It Turns Out They Weren’t Passersby

FOXBORO, Mass. — When quarterback Drew Bledsoe, the pride of Washington’s Walla Walla High School, arrived at the University of Washington on a recruiting trip, he found his host for the weekend was Mark Brunell, already a quarterback at the school.

Thanks, but no thanks, Bledsoe told university officials after calculating the odds. No way, figured Bledsoe, would he beat out both Brunell and the school’s star quarterback, Billy Joe Hobert.

Instead, Bledsoe went to Washington State, where he became the first true freshman quarterback to start in more than three decades.

Fast forward nearly seven years.

Now, it is Brunell who is stepping into an unfamiliar environment. And it is Bledsoe who is the host.

The two quarterbacks will be the opposing starters today when Brunell’s Jacksonville Jaguars come to Foxboro Stadium to battle Bledsoe’s New England Patriots in the AFC championship game, with the winner headed to Super Bowl XXXI in New Orleans in two weeks.

It would be natural to ask who would have thought these quarterback rivals in the state of Washington would come face to face seven years later in the national spotlight.

But that same question could have been asked seven months ago, or even seven weeks ago.

Few expected the Patriots to get this far. Almost nobody outside Jacksonville expected the Jaguars, a second-year team, to still be playing in mid-January.

The fact that both are still in the playoffs is largely a credit to the two quarterbacks. Now finishing his fourth year, Bledsoe, the first pick in the 1993 draft, seems about to be accepted as one of the game’s great quarterbacks. All he did this past season was to lead the league in attempts (623) and completions (373) while throwing for 4,086 yards and 27 touchdowns with a 2.4% interception rate, third best in the league. It was the second time in four years that Bledsoe has gone over the 4,000-yard mark.

Who knows, at this rate, he might even impress his own coach, Bill Parcells, who has been hard on Bledsoe since he first saw the raw quarterback and realized his potential.

When Bledsoe struggled in his rookie year, Parcells told him, “You’d better get your butt going. . . . If you don’t, you’re just going to be another guy who got picked high who wasn’t doing very good.”

Parcells was obviously trying to motivate Bledsoe, and the coach obviously did a good job. But Parcells is not one to lavish praise on anyone, and Bledsoe still seems stung by the early criticism.

Reacting to the speculation that Parcells, win or lose, may leave the Patriots after this season to coach the New York Jets, Bledsoe responded the other night by saying, “When I was a rookie, Bill Parcells told me he was not going to be my coach for my whole career. So I knew that sometime, I would lose him. That is kind of enticing.”

Any thoughts that Bledsoe, while a great regular-season quarterback, still wasn’t ready for postseason pressure were quickly dispelled in New England’s first playoff game last Sunday. After drawing a first-round bye by virtue of winning the AFC East, the Patriots drew a tough Pittsburgh Steeler team, a team that had demolished the Indianapolis Colts the week before.

But with a masterful throw the first time he took a snap from center last Sunday, Bledsoe began to shred the Steelers. He connected on that first throw with rookie Terry Glenn on a 53-yard play that set up New England’s game-opening touchdown en route to a 28-3 victory.

While in the case of Bledsoe it was always a matter of when, not if, the same could not have been said for Brunell. Although he had been a part of three consecutive Rose Bowls as a member of the Huskies, even winning the game’s most-valuable-player award as a sophomore, Brunell wasn’t taken until the fifth round of the ’93 draft, selected by the Green Bay Packers 118th overall. Two years ago, Brunell was battling to back up Green Bay’s Brett Favre, hardly a job with a much potential.

Jacksonville Coach Tom Coughlin spotted Brunell, traded for him as his quarterback of the future and was delighted to discover that the future was now.

What Brunell has done is even more amazing, if possible, than what his team has accomplished. Many football experts figured that one of the Super Bowl contenders would be led by a left-handed throwing quarterback who wears No. 8 and loves to run. But those experts figured it would be Steve Young of the San Francisco 49ers.

So meet the new Steve Young, younger, less wear and tear on the body and capable of putting up the same kind of numbers that elevated Young to a spot among the game’s elite.

Brunell was second only to Bledsoe in the regular season with 353 completions in 557 passes. But Brunell soared past everybody with a league-leading 4,367 passing yards. Still, his inexperience showed. Along with 19 touchdown passes, he threw 20 interceptions. Brunell also rushed for 396 yards.

Then came playoff upsets on consecutive weeks of the Bills in Buffalo and Broncos in Denver.

Still, insists Coughlin, “Brunell’s best is yet to come.”

It may have to if the Jaguars, again in their familiar role as underdogs, are to win today, something they narrowly missed doing in this same stadium in September in the regular season when Patriots beat them, 28-25, in overtime.

There are many keys for today’s game. Both teams have runners peaking at the right time. Natrone Means has gained 315 yards in Jacksonville’s two postseason games; New England’s Curtis Martin rushed for 166 yards last week against Pittsburgh. The Patriots’ defense held the Steelers to 213 yards of total offense last week; the Jaguars have shut down Buffalo’s Jim Kelly and Denver’s John Elway in the last two weeks.

But, in the end, it should come down to the quarterbacks. Bledsoe versus Brunell: yet another chapter in a seven-year-old story.