Hebert Leads the Band in New Orleans

He plays for New Orleans. He’s a local boy who makes good. He’s one of the three best quarterbacks in the game.

By all rights, Bobby Joe Hebert should be the dream hero, the most popular figure in his home state.

He’s about as Louisianian as you can get--a Cajun. His ancestors went there about 150 years ago. He speaks with the rich gumbo accent of the canebrakes. He’s as native as the bayou. Heberts have lived in those swamps for generations. They can deal in French or English.

You’d think they’d elect him governor.

Instead, he gets washed over with a chorus of boos when he runs out on the field in the Superdome. Way down yonder in New Orleans, you’d think he got caught putting ketchup in the jambalaya, poisoning the crawfish.

Why don’t they make him king of the Mardi Gras? The emperor of the French Quarter?

I’ll tell you one thing: Before Bobby Joe came along, the New Orleans Saints were a team whose fans put bags over their heads because they didn’t want to be seen looking at their comedic football team. In those days, 5-11 was a big year for them.

They gave Bobby Hebert the ball in 1987, and Basin Street has never been the same. The team went 12-3 and got into the playoffs for the first time. All he did was complete 55% of his passes for 15 touchdowns and only nine interceptions, the league low. In ‘88, he passed for 20 touchdowns. The team slipped to 10-6, though, largely because the Saints lost to the 49ers by a point, to the Giants by one, to the Rams by two and to Washington by three.

Then last year, the Saints had their first nonwinning season (8-8) since Hebert became their starter. Reason: Hebert was not on the team.

Injury? Trade? Beaten out for the job? Old?

None of the above. Hebert was not taking snaps for the oldest reason in the world: money.

He felt underpaid, under-appreciated and under-used. The team had slipped the ball to a journeyman, John Fourcade, for the final three games of the ’89 season.

And that’s when the New Orleans fans wanted to put a bag over their quarterback’s head. Hebert held out, returned a contract unsigned and demanded more money or a trade.

He might have been forgiven if he had held out the obligatory few weeks, then capitulated and resumed his position under center. But Hebert stayed in the pocket, resisted the front-office sack.

He moved to California--Manhattan Beach--and began to lobby actively to join the Raiders.

The Raiders’ Al Davis was interested.

“He didn’t come up with enough,” New Orleans General Manager Jim Finks surmises. “A draft choice for a functioning quarterback is not quid pro quo.”

Counters Davis: “They wanted too much.”

Back on Bourbon Street, the quarterback was about as popular as mercury in the red snapper.

“It might have been all right if I were a guy who had gone to SC or UCLA or even Penn State,” Hebert said, reminiscing as he stood in a locker room after the Saints had beaten the Rams Sunday. “But I grew up here. It was like I had let the neighborhood down.”

He stayed out of football the whole year. He sued the league. He was a victim of restraint of trade, his lawyers argued.

The story had a happy ending, though. New Orleans without Bobby Hebert is a team with a bag over its head. Between boos this season, he has managed to lead the team to 8-1. (He was in uniform but did not play Sunday, suffering from shoulder strain.)

Hebert has been a winner wherever he has gone. His high school team, South Lafourche, La., won the state championship. In college, at Northwestern Louisiana, he suffered broken ribs and still was drafted, not by the NFL, but the United States Football League.

In the USFL, he was part of the extraordinary quarterbacking corps--Jim Kelly, Steve Young, et al--who were able to get starting NFL jobs when their league folded.

Hebert was as good as or better than any of them. His team, the Michigan Panthers, won the USFL title the first year, over the Philadelphia Stars, and lost the title game the third year, as an Oakland Invader, to the Baltimore Stars. In each case, the coach of the other team was Jim Mora. He is now the coach of New Orleans, and one of the first things he did when he got there was give the ball to Bobby Hebert.

If the Saints come marchin’ in to the Super Bowl this year, the town’s ragin’ Cajun will be thoroughly forgiven, of course, and will probably be heading up his own South Rampart Street parade. He’s the greatest thing to come out of New Orleans since Louie’s trumpet.