Ethiopian Review

It’s 2,053 miles from the Rose Bowl in Pasadena to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

But on Jan. 4, 2006 it looked like Vince Young, Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart would make the journey look like a hop, skip and a jump.

In what many consider the greatest college football game ever played, Young led Texas to a 41-38 victory over USC, completing 30 of 40 passes for 267 yards and rushing for 200 yards and three touchdowns, including the game-winner on fourth down with 19 seconds left.

Leinart, the 2004 Heisman Trophy winner, completed 29 of 40 passes for 365 yards, an average of 9.1 yards per attempt, in only his second loss as USC’s quarterback (37-2).

Bush, the 2005 Heisman winner, gained 82 yards on 13 carries (6.3 yards per carry) and 95 yards on six receptions (15.9 yards per catch), averaging 9.3 yards per touch from scrimmage.

Their football futures were so bright, their potential so limitless, it would have been hard to imagine that the three college superstars had just peaked. Bush, Young and Leinart were taken Nos. 2, 3 and 10, respectively, in the 2006 NFL draft. But in the three years since, Canton has faded beyond the horizon as expectations have been adjusted downward for the once-dazzling trio.

As it stands, the less-heralded USC running back LenDale White — taken with the 45th pick in the 2006 draft — has been a much better pro than Young, Leinart or Bush. White ran for 1,110 yards in 2007 and scored 15 touchdowns last year.

Arriving in the NFL, Bush seemed the surest bet to dominate. With Houston taking Mario Williams No. 1 overall — and all the misguided derision that went with that pick — Bush landed in New Orleans in the lab of offensive genius Sean Payton.

Bush appeared to be a lock to be the latest in the incredible tradition of USC tailbacks who continued their dominance in the NFL. He was Barry Sanders, only with more breakaway speed. But it became apparent right from the start that the only time Bush was even a threat to break away was as a receiver when he could be isolated in space against a slower defender.

As a runner, he was almost no threat at all. On 155 carries as a rookie, his longest run was 18 yards and he averaged a measly 3.6 yards per carry.

That, it turns out, was no aberration.

In his three seasons with the Saints, Bush has carried 418 times for 1,550 yards, an anemic 3.7 yards per carry average. Compare that pathetic average, befitting a short-yardage fullback, to the NFL yards per carry averages of Selvin Young and Jamaal Charles, both of whom suited up for Texas in that Rose Bowl. Young has averaged 5.1 yards per carry on 201 attempts for the Broncos while Charles averaged 5.3 yards per carry on 67 rushes as a rookie for the Chiefs.

In other words, the supposedly explosive Bush has the fourth-highest NFL yards per carry average of the running backs on the field in that Rose Bowl.

To make matters worse, in Bush’s three seasons with the Saints he has fumbled 12 times, losing seven, including coughing it up last year in a two-point loss to the Broncos and a three-point loss to the Vikings that crippled the Saints’ playoff chances.

It’s no wonder Bush lost the starter’s job to Pierre Thomas, an undrafted free agent out of Illinois who averaged 4.8 yards per carry in 2008, a full yard per carry more than Bush.

While Bush has been sort of consistently disappointing as an NFL runner, at least he hasn’t regressed. The same cannot be said for Young.

After a promising first season in which he earned NFL Rookie of the Year, Young took a step back in his second season before injury and ineffectiveness led to his losing his starting job to journeyman Kerry Collins.

From Week 11 to Week 16 of his rookie season, Young led the Titans on a six-game winning streak during which Tennessee averaged 26 points a game. He completed almost 60 percent of his passes, threw seven touchdowns to only three picks and carried 44 times for 347 yards, an impressive 7.9 yards a carry, and scored three touchdowns. He was well on his way to becoming the unstoppable double threat at the pro level that he’d been in college.

But whatever it was that made Young so hard to contain during that magical six-game stretch in 2006, the league seemed to have solved in ’07. Starting 15 games, he threw only nine touchdown passes all season and was picked off 17 times. His yards per carry dropped from 6.7 as a rookie to 4.2 in year two.

Thanks to a stout defense, the Titans won five games in which the offense scored only one touchdown and made the playoffs at 10-6 in ’07, leading to Young’s disappointing playoff debut. In a 17-6 loss at San Diego, Young threw for only 138 yards on 29 attempts, a puny 4.76 yards-per-attempt average. He was also picked off once and failed to put the ball in the end zone.

That offseason brought the infamous photos of a shirtless, liquored up Young partying with a bunch of other shirtless dudes. It was weird and disconcerting and not the image an NFL coach would want of his team’s leader.

In the ’08 opener against the Jaguars, Young picked up where he’d left off in the ’07 playoffs, dinking and dunking his way to a five-yards-per-attempt average on 22 passes and throwing two picks before leaving the game with a sprained knee.

The following day Young went missing for four hours and the team, alerted by Young’s therapist that he had mentioned suicide several times, enlisted the Nashville police to track him down. Once Young was located, the organization tried to downplay the reports of Vince’s fragile state of mind. But it was clear, no matter the condition of his knee, Vince Young would not be leading the Titans in 2008.

Collins is the incumbent coming into this season, but not being able to beat out a 36-year-old, lead-footed statue hasn’t lowered Young’s expectations of himself.

“I don’t know when I’ll start again. But I will be the next black quarterback to win a Super Bowl. And I will be in the Hall of Fame,” Young told Esquire in a piece published this month.

Future Hall of Famers usually know when they’ll start again.

While Bush and Young went 2-3 in the ’06 draft, it was Leinart, taken with the 10th pick by the Arizona Cardinals, who might have been in the best position to succeed right away.

The year before Leinart arrived, Anquan Boldin and Larry Fitzgerald both caught over 100 passes for over 1,400 yards, making them the most prolific wide receiver tandem in the league. Leinart would also be able to learn at the elbow of aging former Super Bowl MVP Kurt Warner and step in when Warner inevitably got hurt.

When Warner went down in Week 4 of 2006, the cocky rookie stepped in to begin what many assumed would be a long run as The Man in Arizona. But one thing became clear right away: despite the presence of Boldin and Fitzgerald, the Cardinals did not move the ball with Leinart at the helm nearly as effectively as they had with Warner.

Leinart was still the starter at the outset of the 2007 season, but new coach Ken Whisenhunt began employing a platoon system in which Warner would relieve Leinart during games.

In Weeks 3 and 4 of the ’07 season, the platoon system left little doubt as to which QB should be leading the Cardinals. Facing the same defenses, Warner posted quarterback ratings of 150.0 and 99.7 while Leinart struggled with ratings of 52.1 and 71.4. Unable to pull the trigger on what seemed like an obvious decision to go with Warner full time, Whisenhunt had the decision made for him when Leinart broke his collarbone in Week 5

Despite Warner’s return to form in 2007 and pictures of Leinart partying in a hot tub during that offseason with girls of less than legal drinking age, Whisenhunt held an open competition for the starting job before last season.

Lucky for the coach, Leinart delivered three picks and a 2.8 QB rating in a make-or-break preseason start. Who knows how things would have gone down in Arizona last year had Leinart played capably in that game, but it’s safe to say the Cardinals would not have had a fourth-quarter lead in the Super Bowl had Whisenhunt tabbed his QB of the future over the reborn-again Warner.

After his spectacular 2008 season Warner was signed to a two-year extension. Leinart, meanwhile, used an MMA training regimen to improve his toughness. And now he’ll get to prove just how tough he is by competing for the No. 2 job with free agent Brian St. Pierre, who has thrown one pass in his NFL career.

In insisting the competition for the backup job was a non-story, Whisenhunt may have inadvertently illustrated just how far Leinart has fallen.

“To be talking about a competition at the second-team quarterback to me just means there’s not a whole lot else going on,” Whisenhunt told the AP, “because nobody talks about the battles for the second-team running back or the second-team linebacker and there’s no difference in my eyes.”

So there you go, former Heisman Trophy winner. You’re now no different than a backup linebacker (except, of course, that those guys are expected to play special teams).

Three years ago who’d have thought the most important Trojan on the Arizona roster would be starting right guard Deuce Latui? And who would have thought the triumvirate that ruled over college football on Jan. 4, 2006 would be entering their fourth NFL seasons as two backup quarterbacks and a third-down running back?

But that’s how it’s gone for Leinart, Young and Bush, three can’t-miss phenoms in the process of missing very badly.

- by Kevin Hench | Fox