Glow of Heightened Expectations Casts Shadow on Chargers’ Friesz : Football: Third-year quarterback knows this is the season he is expected to produce.
The Chargers return to work this week, and if they desire success in 1992, surely they will provide a bullet-proof limousine, bodyguards and tender loving care for quarterback John Friesz.
The team that General Manager Bobby Beathard built will be guided by Coach Bobby Ross this season, but it will rise or fall on Friesz.
If Friesz flops, a la Billy Joe Tolliver, there is no great hope in reserve. Behind Friesz wait Bob Gagliano, Jeff Graham and Pat O’Hara. To think some people weren’t happy with the likes of Mark Malone, David Archer and Babe Laufenberg.
It’s all riding on John Friesz, and history be damned. Although tradition might dictate that it takes time for a quarterback to develop, it already has been 10 years since Dan Fouts led the Chargers to their last playoff appearance.
“John’s our man now, absolutely,” Beathard said. “He’s our No. 1 quarterback, but we don’t know how far John Friesz can go or how far he can take this team. I think he’s at the stage now where we like what we’ve seen, but we don’t know exactly what we have.”
Friesz, who remains unsigned, has purchased $1 million in insurance from Lloyd’s of London. He will participate in Ross’ first minicamp Thursday through Sunday at the team’s San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium practice facility. He already has spent the past month throwing footballs to the team’s receivers in preparation for the upcoming season.
“I remember something that happened last preseason,” Friesz said. “(Offensive coordinator) Ted Tollner pulled Billy Joe and me to the side one day after Billy Joe had played not as well as he would have liked. Tollner was a little frustrated with Billy Joe, and he told him, ‘You are through with your Cinderella season where you’re not going to catch some heat. Right now you need to be playing at a different level.’
“Then he looked at me and said, ‘You haven’t had that chance yet. You haven’t had that buffer zone, but some day you’ll get through that, and it will be time to play.’ Well, that’s where I’m at right now. Last year there were a lot of excuses made when things didn’t go well for me, but now everyone’s expectations are going to be higher.”
Friesz begins his third season in the NFL with a 4-13 mark as a starting quarterback. Tolliver went 8-9 in his initial 17 starts, and by that time he was being booed soundly.
“When I got drafted, Billy Joe was the guy, he was young, he was fiery and everybody liked him,” Friesz said. “Then pretty quickly something changed.
“I think there are two things I learned from his situation. When he held out after he got drafted, it not only might have upset the personnel people, but the average fan. I learned a lesson there: There’s a point where you need to ask what is fair and hopefully management will respond. You don’t want to ask for a ridiculous figure, and have the people who are buying the seats get mad at you. I’m not sure he ever recovered from that.
“He also enjoyed his off-seasons (playing golf), and I’ve tried to work hard and get better. Whether that’s taken place, we’ll find out.”
Friesz completed 53.8% of his passes last season with 12 touchdowns and 15 interceptions. He finished the year with a poor week of practice and had three of his passes intercepted in a 17-14 loss to Denver.
After Dan Henning was dismissed as coach, he said his enthusiasm for Friesz had been tempered by Friesz’s inexplicable poor play at season’s end. He wondered out loud if that was a harbinger of what was to come.
Henning had been credited with protecting Friesz, relying on the play of his offensive line, his running backs and defense to achieve victory. Ross’ plan is to rely more on Friesz, push the ball down the field via the pass and have Friesz call plays at the line of scrimmage.
“Coach Henning tried to protect me and that would probably be every coach’s philosophy who had basically a rookie starting at quarterback,” Friesz said. “But we’re going to do more this year. We’re going to change plays at the line. It’s something new in this league for me, but in college I could literally call any play in our offense at the line of scrimmage at any time.
“I still think that our strengths are defense, offensive line and at running back, and so the receivers need to step it up a notch. I need to step it up a notch. I know those other guys on the team are going to play well, so if the passing game can come up a little, the entire offense will do a lot better.”
But how good is Friesz? Will he be able to carry a team into the playoffs like John Elway and Joe Montana, or will the Chargers’ return to the playoffs stall out again with the search for another young replacement?
“We don’t know if John is going to be the kind of quarterback that takes a good team and makes it into a real, real great team or the type of guy that ends up being just a good quarterback,” Beathard said. “We’re trying to give him a better supporting cast and better coaching so whichever way he goes, we still have a chance to win.
“Washington’s Mark Rypien is a quarterback who has a great supporting cast. It’s an ideal situation for Rypien, and that’s no knock on Rypien. The Montanas and Namaths, however, are the kind of quarterbacks who take an average team and put them at the top. I don’t think John is at the stage of his career where we can say what he’s going to be like.
“We’re trying to surround him with top players. He’s progressing at a good rate, and one of the reasons for that is he had an opportunity to play. Tolliver had the opportunity to play and he could take a team in the opposite way. He could take a pretty good team and take the air right out of it because he had a thing about self-destructing.
“You have to have a quarterback that has the players’ confidence. They have to feel that he’s going to win it for us. We hope that’s what John is all about.”
The Chargers are going to use two running backs in the same backfield. They are going to a 4-3 defense that will highlight linebacker Junior Seau’s skills. They are going to have their quarterback rolling out in some situations. They are going to employ pass catchers at H-back in some cases rather than overweight tight ends who have been hired exclusively to block. They are going to rely on more zone coverage in the secondary and reduce the pressure on their cornerbacks.
But if they want to win, they must get big-time play from their quarterback. And right now, although the rest of the world may not know it, Friesz is The Franchise.
“I was in a store the other day and Jay Schroeder walked in and he didn’t recognize me,” Friesz said. “I said, ‘Jay, John Friesz.’ He said, ‘Oh yeah, how are you doing?’ Once I said the name he knew, but people don’t recognize me until they hear the name.
“Hey, it all takes time. It’s amazing what defenses do, how smart they are. It’s amazing how good athletes there are on defense. It looks so easy from the stands, but it’s not.
“I’ve always been the young guy in the huddle, and everybody has enjoyed having fun with me. They’ve gotten a kick out of me when I’ve popped off back to them. But now we need to focus more, and have fun later. We have things to learn, things to do to improve.”
Offensive coordinator Jack Reilly, who oversaw Friesz’s development after Ted Tollner was dismissed early last season, expects such improvement, but he also has the patience to wait.
“I’m optimistic about his future,” Reilly said. “And we’re looking for him to blossom a little bit this year, but I don’t think it’s all riding on his shoulders.”
Sure. The Chargers have high hopes for ’92. They believe a fifth-place schedule will provide them with a substantial edge on their AFC West counterparts. They have heard the talk around the league about how close the Chargers are to striking it big, and they believe it.
Teams that win, however, do so with a quality quarterback. Sometimes it takes two. The Chargers have no intention of selecting a quarterback in the draft. They are not pursuing Steve Young or Phil Simms. Fouts will not come out of retirement.
It’s Friesz or bust.
“I’m trying to improve and take one good sized step in everything I did last year,” Friesz said. “I don’t know how much more you can ask out of a person. One good step might be the difference in a couple of outcomes, but it’s not going to make eight more wins. It’s going to take a little bit more from everybody to win. Not just me.”