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Show by Jim Murray Mnniriray mi prtt That's why they're called the Raiders Plunkett quickly became Exhibit A in the Waterfield summation. Accustomed to the unsophisticated or non-existent pass defenses defen-ses of Oregon State or Ohio State, he found himself throwing not the gorgeous length-of-the-field spirals of his years at The Farm but short, hysterical, to-whom-it-may-concern spasms as likely of success as notes thrown in a bottle. The New England line was scarcely scar-cely the Seven Blocks of Granite. The Seven Pieces of Kleenex was more like it. Plunkett got intercepted. Plunkett got hurt. The coaches deserted Plunkett. The fans deserted Plunkett. Then, Plunkett deserted Plunkett. "Sure, my confidence was gone," Plunkett said as he sat on a bench at the Raiders' training camp the other day. "you try to do everything yourself. You get so you want to throw the ball and catch it yourself. You press. You scramble. You improvise." The Patroits' backfield looked like the proverbial Chinese fire drill, a corral in a windstorm. Plunkett thought a return to the scenes of his childhood would help. The Patroits traded him to San Francisco for a quarterback quarter-back and five draft choices. But the fault was not geographical. It was, said the league, biological. Plunkett had been broken on the When you talk of great bargains in sports history, you begin of course with Babe Ruth. He cost the New York Yankees $125,000 which, while that was a lot of money in 1919, has to rank in American lore with getting Manhattan Island from the Indians for $26 worth of beads. The Yankees also got Joe DiMaggio for $25,000, which makes Alaska look like a hard bargain. The Baltimore Colts got Johnny Unitas for an 87-cent phone call. But getting Jim Plunkett for $100 in the Year of Our Lord 1978, when coffee costs four bits, steak was $7 a pound, tract houses were $150,000 and journeymen ballplayers were getting million-dollar contracts, has to rank with the great steals of all time. In point of fact, Plunkett didn't even cost the Raiders the C note. What happened in 1978 was, the San Francisco 49ers turned him loose on waivers and, when every club in the NFL passed on him, the Raiders' Al Davis got on the phone. How Jim Plunkett came to be available for $100 is one of the sad stories of our day. It makes "Hamlet" look like a comedy, "Stella Dallas" a musical. Five years before, you couldn't have got him our of Boston for the Brinks holdup money. rack, they said. He was afraid to let go of the ball. He was relieved when it was merely im-complete. im-complete. The 49ers didn't even try to trade him. The Raiders didn't entirely buy the scenario. The Raiders, you see, hardly ever buy retail. They are specialists in 'the wholesaling of football players, in distress sales, second-hand properties. Jim Plunkett had completed 1,000 passes in the NFL by then. He had thrown 100 touchdowns. His temperature was normal, vision 2020, he was as big as a linebacker. He could be backup to Ken Stabler and he and Stabler could keep the seat warm till they could break in some kid from Brigham Young. The $100 quarterback chafed under the role. But he finally got to sit on the bench and get some clear idea of what the flow of a game was without some 270-pound end trying to stick a finger in his eye. Plunkett discovered something else when he did get to play : You don't have to get rid of the ball in 1.1 seconds on the Raiders. John Unitas says a quarterback should unload the ball in 3.5 seconds after getting it. The Raiders frequently gave you 4 or more. The Plunkett story took on glass-slipper proportions after that. Stabler left, Dan Pastorini came in. Pastorini broke a leg and Jim Plunkett went to the Super Bowl where he threw an 80-yard touchdown pass and two others. The Philadelphia Eagles were as easy in the Super Bowl as Ohio State had been in the Rose Bowl. Has it all come back? "Well, I don't throw the ball as long as I once did, nor with the same velocity," Plunkett said. "But I have a pretty clear idea where it's going. And why." Would the script have been different if Joe Kapp had stayed and let him ease into the career? "I don't know," signed Jim Plunkett. "But I sure don't want to go through it all again in find out." 1983, Los Angeles Time Syndicate Jim Plunkett's career was supposed to have been a golden legend. Part Indian, part Mexican, All-American, Plunkett had led Stanford to its first Rose Bowl in 20 years and its first Rose Bowl win since 1936. He won the Heisman Trophy the Maxwell Trophy, he was the No. 1 draft choice, he had an agent, a lawyer. He could throw a football 70 yards and, if you wanted him to hit a receiver in the eye, he could say, "Which eye?" He got drafted by the New England Patroits, the Ivy Leaguers of the NFL, and what happened to Plunkett will probably give you a clue as to why another celebrated Stanford quarterback, John Elway, refused to go to the worst team in football this past season. They teach respect for history at Stanford. When Plunkett came to New England, the veteran Joe Kapp was supposed to be the quarterback. I didn't work out that way. Snarled in a contract dispute, Kapp, a Super Bowl-seasoned play caller, walked out of camp before Plunkett got there. He filed a series of lawsuits and never played another game of football. New England shrugged. It has the world's greatest quarterback anyway, didn't it? He could handle Ohio State in the Rose Bowl, he could take care of Miami in the Orange Bowl, right? He'd get the hang of it after the first series of plays. ' The last quarterback in the NFL to step right off a college campus and win in the pros was Bob Waterfield, and that was back in the war years. When Waterfield became a coach, he ardently insisted that it took a minimum of three years for even the most precocious passer to succeed in the professional pro-fessional game. Waterfield said it was like throwing a baby into the North Atlantic to teach him to swim. "You will destroy him," he warned owners impatient to get a No. 1 draft choice in the lineup. |
