One of the things that makes football so fascinating is that while much of the on and off field activity is analogous to life, the application of those “life lessons” is more subjective than it is anywhere else in sports. For someone who traffics in visions of what developing or unproven players could be, this makes the NFL offseason, one presided over by the “right way” cult, particularly frustrating. Free agency poses the even more confusing question of exactly where the line is between the hopeful “fresh start” and the graveyard of “he is who he is” lies, a question whose answer seems to depend on whether or not we like you all that much.
How else to explain the discussion of Kevin Kolb, who is apparently full of potential and just needs the right opportunity at the age of 26, while Tarvaris Jackson is a waste of money with similar stats and just one more year of experience? Why is Vince Young some sort of pet project with immense upside while Kyle Orton, who is a better quarterback in every measurable passing statistic, is basically a bargain bin castoff? How is it that sports, the ultimate meritocracy among professions, is infected in this respect with a sort of caste of haves and have-nots created by media contrivances?
This, of course, is the great frustration of anybody who wants to see even-handed consideration of athletes across a sport regardless of pedigree or hype. If that seems like a ridiculous “quest” for a sports fan, consider that it may be the only way to assure that any sport improves overall. When we allow measured potential and performance to act as the foundation upon which teams, and even leagues are built, we get a better product than we do when we manufacture stories outside of quantifiable measurements. Vince Young, for example, has put up solid, if unremarkable statistics while carrying the burden of a coach undermining him at every opportunity. How is that not just as good and important a story as the cautionary tale of an out of control athlete (debatable, and certainly insensitive to real mental issues) losing his ability to play the game (almost certainly false by any fair statistical assessment). We create stories that make for easy fits into well trod media themes instead of allowing reality, in the fullness of its context and statistics, to write new stories.
This cheats us as fans by telling the same old story, but it also cheats the athletes themselves. The “right way” retort of “play well and the rest will work itself out” rings hollow to anybody who knows just how much expectations have to do with the practical realities of life. Once history is allowed to settle, and this “history” is created more and more quickly in the up-to-the-minute sports media landscape, it becomes quicksand in which a player either passively, patiently survives (Kerry Collins is an excellent example of this) or drowns as he presses harder and harder to escape. This is why I look at the movement of players like Orton and Jackson and hope that maybe, just maybe they can meet (or in Orton’s case, continue to meet) the potential that hasn’t gone anywhere because it hasn’t had time to vanish yet. Tarvaris Jackson isn’t dead after five years (none of which involved a coach actually trusting him as a starting quarterback), and Kyle Orton’s last two years aren’t a fluke just because they’re different (whether or not they’re a product of Josh McDaniels, similarly etched in stone as an arrogant loser, actually being one of the best offensive minds of the past decade, is another thing). Yet here we all are somehow certain of the entirety of the careers people in their mid 20’s when most of us aren’t sure about how professionally developed we are right now.
So I choose to appreciate free agency, and every little move entailed by it, particularly when those moves involve careers that in any fair world would be considered sill nascent by onlookers (Vernon Gholston, best wishes to you in Chicago, and that’s coming from a Jets fan). Because one day, six years from now, I really hope nobody looks at this blog and says “well, that’s who he is, and that’s who he’ll always be.”
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