Earning his stripes

Sporting News, The, Nov 7, 1994 by Mark Purdy

Thirty years from now, no one will believe him. Jeff Blake will be telling the amazing story. He will be sitting at a family reunion. Or maybe at a sports bar. His waist will be thicker. There will be crow's feet around his eyes.

"You know," Blake will say, "I once started at quarterback against the Cowboys. The defending Super Bowl champions. And I outplayed Troy Aikman for most of the game. And we almost won."

"Oh, Grandpa," the kids will say. "Don't tease us."

"Sure, Pops," the bartender will tell him. "Listen, it's closing time. Drink up, will ya?"

Jeff Blake had better save the videotape of last Sunday's game, between the Bengals and Cowboys. He had better make several copies. This season, other NFL players will have more spectacular moments in the sun. But no other moment will match Jeff Blake's moment for sheer, full-frontal improbability.

Thirty years from now, no one will believe him. Here he was one week, minding his own business as the last-string quarterback of pro football's last-string team. And here was Blake the very next week, forced to start because of injuries to the first two Bengals quarterbacks.

Here he was, lining up against the world-champion Cowboys and throwing two touchdown passes. Here he was, giving the Bengals a 17-14 halftime lead against the NFL's top-ranked defense. Come again?

"I wasn't really nervous at all," Blake says.

"Oh, he was nervous," teammate Tim McGee says. "Before the game, he knew he was nervous. We knew he was nervous. But in the huddle, he was very confident and very cool. You'd have sworn he had been here 10 years, the way he was acting."

Sadly, reality soon kicked in, along with three Cowboys field goals. Cincinnati lost, 23-20. But no one blamed Blake. For four quarters, Blake lived the fantasy of every third-string quarterback everywhere. He threw downfield with authority. He never fumbled. Never threw an interception.

It makes you wonder how many other Jeff Blakes are out there in the NFL, ignored and undiscovered and invisible.

"All someone like me wants is a chance," Blake says.

Thirty years from now, no one will believe him. This is why we keep watching pro football, isn't it? For all of its corporate sheen and scientific product placement and computer megabyte scouting, the NFL cannot prevent a Jeff Blake from breaking the mold and messing up the whole deal. The NFL believes it is all the other stuff that keeps us watching. What really keeps us watching is the concept of Jeff Blake.

"My hat's off to him," Aikman says.

Blake should not have been a total surprise. This is a man who set or tied 32 school records for an excellent but out-of-the way major-college football team, East Carolina University. This is a man who helped ECU win the Peach Bowl and be ranked in the nation's top 10.

Yet this is a man who was generally snubbed in the 1992 NFL draft before the Jets picked him in the sixth round. Blake says he was hurt by ECU's lack of network television exposure -- and by lack of playing time in his only postseason all-star appearance at the Japan Bowl.

"I wasn't treated right at the Japan Bowl," says Blake, who at 6 feet and 200 pounds is relatively small by NFL standards. "Johnny Majors of Tennessee was the coach and (Tennessee's) Andy Kelly was the other quarterback. He was supposed to play the first and third quarters, and I was supposed to play the second and fourth quarters. But I only got to play about half of those quarters, about a quarter total. It was only bad because the scouts hadn't seen me much."

Things didn't improve much when Blake lost his job with the Jets last summer. After basically benching him for the entire preseason, they cut him on August 29, deciding to instead keep Gleen Foley of Boston College. The Bengals picked up Blake less than 24 hours later.

"There are some things you can't control," Blake says. "But all I've ever wanted to do is give people something to think about. Now the Jets have got something to think about. They need to go back and re-evaluate some of their players."

This is the only time he gloats after his big day. And the only time he mentions his skin color -- Blake is the first black quarterback to start for the Bengals -- occurs in a discussion about his career path. After being dumped on in the draft and then cut by the Jets, Blake briefly considered going to the Canadian Football League, where his father had once played running back for the Toronto Argonauts.

"I think that's a cop-out, especially for a black quarterback, to say, 'I'm not going to get a chance in the NFL, so I'm going to Canada,'" Blake says. "I wanted to stay in the NFL and take my chances. As long as somebody wanted me to play for them in the NFL, I was going to be there."

Lewanna Blake, Jeff's wife, says there was another reason. "His dad wanted Jeff to do better than he'd done," she says. "And I wanted him to be here in the NFL, too. He has the talent to play here."

Yes, but making your first pro start against the world champions? Who would have guessed that might happen? The week before the game, when David Klingler and Don Hollas went down injured against the Browns, Cincinnati's coaches told Blake the next day he would be the starter against Dallas. Blake came home from work and excitedly told his wife: "Honey, we've got to call everybody. I'm playing."