Paradise Found

Football Digest, March, 2001 by William Wagner

Kerry Collins, once an NFL bad boy, is redeeming himself in the Big Apple

THE "F" IN NFL SHOULD STAND for "forgiveness." Make no mistake: This is a league of second chances ... even third chances. Just ask Kerry Collins.

In 1998, Collins flamed out with the Carolina Panthers. He was promptly signed by New Orleans but was unable to reignite his career, playing only seven games before the Saints turned him away.

Since joining the New York Giants in 1999, however, Collins has steadily developed into the leader everyone thought he would be when he was the second quarterback and the fifth player overall selected in the '95 draft. He isn't burning up the league yet, but the temperature is starting to rise.

"I think I've grown up a lot--I think I've matured," says the 28-year-old Collins. "I've realized I made a lot of mistakes, was immature in a lot of situations."

Mistakes? Immature? That's like saying those New York cabbies only occasionally ,disregard the rules of the road. Collins arrived in the Big Apple carrying so much mental baggage that he was a better candidate to spend the remainder of his prime athletic years on a psychiatrist's couch than to be the starting quarterback for the Giants. The guy was a head case, an accident waiting to happen.

Collins' NFL story certainly didn't start out that way. As the first draft pick in the history of the expansion Panthers, the former Penn State QB had the hopes and aspirations of an entire franchise placed on his shoulders. He was the one who was supposed to lead Carolina to glory.

And he did just that--more quickly than anyone could have possibly expected. In only his second season, a remarkably steady and poised Collins took the Panthers all the way to the NFC Championship Game. His numbers weren't Marino-esque (14 touchdown passes, 2,454 yards), but his mistake-free play allowed a stout Carolina defense to dictate the tempo of the games. The future seemed boundless.

All the while, though, Collins' exploits on the field were being matched--sometimes even surpassed--by his drinking deeds off of it And eventually, his unabashed late-night reveling in Charlotte began to affect his quarterbacking job. In 1997, both Collins (a league-high 21 interceptions) and the Panthers (a 7-9 record) disappeared from the NFL's elite as quickly as they had joined it.

The lowlight of the season occurred when Collins directed a racial slur at a black teammate, an incident that divided the Panthers. Now Collins no longer was perceived simply as a fun-loving party boy--he had become something far more sinister. "You know, I was making mistakes," Collins says. "My public image certainly wasn't very good. I was going through a lot of different things that I had to work through."

Among the issues Collins was wrestling with were the money (a six-year, $21 million contract he had signed as a rookie), expectations, and fame that had come to him so suddenly. Says Collins, "For some guys, it's tough enough to get out of college and get acclimated to the whole process [of the NFL], much less having the pressure and expectations of carrying a team or playing at a real high level each week."

Ultimately, that burden got the better of Collins. In one of the strangest moves of recent NFL vintage, he essentially abdicated his starting job early in the 1998 season. Soon after that, the dumb-founded Panthers cut him. Although Saints coach Mike Ditka took a flyer on him, Collins' head still wasn't right. In his stint with New Orleans in '98, he had four touchdown passes, 10 interceptions, and a Ryan Leaf-like passer rating of 54.5.

Was this the end of the line for the star-crossed Collins, the golden boy-turned-bad boy? Not quite. In February 1999 the quarterback-starved Giants signed him, giving him yet another opportunity to piece his career back together.

Although Collins never would have been mistaken for a Pro Bowl passer in his 10 games with the Giants in '99 (eight touchdowns against 11 picks), he did show some sighs of life. In fact, New York's passing offense improved to eighth in the league from 28th in 1998.

And this year the offense--buoyed by the running of Tiki Barber and rookie Ron Dayne--achieved something not seen on the Giants in years: consistency. The result was the NFC East title and a 12-4 record, New York's best mark since it went 13-3 in 1990.

At the center of the resurgence was Collins, who played the same level-headed brand of football that had pushed the Panthers to the NFC title game back in '96. "I don't want to say the offense is simple because it is very complicated," Barber says. "But it is simple to execute once you have it all down. And Kerry understands every bit of it. That is what makes it so good for us."

Collins attributes his prowess to coach Jim Fassel, whose specialty is working with quarterbacks. "From the first day I met with him, he said, `I believe in your abilities. If you take care of everything else, you can be a very good quarterback in this league,'" says Collins, who finished 2000 with career highs in passing yards (3,610), touchdown passes (22), and passer rating (83.1). "From a pure quarterback, playing-the-game-well standpoint, he's helped me more than anybody."