The tallest quarterback in the NFL has long been accustomed to lurking in the background. Starting football games was never a given right for Brock Osweiler. Not in the NFL and not in college. And so even before he spent three and a half seasons sitting behind Peyton Manning, he seemed destined to wait behind a man named Steven Threet.
This was in 2010, and Osweiler was trying desperately to establish himself as the quarterback of the future at Arizona State. He had come from the far north-west of Montana with an innate ability to throw a football farther than almost anyone, and little feel for being a college quarterback. After starting a game during his freshman season, he hoped he could be the starter in 2010, until Threet took the job away.
Want to understand how Manning’s backup in Denver might be ready to jump into his first NFL start this weekend? Realize that Osweiler has been doing this for years.
“I think there was a couple of times he was frustrated with me because I was playing Steven Threet,” former Arizona State offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone told the Guardian this week. “He even said he was going to go back to Montana.”
At the time, ASU’s coaches saw Threet as a more consistent quarterback, a top recruit who had been to Georgia Tech and Michigan before believing Mazzone and Sun Devils head coach Dennis Erickson could get him to the NFL. Osweiler was a former high school basketball start who had committed to Gonzaga as a high school freshman and only realized his love of football years later. For a new coaching staff, Threet was the better bet.
“One of the attributes all great quarterbacks have is that they are very competitive by nature,” says Mazzone, now the offensive coordinator at UCLA. “I’m sure it was hard for him.”
But then late in the 2010 season, with ASU already down 17-0 to UCLA, Threet suffered a concussion and left the game in the first quarter. Osweiler came in and threw for 380 yards and three touchdowns, while running for another score. The 17-0 deficit turned into a 55-34 victory. The next week he led the Sun Devils to an overtime win against their rivals, Arizona. Soon Threet retired from football and Osweiler became ASU’s full-time starter.
The next season he threw for 4,036 yards and 26 touchdowns against 13 interceptions. But ASU struggled that year, finishing 6-7, losing to Boise State in the Las Vegas Bowl. Erickson and his staff were fired and Osweiler – who tearfully told the Arizona Republic that Mazzone had turned him into a quarterback – skipped his senior year to go to the NFL, where the Broncos took him in the second round.
“He’s a tireless guy at perfecting his craft, he works hard on all the fundamentals,” Mazzone said. “I think after (the UCLA and Arizona games) he became a student of the game. At the start of his junior year he came back learning to be a quarterback, not just a 6ft 7in guy who could throw it.”
When asked now if he thinks Osweiler should have spent another year at ASU, perhaps getting more college starts, gaining more experience and perhaps moving into the first round of the 2013 draft, Mazzone doesn’t hesitate.
“Look at the flip side of that,” he says. “He was lucky enough to go and be the understudy to one of the greatest quarterbacks in the game in Peyton. I couldn’t have taught him what Peyton did about how to be a professional and prepare and how to study.”
As he has prepared to start his first NFL game on Sunday in Chicago, Osweiler has constantly praised the time Manning has spent helping him to prepare, saying that Manning has offered to answer any question he has or offer his advice. “[Osweiler] studied every week and been involved in the game plan and all, that’s a credit to him,” Manning told reporters in Denver this week.
Perhaps if college had been easier for Osweiler, he might not have been able to handle sitting behind Manning as well as he has. Maybe if he had been a college star, anointed early at Arizona State, he would have never learned to wait patiently, studying the starter, looking to see how he could get better. All of the other big-name quarterbacks in the 2012 draft have gotten to play in the NFL, including those taken behind him, like Seattle’s Russell Wilson and Washington’s Kirk Cousins. Others, like Robert Griffin III, have starred and then stumbled.
He has not complained about this, cursing the luck of being drafted to be the backup of an NFL superstar who never gets hurt. He continually did the one thing a player in his position is supposed to do. He praised Manning, and worked quietly on his game, waiting for the opportunity that has finally arrived – and on his 25th birthday.
“You know, it’s hard not to play the ‘what if’ game and [ask]: ‘What’s going to happen? Am I ever going to start?” Osweiler told reporters in Denver this week. “I really did put all of that aside and I tried to narrow my focus to the best of my ability and just focus on one week at a time. I truly worked for me.
“When I kept my focus just one day, one week, at a time, and only worried about the task that was at hand, I never really got into the ‘Am I ever going to start? What’s going to happen?’ I didn’t really buy into the what ifs.”
Now five years after wondering if he’d ever have any kind of football career, he starts his first NFL game. In many ways, he’s never been more ready.
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