Lucas Can’t Rest on One Good Game

All right. Now what does Ray Lucas do for an encore, an encore, an encore, an encore? You might say that sounds a like broken record but hardly anybody of the age to be playing professional football knows how a broken record sounds.

So we will have to see Lucas play quarterback well enough, often enough and long enough to know if what he did Monday night was the beginning of something good. That’s Bill Parcells’ warning: a lot of quarterbacks have had a good day and nobody ever heard from them again. Except that Parcells sees Lucas the way a music teacher hears an unpolished voice or a modeling agent looks through smudges of ashes on the cheeks and sees a pretty face.

Lucas is Parcells’ Cinderella, the raw talent he brought from New England as soon as he could. Back when Vinny Testaverde was a fresh woe-is-me and the season not yet rubble, the coach pondered the new Rick Mirer, who had some experience, and Lucas, who the coach really wished was prepared for the situation.

“Ray just sees the game different from other people,” Parcells said. “You just do not throw that away. A lot of guys talk about competitiveness; this guy has it.”

The old coach in Parcells said he’s telling Lucas the things that lie in his way. “There’s a greater chance they’ll get in his way,” Parcells said, judging from the long list of those who failed. A coach or a manager or an editor can watch a hopeful and it’s rarely clear he’ll ever make the grade but sometimes a light behind the eyes says he has a chance.

Parcells has his own kind of definition of character

in a player. In Lucas, it comes from a willingness to play the wide receiver position and to work in the pinball machine of special teams to play football. Parcells acknowledges the end of his coaching time isn’t many seasons off but Lucas’ mentality flips Parcells’ switches on, even across the generation gap.

Sometimes an old player whose ears Parcells singed will come back and thank the coac h for making him better. “What makes a difference is, if you did something for someone and they knew it,” Parcells said. “If Ray can succeed, I’ll take a great deal of satisfaction.”

Back with New England, Parcells signed this undrafted fellow from that noted Rutgers quarterback factory and had him play the position with the scout team, which is where hot prospects learn the job. And, as Parcells recalled, the assistant coaches laughed at such sport.

Today, Jets players are saying they like the feeling of Lucas at quarterback and never were comfortable with Mirer.