Joe Montana is unimpressed with your quarterbacks, National Football Leauge. Actually, that's not exactly true; Montana, like the rest of us, is slack-jawed watching Tom Brady rip through the league. But after learning Vinny Testaverde wasn't dead, and was currently employed by an NFL team as a starting quarterback, the Hall of Famer had some thoughts on the dearth of talent at the position.
"You're seeing a lot of things change the position because a lot of those guys in college aren't running typical pro-type offenses," Montana said. "They're spreading things out in the shotgun, and ... that doesn't translate as well to the next level.Hmm. Maybe Montana can work with Rex Grossman on improving the handoffs, because he definitely got screwed out of that lesson in college (Thanks, Steve Spurrier).
I tell my boys, the first thing I have to do is train you to hand off, because this is not a handoff," he said, imitating the quarterback riding the ball in a running back's hands deep in the backfield. "All you're reading is from tackle to tackle, and half the time you don't even look (downfield). They're limited in their passing."
Seriously, good or bad, the NFL is a copycat league. And Montana played for Bill Walsh, widely considered one of the smartest guys to ever draw up a play. And although the NFL is ever-evolving, there's not as much innovation going on as there was 20 or 30 years ago ... more tweaking than anything.
That's not an indictment on the current state of affairs, just a reflection of why the quarterback position has morphed into some bastardized version of what it once was. Since he's responsible for everything else that is wrong with professional football, I say we blame Michael Vick.
