Bledsoe Act Has Bit Less Improv

The kid on stage was good. Really good.

With those dark glasses and the headband and the movements, lip-syncing his way through the words of “The Super Bowl Shuffle,” he really looked like quarterback Jim McMahon.

OK, so maybe it was only because he was doing his act in front of a friendly crowd of fellow students. Maybe if it had been somewhere other than on the stage at Pioneer Junior High in Walla Walla, Wash., the audience might have been more discerning.

But on that day 11 years ago, all the kid and his fellow eighth-graders cared about was living out their fantasies by pretending to be the Chicago Bears, who were playing in the Super Bowl that year in New Orleans against the New England Patriots.

Fast-forward 11 years.

The Super Bowl is being played again in New Orleans.

The Patriots are one of the teams.

McMahon is here again, although this time as a Green Bay Packer, a backup to starter Brett Favre.

And the kid who mimicked him so long ago on a junior high stage?

He’s here too. His name is Drew Bledsoe and he’ll start at quarterback for New England on Sunday.

Talk about living out a fantasy.

“It’s hard to believe,” Bledsoe said. “I was dressed up like Jim and now I’m here in the same city, playing against him.”

Bledsoe still keeps a picture of himself at 13, performing as McMahon.

Playing quarterback in the NFL has been everything Bledsoe dreamed it would be back in those days.

At least on the field.

At first, he had the normal ups and downs of a young NFL quarterback. But this season, Bledsoe threw for 4,086 yards, the second time he has passed the 4,000-yard mark in his four pro seasons.

He is only the fourth NFL quarterback to have passed for more than 4,000 yards more than once. And with a total of 14,464 yards, he is, at 24, the youngest to have reached the 14,000-yard mark.

Those are numbers McMahon never dreamed of producing.

Oh, yeah, and Bledsoe also has made it to the Super Bowl at his tender age.

But not all the numbers have been worth bragging about. Besides having thrown for 80 touchdowns, Bledsoe has thrown 73 interceptions. In the early years, he had the same difficulty reading defenses as most other young quarterbacks. And he has shown a tendency, when in trouble, to throw the ball up for grabs, usually seeing it end up in the hands of the enemy.

In fact, this season was the first in which Bledsoe came out on the plus side in the touchdowns-interceptions ratio, throwing 27 touchdown passes and 15 interceptions.

Even now, when his father Mac, a high-school football coach in Washington for a quarter of a century, visits Bledsoe, the last thing he tells his son before the quarterback heads to the stadium is, “Good luck. Throw it to our guys.”

Bledsoe has always been close to his father. They speak the same language: football.

“My dad was just my dad,” Bledsoe said. “He didn’t care if I threw four touchdown passes or four interceptions. It was nice to have.”

Bledsoe was born in Ellensburg, Wash., and grew up in the state. He was exposed--literally--to football at a very young age. Brought to the All-Northwest Football Camp in Idaho by his father, who was working there, Bledsoe, who was not yet 2, urinated in Hall of Fame receiver Fred Biletnikoff’s shoe.

Bledsoe had made his first mark in the NFL.

And his life might have turned out different if Tommy Knecht hadn’t left Pioneer Junior High. Knecht was the quarterback of the school’s football team. Bledsoe, a seventh-grader, replaced him.

Bledsoe didn’t take to the position easily.

“He was awkward,” his father recalled.

Understandable, considering that Bledsoe was wearing a size 13 shoe while still in junior high.

But his body filled out, the awkwardness faded, the strong right arm blossomed and his knowledge of the game grew. Because his father was a football coach, Bledsoe had a big advantage.

“I learned to read defenses like a lot of kids learn to talk,” he said.

Bledsoe was all-state at Walla Walla High, then went on to Washington State, where he finished second on the school’s all-time passing list, even though he left for the NFL after his junior year.

When the Patriots made Bledsoe the No. 1 pick in the 1993 draft, he went through a traumatic adjustment--from college life in the peaceful Northwest to a big, loud, bustling eastern city, and from the low-key support of his father to the abrasive, demanding style of Coach Bill Parcells.

Parcells saw promise and wanted to develop it. Bledsoe saw anger and wanted to avoid it.

“Drew is not a complainer,” said his mother, Barbara. “But I could tell that it was just not a good match, personality-wise. [Parcells] found out that yelling at Drew doesn’t work. It doesn’t make him play better. But I think they’ve adjusted to each other.”

Much of the credit for that has to go to quarterback coach Chris Palmer, Bledsoe said.

“When I make a mistake, Bill screams at me, ‘Drew, you . . . ,’ ” Bledsoe said. “Then Chris comes to me and tells me what the coach meant, like, ‘That was a poor read.’ ”

So does Bledsoe think Parcells has helped him develop?

“I think he has helped me develop a thick skin,” Bledsoe said.

Joe Theismann, a Super Bowl-winning quarterback with the Washington Redskins and now a television analyst, thinks it’s more than that.

“The greatest thing Drew Bledsoe has going for him was that he played for Bill Parcells,” Theismann said. “Maybe he doesn’t know it yet. I think Drew got tired of Parcells bearing down on him. I think he got tired of those eyes burning in the back of his head. But I don’t think Parcells has gotten enough credit for the development of Drew.”

Whoever deserves the credit, Bledsoe has arrived. But whenever he steps into the spotlight, he yearns to be back in the peace and quiet of Washington.

Here is this Super Bowl quarterback and two of his favorite stories involve people not knowing who he was.

On one occasion, he was walking by a group of girls when one asked if he could take a picture. Sure, he said, obligingly stepping into the group so they could be photographed with Drew Bledsoe.

No, the girl said, not knowing who he was, they wanted him to take the picture.

Bledsoe bragged to his mother about the time he landed at a Seattle airport and got into a discussion with two fellow travelers who didn’t know he was a star quarterback .

“Drew was so excited when he told me about it,” Barbara said. “These guys were talking to him because he was friendly. No other reason. It kind of tugs at my heartstrings.”

In some ways, he’s still that kid on the stage, pretending to be McMahon.

“In a perfect world, I would have a great game, come off the field and nobody would know who I was,” Bledsoe said.

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Drew Bledsoe Profile

BACKGROUND: Born Feb. 14, 1972 . . . 6-3, 233 pounds . . . Quarterback selected after junior season out of Washington State by the New England Patriots with the first pick of the 1993 NFL draft . . . Made Pro Bowl for 1994 and 1996 seasons . . . Holds NFL single-game records for most passes completed (45), most passes attempted (70) and most passes attempted without an interception (70), set Nov. 13, 1994 vs. Minnesota Vikings. *--*

YEAR COMP % TD INT RATE 1993 49.9 15 15 65.0 1994 57.9 25 27 73.6 1995 50.8 13 16 63.7 1996 59.9 27 15 83.2

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