Keep an Eye on Vikings’ Culpepper

At 255 pounds, quarterback Daunte Culpepper, the new Minnesota Viking who gave a star-is-born performance on opening day, has the arm, the speed and the size to make NFL player of the month in his first several starts.

Building on an impressive first game, Culpepper is favored to lead the Vikings to 2-0 today, when they’ll be getting the Miami Dolphins in the noise palace at Minneapolis.

And for the Vikings after that, there are tuneups at New England and Detroit.

So the big quarterback can be 4-0 going into one of the season’s big Monday night games, Tampa Bay at Minnesota on Oct. 9.

In the NFC Central this year, the Vikings and Buccaneers are it after adding, respectively, Culpepper and wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson, who are heading into a rivalry that could be as lengthy as it is celebrated.

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BF Nonesuch Quarterback: (unbf) Culpepper can no longer make Rookie of the Year--he was on the field last fall for six NFL plays--but presumably, Player of the Year is still open.

And there’s never been a quarterback like him.

As Minnesota twice came from behind to turn back Chicago, 30-27, Culpepper, who distributes his 255 pounds across 6 feet 4, showed the Bears that he can throw every kind of pass.

The three fast touchdowns he scored scrambling or on quarterback draws were set up with a touch pass to Randy Moss, a deep sideline pass to Cris Carter, and a long one to Moss.

Curiously, his coaches gave their new quarterback too little help, allowing the Bears to use all four of their defensive backs to double-cover wide receivers Moss and Carter on almost every snap.

To break a defense out of that kind of coverage, what Culpepper needs most now is a three-receiver offense--and in Matthew Hatchette, the Vikings have an ideal third wide receiver rusting away on the bench.

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BF McNown Does IT: (unbf) The Bears will get the next shot at Tampa Bay’s league-leading defense today in a learning-experience game for the new Chicago passer, Cade McNown, who the other day joined with Culpepper to show that in the NFL, quarterback running plays are becoming increasingly important.

The explanation is that an NFL defense can’t be designed to deal with quarterbacks who have the courage to run the ball.

Most of the personnel on a defensive team must be deployed against wide receivers and running backs, which leaves four or five others to rush the passer--but if you’re rushing hard, you can only stop and react extemporaneously to a quarterback who takes off suddenly on a well-blocked running play.

Thus, McNown all but beat the Vikings on 10 carries for 87 yards and a touchdown, which provided Chicago with leads of 7-0 and 20-9 on a day when Culpepper ran 10 times for 73 and three touchdowns.

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BF And Jauron Does It: (unbf) After years of fouling up with journeyman coaches and inferior drafts, the Bears have obviously changed direction with a bright new coach, Dick Jauron, who was a running back at Yale in the 1970s, and with quarterback McNown, the controversial former UCLA Bruin.

Jauron only lost to the Bears because he can’t match their talent.

Nor does he have Tampa Bay’s talent.

But over the long season, the Bears will rise.

McNown, of course, to survive in the NFL, will soon have to learn the quarterback slide; but he runs the ball with distinction, and, for his kind of quarterback, he throws it almost straight enough.

Any pre-McNown or pre-Jauron Bear team of recent years would have lost the Minnesota game by four or five touchdowns.

Instead, still fighting after Culpepper had run the Vikings into a 30-20 fourth-quarter lead, McNown closed it to 30-27 with the afternoon’s most impressive long drive, a drive that brought the Bears to within a successful onside kickoff of an upset.

His problem is the same as Culpepper’s: How long can a running quarterback live on an NFL team?

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BF Stability is first: (unbf) As usual, the Vikings need more defense to seriously contend for championships in this league, but offensively, if they’ll improve the design of their passing game with three wide receivers instead of two, they have the capacity this year to outscore most teams.

The first explanation is that Culpepper even now has the look of a veteran.

His long suit, in my view, isn’t that he throws straight or runs fast but that he is plainly so stable psychologically.

He appears to be one of the smartest football products ever from Central Florida University, which is down the road from hometown Ocala, Fla., which isn’t too far from one of the South’s leading pre-Civil War businesses, the Culpepper plantation.

As an athlete, Culpepper is already so together that in his first NFL game, he almost never threw a bad pass.

He hasn’t been hit yet, to be sure, and as always, an NFL quarterback’s final test will come after that.

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BF Do Ravens Have QB?: (unbf) In the NFL game of the week against quarterback Mark Brunell and 1-0 Jacksonville today, the 1-0 Baltimore Ravens will show a hometown crowd how far they’ve come in the four years since they were born and how far they have to go.

The Las Vegas line on the Jaguars and Ravens, which has been even for several weeks, shifted to establish the Ravens as a slight favorite after they shut out the Pittsburgh Steelers opening day, 16-0--at Pittsburgh.

Jacksonville leads the NFL in talent, and is particularly far in front of the Ravens in offensive talent, but Baltimore Coach Brian Billick has a way with quarterbacks, and he hasn’t given up yet on Tony Banks, who in St. Louis several years ago was all but destroyed by former Ram coaches.

Banks this year has the player he needs most, tight end Shannon Sharpe, if he can find him in Jacksonville’s defensive maze.

Losing Sharpe, conceivably, hurt Denver about as much as losing John Elway.

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BF James’ Fumble Hurt: (unbf) In the end, Indianapolis quarterback Peyton Manning had enough to outscore quarterback Elvis Grbac in Kansas City the other day, 27-14, but Colt running back Edgerrin James made it harder than it needed have been when, in the first quarter, he fumbled the ball away on the Chiefs’ goal line on Manning’s first drive, a long one.

James simply failed to protect the ball there, an inexcusable error when a quick early touchdown would have quieted a hometown crowd whose loudness thereafter nearly undid the Colts.

Later in the day, the Oakland Raiders, who had to come from behind--the fourth-quarter score was 6-2--to cut down San Diego, 9-6, didn’t seem powerful enough to upset the Colts in Indiana today.

The Charger quarterback, Ryan Leaf, who has been absent for two years, appeared to be about where Manning was three years ago, when, in the rookie season for the 1-2 draft choices of 1998, Manning finished 3-13.