Quarterback Class of ’83 Will Be Difficult to Surpass

Don’t believe the hype about the NFL draft and this year’s quarterback class--in particular, the class of this year’s class.

Five quarterbacks to be taken in the top 15 for the first time in league history, with a total of six expected to be selected in the first round? Three quarterbacks--Kentucky’s Tim Couch, Oregon’s Akili Smith and Syracuse’s Donovan McNabb--going 1-2-3, ahead of Heisman Trophy winner and consensus Best Athlete Available Ricky Williams of Texas?

A quarterback crop so deep and so talented that it begs comparison to the fabled class of 1983?

All right then.

Let us compare.

Class of ‘83:

* John Elway. First selection overall by the Baltimore Colts, subsequently traded to the Denver Broncos. He’ll be a Hall of Famer, first ballot.

* Dan Marino. Twenty-seventh selection overall by the Miami Dolphins. Hall of Famer, first ballot.

* Jim Kelly, 14th selection overall by the Buffalo Bills. Hall of Famer, if the voting committee doesn’t hold Kelly’s 0-4 record in Super Bowls against him.

* Tony Eason, 15th selection overall by the New England Patriots. Started for the Patriots in Super Bowl XX. Career cut short by injuries after eight NFL seasons.

* Ken O’Brien, 24th selection overall by the New York Jets. Passed for 128 touchdowns and more than 25,000 yards in 10 NFL seasons.

* Todd Blackledge, seventh selection overall by the Kansas City Chiefs. The only out-and-out bust among the quarterbacks chosen in the first round in ‘83, out of the league by 1989 after appearing in only 46 NFL games.

Totals: Super Bowl appearances: 11. Vince Lombardi Trophies: 2. Hall of Fame players: Two, possibly three.

Class of ‘99:

* Couch. Probable first collegian chosen by the expansion Cleveland Browns. “Where he excels is accuracy and touch,” says Jim Sabo, scout for Ourland’s NFL Scouting Services. “His arm strength is a bit of a concern. And in the group, he’s the least mobile of all of them. Still, he’s not bad.”

* Smith. Will go to Philadelphia at No. 2 if Cleveland passes on him. “Great arm, pretty good decision-making, can throw every pass the NFL wants him to throw,” Sabo says. “What concerns me is that he played only one full year and part of another in college. Going into last season, we had him rated as a free agent. Plus, he’s the oldest of the group [soon to be 24], because he spent three years with the Pirates playing baseball.”

* McNabb. Expected to land in Cincinnati at No. 3. Sabo: “I’ve never seen a quarterback with better escapability and mobility than he has. Absolutely phenomenal at avoiding the rush and turning nothing into something. He was a four-year starter at Syracuse who improved every year.

“The knock on him is that he played in a freeze-option type of offense, and looked to run a little bit. One of the things we wanted to see: Is he one of these guys that just wants to pull the ball down too quickly and take off and start running? And we did see that early in his career. But he has improved greatly as far as that goes.”

* Daunte Culpepper, Central Florida. Expected to go in the top 10, possibly to Chicago at No. 7 or Baltimore at No. 10. Sabo: “Not the best in anything, but close to the top of the group in almost everything. We’ve got him second in arm strength behind Smith. His accuracy is very good--he’s an over-70% passer. Great touch on the ball.

“He’s huge--almost 6-4, 255. Very athletic. Where he falls off is the level of competition he faced at Central Florida, which was not very good. He’s got to get up to speed as far as reading defenses. He’s probably the least ready to play [immediately] of the entire group.”

* Cade McNown, UCLA. Possibly headed to New Orleans at No. 12 or Tampa Bay at No. 15. Sabo: “The biggest negative about him is his size [6-1, 213 pounds], and his arm strength is poor. People want to compare him to [Arizona’s Jake] Plummer and to [Jacksonville’s] Mark Brunell and that’s fair, but, honestly, I don’t think his arm is as good as those two guys’.

“But, on the other side, the intangibles are tremendous. He’s a winner, he’s a leader, he’s got great moxie, he’s savvy, he knows the game. He’s got everything you’re looking for in a quarterback on the intangible side but not the great ‘measurables’--arm strength and size.”

* Shaun King, Tulane. Has been projected as high as the late first round, which Sabo believes “is way too high for him. I don’t see that at all. If you want to take a shot at him in the late second, maybe third round--value-wise, that’s about right for Shaun King. He’s not very big [6-0, 221]. He was a great college player, he went undefeated so he knows how to win, but I think he has more work to do on mechanics than even Cade McNown does.”

The call?

“I don’t think anybody’s at Elway’s level,” says NBC football analyst Pat Haden, a former NFL quarterback. “There were some questions about Dan Marino coming out in ‘83, but he turned out remarkably well. This year, you have a bunch of guys being drafted in the first round. But how many of them will go into the Hall of Fame? That’s the standard, and it’s hard to live up to that.”

ESPN draft analyst Mel Kiper Jr. says that unlike ‘83, “There are no franchise-type signal-callers on the surface coming out. But they could develop. You have Couch, you have Smith and McNabb--they are outstanding talents. They could emerge.”

Sabo offers a harsher assessment.

“The class of ‘83, you had two certain Hall of Famers and maybe a third. These guys don’t stack up,” he says. “None of these guys stack up as well as Peyton Manning or even Ryan Leaf. None of these guys stack up with Drew Bledsoe, to tell you the truth. None of them is a sure thing. There’s a hole in every one of them.”

So why the hue and cry? Why the mad rush to clear the rack in the first round, to throw tens of millions of dollars at a few guys who just might be the next not-quite-Drew-Bledsoe, to gamble everything on a maybe prospect at quarterback while leaving safer bets and potential franchise-turning players such as Williams and Georgia cornerback Champ Bailey in the dust? Two words: “supply” and “demand.”

“Teams are starved for quarterbacks today,” Sabo says. “You look around the league and you’ve got Atlanta in the Super Bowl with a backup, Steve DeBerg, who’s 44. That’s ridiculous. That’s a joke. Tell me they’re not looking for quarterbacks all over this place.

“They keep recycling guys like Scott Mitchell, who’s getting another chance [with Baltimore]. The guy has done nothing in his career, and I don’t think he ever will. But teams are crazy for guys like him. Teams are desperate for quarterbacks.”

San Diego State Coach Ted Tollner, who coached quarterbacks in the NFL for eight years during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, contends that in the NFL today, “You don’t have a chance to be a winning team if you don’t have a legitimate, NFL-quality quarterback. So many games are won in the fourth quarter. If your guy can’t do it, you’re going to lose.”

Which explains why so many teams will overextend Saturday--”reach,” in NFL draftnik parlance--for a quarterback when better athletes, in droves, are still on the board.

“You can play your butt off on defense and run the football and make yards, but when the game is tight, somebody’s going to make some plays throwing the ball and somebody isn’t,” Tollner says. “All these teams are trying to make sure they have that quality guy. So I think you can reach a little bit.

“Ricky Williams has got everything. To pass him up would be very hard. You’re going to get a guy who can break, a guy who can pound, a guy with great pride. . . . But you can have a great runner and if you can’t throw the ball, you’re probably not going to win.

“That’s why, I think, you’re hearing so much, ‘Hey, this is a great year [for quarterbacks], we better get one of them so that we have one of these guys for the next 10 years.’ ”

Especially considering the early forecast for the quarterback class of 2000: Drought headed this way.

“You better get one this year,” Sabo says, “because next year looks like a lousy year again. . . . If you want one and you want a good one, you better try and get one now.”

USC Coach Paul Hackett, another veteran quarterback coach who spent 17 years in the NFL as an assistant, believes the class of ’99 has one edge over the class of ‘83: athletic ability.

“I don’t know if the quarterbacks coming out in ’83 were the kind of athletes these players are,” Hackett says. “McNabb was out at practice at USC last week and he looks awfully impressive. Akili went in one year from a part-time player to maybe the most valuable player in the Pac-10. He’s a very exciting player right now. And the best, to me, seems to be Couch. He played in a sophisticated passing attack at Kentucky. He’s the most accomplished of the quarterbacks coming out.”

Still, it is one thing to be the best of the incoming class of ’99 and quite another to measure up to the best of the class of ’83.

“It will be a long time,” Hackett muses, “before another Elway comes along.”