9901290231
DETROIT FREE PRESS
990129
Friday, January 29, 1999
METRO FINAL
1C
Photo
MITCH ALBOM
SIDEBAR ATTACHED
Copyright (c) 1999, Detroit Free Press
THE BREAKABLE QB FINALLY GETS A BREAK
MIAMI-- "When he arrived here, we're all like, 'We traded for him? He's going to be
our quarterback?' "
-- Jamal Anderson, Falcons running back
Football will forgive you many things. Fragility is not one of them.
You can have a big mouth. You can oversleep. You can have a police record. But
if you break too easily, they start looking elsewhere.
So you begin to understand why Chris Chandler has been the NFL's answer to a
hobo hopping on trains. He blew a knee out in his second year in the NFL, and
the owners of his first team, the Colts, "gave up on me. They didn't think I
could come back." He was damaged goods. He was traded.
That began a nomadic life in football that took him from a smirking, partying,
22-year-old kid to a balding, married, 33-year-old veteran, from a bum knee to
an injured ankle to a series of blurring concussions, from Indianapolis to
Tampa Bay to Phoenix to Los Angeles to Houston and finally here, to the
Atlanta Falcons. Many quarterbacks can tire you out chasing them. Chandler
tires you out by reading his resume.
And yet he has made it. The Super Bowl. He is the hero for every man who has
ever bounced from place to place, saddled with a lousy reputation. Here is
Chris Chandler at the Super Bowl, now being compared to John Elway -- in some
cases, more favorably -- and damn if you don't rub your eyes and wonder if you
haven't been in the business too long.
Chris Chandler? Wasn't he the quarterback teams got when they couldn't get the
guy they really wanted? Wasn't he the guy who lost his job to Jeff George,
then to Steve Beuerlein, then to Steve McNair? Wasn't he the Breakable
Quarterback? A guy who averaged just eight starts a season, a guy who was
injured so often, they nicknamed him "Crystal Chandelier"?
"He really impressed us this year," says Terance Mathis, one of his star
receivers. "In football, when you hear you're not durable, it hurts.
"He paid a big price for that reputation. If you watch some of the shots he's
taken, it's close where they're trying to hurt him. But he kept getting up off
the turf and throwing touchdowns passes.
"To be honest, Chris Chandler is probably the driving force for us being in
this Super Bowl."
A cheap acquisition
Chandler sits now in a large conference room at a Miami hotel, wearing a
lemon-colored golf shirt, his thinning, wavy hair tucked under a cap. He's had
an incredible year, a Pro Bowl year, with a sky-high passing rating and a
memorable overtime drive to win the NFC championship game over the heavily
favored Vikings. Were this 10 years ago, he might be boasting how the critics
were wrong, how everybody underrated him. There is no such bravado now.
If he is bitter, he is smart enough to hide it. If he is vengeful, he is smart
enough to wait until Sunday. With the endless stream of reporters coming his
way, he has enough chances to slam former bosses. This is all he will say:
"I got over that a long time ago. The teams that gave up on me, it's not hard
to look back and see the coaches are all gone, and the front offices aren't
around -- not that keeping me was the right answer. But pointing the finger at
me wasn't the right answer, either."
He shrugs.
"They all know that now."
Chandler came to the Falcons last season the way he came almost everywhere
else: cheaply. Cost them only fourth- and sixth-round draft picks. In previous
years, Chandler had been acquired through free agency or trade no fewer than
four times.
The thing is, there were flashes of how good Chandler could be all along the
way. He was 9-4 as a starter in his rookie year. Then he got hurt. He once
threw 125 straight passes without an interception. Then he got traded.
When he was standing up, he was effective. But too often he was hobbling off,
knocked over or knocked out.
"What price have you had to pay for an injury-prone reputation?" he is asked.
"You pay a price," he says. "But it's no different than the GMs who had me on
their teams and said, 'He's not very good, let's get rid of him.'
"I've said it many times. There are very few guys who really know how this
game is played and what it takes. I'm lucky to be with one of them now in Dan
Reeves."
It was Reeves who traded for Chandler, brought him in, and said the words the
quarterback had been wanting to hear his whole career: "You're my guy. If you
have a bad game, you're not coming out. If you get injured, you're coming
back. I'm counting on you to be my starting quarterback."
And that has made all the difference in the world.
The born-again quarterbacks
Well, OK. There's also his wife, Diane, and his three daughters, the latest of
whom came into the world last week. "Marriage and kids have been the single
biggest factor in my development," he says. "I'm much more mature now."
And it doesn't hurt that his father-in-law is John Brodie, the longtime San
Francisco quarterback. "He also didn't make it right away," Chandler says.
"Every time I talk to him, I feel smarter and better about my job."
Still, there's nothing like being with a winner. Maybe it just takes time to
find the right cast. Vinny Testaverde, reborn with the Jets, is proof. Randall
Cunningham, reborn with the Vikings, is proof.
Chris Chandler, pride of the Falcons, may be the biggest proof of all. Or
maybe he's just finally healthy. Either way, when they call his name in the
tunnel Sunday, it'll be the end to a worthy story of patience. The breakable
quarterback gets his big break at last.
To leave a message for Mitch Albom, call 1-313-223-4581 or E-mail
albom@freepress.com
Name game
Besides Chris, our favorite Chandlers:
Chandler Park
Chandler from "Friends"
Jeff Chandler, who played Cochise in "Broken Arrow"
Mystery writer Raymond Chandler, the creator of Phillip Marlowe
Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, where they hand out Oscars
Kicker Don Chandler, who played for Green Bay in the first two Super Bowls
Baseball commissioner Happy Chandler
Gene Chandler, who sang "Duke of Earl"
Chandler, Ariz., former Cactus League town that hosts NHRA drag racing, an
annual ostrich festival ("the other red meat"), and is the home of Shane Stant
(the guy who clubbed Nancy Kerrigan)
THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION MAY DIFFER SLIGHTLY FROM THE PRINTED ARTICLE.
COLUMN;CHRIS CHANDLER;BIOGRAPHY;SUPER BOWL