The Power of the Interview

Last year around this time, which is basically NFL Draft time, I overheard Cam Newton during an interview on Sportscenter. This interview took place before the draft, but close enough to the draft that the Panthers had all ready came out and said they were taking Newton first overall after his Heisman/NCAA run at Auburn. I can't remember what he said verbatim, or at all really, during this interview, but I can remember thinking to myself, based on this one interview that I happened to overhear while I had the television on, "This guy is going to be good." Based on his play at Auburn, he looked way too much Vince Young than Michael Vick; he was bigger than collegiate defensive lineman for crying out loud. Too many variables suggested that Newton was going to be a flash in the pan style athlete tailor made for the college game. The conventional thinking was, and still is, that running quarterbacks don't make it in the NFL, that NFL linebackers are faster than college defensive backs. Which is true, and even though Newton rushed for over 700 yards and amassed an other-worldy 14 touchdowns as a quarterback, he also threw for a rookie-record of 4,051 and chipped in another 21 touchdowns with his arm. It's easy to point to Newton's stats now, but going back a little over a year ago, nothing of what Newton did on the field protruded into my final evaluation of how I thought he was going to translate into the NFL. It was that one interview that did it for me. Like I said, I can't remember what Newton said, but it was the way that Newton said it. It was the poise and bravado that Newton carried, his demeanor that signaled he was always going to be in control. He had a lot of things along the way happen to him that could have derailed his career, and I thought for sure Auburn was done for when the whole Mississippi State illegal recruitment stories started to surface. But Newton prevailed through that, he prevailed through his critiques heading into the draft, and he further prevailed throughout his first season in the league. I point back to that interview that I was lucky enough to catch as my "I believe" moment. I do my best to be as good as I can when it comes to judging someone's character, and over the years I think I've done a fairly decent job of fine-tuning the tools needed to evaluate someone's character fairly and properly. That Newton interview, as I've pointed out a few times by now, was the reason why I believed Newton was going to be a star. I posted something very similar on my Facebook page, and if I really wanted that self-gratification I'd go searching for it on my timeline. Point is, there is nothing quite like listening to a quarterback talk. Every year around draft time it seems the NFL throws up the Peyton vs Leaf video clips, where Peyton carried himself eminently while his team was in the process of winning 3 games, while Ryan Leaf was flipping out on interviewers in the San Diego lockerrooms. There is no other position in sports quite like quarterback, and if a quarterback can't conjure an aura around himself during a one-on-one interview, how well can that same person control a huddle with 10 other men in a tight spot during an NFL game? Best-case example: Tom Brady instilling a sizeable confidence in his group of guys that features a slot receiver who doubles as a defensive back. Worst-case example: Donovan McNabb throwing up during the Super Bowl. How a quarterback carries himself is just as important as the throwing motion, the arm strength, the pin-point accuracy, all the other intangibles that can be seen on game film. During this past draft when ESPN was replaying the same highlights from the first 3 quarterbacks selected, if you turned your TV to the black and white picture setting and remove jersey colors, you couldn't tell what QB had thrown the ball, mostly cause all of those highlights looked the same, especially when all three of them were playing against ho-hum college defenses and not the Bamas and LSUs of the world day-in and day-out. But now, the fun begins, because now, Luck, Griffin, and Tannehill will be playing against the Bama and LSUs of the world, because every NFL team in the league has a better defense year in and year out than any of the great college Ds ever has had to offer. I was able to catch Luck and Griffin's QB Camps with Jon Gruden specials on the tele. Like anyone else, I was immensely impressed with Luck. I went in with the mindset and intent of trying to pick apart anything I could when I was watching these shows. With Luck, I thought he was a little too happy-go-lucky at the beginning, but as soon as the talk switched to football language, Luck jumped in feet first. Griffin, on the other hand, has always carried himself like he has something to prove. Anytime you hear Griffin talk, he's talking about how hard he has to keep working, how hard he needs to now work, that nothing can be taken for granted or nothing comes easily. Luck really sounds like the next Peyton Manning with how he speaks, football all the time, nothing else. There is nothing outside the field that phases Luck in the slightest, as his mind is always pointed and focused on what takes place inside the lines. Luck could have been drafted first or one-hundred and first and would have came into training camp with the same attitude and demeanor. Griffin sounds like Tom Brady constantly reinforcing the message and idea that he needs practice in order to come as close to perfection as he can, from practice habbits to film study habbits to something almost irrelevant like sleep habbits. Whereas Brady has been able to hark back to the fact that 198 other people were drafted ahead of him and used that as a fiery motivation, Griffin has only needed the number 1 to fuel his fire. That being, that he expects to be the best, but there was someone else drafted ahead of him. You could tell this with how he could never really label himself as the number two pick in the draft, constantly saying that there were two number one picks in this draft, never able to come to terms that he wasn't picked first as in first overall. For reference, Newton has always sounded like the premier businessman, almost a football player in jest, someone's whose brand and image would fit much better in the NBA than the NFL. I had been wary of Griffin's prospects as a professional quarterback up until earlier today, when during NFL Live I caught yet another Griffin interview and tried to analyze it like a ghost hunter searching for any type of sign, overanalyzing the pitch and tone just like a ghost hunter would analyze a creak in the floorboards. All in all, I gave in, and allowed myself to become impressed with how Griffin carried himself. I tried my best play Devil's advocate, to buck the trend of analysts falling in love with a player, because it is amazingly easy to say that the first or second overall pick in a draft is goign to ba amazing, and not so easy to say that the player is going to bust. With JaMarcus Russell and Matt Leinart it was pretty easy, much like it was pretty easy for me with Cam Newton, Andrew Luck, and Ben Roethlisberger (I always credit my first big faux-football evaluator moment as being Roethlisberg's success in the NFL. Sophomore year of high school I wrote in my journal during creative writing during free-write that I thought the Cardinals should draft Roethlisberger in the draft they drafted Fitzgerald. Two Super Bowl victories in three appearances and I feel very vindicated by how well I can judge talent). The verdict is still out for Tannehill. I have barely heard him speak a word, and I don't think he's going to make it in the NFL. But, time will tell, and I may talk myself into him just by listening to him talk.