The Conceited Jason Whitlock
The hallmark of a look-at-me sports columnist is the ability to base criticism not only on nothing but on assertions that run against known facts. Kansas City Star’s Jason Whitlock makes a hedged but still ridiculous accusation against the Kansas City Chiefs General Manager Scott Pioli after the team traded a second-round 2009 pick for New England Patriots outside linebacker Mike Vrabel and back up quarterback Matt Cassel:
The acquisition of Cassel could be a Pioli ego trip. You get lucky, find Tom Brady in the seventh round [sic - it was actually the sixth round], and it becomes easy to convince yourself you’ve done it again with Cassel.
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I’d just like to see a little less arrogance. We embrace Belichick’s and Parcells’ conceit because theirs is backed by multiple Super Bowl titles and appearances.
Pioli and Haley look good on paper, just like their decision to trade for Cassel and Vrabel.
There is no way Pioli has convinced himself he’s found another Tom Brady in Cassel. If he had the Patriots wouldn’t have used a third-round pick in the 2008 draft to on a quarterback who’s widely seen a possible successor to Brady sometime around 2011-12. One could argue, I suppose that Pioli but nobody else in the Patriots organization thought Cassel indeed was a new Brady, but more realistically, Pioli knows that he’s unlikely to ever get his hands on another Brady, just like the Indianapolis Colts are unlikely to see another Peyton Manning-type quarterback in the next three decades. Mannings and Bradys are very few and far between. It seems more likely that Pioli is highly aware of that fact therefore is happy to at least for the moment settle for Matt Cassel who at least has proven himself not incapable of leading a talented offense (I think Cassel is overrated and that’s why I use the double negative).
Whitlock’s phrasing suggests to me that he’s bought into the mythology that Brady was a known quantity in the 2000 draft but only the Patriots understood the value of it. That’s just not the case. Brady was a decidedly unknown quantity because he had won relatively little playing time at Michigan. To the Patriots credit they quickly realized they had something special in Brady and moved him from fourth-string in 2000 to second-string in 2001.
Nor have the Patriots been chasing The Next Brady. Take Matt Gutierrez. He was brought in as an undrafted free agent in 2007. He stuck as thrid-string that year but was cut after the 2008 pre-season, then brought back after Brady was injured, but again as third-stringer.
The man who is guilty as charged of conceitedly thinking he’s found the next Tom Brady is actually Jason Whitlock. Here’s what he wrote for Fox Sports last year about some JAG quarterback at Ball State (comedian David Letterman’s alma mater):
Look, if the sports world didn’t operate under the control of a sports-media dictatorship, I wouldn’t have to provide you the context. A powerful, unbiased, independent journalist would’ve traveled to Ball State during the summer and talked with the man who recruited Tom Brady to Michigan (Brady Hoke) and the man who coached Tom Brady at Michigan (Ball State offensive coordinator Stan Parrish).
Hoke and Parrish can put [Ball State quarterback] Nate Davis in context more effectively than I can.
Nate Davis has the tools to be better than Tom Brady. Hoke and Parrish will tell you that, and they absolutely adore Tom Brady.
If you watch Nate Davis play, he looks like the second coming of Brett Favre.
Even I don’t think that lowly of Favre.
Parrish didn’t recognize Tom Brady when he coached Tom Brady. You don’t get a prize for finding a quarterback who has “the tools to be better than Tom Brady.” Just about every quarterback in the history of college football has stronger arms and faster legs than Tom Brady.
