Stark Reality: All Great Quarterbacks Must Come To An End

When the party finally ended, with an infield hit, a run batted in, and thousands of adoring fans paying one, last, extended tribute to the man for 19 remarkable years of baseball, so too did the novelty of the season-long celebrations that held the New York Yankees hostage for two seasons.

In 2013, the best closer to ever play the game, Mariano Rivera, was the honoree of a ballpark tour that feted him with gifts and tips of the cap, a process only to be repeated in 2014 when shortstop Derek Jeter announced the season would be his last. A week ago, the Yankees captain played his final game at Fenway Park, where he was handed a pair of boots and treated to one final love-fest between fans and player, history and inevitability.

These were, for sure, rare instances. When the time comes to hang it up, when an athlete simply can’t play at the level that he once used to, or no longer fits the parameter of a team looking to maintain stability for the long term, reality isn’t easy to taste, even for the most prodigious at their positions.

Such farewell brigades are also only indigenous to baseball, or, more specifically, to New York, where Rivera and Jeter were baseball gods. But even in Gotham, these parades strayed from the norm of how other Yankee greats went out. Babe Ruth was released in 1935 after a season in which he hit 22 home runs. The team cut Yogi Berra in 1963 after a season in which the catcher had an .856 OPS. Don Mattingly was allowed to walk with little fanfare in 1995, just as Bernie Williams was in 2006.

The end hardly ever comes gracefully. Even for idols of the game.

It is even more jarring in other sports, where age and a decline in skills can appear more rapidly and have more a debilitating effect on a team as a whole. Still, oftentimes the biggest names are allowed to hang on too long because of the name and legacy attached to it. Wayne Gretzky was a minus-34 his final two seasons with the New York Rangers at the ages of 37 and 38. Michael Jordan’s two comeback years were spent lingering with the Washington Wizards, with whom he averaged 21.2 points per game, nearly 10 points below his career average with the Chicago Bulls.

But if the way professional sports exhibit a semblance of heart when it comes to its retiring legends, it shouldn’t be surprising to realize such love affairs hardly exist in the NFL, a calculated business with an approach to the bottom line that even eschews favoritism for the athletes who delivered their most memorable moments.

The Baltimore Colts traded Johnny Unitas. The Green Bay Packers sent Brett Favre to the New York Jets. Joe Montana, architect of four Super Bowl victories with the San Francisco 49ers, finished his career in Kansas City. The Indianapolis Colts released Peyton Manning.

For quarterbacks, in particular those who have tasted the shine of the Lombardi Trophy, the breakup always seems one that would never come. For years, he was the face of a franchise, the reason a team can tout itself among the best in the NFL; because of the gifts he was able to deliver them. Then one day they wake up and there’s a younger version of him breathing down his neck in the film room, trailing his steps on the sideline, waiting for his own chance at the expense of a lengthy resume.

In some instances the divorce, despite a natural, initial backlash from the fan base, works out well for the team. Aaron Rodgers in Green Bay. Steve Young in San Francisco. Andrew Luck in Indianapolis.

Tom Brady in New England.

Thirteen years and five Super Bowl appearances later, Brady is staring at a situation that may not exactly parallel the one he experienced on the other end with Drew Bledsoe in New England, but still may be forced to face the realization that a changing of the guard at quarterback will come … eventually. Second-round draft pick Jimmy Garoppolo may or may not be a viable starter in the NFL, but the fact that Patriots head coach Bill Belichick selected him in the second round speaks volumes.

It’s the highest Belichick has ever drafted a quarterback during his stint in New England, and the highest the team has picked the position since Bill Parcells drafted Bledsoe in 1993. That fact that it came prior to a season that Brady would play at age 37 and staring at football mortality may have sent an even more blunt message.

Even the elites have an expiration date.

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

“It was difficult,” Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay told the Indianapolis Star in 2013 of his 2012 decision to cut Manning, the quarterback of the Colts since 1998 who led the team to a Super Bowl win and even more close calls. “You wait until the last possible second (to make the decision) even though a month or so before you could see the writing on the wall.

“We used all the time we could just because you didn’t want to have to face the realities that were sitting before us. Every time you turned the Rubik’s Cube whichever direction, there was no way of having it come out a different way.

“It just wasn’t solvable. It became apparent what had to be done.”

Of course the Colts were put in a unique situation in 2011, when Manning underwent multiple neck surgeries and the Colts limped to a 2-14 record. They could have simply hoped that Manning would come back to his MVP form in 2012. Instead, they embraced the “Suck for Luck” campaign and decided there was less risk in drafting the Stanford University standout, who was considered one of the top “sure things” to come along in a draft that has more JaMarcus Russells than not. Irsay tearfully said goodbye to the Colts legend, who has gone on to re-write more records with the Denver Broncos, whom many consider the favorite to win the AFC for a second year in a row.

Despite the emotion, the breakup was relatively painless. Manning stood side-by-side with Irsay at the press conference following his release, and had no barbs to throw, no anger that his time with the Colts came to an end in that particular fashion. The fact that both teams worked out so well to the degree that they did makes it even more remarkable.

In three seasons with the Colts, Luck has thrown 59 touchdown passes, and this year just might be an early suggestion for league MVP with 13 touchdowns and a 108.0 QB rating through the season’s first four weeks. Manning, of course, threw as many TD’s (55) last year as Luck has in three seasons, and at the age of 38 has thrown only one interception over the course of the Broncos’ first three games.

Rarely does it work out so well for both parties, as Montana and Favre can attest. Unlike Manning, both quarterbacks had the future in waiting on his team’s roster during their final days, Young with San Francisco and Rodgers with Green Bay.

After Montana spent the bulk of the 1992 season on the sideline with an injury, the 49ers reluctantly dealt him to the Kansas City Chiefs the following year, when it became clear to Montana that he wouldn’t be able to escape the brewing quarterback controversy with Young, who led the team that season to a 14-2 record, and topped the league in a number of categories, including touchdowns (25) and completion percentage (66.7).

In the meantime, Young himself didn’t seem willing to lay down his aspirations of grabbing the starting job, no matter what the name was in front of him on the depth chart.

“Steve has been in the shadow of Montana so long, he’s needed to subjugate some of his own personality,” Young’s agent, Leigh Steinberg, said at the time of the deal. “The hard-core Montana loyalists would react with tremendous anger to any statement that Steve was a quality quarterback or that Joe was past his prime. So Steve had to toe a very unnerving political tightrope, and knew the Montana fans were monitoring every word said by either Steve or the club executives and that any word by him would provoke some response. So, Steve carefully bit his tongue for six years and stayed away from any comments.”

With Young, who played until 1999, when he was 38 years old, the 49ers went on to win the fifth Super Bowl in franchise history in 1994, while Montana spent two unspectacular seasons with the Chiefs, who did, however, make the playoffs both years, including the ’93 AFC Championship game, which the Chiefs lost, 30-13 to the Buffalo Bills.

“The thing that stuck in me the most wasn’t that I was going somewhere else, but it was the reason I was going,” Montana said last year. “I had felt I shouldn’t be (leaving) at that point in time. I could understand it if my play was down, but it wasn’t at that point. It was simply because they didn’t want to have a quarterback controversy.”

“They always had offers,” Montana said of the 49ers, his team of 14 years, “but none that would give me an opportunity to compete for the job. I felt I deserved to get it back, but hey, they made a decision, and then I had to make one.

After two seasons with the Chiefs, Montana retired, a conclusion it took Favre one more year, and even more infamous hemming and hawing, to finally succumb.

It was after the 2007 season, when the Packers very nearly met the Patriots in the Super Bowl, that Favre first decided to retire, then three months later thought it might have been a rash decision. For their part, the Packers had already moved onto Rodgers taking over at quarterback, leading Favre to write Green Bay general manager Ted Thompson, asking for his outright release so that he could sign with another team. Thompson refused.

Favre, who led Green Bay to a Super Bowl win in 1996, lashed out at the organization for their dishonesty, yet refused to return to the Packers in any other capacity that didn’t include his old starting job. Back-and-forth it went until the Packers finally relieved themselves of the headache by trading Favre to the Jets for a conditional fourth-round pick. He was sub-par, partly attributed to a torn bicep, under Rex Ryan, throwing a league-high 22 interceptions for the 9-7 Jets, while Rodgers, in his first full season, went only 6-10. Two years later, he was the MVP of Super Bowl XLV.

“I was at fault,” Favre said last year about his divorce with the Packers. “It is what it is. It’s over and done with…I feel that both sides had a part in it. If you could go back, would I or they have done things differently? I’m sure both sides would. But you can’t. And I think, I don’t know for certain, but I think the situation with Peyton and the Colts almost looked like our situation. But then, maybe they thought twice about it and maybe they learned from our situation and they handled it correctly.

“So I hate it, that it happened that way. And I tried to go on and play my best football in spite of those things. And I had a great year my first year in Minnesota and up until my bicep was torn in New York, I really felt we were having a great year. So I look back and have fond memories of all those years.”

Favre did find resurgence again with the Vikings, who he joined in 2009, and led them to the NFC Championship game against the Saints, a contest during which he did…well, this:

Favre played one more year with the Vikings, throwing 11 touchdowns, coupled with 19 interceptions during a season in which he battled concussion symptoms. Rodgers won the NFL MVP that same year.

Even when it works out well for the player, the same isn’t necessarily true of the franchise. For John Elway, the end came following the second of back-to-back Super Bowl victories, and even though the franchise knew the Hall of Famer’s days were dwindling, they had little to replace him with except for the hopes of Brian Griese, who was ahead of Brady on the depth chart at the University of Michigan, and not up to the challenge of taking over for the likes of Elway upon his fairy tale retirement announcement.

The Miami Dolphins had the likes of Jay Fielder and Damon Huard fighting for Dan Marino’s job when the longtime quarterback went along his way after the 1999 season. The Buffalo Bills are truthfully still looking for a solution at quarterback ever since Jim Kelly retired in 1997. Todd Collins, groomed to be the replacement, wasn’t up to snuff, and the franchise has rotated through a host of eligible candidates since then, including Doug Flutie, Bledsoe, and, now, Kyle Orton. When Troy Aikman was forced to leave the game that knocked him around like a piñata at age 34, the Dallas Cowboys were forced to look to Quincy Carter, Anthony Wright, and even Ryan Leaf as less-than-viable solutions.

Preparation for the inevitable is imperative, for few situations with an aging quarterback end as well as they did for the 49ers and Packers.

’When I Suck, I’ll Retire

Of course, this all comes back to Brady, and the debate as to when the Patriots legend will finally sail off into the sunset of a brilliant NFL career. Brady’s 2014 season has thus far been highlighted by the turmoil of an inept offensive line, and a crop of wide receivers who don’t appear to be on the same page. Brady appears frustrated and unhappy in the current state of affairs, nothing like the athlete who once professed he wanted to play football well into his 40’s. If that were to happen, it would likely be elsewhere.

“There’s nowhere I’d rather play, I know that,” Brady told WEEI at the beginning of the 2014 season, stopping short of saying he’d never play for another team. “I love playing for this team and I love representing this team and hopefully I can do that for as long as I can. When I suck, I’ll retire. But I don’t plan on sucking for a long time.”

“So hopefully that leads me to being here and there’s no place I’d rather be. I love this game and I love working hard at it. I’ve had a lot of people over the years tell me the things I couldn’t do and I think that’s always been great motivation for me to try to go out there an accomplish things that I think I can do, so hopefully I can continue to play at a really high level for a long period of time.”

But Brady has never had such a difficult start to a season as he has undergone in 2014, when he’s tossed only four touchdown passes. The Patriots are 2-2, and look more like the middle of the pack in the AFC rather than the Super Bowl contenders many touted them to be in the preseason.

That was before the frustration of losing Logan Mankins, the popular Patriots guard who was traded to Tampa Bay, a move that just perhaps also instilled a sense of locker room dysfunction in the process. Without Mankins, an inexperienced offensive line has been a gateway to Brady, who has found little time to find open receivers, and more time to pull himself off the field after getting drilled by a defender.

“I’m trying to do the best job I can do,” Brady said when asked this past week if he felt he was past his prime. “I’ll try to go out there and play better and play as best as I possibly can each week. Some weeks it looks better than others, some weeks it doesn’t, but you’ve got to believe in your process and what you’re doing. It’s served me well.

“It’s a team sport. This isn’t like hitting home runs or playing golf and not making par.”

Football players hardly ever predetermine when they’re ready to go out with good reason. It is normally only after the season is over that a player’s body tells him whether or not he can continue in the same capacity that has been his livelihood his entire adult life. Or, if he, as was the case with Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi, he is told that he can’t go anymore.

There is no parade through the NFL, no celebration of accomplishments via other fan bases, no long list of gifts the player will never use. There will always be appreciation and memories. But fans and team are together in pursuing future endeavors.

The end is his, but the game moves along.