Testaverde Answers the Jets’ Casting Call

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This is the script for a B-movie, right? A promising young blond quarterback signed to a multiyear contract goes down with a rotator cuff injury, the team’s season is in doubt, the coach’s job is in jeopardy. The second-string quarterback goes down in the same game – now where would you see that except in Hollywood? – and who do they have to step in now? A former college stud who, in two years of pro football, has never appeared in an NFL game – well, third-stringer Brooks Bollinger has appeared in one NFL game, but in the script, of course, it would be none – and a seemingly washed-up 41-year-old superstar-whonever-quite-was.


What producer could possibly greenlight a script that corny? And who could play the 41-year old quarterback? Is Dennis Quaid too old?


The truth is that despite the years of taking cheap shots from linebackers and talk show callers, Vinny Testaverde has never been all that bad and at times has even approached greatness. In his 18 years in the NFL, he had some good seasons, a couple of sensational ones, and was almost always better than the teams he played for. And that’s the level of performance that the Jets and Herman Edwards desperately need, because you just know that Brooks Bollinger isn’t likely to carry the load for the Jets through the third quarter of this Sunday’s game against the Baltimore Ravens, much less the rest of the season.


In truth, the Jets, though they won’t admit it, would probably be overjoyed if they knew right now that Testaverde could equal the numbers he put up last year for the Dallas Cowboys: 3,532 yards, 17 touchdowns, and a very respectable 7.1 yards per pass.(Chad Pennington’s yards per throw, in case you’re wondering, was 6.3 in three games this year.) Of course, Vinny threw 20 interceptions with the Cowboys, but most of them came in the second half of games in which he was almost always coming from behind.


The Jets would like to believe that’s not going to happen, that whoever plays quarterback will not be forced to play catch-up all season, and that their defense will get it together. That could happen. The Jets have given up 60 points in three games so far, and a couple of those touchdowns, such as the cheap score off the fumbled punt in last Sunday’s loss to Jacksonville, came as the result of bad special teams play.


But from this point forward, the Jets’ defense will not merely have to do its part, it will have to become much better and do some of the offense’s part as well, which means forcing turnovers and giving the offense the ball in good field position where Vinny won’t always be passing on third and long in the shadow of his own goal posts. Only in Bmovies do quarterbacks consistently complete passes under those conditions. (And Chad Pennington couldn’t, which is why he is now about to go under Dr. James Andrews’s knife in Birmingham, Ala.)


If the defense comes through, Vinny could inspire and rally the team. And wouldn’t that put a B-movie capper on his strange career? Though he has thrown 268 touchdown passes in his career (against 255 interceptions) and has accumulated 44,475 passing yards while running for 1,643, Testaverde has never shed the image of being an underachiever. This isn’t quite fair, but it’s the kind of albatross that hangs around your neck when you’re the losing quarterback in the most publicized bowl upset of the 1980s.


In 1987, the Miami Hurricanes, led by Testaverde – the B-movie star handsome, Heisman Trophy-winning, Brooklyn-born Italian kid – played a national championship game with what was supposed to be an overmatched Penn State team in the Fiesta Bowl. The Nittany Lions were punchless on offense, but their defense intercepted Testaverde five times, three times inside Penn State’s 15-yard line, to key a 14-10 victory and steal the national title.


It was far from all Vinny’s fault, but when you get the credit (and the trophy) for the wins, you have to take the blame for the losses. And Testaverde did, and still does whenever famous college upsets are talked about. Through six years with a mediocre-to-bad Tampa Bay Bucs team and 12 up-and-down seasons with four other teams – including these Jets from 1998-2003 – he has never brought his team to the one game that might have redeemed that college loss: the Super Bowl.


He has had two really great seasons: 1996, maybe his best, when he passed for a career high 4,177 yards and threw 33 touchdown passes for a lousy (4-12) Baltimore Ravens team, and 1998, when he threw 29 touchdowns against just seven interceptions for the Bill Parcells-coached Jets team that got within one game of the Super Bowl.


Since then, it’s been all rapidly aging legs, bad blocking, injuries, and frustration. Now, in true B-movie fashion, he’ll get one more shot – or at least he will as soon as Herman Edwards gets a snoot full of Bollinger, who would probably trade his pro future just to have Testaverde’s college past.


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