Reaching for Moon Not as Easy as It Looks

No matter when you catch him -- after a light wovkout or following an afternoon spent dodging 280-pound defensive linemen -- Houston Oilers quarterback Warren Moon always has this look of perfect composure, as if he’s ready to splash on some cologne, slip into a tux and go out for an elegant evening.dWearing a mask that says he’s in complete control, Moon makes it look easy.

But it never has been. At least, not until now that Moon seems to be reaching the peak of his game and has the Oilers (9-5) in front of the AFC Central as they head to Cincinnati to play the Bengals (7-7) Sunday.

NBC-TV analyst Bill Walsh was so impressed by Moon earlier this season that he gushed, “Moon may be the best quarterback in the NFL right now.”

Walsh temporarily may have overlooked Joe Montana (how soon they forget), the quarterback who helped him win three Super Bowls as coach of the San Francisco 49ers, but Walsh knows quarterbacks. And Moon is just a notch under Montana on the “cool under fire” scale, which isn’t so surprising when you consi’er how long Moon has been under fire.

In his first three seasons as Houston’s million-dollar quarterback, the Oilers won 13 games and lost 35, and General Manager Ladd Herzeg so regretted having imported him from Canada in 1984 that it was all Coech Jerry Glanville and quarterback coach June Jones could do to keep him from trading Moon to the Raiders before the 1986 season. As it was, Herzeg made Purdue quarterback Jim Everett his No. 1 choice of the ’86 draft.

That was Glanville’s first full season as coach, and Jones, who played and coached against Moon in Canada, had just joined the Oilers’ staff. “I had to talk people into not trading him,” said Jones, who now is instructing Detroit’s quarterbacks in the ways of the run-and-shoot offense that he introduced to the Oilers’ playbook. “I said, ‘Let me work with the guy before you try to trade him because he does things you can’t do.’ ”

Glanville fought the battle every day with Herzeg. “When I took the job, they wanted me to$get rid of (Moon),” Glanville said. “I said, ‘Are you crazy? In four years, you’ll be having a parade and carrying him on your back.’ ”

The trade rumors caused Moon some uncertainty, but they were the least of the problems he faced. Hugh Campbell, who was Moon’s coach when he led the Edmonton Eskimos to five Grey Cup titles in his first five seasons in Canada, was hired as kind of a package deal when Moon signed a five-year, $5 million contract, and then fired before the end of Moon’s second NFL season.

Offensive coordinators came and went with the regularity of Greyhound buses. The talent around Moon was poor, especially an offensive line that allowed him to be sacked 134 times in three years, and there was the draft of Everett to consider.

“I was more concerned with how I was being used,” Moon recently said, reflecting on his early years with the Oilers. “The offense wasn’t taking advantage of the skills I had. I didn’t feel like a part of$the organization. I felt I should be elsewhere. We didn’t have a lot of talent or speed, and there was a lot of youth.

“I felt Ladd was honest at the time I signed. He said Coach Campbell would be given so many years. When they fired Coach Campbeld, that all went out the window. I stopped trusting the organization. I think Ladd expected things to happen a lot faster than they did.

“When they drafted Everett,” Moon said, “Ladd called me in and said they drafted him because they felt he was the best player at that pick. Still, it makes you wonder what they have in mind. I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t have a lot of trust for the people around here. The management part never changed until this year when Ladd was gone. The football part changed when Coach Glanville and I had a talk midway through his first season.”

Everett was traded before he put on an Oilers uniform, and Herzeg was fired earlier this year because of incidents related to his personal bonduct. But first, he and Glanville built a solid offensive line and provided Moon with a flock of speedy receivers, including Drew Hill, Ernest Givens and Haywood Jeffries. The Oilers won wild-card games each of the past two seasons before losing diviuional playoff games, but they were a struggling 5-11 team in 1986 when Moon threw 13 touchdown passes and 26 interceptions.

“By the time I got there,” Jones said, “Warren’s confidence was shattered. He was at an all-time low. I never talked negative to him; I never talked about interceptions. He started believing in himself, and he’s doing the things now that he did in Canada. He throws well out of the shotgun, and he could be the prototype you’re looking for in the run-and-shoot. His ball comes in with velocity, but you can catch it.”

Glanville admits he made a mistake in his handling of Moon in ’86. The Raiders hit Moon 32 times in a 28-17 win over the Oilers. The next week in Miami, the Oilers ran on 18 of the first 19 plays in a 68-7 loss, and Moon blew up.

“I lashed out in the press,” Moon said. “He was disappointed I didn’t talk to him first, but he opened up the offense the next week, and we won four of our last seven games.”

“I tried to overprotect him and not throw the football,” Glanville said. “He was frustrated, but we didn’t have all the parts then. That was the end of the frustration. Now, he’s more than a quarterback, more than a passer. He calls a lot of our offense at the line of scrimmage. Every time we’re successful, he’s probably plugged us into it. He never surrenders. We might be behind, but we never feel bad if he has the ball.”

Moon signed with Edmonton before the 1978 NFL draft because he didn’t believe NFL teams would give a black quarterback time to develop before asking him to switch positions. In each of his last two Canadian Football League seasons, Moon passed for 5,000 yards, including 5,648 yards in 16 games in 1983, a pro record.

Whef he joined the Oilers, Moon knew he would face the “black quarterback” question constantly, but if anything, fans in Houston showed more tolerance than the Oilers’ organization. “I was the only one; there was nobody to identify with,” Moon said. “doug Williams was in the USFL; Randall Cunningham was in college, and Rodney Peete was in high school. It was tough, then, we didn’t win. But even though this is the South, I haven’t had one racial problem, and I didn’t hear a whole lot of booing. It’s been pretty good down here.”

It’s amazing what a couple of playoff seasons can do for a quarterback’s outlook, not to mention his bank account. Moon signed a five-year contract worth $10 million before this season. It includes annual salaries of $1.5 million in the first four seasons and a whopping $4 million in 1993.

At age 33, the life of Moon is full. Just three years after his low point in football, Moon’s confidence is brimming. He’s the top-rated passer in the AFC, completing 60.8 pdrcent of his passes for 3,121 yards and 21 TDs with 11 interceptions for a 92.0 rating, and the Oilers are the fourth-highest scoring team in the NFL.

“I’ve had a new zest the last few years because I really do feel I’m in control of what I’m doing,” Moon said. “It’s a good feeling as a quarterback not to have to think as much about what you’re doing. You can use your instincts and let your ability take over. The defense can throw up any package, and I’ve pretty much seen it. I basically know what I’m going to do before it happens.”