True to NFL life

April 26, 2016

Whenever I wonder just how true my upcoming novel “The Penalty for Holding” is about the NFL, I encounter a story that reestablishes my equilibrium.

Such a story is contained in John Branch’s “In Manziel, a Draft Machine’s Human Cost.” It’s a by-now-familiar tale – the rise and fall of a big-time college football star. Johnny Manziel, aka “Johnny Football” – who won the Heisman Trophy as the best college player when he was a freshman quarterback at Texas A&M – was the main event in the 2014 NFL Draft, the 2016 version of which gets underway Thursday, April 28. ...

Whither Colin Kaepernick?

March 3, 2016

Can Colin Kaepernick and the San Francisco 49ers go on, or is it a case of irreconcilable differences, as has been widely reported?

The Niners ill-used their star QB by trying to turn a brilliant running quarterback into the traditional pocket passer that he will probably never be. You didn’t see the Carolina Panthers doing this to Cam Newton and the result was a Super Bowl appearance. Maybe the Niners figured Colin only had one Super Bowl appearance in him, and they’ve already gotten that out of him. ...

Achilles in San Francisco: Cam Newton and the art of the gracious loser

February 8, 2016

So as the world knows by now – or at least the world that cares about American football knows by now – the Denver Broncos’ D got inside Cam Newton’s head at the Super Bowl Sunday night, frustrating the Carolina Panthers’ QB, who sulked on the sidelines and then through the postgame press conference he walked out on.

Outrage was swift among the Twitterati, who admittedly have their share of anti-Cam fans for a variety of reasons.

Roger Federer once observed that the athletic loss is doubly painful: You lose and then you have to discuss it immediately with the press. It’s enough to disturb anyone’s equilibrium. Newton can be forgiven his disappointment, of course. No one likes to lose or see his team – a surrogate for the self – lose. But losing with grace, like winning with grace, is a necessary part of the athlete’s arsenal. A sore loser just gives his opponents and detractors ammunition. ...

Super Bowl 50 – Defense! Defense!

February 8, 2016

Good pitching, baseball fans always say, stops good hitting. A good defense stops a good offense.

And so the Denver Broncos’ vaunted defense stopped Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers’ electric running game, 24-10 in Super Bowl 50.

It was perhaps the last hurrah for Broncos’ quarterback Peyton Manning, who at 39 became the oldest quarterback to pilot a Super Bowl team and may join his boss John Elway as the only quarterback to retire after winning a Super Bowl. ...

Can the Broncos stop Cam Newton, er, the Panthers?

January 25, 2016

A good defense stops a good offense like good pitching stops good hitting – or so running quarterback Quinn Novak wonders in my forthcoming novel, “The Penalty for Holding.”

Anyone who thinks that, he reasons, has never considered Alexander the Great taking it to the Persians in 331 B.C.

And indeed, while the Denver Broncos’ defense surely stopped Tom Brady and the New England Patriots in the American Football Conference Championship, that defense is going to be hard-pressed to stop the Carolina Panthers’ electrifying running game as encapsulated by their QB Cam Newton in Super Bowl 50 Feb. 7. ...

Brain freeze: The NFL and concussions

November 25, 2015

Every time I despair of the psychological truth and realism of “The Penalty for Holding” – the second novel in my series “The Games Men Play” – I’m given a sign from the universe.

There’s a crucial moment in the story in which Quinn Novak, star quarterback of the New York Templars, chooses to play on despite sustaining a sub-concussion. I agonized over this plot point because of the new protocols in place that pull players who’ve sustained such injuries immediately from the game. It didn’t seem authentic not to reflect this in my book.

But truth really is stranger than fiction. In the St. Louis Rams’ 16-13 loss to the Baltimore Ravens Sunday, Rams’ QB Case Keenum sustained a concussion and continued to play. ...

Stand and deliver

January 8, 2015

The big news for us Colin Kaepernick fans is that he’s spending the off-season in Phoenix, Ariz. – working on his quarterbacking skills with Kurt Warner, two-time NFL MVP and Super Bowl champ for the St. Louis Rams and Arizona Cardinals.

So it’s all good, right? Someone who’s talented wants to improve on that. We should be cheering him on, no?

No: Let the hating begin.

“Warner should teach him how to bag groceries” is among the milder thoughts in the blogosphere. The rap is that Colin is a running quarterback who will never be a traditional pocket passer. And that may – or may not – be true.

For the uninitiated, and I must confess that Yours Truly counts herself among them, a pocket passer, like the Broncos’ Peyton Manning or the Patriots’ Tom Brady, stands and delivers, that is he stands in the “pocket” – presumably protected by his great offensive line, or O-line – to throw the ball to various teammates whose locations on the field he quickly “reads” under great pressure.

Then there is the new breed of running quarterback – led by Colin, the Redskins’ Robert Griffin III (known as RG III) and the Panthers’ Cam Newton – all of whom have struggled this season. The exception is their contemporary, the Seahawks’ Russell Wilson, who, though a running quarterback, can deliver from the pocket and read the field. He is considered more of a hybrid like the Colts’ Andrew Luck, another contemporary, and the Packers’ Aaron Rodgers, an established superstar. The thinking is that though it’s fine to be able to scramble, you have to be able first and foremost to stand and deliver in the NFL, unlike in college ball.

All this is fascinating and serves as a great subtext in my novel “The Penalty for Holding,” about a gay, biracial quarterback’s search for acceptance in the NFL. My protagonist, Quinn Novak, is more of a hybrid like a Wilson, Rodgers or Luck – what former Niners’ star Steve Young, a great running quarterback who became a great pocket passer – would call a multi-threat.