SUPER BOWL XXI : DENVER vs. NEW YORK : THE QUARTERBACKS : SIMMS : Giants’ 9-to-5 Passer Reaches Finest Hour in Spite of Interceptions, Boos, Benchings

They’re calling Phil Simms the blue-collar quarterback these days, and not just because he’s being tossed in against the one of the game’s eminent passers, John Elway, Sunday at the Rose Bowl. Simms really is a 9-to-5 kind of guy, so workmanlike he probably should be throwing for the Green Bay Packers or the Pittsburgh Steelers. He belongs on a union team, not the New York Giants.

Maybe all you need to know about Simms is that he hangs out with his linemen. Super Bowl quarterbacks should have handles like Broadway Joe and behave accordingly, spending their weeknights on the boulevard and enjoying the celebrity of their position. But Monday night, Simms and the perpetually bandaged tackle, Brad Benson, went to a war movie together. “That’s pretty typical of Phil,” says Benson, himself part of a unit so boring that even the coach disparages them as the “suburbanites.” “He’s really one of us.”

He’s not really, but the fact that he wants to be is weird. To be a “suburbanite,” never mind a lineman, is a pretty low-level aspiration. Check it out: “A suburbanite,” explains tackle Chris Godfrey, “is the kind of guy, their moms drive them to practice. Then on the way home, stop at the Dairy Queen.” This, then, is Phil Simms, honorary member of the suburbanites/Super Bowl quarterback.

“I’m not pretty or exciting,” agrees Simms, a Terry Bradshaw look-alike but with hair. “I’m not flashy like Elway. Just a lunch pail kind of guy. Elway, on the other hand, he’s an executive quarterback.”

Simms is evidently the kind of quarterback who’d use mass transit and maybe bowl a few lines after practice. He hangs out with linemen? You know what every New York lineman says of his quarterback? The highest possible compliment: “He lifts weights with us.” Three of them said that very thing Tuesday, their eyes lit with adoration. What a guy.

You can expect to read even more of this salt-of-the-earth angle, too. Probably, before the week is over, Simms will have acquired the published pizazz of Ralph Kramden. The other players get Gatorade on timeouts, Simms unscrews a thermos. Did we see that or do we just think we did?

Part of that is because he has been thrown in against John Elway. It helps, of course, that Elway is of Stanford, Simms of Morehead State. Further, Elway, the ultimate preppie, looks as if he might be dating Muffy, while Simms could very well be married to Alice. But the easy contrast of the two quarterbacks is all the more possible in that Elway is considered to have passed the Denver Broncos to the Super Bowl, while it is widely felt that Simms just handed his team off.

See, as Joe Morris can run a little bit (he has rushed for 1,516 yards, compared to the Broncos’ team total of 1,678), Simms is not always obliged to loft the ball 60 yards in a magnificent arc in the last seconds to win the game. In fact, the Giants are considered as much a running team as anything. Any quarterback who allows himself to become part of such a system is thus believed to punch a clock when he gets to the stadium.

Simms plays along. Told that he is not widely considered to be the key to the game, he shrugs and says: “I guess they figure Denver won’t win if Elway doesn’t play well and that it doesn’t matter what I do.” The thinking is, just about anybody can do this job.

This contrast between the two quarterbacks, and the underlying assumption that Simms is performing a complicated kind of menial labor, is somewhat blown out of proportion, though. Simms was not taken in the first round in 1979 because he astonished scouts with his ability to take a snap.

“Do you think a lot of people were in a hurry to go to Morehead, Ky.?” Giant General Manager George Young once asked, inquiring why 20 of 28 National Football League scouts went there. “Is that the crossroads of the universe?”

Simms can throw the ball. Has thrown it. Will throw it. For all the wonderful tap-dancing of Little Joe, the Giants have really come this far on Simms’ passing. New York fans have not always appreciated this, but more on that later. His colleagues have continued to recognize the fact; last year, he was the starting quarterback in the Pro Bowl. This year, his numbers have continued to improve. For you accountants: He completed 55% of his passes for 3,487 yards and 21 touchdowns. Interestingly, the aforementioned executive quarterback completed the same percentage of his passes for 2 less yards and 2 less touchdowns.

Occasionally Simms will suggest you take a look at these numbers. “I’m always going to get criticized,” Simms says. “I’ll always get that because I’m not pretty. But I think I’ve been effective.” He says maybe he has been just as effective as Elway, maybe more so, in the last three seasons. And in fact, Simms has posted higher yardage totals every season but last, when Elway threw for 52 more yards. Simms has thrown for as many or more touchdowns each of the last three seasons.

Simms is wary of these comparisons but does come close to bristling after he gets a persistent dose of them. “It all depends on what’s expected of a quarterback,” he says. “We have a great defense, so I’m not called on to force the ball. At the same time, when called upon, they expect this quarterback to make the big play.”

This quarterback does. Two such plays stand out in the Giants’ drive from perennial frustration to the Super Bowl. Trailing Minnesota, 20-19, the Giants are faced with a fourth and 17, a minute to go. Simms keeps the winning drive alive with a first-down pass to Bobby Johnson. The Giants win on a field goal. The next week, the Giants and Broncos are tied in the final two minutes. It’s third and 21 this time. Simms hits Phil McConkey. Field goal wins it.

In the final four-game stretch, Simms went from Choking Dog to Mr. Clutch. Against Washington, he completed three important third-down passes. Over those four games, it has been pointed out, Simms completed 62% of his passes for 1,111 yards and 6 touchdowns. Morris, on the other hand, rushed for just 242 yards in those four games.

Now, maybe it’s the fact that the two games appeared to have been pulled out of the fire by kicker Raul Allegre that obscures Simms’ passing. Or maybe it’s the fact that he labors in New York, a sinkhole for quarterbacks (Richard Todd, Fran Tarkenton, Norm Snead, Craig Morton). But Simms is only as good as his Super Bowl Sunday.

For all he’s done, nobody has heard more boos than Simms. He does tend to throw an interception (he tends to throw a lot, like one per touchdown pass), and New York fans have never overlooked it. There are reasons for those interceptions, but New York fans have not always been understanding. Harry Carson, who has been with Simms through some lean years, remembers the fans throwing eggs, golf balls and fruit during the introductions.

Only lately have the fans gotten behind Simms. Now, when the offense is introduced, Simms is not booed. In fact, the fans recently demonstrated their fickleness by giving Simms the biggest cheer of all the players. It does not obscure the memory of those boos, though.

“That’s a tough guy,” says nose guard Jim Burt, “to go through what he’s gone through. And the way he’s kept his confidence.”

Of course, this season wasn’t much of a test for Simms, considering what he has gone through in his career. This is a player who has twice been replaced as a starting quarterback by Scott Brunner, and not just by former Coach Ray Perkins but by his present admirer, Bill Parcells.

Simms knows what it’s like to be down. Simms, who has played every game in each of the last three seasons, has not always been so reliable. He missed the end of the 1980 season with a shoulder separation, the final five games of the next season with the same injury, 1982 with a knee injury. In 1983, he threw just 13 passes because of broken thumb.

The frustration, both his and New York’s, was nearly complete. When he hurt his little finger the next season, he says, “I was beside myself. If the s.o.b. was broke, I was going to quit.”

And the losing, it didn’t help. Did the experience of those lean seasons prepare him for this eventual satisfaction? “You don’t learn nothing from losing,” he says. “If anything, it makes you begin to doubt yourself. You become twice as hard on yourself, the self-doubt creeps in.”

But Simms stopped getting hurt, and New York stopped losing. Instead, he embarked on a three-year siege on New York passing records.

The interception ratio, 1-1, never went down, so the past three seasons have not been entirely euphoric. Yet, they seem to be an integral part of Simms’ style, and maybe even Parcells’. The coach took Simms aside before the 1984 season and explained that he wanted him to stand in the pocket and be aggressive, to dare to throw the ball. Said Simms: “He said, ‘If we want a five-yard gain, we’ll give it to Joe. I want you to throw and throw deep.’ ”

That proclivity accounts for some of those interceptions, and of course boos. But Simms doesn’t like to acknowledge a downed play. He can be seen completing the throw even as he is pulled down. Parcells probably doesn’t like that any more than the New York fans. Hey, Simms doesn’t like it.

“That’s a terrible feeling,” he says, articulating a quarterback’s worst moment. “You can’t see, but you have to make the throw. You get hit and you’re lying on the ground and you’re listening for the crowd.”

It takes a lot of confidence to continue when what you hear are boos. But Simms, evidently, is to be prized as much for his self-assurance as his arm. “For that stretch (early in the season), he had two rookie receivers,” Jim Burt explains. “He’s throwing in, they’re running out. People don’t see that. But he’s a class guy and he’s not going to point any fingers.”

This is another kind of toughness. Brad Benson is amazed at just how tough Simms is. “Maybe the toughest guy on the team,” he says. “I’ve seen him take some unbelievable hits, mentally and physically. He takes the pain standing up.”

Of course, lying on the ground, he has heard cheers, too. And that’s been worth the knocks to Simms. “The way we’ve finished,” he says, “has been most satisfying. We’ve won games the way a quarterback likes to, late in the game, with big plays. We’re down, 17-0, in San Francisco, we’re not looking to hand off. The Denver game, the Minnesota game. Once we made the big plays, it turned the team around. Learned that in tough situations, we could move the ball passing.”

In his own little circle, this is much appreciated. The “suburbanites” love him, but they always have. The fans are warming to him, assuming he throws fewer interceptions than touchdowns Sunday. And Simms is growing comfortable with life atop the world.

Example: When asked whether Elway, the executive quarterback, could have played at Morehead State, Simms smiles. “He could have followed me. I don’t think he could have played when I was there.” He is kidding. Sort of. Blue collar quarterbacks, not unlike Ralph Kramden, have dreams, too.