What a Journey, Man

Steve Bono, a sixth-round pick in the 1985 NFL draft, had an undistinguished four years as a backup with the Minnesota Vikings and Pittsburgh Steelers. But after signing with the San Francisco 49ers, who ran the sort of timing-based offense he'd learned at UCLA, he found new confidence. Though third on the depth chart, Bono had future Hall of Famers Joe Montana and Steve Young to study and emulate.

"It was absolutely valuable time -- a time for me to learn and develop," said Bono, who started his first game for San Francisco midway through the 1991 season after Montana was lost for the year and Young got hurt. He stepped in and finished 5-1. "It really proves how long the learning curve is to become a successful NFL quarterback."

The biggest challenge for many backups is not losing confidence while they're waiting for the chance to prove their skills.

"That's probably the most difficult thing," said Al Saunders, the Redskins' associate head coach-offense. "The frustration of knowing that you could perform at a very high level and not having that opportunity."

Green, who spent six seasons as a backup in San Diego, the Canadian Football League and Washington (including one year out of football entirely), said his driving force was shaking the tag of being an eighth-round draft pick and third-string material.

As is typical of third quarterbacks in the NFL, Green was charged with running the scout team when he was with the Redskins and got no work with the first team. So after practice each day, he'd round up young receivers and spend 20 minutes running through the plays the starters had run. Then, once he got home, he'd give his wife, Julie, the script of all the plays run in practice so she could call them out, one by one, as they made dinner. She'd call a play, and he'd tell her what his progression was. It kept his mind sharp, he said, and it gave him more practice with the arcane language of play-calling.

"If you're called on, you've got to be able to step into the huddle and make a call," Green said. "It may sound simple. But when you talk about the terminology that's used, it's really a second language. And if you're not using that second language, it tends to leave you."

Joe Theismann, who supplanted Billy Kilmer as the Redskins' starter in 1978, said that calling plays with authority is essential -- and that includes inflection and body language.

"In a huddle sometimes it's hard to hear, so guys look in your eyes and read your lips," Theismann said. "You can tell, looking in a quarterback's eyes, whether he's nervous or unsure, or whether he's saying, 'Don't worry, guys! I've got this!' "

Once he wrested the starter's job from Kilmer, Theismann did his best to keep it -- partly by making sure his backups never got work in practice. "I never let somebody else take a snap," Theismann said. "Number one, I wanted to see as much as I could during practice in every drill. Number two, if the second quarterback didn't work, the coach had no idea how good or bad he was. It's called 'job security.' "

In Collins's case, after flaming out as Jim Kelly's successor in Buffalo, he had the dubious fortune of landing in Kansas City, where Green, the starter, stayed healthy for five seasons. Under Dick Vermeil's regimented system, backup quarterbacks got no work with the first-team offense once the season started. So when the first-team offense wasn't on the field during practice, quarterbacks coach Terry Shea would take Collins to an adjacent field to run through the practice script. Shea would call out each play, and Collins would repeat it, with all the shifts and motion. A weight coach would snap the ball, and Collins would drop back, take the required number of steps, visualize a defense and fire the ball to wherever Shea had positioned himself.

Collins and Green shared the same zeal for preparation. Their lockers were side by side, and they routinely drilled each other on reading defenses. "What are we doing against cover-6?" "What about cover-4?"