Secret Weapon

He had the arm, Rich Gannon was convinced of that. He had the speed. At the 1987 NFL draft combine, Gannon had the sixth-fastest 40-yard dash time. Not among quarterbacks, but among everybody. He had the mind. His college coach, Tubby Raymond, said Gannon was the smartest, most competitive athlete he had dealt with.

But it didn’t matter. NFL coaches wanted to make Gannon a running back. Or a defensive back. They traded him or demoted or cut him for the likes of Sean Salisbury, Steve Bono and Elvis Grbac. He would get brief opportunities -- he went 8-3 with the Vikings one year and was benched; had a six-game winning streak in Kansas City and was benched -- and no one saw it.

“The physical attributes, you can’t hide those forever,” Raymond said. “But what Rich also has is an intensity that is contagious. People love to go to war with Rich. He’s always ready. He makes his teammates ready. But you don’t know that if you don’t give him a chance.”

Sometimes you have to wonder about a business where Kurt Warner got to play, finally and grudgingly, because another man got hurt; where Tom Brady became a starter only because somebody got hurt.

At 37, after 15 years in the league, Gannon is the NFL most valuable player. He has led the Oakland Raiders to the Super Bowl. He has mastered the West Coast offense in a way its architect, Bill Walsh, says is “outstanding, absolutely outstanding.”

Walsh says Gannon has come into his own because, “finally, he got into a system that takes full advantage of his abilities, of his mobility, of his skill in making quick decisions, of his arm accuracy.”

Why, Walsh is asked, did it take until 1999, when Gannon arrived in Oakland as a free agent, for him to be recognized for what he was -- a winner, a fighter, a fine athlete, a Pro Bowl quarterback who could take a team to the playoffs?

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Walsh says. “Historically, in the NFL, they’ve looked for the quarterback with the bigger arm or the stronger arm or something. There are stereotypes on size, on speed. Sometimes as a coach, you have to adapt your talent and system to the player. You can’t just fit square pegs into round holes. A lot of times you have quarterbacks with coaches who just didn’t adapt their system.”

Back in 1995, Gannon had just recovered from shoulder surgery. He had already played in the NFL for six years. The team that drafted Gannon, New England, had tried to make him a defensive back. He said he’d rather go to law school, so the Patriots sent Gannon to Minnesota.

After winning games when he played, Gannon was put on the bench behind Salisbury and then the Vikings traded him for low draft picks to Washington. After a sluggish and painful year with the Redskins backing up Mark Rypien, Gannon had the surgery and missed the 1994 season in rehab. Now he was headed to a fourth team, Kansas City.

A little discouraged but certain of himself and his talent, Gannon saw his college coach, Raymond, at a University of Delaware alumni function.

“Rich was feeling great, his shoulder had finally been fixed,” Raymond says, “with a lot more cartilage than he had expected getting cleared out. And he looks me in the eye and says, ‘Coach, my arm, right now, is the best-kept secret in the NFL. Now I’ve got to figure out how to get the secret out.’ ”

The secret is out. But it didn’t break out until Gannon almost had the heart taken out of him in Kansas City.

Gannon had signed for the league minimum with the Chiefs in 1995. By 1996, he had taken the starting job from Bono and had also become a huge fan favorite for his work ethic and style.

Still, the Chiefs signed Grbac to a long-term, big-money deal and Gannon went back to the bench. In 1997 Grbac got hurt and Gannon took the Chiefs on a fantastic ride, a six-game winning streak. But Grbac got healthy in time for the playoffs and coach Marty Schottenheimer sent Gannon back to the bench. The Chiefs and Grbac lost their first playoff game to Denver.

For another year a discouraged Gannon languished in Kansas City.

“I thought I had conducted myself well and had done things the right way,” Gannon says, “and I still couldn’t keep the job.”

Raymond says Gannon told him, “Jon Gruden is an offensive genius.”

Certainly it was Gruden in Oakland who understood Gannon’s strengths and was smart enough to give Gannon the ball and a team to run.

Rodney Peete, the former USC and current Carolina Panther quarterback, was Gannon’s backup for two years in Oakland.

“Rich is not the first nor will he be the last quarterback where mistakes are made,” Peete says. “You have no control over where you go, where you’re drafted. Guys get stuck into situations that aren’t going in the right direction or on a team with a bad coaching staff or with bad management, get locked into those situations for years and some can’t recover from that.

“There are dozens of quarterbacks, maybe more, who could have been Rich Gannon if they’d found the right coach or right situation.”

Oakland offensive coordinator Marc Trestman was with Minnesota when Dennis Green arrived and decided that Gannon wasn’t good enough.

“Denny came in and, as he had a right to do, did his own thing and brought his own people in,” Trestman says. “Rich just didn’t fit, in their minds, their style of play. In this business, there are going to be people who are going to critique you and evaluate you. Some like you, some don’t. If you live for your passion and your love, eventually, maybe, it works out. If it doesn’t, you look back and say you did your best.”

Peete sees a 37-year-old who has kept himself in perfect shape, who has 15 years of NFL wisdom and who has found a system that suits him.

“And now,” Peete says, “you have an MVP who had an outstanding year. But for the last three years there hasn’t been a quarterback in the league who has played like Rich has. Whether he’s beating you with his legs, his arm, his mind, he’s got all three just about perfected now. And he found a coach who believed in him.

“After everything else, that’s the most important thing. You’ve got to persevere until you find the coach who will believe in you enough to give you a team and the financial commitment. Sometimes it’s just the luck of the draw. It’s a crazy business.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Purple in the Face

Rich Gannon and Brad Johnson have followed eerily similar career paths. ... Both were looked on as young phenoms in Minnesota, both flamed out after miserable experiences in Washington. ... The question must be pondered, did the Vikings and Redskins (a combined 13-19 in 2002) give up on Gannon and Johnson too early?

*--* RICH Team Sea W-L Att Comp Yards TD INT Rating GANNON son s The Rise Minneso 198 21-14 1,003 561 6,457 40 35 74.3 ta 7-9 2 The Fall Washing 1993 1-3 125 74 704 3 7 59.5 ton The K.C., 199 45-31 2,785 1,731 19,784 128 55 90.6 Resurgen Oakland 5-2 ce 002 BRAD Team Sea W-L Att Comp Yards TD INT Rating JOHNSON son s The Rise Minneso 199 15-8 937 582 6,463 44 27 86.4 ta 2-9 8 The Fall Washing 199 17-10 884 544 6,510 35 28 84.0 ton 9-2 000 The Tampa 200 19-10 1,010 621 6,455 35 17 84.5 Resurgen Bay 1-0 ce 2

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-- ROY JURGENS