Big Surprise : After Six Years of Waiting Giants’ Hostetler Taking Advantage of His Chance

Bill Parcells told him he would play more, and Jeff Hostetler believed his coach. Believed him enough not to renew his trade demands, believed him enough to start the dream again.

Hostetler believed that Parcells believed in him, even after six seasons of a quarterbacking career highlighted by nothing. Six seasons of nothing but standing on the sidelines, waiting his turn, watching his NFL career slip silently away and maybe blocking a punt when he got antsy enough to volunteer for the punt team.

It was all so familiar. He had almost watched his college career get devoured, too, by a coach who wanted him to wait. But Hostetler said enough of that and skipped away from Joe Paterno’s Penn State squad after his sophomore year to a glorious career at West Virginia, where he had a 3.95 grade-point average, married the coach’s daughter and prepared for a long life as an NFL starter.

After all, Hostetler is from that magic western Pennsylvania area that has produced NFL quarterbacking legends Joe Montana, Johnny Unitas, Joe Namath and Dan Marino. Buffalo quarterback Jim Kelly, Hostetler’s counterpart in today’s Super Bowl XXV here, emerged from that fertile soil, too.

After all, he was no dummy. An economics major, he flew through school with just a single B marring his GPA, and that in a course he took while going through the grueling workouts demanded by NFL scouts.

But then he got drafted by the Giants in 1984, was stuck behind Phil Simms and did not throw a pass for four seasons. And in the NFL, you don’t transfer, they transfer you, if that’s what they want.

The escape from New York never happened.

Trade me, he implored Parcells. Hostetler, now 29 years old and still confident that he could excel in the big leagues, did not want to be the man who cooled in Simms’ shadow forever.

The Giants, perhaps because they couldn’t get much for him, perhaps because they suspected deep down that someday their prince would be Hostetler, neither traded nor played him. His time was spent practicing and playing some as a receiver or on special teams, where he blocked a punt in 1988.

But camp last summer was different, it seemed. Parcells brought him in, told him that he thought Hostetler had proved himself enough in spot play relieving Simms in 1989 to earn a real chance to play, even if Simms was sound.

Turns out, though, that Parcells believed in Hostetler only enough to go to him out of desperate need, not confident decree, 14 games into the season when Simms went down for a season-ending count with a sprained foot Dec. 15. But how could Hostetler have complained before Simms went out, since Simms was one of the highest-ranked quarterbacks in the league and the Giants were busting out to a 10-0 record?

“It was tough to handle once the season started,” Hostetler said. “I was expecting some opportunities to play, and they just didn’t come out. But I’ve been used to frustrations before, and this was just another opportunity to be handle the frustration.”

He handled it until Dec. 15, when everything changed, and everything since then has been a four-game Hostetler hurricane. Six years of nothing, then four games of everything.

After six silent seasons, with Giant observers logically concluding that no career backup could possibly lead the team to a Super Bowl, Hostetler plopped into Simms’ spotlight and promptly began a dance that has captivated the football world.

“Fortunately, I wasn’t putting a rookie into the game,” Parcells said. “We were putting in a guy that’s been with us six or seven years, and you understand what the capabilities of the player are.

“However, confidence in a player is born of demonstrated ability, and, in this game, it’s usually demonstrated ability under pressure. Jeff had been in some sporadic pressure situations, but he had never been in a situation where he knew that he was going to go the whole way for the remainder of the season.”

First, after unspectacularly leading the Giants to victories in their final two regular-season games, Hostetler torched the Chicago Bears with his knack for getting outside the pocket and turning breakdowns into first downs, leading the Giants to a 31-3 victory.

The next week, all Hostetler did was slay the Giant killers, Joe Montana and the two-time defending Super Bowl champion San Francisco 49ers, by shaking off a fourth-quarter knee injury and driving the Giants to a game-winning field goal as time expired.

Now it is Hostetler who a little uncomfortably but politely commands the driving media attention heading into today’s matchup against the brilliantly talented Bills, and Simms who is a background piece, quiet and uninvolved.

The Giants have tried to avoid forcing Hostetler to throw too much, tried to let their running game dominate, and looked to him to do what he could.

What they learned is that he could consistently make those scattered-field, out-of-the-pocket dashes and off-balance throws that Montana has done for so many years. Pretty soon, the game plan was largely based on Hostetler’s nimbleness, and third and eight with a linebacker in the backfield wasn’t necessarily a disaster anymore.

A guy sits on the bench for six years and then out-Montanas Montana?

“I think probably what surprised me is how consistent he was so quickly,” Parcells said. “It’s just simply a case of him attempting to make the most of it. Hell, he had to make the most of it. That was the only chance we had. He knew that.”

He knew that, but never was shaken by it. Hostetler is no swaggering public ego-maniac, but in his own, almost-mumbling way, he is a confidence man. Six seasons of clipboard duty dampened nothing.

“You started thinking, hey, was the opportunity ever going to present itself,” Hostetler said. “But I kept plugging away, believing that something will happen. Without my faith in that, I don’t think I could have made it.

“It’s not been hard to convince myself that I can do it, it’s just been hard to convince others. When you don’t have a chance to go out and perform and make people believe, it gets frustrating.”

When you do go out and perform, then, it isn’t hard to accept success when it comes, says Hostetler’s backup, Matt Cavanaugh.

“He hasn’t done anything that’s surprised himself,” Cavanaugh said. “I think he expected to go out and play well, to show poise and leadership. That’s why the success he’s had the last four weeks is no shock to him. And I think he’s able to handle this because of that.”

The rest of the Giants swear they never doubted Hostetler for a second, but of course, hindsight is 20-20 and Hostetler is 4-0 as a starter this year. In fact, the Giants have won all six games he has started in his NFL career. Now, everybody calls him, simply, “Hoss,” which is not a nickname you award to weenies.

Still, nobody besides Hostetler was certain the gap from Simms to Hostetler wouldn’t be the difference between Super Bowl contention and a quick exit come crunch time.

“I think that probably the toughest game, as far as feeling pressure, was the Chicago game,” Hostetler said of the days and analysis leading up to the Giants’ first playoff game. “Probably just due to the fact that we had two weeks to prepare for that one, it’s a playoff game, a lot of press, a lot of negative press.”

Hostetler won’t talk about his future after Super Bowl XXV, and probably doesn’t know what it will be, anyway. Is he now the No. 1 quarterback even when Simms, who will be 36 next year, comes back? Can Hostetler, after this, ever be comfortable as a backup again?

Everything has changed. Six years of marking time, and now his dream has rushed up and taken over and it won’t stop until he does.

“You prepare yourself and you hope you get into this situation,” Hostetler said. “But after what I’ve gone through in my career, I guess I actually believed it would never come to this.”