RARE PAIR : Moon, Cunningham Only Two Blacks Starting at QB in NFL

When Randall Cunningham was in high school, he basked in the career of his brother Sam, a star running back with the New England Patriots of the NFL.

“I used to sit and watch him and say, ‘You’re my big brother, yeah,”’ Cunningham recalled. “I felt great. Now he’s retired and sitting back and saying, ‘That’s my little brother.”’

The “little brother” enters the Philadelphia Eagles training camp as the team’s starting quarterback and, barring injury, he will lead the team on the field when the Eagles open their 1987 season at Washington on Sept. 13.

Cunningham, 24, will be one of the youngest starting quarterbacks in the league. He and Warren Moon of the Houston Oilers are the only starting black quarterbacks in the NFL, which has no black head coaches and few blacks in management positions among its 28 teams.

“He’s a great young talent,” Philadelphia Coach Buddy Ryan said of Cunningham, who had starred at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and was the first quarterback picked in the 1985 NFL draft. “I’ve said this to everybody. I think he’s ahead of (Denver quarterback John) Elway’s performance after Elway’s second year.”

The statistics don’t back up Ryan’s boast. Elway, the No. 1 player in the 1983 NFL draft, started 24 games in his first two seasons, throwing for 4,261 yards and 25 touchdowns. Cunningham, meanwhile, managed only nine starts with 1,939 yards passing and 16 TDs in his first two years.

Nevertheless, Ryan showed his confidence in Cunningham by releasing veteran Ron Jaworski after last season, leaving career second-stringer Matt Cavanaugh as the only experienced quarterback behind Cunningham.

“When we let Jaworski go, he (Cunningham) really grew as a leader and took over the team,” Ryan said. “That’s why I call him ‘the boss.’ He’s the boss of the offense.”

The issue of black representation, as quarterback, coach or club official, is not one Cunningham wants to address.

“I don’t have any comment on that,” he said. “I don’t like talking about that.”

But Moon, who played in the Canadian Football League for several seasons before signing with the Oilers as a free agent in 1984, is not so shy.

He lashed out recently when Texas A&M; quarterback Kevin Murray, who is black, was not selected in the NFL draft.

“I think it’s a slap in the face to all black quarterbacks,” Moon said. “Here’s a guy who’s not the stereotypical black quarterback. He didn’t come out of a school that ran the veer. He didn’t run much but he threw a lot.

“Murray holds Southwest Conference records. He took his team to the Cotton Bowl the last two years. He came back from a major injury. He deserved the right to be drafted. I’m not really sure what being black has to do with it. It’s just the stigma. You look at his numbers, his winning, his athletic ability. It’s probably just as good as some of the guys who went early.”

General managers and coaches have blamed the scarcity of black quarterbacks on their lack of familiarity with the pro passing game and Ryan is no exception.

“In college, they run the wishbone,” he said. “It’s a completely different thing. That’s the reason Randall didn’t go to USC. He wanted to go to a place where they threw the football.

“One of the toughest quarterbacks I’ve ever faced was that kid in Tampa,” he said, referring to Doug Williams, now a backup with the Washington Redskins. “He was tough. People who believe that crap, that they’re too dumb to play quarterback, then they also believe that they’re faster and all that junk. It’s just not true.”

Cunningham’s brother Sam was a star fullback at USC and Randall wanted few things more than to follow in his brother’s footsteps.

“But I didn’t want to go to USC and pitch the ball to the halfback,” he said. “I really wanted to go to USC and follow my brother but at UNLV, back then, the quarterback called his own plays and they ran a pro-style offense.

“I was prepared for the basics,” Cunningham said of his experience at UNLV. “I wasn’t prepared for all these double coverages. The NFL is totally different from college. In the preseason, you’re playing against college ballplayers. When you get to the regular season, it’s Lawrence Taylor, it’s Mike Quick, it’s Phil Simms. It’s the real ballplayers you have to beat, the best.”

Moon, meanwhile, said he has his doubts that black quarterbacks are in control of their fate.

“I don’t think many teams want a black quarterback who’s a backup unless you’re a seasoned vet like James Harris who was near the end of his career or like Doug Williams is now,” Moon said. “They don’t want to groom a black quarterback. They want us to play right away.

“Most guys look at a backup as a real intelligent guy who can step right in. He might not be the great athlete, but he’s highly intelligent and maybe not as great an athlete as the starter. They don’t look at us that way.”

Naturally, team officials deny that is the case.

Philadelphia Eagles General Manager Harry Gamble formerly coached at the University of Pennsylvania and he said race has never played a part in any of his personnel decisions.

“It might have been a factor (in other places) but I can’t speak for other people,” he said. “For me, it was not a consideration. I feel if a guy can play that position, you want the best man that can do the job.”

The Eagles hope they have found the best.

Cunningham said he can hardly wait for the season to begin so he can find out.

“There’s a lot of curiosity built up inside me,” he said. “Can I do it? People are behind me. I love it and I appreciate it and I’m not going to let them down.”

Controversial remarks by former Los Angeles Dodgers executive Al Campanis have made an issue of the lack of minority representation in baseball management and led undeclared presidential candidate Jesse Jackson to demand all teams take affirmative action.

Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth has agreed with Jackson that his sport has a problem, ordered all teams to develop affirmative-action plans and hired a Washington firm to monitor the teams’ performance.

Jackson has indicated that he will soon turn his attention to football, which experienced similar scrutiny seven years ago when the National Football League Players’ Association commissioned a study that determined race was a key reason that blacks had not been hired to coaching positions in the league.

Jomills Braddock, principal research scientist with the Center for Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, examined the NFL’s hiring practices from 1960 to 1979.

His study showed that of 161 assistant coaches and 68 head coaches hired during that period, only 20 were black and they were all assistant coaches. The NFL has not had a black head coach in its history.

“I tried to see if race, in and of itself, above objective qualifications like educational qualifications, leadership potential and professional accomplishments, was a deciding factor,” Braddock said. “I found that race was a significant factor affecting players’ chances of becoming an assistant and head coach.”

Braddock said he used a statistical formula to determine the number of blacks that could have expected to be named an assistant or head coach during the 20-year period, based on the number of black players in the league and assuming similar qualifications.

“If the qualifications worked the same way for black former players as for white former players, what percentage of blacks would hold coaching positions?” Braddock asked.

The formula showed that 92 blacks should have been hired as assistant coaches, compared to the 20 that were hired, and 10 should have been head coaches.

“In 1979, prior to my study, Commissioner Pete Rozelle made public statements that he had urged the owners to hire qualified blacks,” Braddock said. “It’s a little ironic that during that period of time and seven years since then, the NFL still hasn’t found what they deem to be qualified blacks.”

The league, naturally, disagrees.

“An NFL club will have a black head coach when an owner feels that black individual can help his team win,” said Joe Browne, the NFL’s director of communications. “I really think it’s as simple as that.”

Browne said 40 of the current 285 assistant coaches and 11 of 107 game officials are black. In addition, all five former players who are starting their coaching careers this season are black.

In addition, the league has taken steps to make teams aware of qualified black applicants in an attempt to increase minority representation in management positions, Browne said.

“We think progress has been made in the NFL but that our job is still unfinished,” he concluded.

Cunningham, who was the Eagles’ second-round draft choice out of Nevada Las Vegas in 1985 and the first quarterback taken overall that year, does seem to be more serious about his business than he was during his first two seasons in the league.

“The main point I’ve been stressing to myself is to work harder,” he said. “I’ve always worked 100 percent. I don’t believe in 110% or 120%. I believe when you work, you can’t work any harder than 100% and I’ve always worked that way.

“So the way I’ve approached it is to work a little harder, maybe not on the field throwing the ball or in the classroom but by being friends with more guys on the team, getting along with them, letting them know that we have to work together, get along. We have to love each other, like the (Super Bowl champion New York) Giants. They have that togetherness. We’re at the point now where we have a lot of young players where we can do that, too.”

Cunningham quickly found out how overmatched he was as an NFL rookie quarterback.

After the Eagles were beaten by the Giants, 21-0, to open the 1985 season, Coach Marion Campbell decided to turn to Cunningham to spark the offense.

The rookie started four games, winning one, before being benched after playing a terrible first half against the New Orleans Saints.

“I lost my confidence my first year when I got thrown to the wolves,” Cunningham said. “Then (last year) when Coach Ryan put me back in there on third down, I got my confidence back.”

Last season, Cunningham became the NFL’s first “third-and-long quarterback,” replacing Jaworski in those situations.

“He was the only guy who had a chance to get a first down for us, either by throwing the ball, scrambling with it or making something happen,” Ryan said.

The move was criticized but both Ryan and Cunningham said it speeded the quarterback’s learning process.

Even Cunningham admitted he had his doubts at first.

“At the beginning, I didn’t think (Ryan) was serious,” he said. “It was like he said, ‘Hey, be ready on third down, we’re going to put you in there.’ I sort of said, ‘OK coach, I’ll be ready for it.’ I said, ‘Are we going to use it this game?’ and he said ‘Be ready.’ So it was like, ‘It might happen but I doubt it.’

“So I prepared anyway and he threw me in there for third down and long against the Washington Redskins, third and 20 or something. I dropped back and ran the ball and got the first down. I came to the sidelines and all the guys were fired up and I said, ‘Wow, this man is serious about this third-down stuff.’ ”

After Jaworski went down with a thumb injury late in the season, Cunningham started five of the Eagles’ last six games, leading the team to a 33-27 victory over the Los Angeles Raiders. He completed 22 of 29 passes for 298 yards and two touchdowns and scored the winning TD in overtime.

“I thank Coach Ryan for putting me in that situation early,” Cunningham said. “If I hadn’t been in there, I wouldn’t have kept my head in the game like I should have.”