ASHBURN, Va., -- Steve Young understands the transition. He also understands the scrutiny – and failure.
Tampa Bay selected Young with the first overall pick in the 1985 NFL Supplemental Draft, after he played one season in the USFL. He offered hope then frustration as, in his 19 games as a starting quarterback, Tampa Bay went 3-16 as he threw for 11 touchdowns, 21 interceptions and spent a lot of time running instead of throwing. It was a lot more than just the quarterback.
Still, a career looked dead. Until the 49ers revived Young, putting him around better talent and better coaching. Then, after four years mostly waiting on the bench, he embarked on a Hall of Fame career.
That doesn’t mean Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III will follow the same path. But it does mean Young provided a blueprint for second chances. It started with understanding how to operate in the pocket.
“If you exhaust every play out of the pocket, what happens is you find more opportunities,” Young said. “I can’t tell you how many times I left something on the table because I thought, ‘I’m going, this is crazy.’ And that’s where the mastery comes in. To exhaust it all means to understand it all, to know every element of the responsibility and why they’re moving. It’s reflexive. I have a reflexive response to what’s happening.”
Young said working with Sid Gilman and Mike Shanahan and Bill Walsh helped change his mindset. He would still run on occasion, but he became more of a pocket passer.
It’s what Griffin must do if he wants to regain the starting job and be an effective quarterback in the future. It might take him a few offseasons working in this area to achieve that goal.
"It’s hard," Young said. "You’re under the gun. I remember thinking, 'I have to make a career.' I’d go in and have to play and I was like, 'I don’t care, this ball has to move.'"
Young knows the importance of adopting that mindset rather than just taking off and running.
"You end up not progressing in what can help you do it in 10 years because of what you can do today," he said. "That’s the hard part. Peyton Manning has to do it this way because he’s not going anywhere. For him, it’s either you get this down immediately or you’re done. Guys that can move around, you can kind of make a career of it."
Last week, Young talked about how many hours it takes to alter that mindset -- and it must be done in the offseason. The hard part now is that the CBA limits how much work players can do with coaches.
Young said Walsh used to tell him that "people need to know where you are."
"What I call in the huddle, I want that play run and I want it delivered, and I want it delivered as you take a shot to the chin," Young said Walsh would tell him. "If we get that ball delivered to Jerry [Rice] or Brent [Jones] and we’re completing it and moving on and consistently doing stuff out of the huddle, it will make us champions. If you run around and make plays, you’ll never make enough plays for us to be great. There are always people who would be open or could have been open if you hung in there. There’s a negative effect when you run around without exhausting everything that happens with the play call."
Young recognized that he must improve as a passer. It’s not as if he abandoned running: From 1992-94, Young made three All-Pro teams -- and averaged 67.7 runs per season. But he was never sacked more than 31 times during that stretch. And it wasn’t until his last full season as a starter that he was sacked more than 35 times in San Francisco. In Tampa, he was sacked 68 times in his first 19 games -- a function of his mindset, but also a bad team around him.
"It’s so exhausting in the pocket taking shots when you know I can go," Young said. "I don’t want to take that shot and maybe make a bigger play. To dedicate and discipline your mind that 'I have to find a way, that’s the only way I can learn ...' That’s the challenge."
