Many of us come to a point in our lives where we are forced to confront what we try to keep buried deep inside. For me, it was the fall of 1987 and the quarterback controversy between Jay Schroeder and Doug Williams.
First some background. Schroeder took over as Redskins quarterback in most dramatic fashion. Joe Theismann's career ended on November 18, 1985 when a flea-flicker went horribly awry and Theismann's leg was broken while being sacked by Lawrence Taylor. It was a Monday night game and I was watching it in my dorm room with my best friend. As Theismann was wheeled off the field I figured we were fucked. Our back up was a second stringer from UCLA who had dabbled in baseball until settling on football. He had done a little mop up duty in the first game but that was it.
All that changed in Schroeder's second play when he hit Art Monk for a 44 yard gain, the exact kind of play that Theismann just wasn't able to pull off anymore. Schroeder led the Skins to an emotionally charged win that night and the team finished the season strong. The next season, the starting position his, Schroeder delivered a 12-4 season and a playoff run that ended in on a dark and bitter cold night at the Meadowlands where Taylor & Co. knocked him silly for four quarters.
Still, the future seemed bright and I was a huge Schroeder fan. He had a cannon for an arm. He was great at the fourth quarter comeback. The next season though he went down early in the first game and Doug Williams, the former Tampa Bay QB came in and led the Skins to a victory against the Eagles. The next week Williams played well but the Skins lost by a point due to an inept special team. After that the NFL went on strike and by the time the strike ended Schroeder was healthy and resumed the starting QB position.
But Schroeder was erratic when he returned. He struggled against the Jets, was great against the Bills and then awful against the Eagles. A week later when he was again performing poorly against the Lions Coach Gibbs had seen enough and pulled him. Williams came in and led the team to victory. The next week Williams again started, played well against the Rams and only two rare end zone drops by Art Monk cost him the win. In the week that followed, Williams back was hurt and Schroeder got the call against the hated Giants on a rainy Sunday at RFK. The Skins were trailing 16-0 and 19-3 when Schroeder caught fire and threw three second half TDs (how do I remember this stuff?) and the Skins won 23-19.
Williams was healthy enough to start the next game but Gibbs said he was going with the hot hand and stuck with Schroeder. Williams was devastated and much of Washington was divided over the decision. Washington Post columnist Juan Williams wrote that Williams was "getting jobbed" and raised the race issue. He pointed out that statistically Williams had clearly out-performed Schroeder even if the Skins had lost the two games Williams had started.
I wanted to Schroeder to keep his job. And I was afraid to admit to myself the reason why I felt that way. It had to be because the younger Schroeder had the brighter future vs. the journeyman Williams. Sure Jay had been a little shaky this season, but when the Skins needed a big win he delivered. That had to be my reasoning for supporting number 10 vs. number 17. After all, I was born in Detroit, lived in black neighborhoods for much of my life and was a product of the D.C. public school systems. The cliche "some of my best friends are black" was true in my case. Race couldn't have anything to do with it.
Or did it? After all, as a kid I spent endless afternoons pretending to be the QB of the Redskins and this QB sure didn't look like me. How could I pretend to be him?
Schroeder held on to his job and the controversy faded as he lead the the Skins to three wins in their next five games and they clinched a playoff berth. Heading into the last game at Minnesota though the Skins needed a win to keep their faint hopes of being able to host a playoff game alive.
Once again Schroeder was off. He threw two picks and was flat in a crucial game. It was at that moment I realized I no longer cared what the quarterback of the Redskins looked like as long as he could win and when Gibbs made the move to Williams again I cheered. I knew it was time to let go. Doug led the team to victory and then engineered the big upset in Chicago which led to the rematch with the Vikings at RFK in the NFC championship game.
Williams struggled mightily in that game but not once did I scream at the TV for Schroeder to replace him. I did scream at Williams to get his shit together and eventually he delivered, hitting Gary Clark with a bullet to put the Skins ahead in the fourth quarter and Darrell Green sealed the victory with his hit on Darin Nelson at the goal line.
In the Super Bowl, the Skins struggled early and Williams went out briefly with a twisted knee. Schroeder came in sacked and threw an incomplete pass and the Skins punted. The next time the Skins got the ball back Williams was back and on first down he hit Ricky Sanders with an 80 yard bomb and the blowout was on. It was appropriate that once again Williams shined best when he replaced Schroeder.
Schroeder was gone by next season and Williams never quite recaptured the magic of that fall but it didn't matter. He had left an indelible mark on the Redskins, the NFL and my own concept of what a quarterback is supposed to be.
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7 comments:
Last time the Skins were in the Super Bowl (1992), I drove down and dropped a friend at a Potomac mini-manse. Whole smorgasbords of pasta, meats, dips, mini-franks etc.
I told them I was going to the Hoogs. They thought I was nuts, but watching the game in Hoog's basement was our thing, and shrimp and cocktail sauce didn't compare.
ttishibov
tWhile listening to you talk about Schroeder and Williams I could not help but think about Obama and McCain. Wondering how the country will pick its next QB. This election is not just about who's the better man, but can we get past predudice in deciding who the better man is. Any white man who says he's not somehow influenced by race is asleep at the switch. Clearly, that's true of our black brothers too. Our current governor graduated from law school just a year behind me. I'm rootin' for him notwithstanding all the other stuff. Positive connections help, even essentially meaningless ones. Hope we make the right choice this Nov. for all the right reasons.
Howard
I guess Rambler was wearing a Skins jersey with "Marshall" on the back. As in George Preston Marshall.
I advocated Williams as starter from Day 1. Race was irrelevant. I knew he was better. No disrespect intended, but Schroeder's later stint with the Raiders proved me correct.
I was happy for Doug and overjoyed at a second Super Bowl ring for DC. If it helped erase some of the stigma of GPM's bigotry, fine. If it made the last 10 or so guys who truly believed a black man could not play QB think, all the better.
But the comparison to Obama-McCain seems more than a bit inane. Except that the majority wanted Williams just as the majority now want Obama. Is that racism?
Where's Ricky Sanders?
Ricky Sanders was catching TDs and burning Denver's pathetic excuse for a secondary.
One forgotten irony of that game was that Schroeder, in his brief relief of Williams, threw a perfectly good pass to Kelvin Bryant. Hit him right between the numbers and Bryant inexplicably dropped it. Would have been a 1st and then some.
The Ricky Sanders thing was a reference to what Reagan said when the Skins made their obligatory visit after the pasting.
Yes, Bryant dropped that pass and it was probably a good thing.
Yes, I know what you meant Mr Rambler. I am not a humorless man.
Funny that these cloaked feelings of racial brutality for ole Doug Williams never surfaced when it came to Sanders, Clark or Monk. Or Walker, Dean, Marshall, Coleman, Kaufman, Harvey, Smith, Green, Manley (cut me one fella), Mann, etc, etc.
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