teams now through the rest of the decade. You play who you play. The reason the Cowboys' games are placed the way they are, at least in the first month, is in part because the league wants to take advantage of the Parcells factor. And putting his team up against the Jets and the Giants -- in the Meadowlands, early -- is pretty good for TV, though it might be pretty deadly for Dallas.

1. I think the Texans still will have to move up to No. 1 in the draft if they want to land the receiver of their dreams. But I'd be willing to bet they won't make that move now. It may be a moot point. The Lions, I hear reliably, will not be dissuaded from taking Charles Rogers, the Michigan State wide receiver, because of an ESPN report on Sunday that Rogers took a masking agent, apparently to cover up something in his urine that he didn't want detected at the scouting combine. Rogers visits the Lions today, and I hear they're still dead-solid on picking him with the second overall choice in the draft April 26. Then again, I bet the masking report sours Dom Capers on Rogers entirely.

2. I think I would like to take a personal moment here to thank my mother, Phyllis King, who died at the age of 79 last Wednesday, for being such a great mom and wonderful teacher and non-judgmental grandmother and constantly supportive person and selfless volunteer. Caring and egoless, too. For better or for worse, she's the reason I became a writer, and I'm lucky to have had the chance last week to have told her that. She set a great example that four children and eight grandchildren and the community of Enfield, Conn., will strive to emulate.

3. I think, even at 45, it feels so strange to be parentless.

4. I think the NFL will miss John Butler, the 56-year-old Chargers GM who died of cancer on Friday. I really liked Butler, even though we had a major falling-out late in his tenure in Buffalo. This is why I liked him so much: He was a big man in so many ways. We hadn't spoken for three years until the Friday before this year's Super Bowl in San Diego. I was at the Chargers facility, in their front offices, doing the media pool report while covering the Raiders, and I ran into Butler. He was angry with me because I had agreed to be a regular guest on the radio show of a former Bills coach, Chuck Dickerson, who often was brutally frank and critical of the Bills. Butler said a few things to me, and I'd said a few things back, and then we just didn't speak, which was tough, because he'd always been so forthcoming and helpful to me, just as he was with so many other people in my business. Our practice in recent years was just to pass each other at games or league functions without acknowledging the other. That's life. Anyway, on the Friday before the Super Bowl, I saw him in the hallway near his office and kept walking. He called out, "Hey, hold on there!'' And he walked up to me with a big grin and gave me a warm handshake and we chatted. He joked about his George Clooney hairdo (from the chemotherapy) and he said he was going to beat it. I would have admired him greatly as a person had that never happened, because sometimes people disagree, and it doesn't mean the guy's a jerk. It just means you disagree. But my admiration for him soared after that. And as a football man, he was good because he knew the value of playing for today, which he did with the Bills, and the value of playing for today and tomorrow, which he was doing with the Chargers.

5. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week:

a. I strongly urge anyone in Connecticut or even close to it to take a trip back in time to some real baseball in New Britain. The extended family took a day trip to see the Twins' Class AA team, the New Britain Rock Cats, lose to New Haven 5-2 in 12 innings on Sunday. Close-in seating, a warm afternoon, Rolling Rock on tap, superb fielding by the future Twins and Blue Jays, a chance to see the Toronto organization's well-traveled-but-still-top-prospect John-Ford Griffin, intelligent fans. Funny thing. Kids don't get restless about leaving the ballyard when it's Mascot Day. I especially enjoyed seeing the Connecticut Blood Bank's giant drop of blood mascot walking through the stands.

b. Montclair (N.J.) High School Softball Note of the Week: I can't believe that after 13 days of April the Mounties have played one game. Pretty tough for spring sports when it snows, sleets, rains and hails, all in seven days. Perhaps Montclair and lefty hurler Mary Beth King can shake off the cobwebs this afternoon in Nutley against the rival Raiders.

c. Coffeenerdness: After five days of drinking Dunkin' Donuts coffee, I have one piece of advice for the dunkinmeisters: Please, please, please brew a brand of French roast or something darker than the regular. The regular's too weak.

6. I think there has been lots of activity in the fantasy football market since CBS Sportsline.com's Jay Glazer and I began discussing a blockbuster in our media league at the league meetings. Based in part on the large number of e-mail responses you've sent, and in part because my running game was so dismal, I've decided to accept his offer of Jamal Lewis and David Boston in exchange for Marvin Harrison and James Stewart. I don't do this without your protests, however, including from a fellow named Shaq in Calgary, who asked if I was mad. "Would you trade Mary Beth for a backup left fielder?" asked Mike Basile of North Brunswick, N.J. And said Adam Sassone of Buffalo: "If you make this trade, I want to know exactly what you're on, and could you send me a case?'' And this from Ben Mahfood of Tyler, Texas: "Boston carries more baggage than my mother-in-law when she visits." But I also heard from John Doe of Baltimore, who said: "Make this trade, ASAP." And I got a "I would make the deal," from Randy Amen of Colorado. "Use any means necessary to make the deal," said Chris Rivera of Chicago. Well, I did. Let's hope Boston's good, or I'm an idiot.

7. I think the Dolphins have to get Junior Seau. It makes too much sense. I say it happens by Friday.

8. I think A.J. Smith will do a heck of a job in San Diego. Trivia answer, though I never asked the question: Smith is the man responsible for Doug Flutie's NFL comeback, you know.

9. I think the Tebucky Jones deal -- the Saints will send third- and seventh-round picks this year and a fourth- next year to New England for the franchised safety -- leaves the Patriots in an interesting position of power not only in this year's draft but next. I thought New England could get at least a second-round pick for Jones, but will instead settle for three lesser ones. Still, New England has five picks in the first 86 now, and 13 overall this year; it has six in the first four rounds next year. And whereas the Bengals, Eagles and Bears, respectively, got nothing for Takeo Spikes, Hugh Douglas or Rosevelt Colvin, the Patriots get three building blocks for the future, or three pieces of currency to trade to move into a rich top-10 spot of the draft.

10. I think Carson Palmer will look good in stripes.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL beat for the magazine and is a regular contributor to SI.com. Monday Morning Quarterback appears in this space every week. Click here to send him a comment.

 

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