From the Scrapheap to Super Seasons

By T.J. SIMERS

Jan. 16, 1999 12 AM PT

You might have missed it, but in the last few days the Raiders catapulted themselves into Super Bowl XXXIV contention, assuring themselves of at least an NFL final four appearance next year.

The Raiders signed quarterback Andre Ware, an NFL failure, who sat out last season.

You can count on him starting next year’s AFC championship game, probably against Scott Mitchell, long gone from Detroit by then, while the nomadic likes of Jeff Blake and John Friesz luckily land elsewhere like the transformed stiffs in this year’s title games and duke it out in the NFC.

While it’s true John Elway lends an air of respectability to this year’s final four, it should be pointed out that Elway lost twice this season, and backup Bubby Brister, out of football for a year, went undefeated in four starts and two relief appearances.

Here’s this year’s postseason message: You don’t get to the Super Bowl with phenoms such as Peyton Manning, Ryan Leaf and Charlie Batch--a collective 13-35 this season. Instead you scrape the bottom of the depth chart, and if only the Rams can get their hands on Rich Gannon they might be in Atlanta for next year’s Super Bowl.

Is that any more farfetched than predicting a year ago that Vinny Testaverde, then 48-83-1 in his miserable career and on his way out in Baltimore, would still be in the running for Super Bowl MVP honors?

It’s no fluke. Randall Cunningham is two years removed from laying marble tile and one game away from starting in the Super Bowl. Chris Chandler, on his way to getting hurt for every team in the league, stopped in Atlanta and now could end up holding a Lombardi Trophy high over his head as though there’s no difference between him and Elway.

Before this magical year, Cunningham, Testaverde and Chandler--with a combined record of 147-177-2--had a better chance of auditioning for a remake of a Three Stooges movie than playing in a Super Bowl.

Throw in the backups, and you have Brister, 37-38 as a starter for four teams; Glenn Foley, the Jets’ starting quarterback this year, who went 0-3; Brad Johnson, who was playing for the London Monarchs in the World League three years ago; and Steve DeBerg, out of football for several years and who is older than the Raiders’ coach.

There’s a pattern here, and if you’re the New Orleans Saints, you’re looking for Otto Graham’s phone number. Looking at their roster, he still has to be a consideration.

“I’ve seen it 1,000 times,” DeBerg says. “Somebody throws it better than me, throws it more accurately, throws it harder, but just doesn’t make the right decision. It’s more important to do the right things at this level because the game is so advanced.”

The right decision includes signing with the right team, which just might be Tampa Bay, and avoiding St. Louis at all costs.

Three of Tampa Bay’s former starting quarterbacks will suit up for Sunday’s title games: DeBerg, Chandler and Testaverde. Throw in Steve Young, who came within a game of making it, and based on such tradition, some day Trent Dilfer will be 60 minutes from making the Super Bowl as starting quarterback for another team.

“It just goes to show you it’s not always the player,” says Cunningham, 35. “It’s the system you’re in, it’s the team you’re on, it has to be the right time. Doug Flutie took the route of Canada.”

That’s why the Raiders are smarter than any other team in the NFL. In Ware, they not only signed a quarterback who sat out last season, but a guy who spent time in Canada and who will play in the World League this year. Now that’s covering all your bases.

Anything can happen on any given Sunday, all right, Chris Chandler can start in the Super Bowl.

“I think I can be as good as anybody out there,” says Chandler, who wasn’t with the Colts, Buccaneers, Cardinals, Rams and Oilers before settling in with the Falcons. “Being blessed with a good team around you in a good system is part of it. But some good old-fashioned luck is another part of it.”

There’s no one luckier right now than Cunningham, who inherited Randy Moss and the Vikings’ firepower after Johnson was injured early on. Remember when Coach Dennis Green said Johnson would replace Cunningham as the team’s starter as soon as he was sound? He could be as fit as the Terminator now, and he’s not getting off the bench.

“The guy is just unbelievable,” says Brian Billick, Minnesota offensive coordinator, crediting Cunningham’s religious renaissance in 1995 with his football turnaround. “Never once in two years, even playing behind a third-string center and people running all over him, have I seen him get flustered. Never once a hint in his voice, his eyes or his mannerisms a sense of panic. His calmness calms me.”

Cunningham had his moments in Philadelphia, but he was always on the run, as he says, both on and off the field. He left the game after losing his desire to play football, he says, bought a Las Vegas company specializing in cut marble and granite for kitchen and bathroom counters and then thought maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to play football again.

“And we made it easy for him,” Green says. “Here’s the car, Randall, and here’s the keys. Forget about all those years when you had to do everything, and just think about driving the car. We’re not asking you to build it or design it. Just drive this luxury car to Miami.”

You say the same thing to Testaverde and you better have a tow truck tailing him down the road. After two years in the league with Tampa Bay he had 23 more interceptions than touchdown passes; it took 137 starts before he had more touchdown passes than interceptions in his career.

“Everyone’s trying to explain what happened when he was younger,” Dan Henning, Jet quarterback coach, told reporters earlier this season. “He went with a team that was awful.”

What’s wrong with this picture? It has been 30 years since Joe Namath led the Jets to a Super Bowl, and it’s Vinny Testaverde following in his footsteps.

“I just hoped to get a guy that maybe we could use as a quarterback if we needed him,” says Jet Coach Bill Parcells, who considered Foley a better prospect. “What we tried to do philosophically was different than what maybe he was used to doing. We put as many weapons as we could around him to get him the feel to spread the ball a little bit.”

There’s that theme again: Surround a quarterback with talented players and even a guy like Chandler can look great--well, at least good.

Chandler’s best skill, of course, is handing the ball to Jamal Anderson and getting out of the way so he doesn’t get hurt again.

But Coach Dan Reeves says he also might be one of the most accurate passers in the game. Taking into consideration Reeves has just had a major medical problem that might cloud his judgment, it can be said that Chandler led the NFC in fourth-quarter passing with the game on the line, a year after being the best in the league on third downs.

“I knew his reputation that he was a guy always getting hurt,” Reeves said. “But this guy surprised me, and he’s as tough as anyone out there and maybe is playing as well as anyone out there.”

If Cunningham, Testaverde and Chandler can inspire such glowing tributes, why not Ware, Mitchell, Friesz and Blake?

“I guess we’re all like fine wine--we get better with age,” Brister says. “If we had come back to play for a team like the Saints, we might not have had such great years. I played for teams that we’d have eight or nine passes dropped a game; here we might have eight or nine all year. Here you throw a pass high, saying to yourself, ‘Oh no,’ and the guy catches it.

“What a difference--I’m just glad I got the chance to experience it with such great talent before my day was done.”

A few more days like these guys have had, a Super Bowl triumph and someone’s going to suggest the Pro Football Hall of Fame isn’t out of reach. Tough to maintain perspective around a Super Bowl, but fortunately anyone suggesting such a thing has a better chance of being committed before any of these one-year wonders are inducted.

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Sunday’s Games

Atlanta at Minnesota

9:30 a.m., Channel 11

New York Jets at Denver

1 p.m., Channel 2

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On The Move

Chris Chandler, Vinny Testaverde and Randall Cunningham become unwanted quarterbacks, trying to find their place in NFL. Their travels and records of each team during their stay:

Chandler

Colts: 1988-89, Team: 17-15

Bucs: 199-91, Team: 9-23

Cardinals: 1991-93, Team: 15-33

Rams: 1994, Team: 4-12

Oilers: 1995-96, Team: 15-17

Falcons: 1997-98, Team: 21-11

Testaverde

Bucs: 1987-92, Team: 28-67

Browns: 1993-95, Team: 23-25

Ravens: 1996-97, Team: 10-21-1

N.Y. Jets: 1998, Team: 12-4