Terry Bradshaw is no stranger to speaking his mind; of rookie quarterback Cam Newton, Bradshaw said, “I’m not a Newton fan. I didn’t like him in college.” Yesterday Newton became the first rookie quarterback in NFL history to throw 400 yards in his debut.
This is why Bradshaw is a talking head on TV and not a scout.
On Peyton Manning and that neck injury, Bradshaw admits he was not honest with the Steelers about how injured he was and says Manning should be; “I knew I could not play.” USA Today says Bradshaw not retiring prevented the Steelers from drafting Dan Marino. If we are being brutally honest, because Marino was a local Pittsburgh guy who also went to college locally, the local NFL team was concerned about the truth of substance abuse rumors and that he continued to hang around with the ‘wrong’ crowd. Saying they didn’t draft him because of Bradshaw is just as speculative. I got a chance to see Bradshaw throw at Three Rivers Stadium, doing some warmups, and he looked fine to me – he’s friggin’ Terry Bradshaw and I was an 18 year old college student, of course he looked fine. But trainers and management were not fooled about his condition, they just listened to what he said about himself because he was a grown-ass man and had four Super Bowl rings on his fingers.
They had also drafted Mark Malone in the first round three years earlier so having Cliff Stoudt, Malone, Bradshaw and Marino while passing on “Senor Sack”, Gabe Rivera , in 1983 would have been silly.
The team did draft Rivera, who was having a fine season until he got drunk and crashed his car and became a paraplegic. Marino went on to have a stellar career with the Dolphins but the Steelers were drafting at #21, which means 20 other teams did not see him as their quarterback of the future either. In hindsight, it is easy to say Marino would have been the better choice.