More Trouble Than His Talent is Worth

Talent is worth only so much trouble, and Jeff George has gone over budget in yet one more town. What a surprise. At the rate he’s going, George’s career could become a race to see if he runs out of ability before he runs out of places to play.

“There are 30 teams in the NFL,” his agent, Leigh Steinberg, said Thursday. “We’re quite sure he’ll be playing football somewhere this season.”

If so, it will be somewhere beside Atlanta. Falcons coach June Jones began the week by suspending his pouty quarterback, then vowed to get rid of him. George was yanked from last Sunday’s game against the Eagles after throwing a third-quarter interception. He then compounded his sin by throwing a deadly accurate, nationally televised, nearly 10-minute-long tantrum at Jones.

Despite dueling news conferences later in the week, neither principal revealed what was said to earn George the one-way ticket out of town. So far, the only person able to offer an up-close-and-personal version of the confrontation is the same person who stood to gain the most from it.

“Some things that were said,” Bobby Hebert, George’s replacement at quarterback, explained, “you wouldn’t say to your worst enemy.”

At the moment, however, the casualty rate among NFL quarterbacks almost guarantees he’ll be rewarded instead of punished. Not counting George’s benching, nearly one quarter of the starters in the league were sidelined or headed in that direction after last week’s games. The list of the injured ranged from marquee names like Miami’s Dan Marino and San Francisco’s Steve Young to middle-range performers like Eric Kramer of Chicago, all the way down to Mike Tomczak, whose job in Pittsburgh is essentially to keep the position warm.

And as Steinberg astutely points out -- he represents more quarterbacks than anybody in the business -- things aren’t likely to improve any time soon.

“The way the salary cap works, the supply of talented quarterbacks might never catch up with demand,” he said. “Some are always going to be hurt, but now you don’t have the luxury of letting a young quarterback develop at his own pace ... learning the game from an established star.

“The cap just doesn’t allow a team to stockpile depth at any position, least of all at quarterback. So naturally,” Steinberg added, “we’re in a situation where a lot of teams are looking.”

That being so, it’s still hard to believe reports that as many as a half-dozen teams are looking seriously at George as the answer to their problem. While arguments between coach and quarterback are commonplace, George apparently took his half of the argument to a new level. He does that almost every place he plays.

“I’ve been in plenty of those situations before,” Chicago Bears coach-turned-TV commentator Mike Ditka said. “Arguments are bound to happen. But they’ve got to be based on some kind of mutual respect, and it sounds like that was missing here. I never had a problem that needed to be solved the way this one has.”

Exactly how that is remains to be seen. At age 28, George is still relatively young and durable by NFL standards; until his suspension, George had started 46 consecutive games since 1993, the second-longest active streak among NFL quarterbacks. On the other hand, his record as a starter is a woeful 30-for-84.

“I’m not going to sit here and knock him,” Ditka said before proceeding to do just that, “but for a guy who’s accomplished what he has, he sure seems spoiled.

“And from what I’ve heard, in the league and out, everywhere he’s been, once things don’t go his way, he’s not a real happy camper.”

George was that way at Purdue, from where he transferred his freshman season, and at Illinois, where he left after his junior year to turn pro. He was that way, too, with the Indianapolis Colts, where he held out after completing his third season to force a trade.

Now, he’s managed to do it again. When George first threw his snit, some people recalled Steve Young getting into a highly publicized shouting match on the sideline with George Seifert.

But there are some important differences.

Young was respectful in the way he carried on, and had already proven he was entitled to some respect in return.

The only thing George has proven beyond a doubt is that he knows how to argue.