Sunday, November 12, 2000
Smith's rookie problems are norm
Most QBs get off to rough start
By Mark Curnutte
The Cincinnati Enquirer
DALLAS — Bill Walsh, the Hall of Fame coach and former Bengals assistant, believes rookie quarterbacks are doomed to failure.
The Bengals' Akili Smith played in only seven games as a rookie before an injury ended his season. He now has played in nine games this season, giving him an entire year of NFL experience.
While his performance hasn't been enough to win more than three games and throw more than four touchdown passes, Smith's statistics are roughly parallel those of many other quarterbacks taken in the first round.
The question is, What happens now?
NFL history shows that if teams stick by struggling rookie quarterbacks and surrounds him with an increasing number of good players, the quarterback and the team do better sooner than later.
Much of Smith's problem in the passing game is not his fault. The Bengals left themselves dangerously inexperienced at wide receiver, and when veteran deep threat Darnay Scott was lost for the season with a broken leg in training camp, Cincinnati had three rookies and a pair of second-year wide outs.
The Bengals opened with two rookie receivers, Peter Warrick and Ron Dugans, in the starting lineup. Dugans has been such a disappointment that he is inactive for today's game.
A week ago, the frustration bubbled over on the field when Smith angrily pointed at second-year receiver Craig Yeast, who broke the opposite direction from Smith passes on three third-down plays.
“We weren't on the same page,” Smith said.
Warrick has dropped 11 passes. At least a dozen times, Smith has been leveled from the back on sacks. Sometimes, he has held the ball too long. Most of the time, he's had no chance.
The Bengals followed the recipe for rookie QB disaster to the letter. They used an early first-round draft pick to get him at No. 3 in 1999, turning down a once-in-a-lifetime deal with the Saints to trade that one pick for nine draft choices.
Then Scott went down, and Smith and his kiddie corps of receivers started on-the-job training.
The belief among the vast majority of NFL coaches and personnel directors is don't put too much pressure on young quarterbacks.
Yet, this past spring and summer in Cincinnati, general manager Mike Brown and former coach Bruce Coslet were singing the same song: The Bengals will go as far as Smith can carry them.
Coach Dick LeBeau, promoted when Coslet resigned after Game 3, has changed that tune and dialed down the focus.
“He realizes he's a work in progress,” LeBeau said of Smith. “We just have to keep swinging away, and he has done a good job of that.”
Under Coslet, 68 percent of plays were passes. With LeBeau in charge, the Bengals are going to the air 47 percent of the time.
LeBeau emphasized the team's strength, its running game, similar to what former Patriots coach Bill Parcells did with rookie quarterback Drew Beldsoe in 1993.
Parcells stayed with the running game, even though New England lost its first 11 games that year. Then it won four of its last five.
“No matter what, we didn't put him in a compromising position, throwing the ball,” Parcells would say later. "
In the opener, a 24-7 loss to the Browns, Coslet called 50 pass plays for Smith, even though the Bengals trailed only 14-7 through much of the third quarter.
The Bengals won two games under LeBeau by running the ball 88 times and passing it on 40 plays.
Even though Cincinnati lost its next game, 27-7 to Baltimore, the passing game worked better than the rushing offense. Smith was 15-of-27 for 137 yards and no interceptions agains the Ravens.
“I've learned a whole lot, but I'm still learning,” Smith said.
Bengals receiver Damon Griffin, Smith's Oregon teammate, for one, bristles at comparisons between Smith and Minnesota's Daunte Culpepper, who has thrown for 17 touchdowns and 2,260 yards for the 7-2 Vikings.
“That's not fair,” Griffin said. “Culpepper has (receiver) Chris Carter, whose been there 10 years. Here, we're all learning.”
Culpepper's situation is the rare one, similar to the one Dan Marino came into in Miami in 1983. He was the last piece on a good team that had been to the Super Bowl the year before, not the first piece of a bad one rebuilding.
Last week against Baltimore, Smith's counterpart was a veteran quarterback, Trent Dilfer, who was rushed in Tampa Bay. He says too many quarterbacks are being rushed and are going to crash and will have to resurrect themselves somewhere else when they're older.
“I think the thing that hurt me the most was a lack of maturity, and I don't mean off the field,” Dilfer said. “I mean a football maturity, a perspective that enables you to see the big picture and get through the struggles because you've faced the situations before.”
Smith's teammates are trying to help him avoid the crash.
“Right now, we're all struggling,” veteran tight end Marco Battaglia said of the passing game that's averaging a league low 113 yards a game. “It's just on him more because he is the quarterback. He is our leader. We try to keep his spirits up because if he goes in the tank we're in trouble.”
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Smith's rookie problems are norm
