The Kid Shows His Stuff

By Mike Wise
Monday, September 15, 2008

Miami's own Clinton Portis called one of the most sizzling and stickiest games ever played at FedEx Field "one of the hottest days I ever played football."

Ninety degrees, 55 percent humidity and a nine-point deficit in the fourth quarter in a home opener Jim Zorn and his young quarterback needed very badly.

So every fool who concluded with certainty after one game that a 6-foot-5, deep-drop passer cannot grasp the nuances needed to run a multiple-read offense with a catchy name, would just shut up and go home.

Before the kid finally won a game at the end, before he gathered himself and delivered that dagger of a deep post route to Santana Moss that made nearly 90,000 delirious with 3 minutes 38 seconds remaining, you could say the heat was all but singeing Jason Campbell's No. 17 jersey.

He was skewered, from the lout beneath the press box in Section 107, one level up from the field, who cupped his mouth like a megaphone and shouted, "Jason, you're not our franchise quarterback!" to the cretin behind his own bench.

"That guy would say, 'Come on, Jason, throw the ball downfield,' " Campbell said. "Or he would stand up and yell, 'Jason, you [stink].' Real nice, huh? You tune it out, but . . . "

It's unclear whether the fan was the same man high-fiving his friends repeatedly after Santana Moss skipped into the end zone with the football and victory in his hands. Or whether that was the same fan telling everyone in his vicinity how he always knew Campbell had not only the mental and physical wherewithal to pick up a complex, new system but also the gumption to throw a clutch bomb in the crucible of a home opener.

Being a fan, media member or both in this weekly referendum town, after all, is nothing if not being fickle.

Either way, Campbell parlayed the harshest criticism of his 22-game career as a starting quarterback this week into one of the most pretty and pressure-cooked finishes imaginable -- a go-long bomb to send the Saints marching home with a galling loss.

That's right, the guy they said doesn't speak up enough in the huddle, let his cannon speak for him.

The soft-spoken, 26-year-old people pleaser, whose Mississippi twang is often mocked by his teammates, who enunciate like game analysts in training -- "Well, you know," they say, sometimes doing Campbell better than he does himself -- didn't tell how to lead yesterday afternoon.

In the fourth quarter, for a change, he showed.

"I think back to that Dallas game last year, where I had Santana and missed him by one inch," he said, of the Redskins' last-minute loss at Texas Stadium. "Next play, Terence Newman intercepts it. Same thing happened in Tampa. Driving at the end. Interception, Ronde Barber. To get it this time feels real good. It's the kind of ending that's going to help me grow."

If this does not go down as the defining moment of Campbell's career in Washington, as the game-winning deep ball that gave him the confidence needed to make a team contend, it at least validates Zorn's trust in him and shows for now that he gets it.

The read-and-react offense. The magnitude of the moment. All of it.

Operating from a shotgun much of the afternoon, Campbell didn't just use nine receivers to throw for 321 yards, often going to second and third options (Moss, by the way, was the second read after Antwaan Randle El was covered), he had what Zorn called a "command at the line of scrimmage" unseen in the transition from Joe "Jumbo Package" Gibbs.

He displayed it on the game-winning play, making Ladell Betts move from his tailback position around to the end so he could pick up a possible safety blitz. "A good, smart call on his part," guard Randy Thomas said.

The game actually changed when Campbell hit Chris Cooley, who runs like a beer truck with a broken parking brake and who this team really cannot get the ball enough to, on a 23-yard buttonhook in the middle of the field. It was second and 22 and Campbell had just taken an ugly sack back at his 6-yard line with less than 11 minutes left.

"The biggest play of the game if you think about where we were," Campbell said.

What about the next play, when he moved away from pressure, wheeled right and threw across his body, 17 yards to Randle El? Very money.

"How about that fourth and two?" Zorn said, referring to the play on which Campbell found Moss on a quick slant to essentially end New Orleans' chance of getting the ball back. "That was an excellent throw."

It was after that play that Chris Samuels came up to Campbell, who said Samuels told him, "You can do some great things by the grace of God. We were always behind you. Don't worry about what people are saying about you."

Someone once said, "Failure is not a person; it's an event," the idea being that winners become winners not because they were born that way, but rather because they lost enough until they learned how to get it right.

Never had Campbell embodied the thought more when that 67-yard spiral with the perfect arc took flight -- any higher and it would have not gone far enough; lower and it would have been knocked away or intercepted.

Yes, the defense kept them in it until Reggie Bush cut back, disappeared and became a human hologram. And none of the craziness that consumed FedEx Field would have been possible if a seventh-round draft pick with braids coming out of his helmet like a spoiler on a souped-up sedan hadn't picked off two ricocheted passes and recovered a fumble. Because if Reggie Bush happened yesterday, so did Chris Horton.

If Portis hadn't backed up brash words last week with touchdowns and carries as brilliant as they were bruising, the Redskins would have been in no position to pull out this pulsating finish.

But, first and foremost, the kid won a game yesterday afternoon. Nothing was more important for this franchise and especially a new coaching regime than seeing Campbell repeat Zorn's practice mantra:

Avoid. Reset. Throw.

Deep.

"Nine points, nine minutes left," he said, walking toward his ride home after his grandest day as a pro. "Shows you you just got to stay with it, no matter what you're hearing or what's happening."

When it comes to Campbell, fickle people around here could use that kind of faith.