Top 10 reasons Pats fans should love Kevin O’Connell

By Os Davis  |   Thursday, July 24, 2008  |  Comments( 6 )

New England Patriots
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Quick: Who’s the one guy you never want to cheer for on your favorite team? Easy: The backup quarterback.

In the NFL, the backup quarterback is the football equivalent of the American vice president: The guy who appears on TV once in while, passively backgrounded behind the team leader, while his supposed constituency dreads the “one heartbeat away” that would put No. 2 into the game.

Truth is, if you’re forced into rooting for your backup QB, either the head coach has jacked away too much of the season on an unfit starter (call it “Drew Bledsoe Syndrome”) or your top dog is a man down (which we can name, um, “Drew Bledsoe Syndrome" also).

The New England Patriots are – along with top rival the Indianapolis Colts – the very portrait of this principles. While a team like the Cleveland Browns might have a bona fide future star holding the clipboard and ready to enter the game at a moment’s notice, New England, like Indianapolis, has paid little attention to the understudy at the position since Bledsoe went down in 2000; and like Indianapolis, too, a megastar QB has led consistently great teams throughout this decade.

But as the old cliché goes, time waits for no man – not even supermen dating sleek-and-sultry supermodels. The truth is that with every snap, Tom Brady is one step closer to an ultimately inevitable visit to the doctor’s office.

(Gets you to thinking: Has the entire six-state area just eviscerated from memory the game two seasons back in which the man thought he was channeling Kenny Stabler against the Chicago Bears, only to be taken out for a handful of plays after greedily going for another couple of yards on a scramble?)

However, as always, it appears Bill Belichick is one step ahead. After years of running with a lot of guys named Matt, New England Patriots Football Inc. took the plunge during the 2008 draft to snag a quarterback -- San Diego State's Kevin O'Connell -- from a high-flying school. (This writer had them pegged for Colt Brennan, the high-flyingest of ‘em all, but there you have it.) Reckon all O’Connell will have to do in training camp is show a pulse to be penciled in at No. 2 on the depth chart, and figure Matt Gutierrez to be introduced to the waiver wire real soon.

May RealFootball365.com wish Mr. O’Connell good luck in what – whenever it happens – will most absolutely prove to be a true experience out of the frying pan and into the fire when destiny calls and the former SDSUer has to strap on the helmet and take some snaps.

In the meantime, in a bid to reassure the United States of New England about President Brady’s running mate, RF365’s Top 10 reasons Patriots fans should love Kevin O’Connell.

10. Endless officially sanctioned compliments on the cerebellum, and endless use of adjectives like “intelligent” and “mature.”

9. Gotta love the work ethic. After injuring his thumb and sitting out much of his junior year in 2006, O’Connell rehabbed hard for his final bid in NCAA ball and emerged with a better game than ever. The official book pre-draft summed up the QB’s mini-comeback with the backhanded compliment, “Of all quarterbacks invited to the NFL Combine, he was the only one not listed as a potential pro prospect in preseason evaluations.”

8. Experience with the air-it-out Aztecs. When Belichick & Co. were sitting at the round-table discussing the possibility of drafting at quarterback, the Mountain West and Western Athletic Conferences surely got a thorough combing through. Though O’Connell will probably never be called upon to sling the thing like Brady did in 2007, the Patriots have to be happy with a guy of O’Connell’s arm strength who can hit Randy Moss on the long strike.

7. Four words: “Team captain three years.”

6. This guy is a specimen, with a capital "SPEC." At 6-foot-5, 223 pounds, O’Connell has to just about pick up a football and he immediately resembles a poor man’s JaMarcus Russell. Actually, maybe even a middle-class man’s JaMarcus Russell.

5. The Madden rating. I tell ya, once I played the Patriots for a couple of seasons and Brady went out with a season-ending concussion. (See, Brady, you shouldn’t scramble, even in sims.) In came Matt Cassel and, boy, that was the most brutal Madden I ever played. And so thank Tecmo Bo that O’Connell is here to ... What? They’ve got him at 73 overall? And Cassel is at 76? Um, forget I said anything.

4. Says Sports Illustrated (after an otherwise glowing, nearly sycophantic summary described him as a “terrific college quarterback with solid physical skills”): “His woeful accuracy and poor placement will make it difficult for him to ever leave a practice squad.” Why is this positive? Because everybody at SI is full of it! Well, except for Dr. Z.

3. Unlike, ahem, a certain starter, O’Connell can run if he has to: His 4.61 in the 40 at the combine was second fastest among quarterbacks.

2. His trivia mastery. Just how significant the Patriot rookies’ performance in the “Ultimate Rookie Challenge” is aside, you've gotta love a guy who can rock the Trivial Pursuit game.

And No. 1 on the Top 10 reasons why Patriots fans should love Kevin O’Connell: Hey, if he’s good enough for Belichick ...

Training Camp: An entirely new kind of fantasy game!
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About Os Davis

Os Davis has taken a twisted route to get to RealFootball365.com in his nearly 17 years in professional writing, working in any number of capacities in the sportswriting, news reporting and film criticism worlds. In print media, Os has served as editor at a few publications, including Albuquerque's ...
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