Quote of the Day (Rick Reilly, on the ‘Price of Greatness’)

“The price of greatness is more than you want to pay. The world's most legendary athletes are usually the ones most wildly out of balance. Michael Jordan had to crush you, whether you were an opponent or teammate. The thousands of hours Peyton Manning pours into every season would make you quake, then quit. Andre Agassi grieves, to this day, the childhood he gave up while hitting over a million practice balls. Enjoy your heroes, but don't envy them.”—Sportswriter Rick Reilly, “Some Truths I’ve Discovered,” www.espn.com,  Apr. 23, 2014

More than a touch of envy came out among many football fans when Andrew Luck of the Indianapolis Colts announced his retirement. They simply could not understand how this 29-year-old quarterback could walk away from the game during the same year that 42-year-old Tom Brady seeks his seventh Super Bowl title. 

But the price Luck has already paid for his short period of greatness has already been steep: sprained shoulder, lacerated kidney, partially torn abdominal muscle, torn cartilage, concussion, and calf strain. And constantly, of course, the pressure to come back, even if he wasn’t quite his best, only to hear the boos of uncomprehending and undeserving fans…

(Photo of Andrew Luck taken on Sept. 18, 2016, by Jeffrey Beall.)

Quote of the Day (George F. Will, on Football, ‘A Waning American Romance’)

“Autumn, which is bearing down upon us like a menacing linebacker, is, as John Keats said, a season of mists and mellow fruitfulness and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Actually, Keats, a romantic, did not mention that last part. He died before the birth of the subject of a waning American romance, football. This sport will never die, but it will never again be, as it was until recently, the subject of uncomplicated national enthusiasm.”— George F. Will, “Football’s Enjoyment is on a Fade Pattern,” The Washington Post, Sept. 1, 2017

Quote of the Day (Don Shula, on Luck and Quarterbacks)

“Sure, luck means a lot in football. Not having a good quarterback is bad luck.”—Former Miami Dolphins coach and Football Hall of Famer Don Shula quoted in Norman R. Augustine, Augustine's Laws (1997)

At first, I read the above quote as a quip from Don Shula. But, given certain events in his career—not to mention this past weekend in the NFL playoffs—I think he might have simply been speaking the brutal truth.

After all, Shula—from all accounts, a religious man—must have been thanking the Almighty for much of his career. I’m not talking about the coach having a young Dan Marino or even two other Hall of Fame quarterbacks in their prime, Johnny Unitas and Bob Griese, but also possessing a journeyman QB who, when called on in an emergency to replace the latter two when they were badly injured, performed superbly: Earl Morrall.

When Johnny U. went down with an injury early in the ’68 season, Morrall guided Shula's Baltimore Colts to a 13-1 record, deservedly taking MVP honors. In Super Bowl V, when Unitas was hurt in the big game itself, Morrall stepped in again, this time becoming the first substitute quarterback to rally his team from a deficit to claim victory in the championship contest.

Finally, in the Dolphins’ 1972 season, Morrall—rejoining his former coach, Shula—stepped in yet again when Griese got hurt, keeping the team on track for an undefeated season, before gracefully stepping aside when Griese was ready to take the reins again. 

If Shula was watching TV on Sunday, he must have groaned over what the Pittsburgh Steelers did to the Dolphins in their playoff matchup. More particularly, he must have winced as his old team’s backup QB, Matt Moore, was pressed into making his first playoff start when regular QB Ryan Tannehill was injured a few games before. Moore gave it his best shot, but was a sitting duck for much of the day in the face of the Steeler defense (including one brutal hit that left many observers fearing he had a concussion). 

The only solace Shula might have taken over the weekend was that, compared with the Dolphins, the luck of the Oakland Raiders was downright catastrophic. Once Derek Carr was felled for the duration with an injury, the Raiders blew their last two regular-season games. The team’s fans, who had not experienced a wild ride to the Super Bowl since 2002, sensed that, unlike Jeff Hostetler with the New York Giants a quarter-century ago or Tom Brady with the New England Patriots a decade later, a backup would not leap off the bench and convey them to the Promised Land.

It was bad enough that Matt McGloin joined Carr among the injured before this weekend’s playoff game against the Houston Texans. Left to pick up the fallen standard was rookie Connor Cook (pictured), third on the depth chart, in his first start. Ever. Let’s just say he looked like a deer caught in the headlights.

By the end of the 27-14 loss, Oakland Raiders head coach Jack Del Rio must have felt afflicted not just with bad luck, but with very bad luck.

Quote of the Day (Geoffrey Norman, on the NFL’s Stop-Gap Solutions to Long-Term Crisis)

“Maybe the NFL calculates that the game's own violence will drive it to extinction sooner rather than later. And before that happens, they intend to take advantage of every last commercial minute and each and every untapped venue. The seasons will get longer, games will be played in more and more exotic locations, the number of timeouts will increase, and Viagra sales will be maximized—all before those life insurance policies pay out.”— Geoffrey Norman, “The NFL in Crisis,” The Weekly Standard, Oct. 31, 2016

Commenting on skiing, the late Erma Bombeck wrote that she distrusted any sport that required an ambulance at the bottom of the hill. One wonders what she would have thought of football these days, particularly in light of the growing list of concussion cases (referred to in "those life insurance policies" above).

So now here it is, the home stretch just before the playoffs begin, and those teams lucky enough to earn a spot are making wild guesses about how to maintain momentum while surviving in one piece. The fate of quarterback David Carr—lost for the rest of the season after leading the Oakland Raiders to their first playoff appearance since 2002—is surely on other teams’ minds. Could a catastrophic injury also befall Eli Manning? Dak Prescott? Tom Brady? 

More than a few fans will be saying their prayers in the next week or so over their fates and those of other stars.