PHILADELPHIA – Jake Delhomme didn’t speak the language. He didn’t like the bland food. He barely was hanging on to the lowest rung on the professional football ladder, playing backup quarterback in Amsterdam.
He was homesick and frustrated and wondering whether it was time to give up the game of his youth and take up his second passion, training Thoroughbreds.
On the lowest of his low days, in the spring of 1998, he called his father and told him he was thinking about quitting and returning to his home in Breaux Bridge, La.
Mostly all he wanted was a pep talk. He needed somebody to tell him he still could play the game. He needed someone who knew him, and knew how much football meant to him, to tell him to stay in Amsterdam, study the game, watch the quarterback in front of him – a guy named Kurt Warner – and be patient.
“He’s never even talked to us about those days,” said starting guard Jeno James. “He’s always been positive. It would surprise me if he quit at anything because he’s just not that kind of guy. The words that pump in my head when I think about Jake Delhomme are leadership and courage. He’s a tough guy.”
Delhomme stayed. He went back to the World League the next season and won the championship with Frankfurt.
He hung around New Orleans for six seasons, starting two games and throwing a grand total of 86 passes. Then he came to Carolina as a free agent last March, and now he’s the Panthers’ Super Bowl quarterback.
“I have no idea what I’m in for,” Delhomme said after Carolina’s 14-3 victory over Philadelphia in the NFC Championship Game.
In January, nobodies become somebodies. Good players, with impressive resumes, who don’t have the privilege of playing on Monday night or Sunday prime time, come alive in January.
like the winners of “American Idol.”
This January belongs to guys like Jake Delhomme.
Who?
“He’s taken the long road, the hard road, no doubt,” center Jeff Mitchell said. “I think that’s why he has so much enthusiasm for the game now. He’s stuck with it so long.”
On a day that felt bigger for Philadelphia than any since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, in a city that was so emotionally invested in this team, it treated this loss like a personal tragedy. Delhomme helped silence a city.
He wasn’t brilliant. But he was efficient. He was the perfect quarterback for Carolina’s cautious, conservative, ball-control offense. He completed nine of 14 passes. He threw a fluttering pass into the end zone that Muhsin Muhammad adjusted to for Carolina’s first touchdown five minutes into the second quarter.
Delhomme didn’t make mistakes. Donovan McNabb, trying to play with torn rib cartilage, did. Delhomme didn’t throw an interception. McNabb threw three, and his replacement, Koy Detmer, threw another.
Delhomme converted crucial third downs. A third-and-three pass to Steve Smith in the first quarter. And another third-and-three pass that gained 15 yards to Muhammad on the first scoring drive.
He won’t make you forget John Elway. He doesn’t throw the prettiest spiral. He doesn’t scare teams. He just beats them. Dallas, St. Louis and Philadelphia, for instance, back-to-back-to-back.
He’s beginning to look a little bit – just a little bit – like Brett Favre, without the resume. He even sounds like Favre.
“He’s been everything that a quarterback should be,” Smith said. “I’m from the West Coast, so I don’t understand the accent. He gets pretty bad. When he gets excited, it’s bad. But if we ask him, ‘What did you just say?’ he gets irritated. That’s OK. He’s been a great leader for us.”
His improbable season began on opening day, when starter Rodney Peete was struggling and the Panthers were down 17-0 to Jacksonville. He came into a game with nothing to lose and won it, 24-23.
“He just came into the huddle and said, ‘Let’s go,’ ” James said. “We followed behind him, and we’ve been following him ever since.”
Jake Delhomme is this January’s Trent Dilfer, playing mistake-free quarterback just the way Dilfer did for Baltimore when the Ravens won the Super Bowl three years ago.
Delhomme doesn’t have Dilfer’s arm strength, but he has all the same indescribable insides. He’s a winner, just like Dilfer.
“You always start off kind of skeptical when a change like that is made,” Muhammad said. “Jake had to earn our trust, and I think he did it in that game. He came in and produced right off the bat. That’s what it took.”
Delhomme, 29, stuck with football when he was this close to quitting. He survived years on the bench and tedious afternoons as the backup running the other team’s plays.
He came to Carolina and found his game.
Every January, it seems to happen to somebody.
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AP-NY-01-20-04 0622EST
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