The Grader Never Retires

Summer of 1978. Voluntary off-season workouts, the kind where just showing up already tells your coach something about you.

I stuck around after mine ended, throwing the ball with a couple of friends. One of them had a brother-in-law on break from the Denver Broncos — a wide receiver, a few seasons in, wanting to run some routes to stay sharp. No quarterbacks around. So I volunteered.

That's a habit of mine. When nobody else wants to step up, I do.

I started hitting him on routes — the deep ones, mostly. Corners, posts, fly patterns, the throws that travel forty, fifty, sixty yards downfield to a guy fast enough to actually get under one. He indulged my ego a little. Told me I had real potential. I enjoyed it. No big deal.

Except it was a big deal, because my head coach was watching the whole thing. Watching how I threw it deep. Watching the accuracy.

He let it play out, let us wind down, then found me afterward. I was heading into my senior year. He wanted me at quarterback.

I said yes before he finished the sentence. I'm a team guy. Whatever they need, I do.

He took a real risk on that. No experience at the position, one summer of work, study, conditioning, and whatever grit I had left standing between me and the job — and by the time the season opened, I was the starter. It worked. Or worked enough. Coach believed in me that much. That did something to my confidence I hadn't expected going in.

What happened next took me forty years to fully understand.