As a big cold front rolled across the nation this week, leaving snowdrifts, ice-covered roads and harried commuters in its wake, it was pretty clear even without the benefit of Doppler that the National Football League season had officially turned.
Turned to when conditions can mean as much as anything else, short of an injury-free roster, on the way down the stretch toward the postseason.
When it becomes about who can rise up when the temperature drops.
Especially at quarterback, when throwing the ball on wind-swept December days becomes like tossing a cinder block and it’s a constant battle to try to keep the feeling in his fingers just to handle the snap.
Defensive players say they often look for the players on offense who cringe when they walk out of the tunnel for that first blast of frigid air. They’re looking for those thinking about something else, that wants to be somewhere else.
They take even a harder look at those who play behind center.
“Some guys, whether it’s warm or cold, they find a way to get it done,” said Broncos coach Mike Shanahan. “I don’t care if a guy’s been raised in Miami, raised in California, raised in Minnesota, wherever, usually the guys who are good, who are great quarterbacks, play in all conditions.”
Which leads to one of the bigger contradictions in the league, at least in the Super Bowl era. Two of the quarterbacks who have authored the best records in December and January regular-season games hail from Mississippi.
Brett Favre, of Kiln, Miss., is No. 3 in the Super Bowl era (since the 1966 season, of those with at least 25 career starts in those months) at 51-18 in December and January regular-season games. Steve McNair, of Mount Olive, Miss., is No. 5 at 29-14.
“I have no earthly idea why that is,” Favre said earlier this season. “That’s something, though. It’s not like we played in the snow all the time or anything. So I don’t know, but I think you have to love to play.
“It’s not always fun to be out there when it’s cold and blowing, but if you love to compete, if you love to win and if you love to play, you want to make something happen.”
Once, having had the question posed to him, McNair said, “Well, those Friday nights do get pretty chilly,” he said, just before he offered a smile.
“I don’t know why,” McNair said. “But I want to win more than I want to be warm, I guess.”
Coaches with cold-weather games on the docket spend plenty of time talking about mind-set, taking their players outside on bad days for practice and doing whatever they need to not to make a big deal out of the fact it could be cold.
Hall of Fame lineman Bruce Matthews instituted a rule with teammates during his playing days that what a player wore in training camp would be what the player could wear in any game for the remainder of the season.
No long johns in the sweltering two-a-days of training camp, none for road trips to the shores of Lake Erie in December.
“Everybody plays in the same situation, the same field,” Shanahan said. “But I firmly believe some people look forward to adverse conditions because they know they’re mentally tougher than the other guy.
“So they don’t mind when conditions are tough so they feel like they’ve got an advantage. It’s been my experience that guys who are afraid of bad weather usually play accordingly.”
It is no shock, given all he has done and how he has played this season, that the Patriots’ Tom Brady, with a 25-5 mark in regular-season games in December and January, leads all quarterbacks of the Super Bowl era.
Brady, with 45 touchdowns and just five interceptions this season for the undefeated Patriots, figures to only add to that with the Jets (3-10) and Dolphins (0-13) still remaining on the schedule this season.
Shanahan said it’s difficult to identify a potential bad-weather stalwart at quarterback before he comes into the league because most quarterbacks he has looked at over the years simply don’t play enough in adverse conditions to formulate an opinion on how things will transfer into the NFL.
“So really, you just take a look at the whole picture,” Shanahan said. “You figure out what kind of guy he is. Does he let things get to him? Does he fall apart when things get tough at the end of a game? Does he work?
“Those are the things that tell you what kind of player he is. And if he has all of those things, he can probably play when it’s cold or raining or snowing, because at some point, he’ll have to.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
