He stands at 6-foot-5 and 225 chiseled pounds with a white-bread face and golden hair. He is a red-shirt senior at USC, one of the greatest college football schools of all time. His name is Carson Palmer and in past years he would have been a top-5 draft choice with his pedigree. In next year’s NFL Draft, he will be lucky if he is chosen by the fifth round.
The problem with Palmer is that he has feet of stone, has not won much in college and has failed to provide the leadership at USC that many teams want out of their quarterbacks. Still, 20 years ago all of these negatives would have been outweighed by the fact that Palmer is built, both physically and experience-wise, like the prototypical NFL quarterback. Now, Palmer’s description no longer fits that “prototypical NFL quarterback” definition.
NFL quarterbacks today are preferred in the mold of Donovan McNabb or Michael Vick: someone who can make magic out of a blown play with their feet, arms or heart. Twenty years ago, McNabb and Vick would have been converted into a wide receiver or safety in college. They have one person to thank for their current status as torchbearers for the new breed of NFL quarterback: recently retired Eagle Randall Cunningham.
Cunningham was the most prolific running quarterback of all time. It did not hurt that he also had a cannon arm and a flair for improvisation. He is first in the history of the NFL with 4,928 yards rushing from the quarterback position, threw for almost 30,000 yards and provided for some of the most memorable football moments ever, including doing a flip over a would-be tackler for a touchdown.
Some may say that Cunningham was a fraud because he never won in the postseason. The problem was that he never had an offense. Name one quality Eagles’ receiver other than Cris Carter in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Carter was not even that good when he was with the Eagles anyway. Besides, when Cunningham was 35 and finally had a solid offense, he led the Vikings to the most points in NFL history with 556 and a berth in the 1998 NFC Championship.
Cunningham’s importance to football was beyond stats and highlight-reel plays. He proved that fast, improvisational and, yes, we’ll say it, black quarterbacks could succeed in the NFL. For that reason alone he should be enshrined in the Hall of Fame. At the very least, Vick or McNabb should name their children after him.
