Titans/Oilers All-Time Top 5 QBs: Dante's Angels
Warren Moon changes the NFL, Steve McNair comes up one yard short, and Dan Pastorini sees a message on a mirror.
The foxy ladies will be behind the paywall this week. I’m told that’s a shrewd Internet commerce strategy.
1. Warren Moon
In 1983, the year before Warren Moon entered the league, there were zero black starting quarterbacks in the NFL.
Doug Williams left for the USFL in 1982. Shack Harris was a fast-fading memory. Randall Cunningham was a year away. I triple-checked the passing lists for 1983. Vince Evans, with three starts in relief of Jim McMahon for the Bears, led all black passers with 1,108 passing yards. Marcus Allen was second with 111 passing yards. Jack Thompson, the “Throwin’ Samoan,” outgained them both with 2,906 yards, but we are already getting into the ethnographic weeds.
The lack of diversity among quarterbacks was just the way things were at the time. There were few-to-no black protagonists in movies and television shows that were not explicitly about race, either. It was enough to make an impressionable teen of the era, raised in the suburbs and attending de-facto segregated parochial schools, think that there had to be some legitimate reason for it.
It was important, therefore, for Moon to arrive more-or-less fully formed, already 28 years old and clearly capable, even if the team around him was not. Cunningham was initially the bigger star, but Cunningham would prove more likely to reinforce stereotypes than undermine them. Moon was a grown-ass man who commanded both the huddle and respect. He was a quarterback, not an experiment or a curiosity. And the NFL needed him more than he needed the NFL.
Moon, a star at the University of Washington, signed with the Edmonton CFL franchise six weeks before the NFL draft in 1978. He might well have been drafted, perhaps in an early round: Williams was selected 17th overall that year, and other black quarterbacks trickled into the NFL throughout the 1970s. Still, it’s telling that Moon was not selected at all during a 12-round draft. NFL teams back then often spent late-round flyers on players headed to Canada, baseball, Olympic track or the military. Quarterbacks from Lehigh and Santa Clara were drafted in 1978, but no one bothered to hold on to the rights to the guy who led the Huskies over Michigan in the Rose Bowl.
Moon remained in Canada for six years, becoming one of the greatest quarterbacks in CFL history. The NFL would not come calling until it was forced to.
The Checker cab rumbled through Lower Manhattan. It was a cold, blustery night, and every few blocks homeless men were huddled around garbage cans filled with burning trash. “What are those people doing?” asked Warren Moon, a veteran of six years and five straight Grey Cup wins as a quarterback with the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League but a rookie visitor to New York City.
“Oh, those are street people," one of the New Yorkers in the cab replied casually. "They eat out of garbage cans and live out of shopping bags. They're just trying to keep warm."
Moon, who grew up in Los Angeles, had never seen anything like it. "They live on the streets!" he said in disbelief. "They actually survive!"
Moon was stunned. There he was, at 27, with everything a person could want: a beautiful wife, two healthy children, a thriving off-the-field business (W. Moon's Chocolate Chippery cookie shops) and homes in Edmonton, Seattle and Los Angeles. And, as a pro football rarity—a true free agent—with a rocket for an arm, out-of-this-world stats (in each of the last two seasons with Edmonton he had thrown for 5,000 yards and more than 30 touchdowns) and three leagues bidding for his services, Moon knew he was likely to sign a contract for $1 million a year or more.
He shook his head. "It doesn't seem right," he said to Leigh Steinberg, his Berkeley-based lawyer and agent. "I'm asking for a million dollars a year, and they have nothing."
New York was the third stop on Moon's four-city "fact-finding" tour of interested NFL teams. At least six other NFL clubs—and, at one time, a total of 14 in the NFL, CFL and USFL—had made overtures.
"Look, Warren," Steinberg said, "if you weren't getting that million, it's not like it would be going to them. If you sign with the Giants, we can arrange to donate some money to the homeless."
"That would make me feel better," Moon said, "although I'm not so sure I'll ever feel comfortable making this much money." – Jill Lieber, Sports Illustrated, February, 1984.
The third league was the USFL, of course. The rival league created demand for quarterbacks by out-bidding the NFL for top rookies like Jim Kelly and luring away veterans like Williams and Brian Sipe. The demand and the bidding drove up salaries, particularly for quarterbacks. If not for the USFL, the NFL might not have been nearly as interested in a CFL star.
Early yesterday, Moon had decided to sign with Houston. But later he wavered, after telephone calls from several Seahawks' executives, trying to convince him to stay in the Seattle area, where he has lived since he left the University of Washington in March 1978 to join the Eskimos.
Last evening, he decided on Houston and called Steinberg at his office in Berkeley, Calif. Steinberg then called Ladd Herzeg, the Oilers' general manager.
The Giants, one of three other teams that Moon was considering, dropped out of the pursuit early yesterday. Steinberg said that George Young, the Giants general manager, told him that his team didn't want to spend that much money.
'George said that his position was that if he signed Moon for the dollars we were talking about, it would send a bad message to his other quarterbacks,'' Steinberg said. The Giants' other quarterbacks are Jeff Rutledge, Phil Simms and Scott Brunner. – Michael Janofsky, the New York Times, February 4th, 1984.
The dollars Steinberg spoke of turned out to be $6 million for five years. Moon chose the Oilers, coached by Hugh Campbell, his coach in Edmonton. Campbell soon gave way to the iconoclastic, cantankerous Jerry Glanville.
Glanville and Moon clashed initially over Glanville’s conservative offensive approach. A less experienced quarterback might have chafed, balked, and been branded unworthy. A more traditional coach might have been eager to do the branding. Instead, Glanville began opening things up, and Moon began delivering victories.
“It's good to see that what I've been saying all along proved to be prophetic,” Moon said after a 310-yard passing day and a 32-28 victory over the Bengals in November, 1986. “I don't want to have to tell anyone, 'I told you so.' I just want to do the things I was brought here to do. I was brought here to throw the football.” An early version of the run ’n’ shoot, the Red Gun, arrived with quarterbacks coach June Jones in 1987. Moon’s passing statistics began a steep ascent.
Glanville was fired in 1989, his shtick having worn thin on everyone. "It got to be a circus atmosphere around here," said Moon at the time, per a Rick Reilly column in Sports Illustrated. "We'd have the national media coming in and asking us about snakebites. There were so many distractions, you could hardly concentrate on football."
Jack Pardee replaced Glanville in 1990 and brought a full-throttle run ’n’ shoot system with him. Dr. Z described the situation at the time as only he could:
They have finally found an offense for Warren Moon in Houston, the run-and-shoot, and if ever a player was born for a system, that player is Moon. First they told him, you had better keep your arm healthy, because you're going to throw, maybe more than any quarterback has ever thrown in one year. Throwing? No problem. Whip it or dink it or gun it deep or throw the touch pass—Moon can do it all. Always has.
Wait, that's not all. You're going to have to run, too, because a lot of the stuff comes on rollouts and half rolls, throws on the move. You'll also have to be able to read defenses as well as your wide receivers. You'll have four of them on every play, with each having as many as four routes from which to choose. That's 16 reads every snap of the ball.
And you had better be tough because you're going to get hit. Oh, brother, are you going to be hit. All that running and throwing means all those pass rushers. – Paul Zimmerman, Sports Illustrated, November 1990.
Moon led the NFL in passing yards twice. He won Offensive Player of the Year in 1990. He made the Oilers a playoff staple. He helped the run ’n’ shoot, flawed as it was, become part of the schematic DNA of football at all levels. Moon was tough and athletic, but also smart, disciplined, experienced, methodical, tactical: everything a quarterback can possibly be asked to be.
Much more on Moon, Steve McNair and, um, Farrah Fawcett after the paywall. Become a premium subscriber and get it all!