With luck, getting re-stuck on The Druck won’t suck for Niners

By Anthony Bialy  |   Monday, March 31, 2008  |  Comments( 0 )

San Francisco 49ers
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Waiting for Alex Smith to get better is like hoping a drunken lout of a husband will start asking about his spouse’s feelings and sending flowers for no reason: it’ll never happen, and things are actually more likely to get worse. Meanwhile, Shaun Hill has played only three games with two starts for the Niners, and, with the way things are going for this franchise, he’ll turn out to be a fluky wonder who peaked with his tease of a successful performance last season.

The future looks lame, so maybe the solution to the Niners’ quarterback problem of the present is to turn to their past. But whom to call? Steve Young has what appears to be a neat job talking on television that he’d be unlikely to abandon, Joe Montana has a full schedule devoted to ruining his reputation, and Y.A. Tittle is 81 and probably busy both running his insurance business and yelling at kids to stay off his lawn. Instead, they need a younger, less rusty option who has a history with this team. Specifically, this team should give Jim Druckenmiller a call, assuming they saved his number.

The former 26th overall choice is an astoundingly perfect fit. He hasn’t been involved in the game since he tried and failed to make the Colts roster in 2002, which is a tremendous positive: arm fatigue and general wear are guaranteed not to be issues. Druckenmiller is bruise- and nick-free.

Further, he’s battle-tested in various football forms. Take as an example his successful run throughout the entire history of the XFL as the quarterback for the Memphis Maniax; aside from the thoroughly accurate fact that the team had the extreme league’s most extreme name, The Druck was crazy awesome during his time in Tennessee. He is the franchise’s all-time leader in passing yards forever with 1,499; neither Smith nor Hill can say that.

The year 2001 was a fantastically busy one for Druckenmiller, as he also competed in the Arena League that season. Some scoff at the Virginia Tech product over the fact that he was a backup in the AFL, but that just means he was able to watch and learn. His 66.8 AFL rating over his 13 passes is testament to the fact that he’s capable of improvement: it’s over double his 29.2 NFL mark, which means he progressed vastly in the football/pinball hybrid sport.

His statistically verified talent and the fact he’s rested make him appealing enough, but now is the perfect time to bring him back to San Francisco for an even better reason: the new offensive coordinator will get him cruising, as Mike Martz can convert him from an all-time failure into a superhuman football-dispensing cyborg. It’ll be like a sequel to the story of Kurt Warner going from stocking shelves at a supermarket to Super Bowl MVP, with this column itself serving as the basis for the eventual, inevitable screenplay. I will also executive produce the film.

They have to act quickly to make the fairy tale come true, though, as San Francisco must re-sign Druckenmiller before some CFL team gets their grubby hoser paws on him. Don’t let him rot away as a Roughrider: the Niners have already lucked out in regards to the fact that NFL Europa folded, depriving him of an employment option, so they better jump through the window while it’s open.

He deserves a chance to throw his second career NFL touchdown, if only so that everyone who gambled on buying his Niners jersey doesn’t have to eternally banish same garment to the closet, leave it to rot in a garbage bag with other unfashionable items intended for Goodwill donation, or list it on eBay for like four dollars. Just like those currently worthless replicas, it’s never too late to get value out of a first-round pick. That’s true even if it was spent in 1997.
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