Krieg’s Past Doesn’t Limit His Passing

How would you like to be the quarterback on a team whose attack is described in print as Ground Chuck?

How would you like to be a graduate of a college so small and unrecognized that it disappeared almost as soon as you left it?

Everybody knows where NFL quarterbacks come from--a triangle in western Pennsylvania bounded on the east by the coal mines, on the west by the steel mills, and downstairs by the company store. That’s where Jim Kelly, Joe Namath, Joe Montana, Johnny Unitas, Dan Marino and almost every other guy who ever threw a Super Bowl touchdown came from.

Everybody figured Dave Krieg would be as long gone as the college he came from when the first blitzing linebacker showed up in his face. He wasn’t big. His arm didn’t make you think of John Elway’s. His experience had to be suspect. After all, how many zone defenses would Milton College in Wisconsin face?

No one knew why the Seattle Seahawks even gave him a locker. They didn’t draft him. No one did. They didn’t even send him carfare. They took him as a favor to his college coach. They thought maybe he could warm up their real quarterback, Jim Zorn, on the sidelines, until the cut came. After all, how much could he eat?

No one figured that the Seattle Seahawks really needed a quarterback anyway. They had a reputation as a team that really didn’t even need the football. The quarterback was just a kind of complicated waiter. He stood there and handed the ball to Curt Warner or Dan Doornink and got out of the way.

You didn’t even have to blow up the football for the Seahawks. They could have played the game with a brick. Playing the Seattle Seahawks was a little like stopping a flood. What you really needed was a lot of sandbags.

So no one worried too much that they had this unknown player from a nonexistent college in camp. How much experience do you need to hand off the ball?

It wasn’t as if the Seahawks had anybody who could do much else with the football. The quarterback position was just a step above postman.

Dave Krieg’s problem was he didn’t seem to realize that he was just supposed to mark time till the Seahawks could come up with a real quarterback. Someone from Notre Dame or Miami with a coal mine or an iron foundry in his background. He was suffering from the delusion that he was a pro quarterback.

It was kind of annoying to the Seahawks. Every time they got ready to unload this guy, he would throw a whole bunch of touchdown passes. He’s the longest-playing interim quarterback in the history of the league.

His first season, they let him throw 2 entire passes. The next year, he started only 3 games but threw for 7 touchdowns. He didn’t look good throwing them. But they looked good on the scoreboard.

The league was more impressed with him than the Seahawks were. Even the press was kind of irritated with him when he said his last name was pronounced Craig, which effectively ruled out any cute sobriquets like Blitz-Krieg and left them with a nobody from nowhere who didn’t even know how to pronounce his own name.

Just plain old Dave hit the pines again in 1983, when new coach Chuck Knox came in, until a game against Pittsburgh in midseason. The Seahawks were trailing at the half, 24-0. Krieg played the second half and rifled the ball for 20 completions, 2 touchdowns and 214 yards as Seattle barely lost, 27-21.

Knox whistled and wanted to know, “How long has this guy been around and why wasn’t I told?”

It would be nice to say that Dave Krieg silenced his critics from that day forward. He became, as it happens, one of the best quarterbacks in the league. But nobody wanted to hear about it. It was as if quarterbacks had to belong to this exclusive club and Milton College grads didn’t qualify.

As soon as he’d throw an incomplete pass, the fans would say in effect, “See! Just what I expected!” And they’d start to wonder out loud when the Seahawks were going to get a quarterback. A real one. Somebody named Boomer or Broadway Joe. Somebody who went to a real school such as Miami or UCLA.

No one was surprised when the Seahawks went to a great deal of trouble, legal and financial, to pry loose Kelly Stouffer from the Cardinals. Stouffer was the real article--big, good-looking, rifle-armed--and he went to Colorado State, which, even though it’s not Ohio State, at least is still there.

Stouffer got his chance this season when Krieg was injured, but Stouffer was something less than the next Unitas. In fact, Krieg, throwing only 23 more passes, threw for 10 more touchdowns than Stouffer. Krieg keeps doing that to the Seahawk brain trust.

Still, when Seattle came to the Coliseum for the showdown title game in the AFC West last Sunday, the Raiders knew what they had to do, and it didn’t involve Dave Krieg. They deployed to stop the running game. Curt Warner and John L. Williams were going to be their problem, not what’s-his-name, from that funny little college that’s not there anymore.

The results were predictable. While the Raiders were buckled up in their 6-man front, keying on the ballcarriers, Krieg passed them dizzy, amassing 410 yards and 4 touchdowns. And the AFC West championship.

If I were the rest of the league or even an oddsmaker, I wouldn’t be too quick to look to the quarterbacks named Boomer or Montana, or even Randall or Kelly or McMahon, to dominate this Super Bowl tournament.

There’ll be a lot of guys in the Super Bowl who dropped out of college. The winner may be one whose college dropped out on him.