Diner morning news: 'a man among boys' - by Mike Lombardi

QUOTE: “It is more important for a leader to conquer himself, than to conquer others.” -- Aristotle (384 B.C.-322 B.C.)

When you’re in the personnel business, the first thing you hear is just the name -- something very general, non-specific, and often the name is not even pronounced correctly. The refrain might be, “Have you seen that kid from Alcorn?” Or, “Have you watched any of the Alcorn quarterback?” Or maybe, “Have you seen that McNair kid?” I remember the first time I heard Steve McNair’s name was 1993 as I walked past Jim Schwartz’s office at the Cleveland Browns. Schwartz handled all the college scouting reports that came into the building. He was sensational at his job, not only as an organizer but as an evaluator as well. Schwartz asked, “Michael, have you watched Alcorn tape yet? You have to watch this McNair kid – he’s a man among boys.” My introduction to McNair began that day.

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And what an introduction it was. While working in Cleveland, we left no stone unturned in our attempt to learn as much as we could about each player. Going back to his high school principal, Don McLeod of Mount Olive High, we learned that Steve was a good student who, in the words of McLeod, “had his priorities, sense of value and character in order.” (I still have McNair’s college scouting profile.) He was a great high school quarterback who had opportunities to play at the Division I level if he wanted to be a defensive back. McNair tied the Mississippi state record with Terrell Buckley for most interceptions in high school with 30 (15 in his senior season). However, McNair was more than just a playmaker on defense; he was a playmaker deluxe on offense. His size, his arm and his competitive nature made him force for Mount Olive. He saw himself as a quarterback who could play in the NFL, so he enrolled at Alcorn State with the understanding he would play quarterback.

In evaluating players, I believe that “past performance predicts future achievement.” This creed applied to Steve. He dominated in high school and dominated at Alcorn, as he was a four-year starter, threw for over 14,000 yards (I couldn’t care less on what level, that’s a ton of yards), threw 119 touchdown passes and rushed for over 2,300 yards. What more could one player do in a career? McNair played in the shotgun formation at Alcorn, was much bigger than most of the players on the field and could scramble around until someone was open down the field. He was, as Schwartz had declared, “a man among boys.”

Coming off a successful 1994 season, our drafting position in Cleveland didn’t allow us even a remote chance of selecting McNair. Although we had great reports from all our scouts, Lionel Vital, who is now in Atlanta, wrote, “With a couple of years’ experience the NFL, would not want to face him on Sundays.” Phil Savage, the former Browns GM, wrote, “He can be an explosive weapon like the NFL has ever seen, if handled properly.” Most of our scouts compared him to Steve Young of the 49ers, but the only difference was that McNair weighed 225 pounds. He went third to the Houston Oilers behind Ki-Jana Carter, picked by the Bengals (ouch), and Tony Boselli, who went to the Jags.

We had done our homework on McNair, but we secretly hoped everyone was wrong since he was joining a team we faced twice a year. However, we weren’t wrong -- we were 100 percent correct in all our evaluations. All that was left for us in Cleveland was to watch him play and hope we could develop a game plan that could expose a weakness.

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McNair moved from Houston to Memphis to finally establish his career in Nashville. As I moved around the NFL, from the Browns to the Raiders, it seem liked I could never get away from him. He was a player I loved -- and a player I hated. I loved watching him play, but I hated playing against him. Any time we prepared to play the Titans, McNair was always listed on the injury report as “doubtful.” I would tell the coaches to ignore the report because unless he didn’t get on the team bus to the stadium, he was playing. In fact, the less he practiced, the better he seemed to play. All our defensive coaches would go out early to examine McNair throwing in pregame warm-ups with high hopes that his arm would fall off or his ankle was in a boot, but come game time, he was always under center ready to play.

McNair was a true warrior. He played the game with great passion, with a unique will to lead his team to victory. That will, that passion, that style of play was something I admired from afar. As the years passed, instead of hoping for failure on his part, I became a fan.

He had so many great moments playing in the NFL, but none like a game in the Meadowlands against the Giants in 2002. It was the first week of December, and the game had significance for the Raiders on two levels. The first was that we didn’t want to face the Titans, who were hot as playoff time rolled around. The second was that we surely didn’t want to go back to Nashville, so we needed to have all the tiebreakers in our favor. On that day, I was a Giants fan.

We were playing the Jets on Monday night, so I was able to watch the entire game and root for the Giants. Once again, McNair was the enemy, but as usual, he did things that made me love his play. Going into the game, he was supposed to be hurt, but we all knew that a hurt McNair was really a healthy McNair. The Giants take the lead, 26-14 (they went for two but failed; that’s what the chart says to do – that’s a story for another day) with 14 minutes to go in the fourth, but I’m nervous because that’s not enough to stop McNair. He leads them on a 14-play drive that takes almost seven minutes to make the score 26-21. My Giants then come right down the field to kick a field goal with 2:21 to go and lead 29-21. Now McNair will have to drive his team 80 yards, score a touchdown and add a two-point conversion to push this game into overtime. I’m feeling nervous, but I like my chances.

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It’s on this drive that McNair does the impossible. Not the impossible in terms of scoring a winning touchdown, but the impossible in terms of getting out of bounds to stop the clock when he runs, when the Giants have him cornered. He escapes tacklers twice in the drive that, if they get him on the ground, the game is over. But McNair is too good, and he just wills his team to score, then converts the two- point play on a quarterback draw -- so much for being hurt. The Titans win the game in overtime, and it seems that destiny is calling for us to face McNair and his Titans once again.

He had been a part of my life since 1993, and even though we never met, I felt like I knew him very well. When we beat the Titans in the championship game, instead of celebrating with my team, I immediately went over to see McNair, to tell him how much I admired his play, how I admired his passion and his will to win.

Joseph Addison once wrote, “Admiration is a very short-lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it be still fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view.” To me, that explains McNair. In his career, I kept discovering new ways to admire him as a player.

I feel the pain for his sons as they now have to grow up without a father, something his high school principal believed was the toughest obstacle Steve had to overcome as a child.

His death makes me sad, very sad. Because in a unique way that comes with being a personnel man in the NFL, Steve was my friend.