From the Shadows, He Comes Out Throwing : Krieg Outlasts His Big-Name Competition

Little Milton College in Wisconsin has gone out of business.

But its most famous graduate, Dave Krieg, has not.

Go figure.

It has been 6 years since Milton closed its doors. It has been 8 years since the Seattle Seahawks hesitatingly took a look at Krieg as a reserve quarterback. His chances of survival in the sport at the time didn’t look a lot better than those of his alma mater.

Since then, the Seahawks have flirted with and threatened to sign a lot of big-name quarterbacks, such as Warren Moon, Jim Everett, Bobby Hebert and Ron Jaworski.

This year, they brought in their quarterback of the future, Kelly Stouffer.

Yet when the Seattle offense lines up against the Raiders in the Kingdome on Monday night, guess who’ll be calling the signals?

That’s right. The man who briefly put Milton on the map until others relegated it to the history books.

Take a look at Krieg’s statistics and you have to wonder why the Seahawks are so determined to replace this guy.

At the start of this season, Krieg had a lifetime quarterback rating of 84.7. That puts him fourth in National Football League history, behind Dan Marino, Joe Montana and Ken O’Brien. Krieg threw his 100th touchdown pass in his 65th game. The only two players to do it quicker were Marino and a fellow named John Unitas.

Yet Krieg always seems to be in somebody’s shadow.

In 1984, he threw 32 touchdown passes, the seventh-most in league history. But Marino threw 48, the most ever. In a 1985 Seattle-San Diego game, the Chargers’ Dan Fouts grabbed the headlines with a 440-yard passing day. Krieg, meanwhile, was quietly throwing for 307 yards and 5 touchdowns.

Krieg threw at least 1 touchdown pass in 28 straight games from 1983 to ‘85, the longest such streak since Unitas’ 47 consecutive games a quarter-century ago.

So what happens? Last season, Marino retakes the spotlight by throwing for touchdowns in 29 straight games.

So it seems to go in the life of Dave Krieg.

The bottom line, of course, is not touchdown passes but games won. And in that category, his critics point out, Krieg comes up short. He has never taken the Seahawks to a Super Bowl, they point out.

Of course, nobody else has even gotten them to the playoffs, a feat Krieg has accomplished three times.

But his critics have a lot of other problems with Krieg as well. His arm is just decent, they say, his hands are too small to properly grip the ball, especially in cold weather, and he has a propensity for throwing interceptions at the worst times.

The common complaint around Seattle is that Krieg is just good enough to lose.

So how does he handle the continual stream of criticism and the seemingly continual line of potential replacements at the Seahawks’ door?

“When they bring somebody else in, I think that just helps to motivate me a little bit more,” Krieg said.

Has he ever been secure in the job?

“The one time might have been after the Pro Bowl year (1984),” he said. “But even then, they were trying to get Bobby Hebert or Warren Moon or Everett or somebody. I don’t think I’ve ever felt totally comfortable, that the job was mine. At the same time, every time I step out on the field, I feel like I’m one of the better quarterbacks in the league.

“But if you start feeling too comfortable and complacent, a lot of people would say, ‘Hey, I’ve got the job and I don’t have to work as hard.’ But when they keep trying to bring in more people, plus the simple fact of where I came from, it always keeps me working hard.”

Where he came from might be considered nowhere to a lot of big-city people. If ever the Horatio Alger story is remade in a sports genre, they should rename it the Dave Krieg story.

He grew up in Rothschild, Wis., which is sort of a suburb of Wausau in the middle of the state. And he had such an ordinary career at D.C. Everest High School in Schofield, another sort-of suburb of Wausau, that he couldn’t even make all-league.

Nevertheless, Krieg’s high school coach called Rudy Gaddini, the coach at Milton, and asked if he’d look at Krieg.

Krieg was impressive enough to get $500 in financial aid and the chance to beat out six others for the starting job at quarterback.

Eventually he did, and made it to the big time, such as it was at Milton. Keep in mind this is a school where the coach rounded up fans by driving down the street and imploring the townspeople by megaphone to come to the games.

Sometimes he’d do real well and 500 people would show up.

Krieg did real well, too, being named player of the year in both the Illini-Badger Conference and the Wisconsin Independent Collegiate Athletic Conference in his junior and senior years.

That just turned the pro scouts on their ears. Not a one of them called, before or after the draft.

But Gaddini called and sent letters around the National Football League, trying to get his quarterback a shot.

He finally found some sympathetic ears in Seattle, where Krieg was brought in to camp in 1980.

When second-string quarterback Steve Myer hurt his back in a scrimmage, Krieg had a job.

Three years later, he had a starting job.

“It’s been an inspiration for me, to come from a small college like I did,” Krieg said. “That shows other kids that, hey, you’ve got just as good a chance as anybody. Anybody can make it if they get the opportunity and take advantage of it.”

Going into this year, Krieg had missed only 2 starts since 1983. But in the third game of this season, he was knocked out with a separated shoulder, and Stouffer, who had been obtained in an off-season trade with the Phoenix Cardinals, took over after second-stringer Jeff Kemp proved ineffective.

But the 24-year-old Stouffer, still a rookie after sitting out last year in a contract dispute, managed only to split his six starts for Seattle.

So 2 weeks ago, when Krieg was back in playing shape, he was given his job back.

For good? Well, at least until Stouffer, still considered the Seahawks’ quarterback of the future, is ready.

“I just hope the future is a little further away than what everybody is planning,” Krieg said. “I’d like to think of myself as being in their future plans, too.”

Outlast Stouffer? Heck, why not? What’s one rookie phenom to a guy who has already outlived an entire college?