Kerry Collins’ NFL career had more ups and downs than an amusement park.
When Kerry Collins called it quits on a 16-year NFL career last week, the news made relatively few waves across the sports media landscape. Even in an offseason starving for actual football news, a quarterback with no Super Bowl rings, just two Pro Bowl appearances, and no real NFL Films-worthy career moments can retire without receiving much fanfare. There were the customary bottom line ticker mentions and quick retrospectives on the leading sports web sites, but by the time NBA star Yao Ming and boxer Ricky Hatton announced their retirements less than 24 hours later, Kerry Collins’ “news” had long been forgotten.
But Kerry Collins’ NFL career deserves better. His 16-year NFL journey was more than an athlete’s decade-and-a-half in the huddle and between the hash marks. Sure, most NFL veterans have highs and lows. But few players in the history of the game have had such extreme highs and such lows. If Brett Favre and Terrell Owens’ careers are described as ones of the “roller coaster” variety, Collins’ can be dubbed “Six Flags.”
Ryan Leaf. Akili Smith. Tim Couch. JaMarcus Russell.
In the spring of 1999, Kerry Collins looked all but certain to be mentioned on that eventual list of notorious first round quarterback busts. After a Cinderella run to the NFC Championship in just his second season with the expansion Carolina Panthers, Collins quickly floundered and fluttered in Charlotte. Eventually, he talked and drank his way out of town, getting cut by the team that selected him as their “face of the franchise” just four years earlier. Shortly after hitching his wagon to the division-rival Saints as a mid-season waiver wire pickup, he was arrested for a DWI before ever even stepping on the field. He’d finish the year on a high note, winning a few games for the middling Saints, but it wasn’t enough to salvage his career. He’d finish the ’98 campaign backing up Billy Joe Tolliver. After the season, coach Mike Ditka opted not to re-sign the onetime first round stud.
That could have been it for Kerry Collins. Four years and a disorderly cloud of dust. In most cases—when you’re dealing with young, rich, healthy-ego’d kids—that would have been it.
But something happened in that spring of ’99. Something changed. Collins, with no contract and an uncertain future, grew up. He entered the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, and began to address his demons. He was clean, he was sober, and he was ready to rise again.
And he would.
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After signing with the New York Giants, Collins had a career revival. Cleaned up, he became the city’s jewel, a prized quarterback who’d overcome his flaws and taken the Big Apple by storm. In 2000, he led Wellington Mara’s Giants to their third Super Bowl in 15 years, getting there after blanking the high-powered Minnesota Vikings 41-0 in the NFC Championship Game. But Collins’ greatest contributions as a Giants quarterback came in his philanthropic efforts off the field. The same guy who used to get headlines for his barroom antics served as an inspiration and a civic leader in the wake of the 9/11 tragedy. Realizing the significance of being the quarterback—the face, really—of one of New York’s most beloved sports franchises, Collins proactively went out of his way to make a difference. He set up charitable funds, he visited firehouses, and in the end, he forever became a beloved New York sports figure. He wasn’t some hired gun with a cannon for an arm. He was an inspiration. He was one of us. He was everything you’d want your kids to look up to.
And when the Giants drafted Eli Manning in the spring of 2004? Collins didn’t pout or kick and scream. He gracefully exited town, thanking the ownership for the opportunity to make a difference. Tiki Barber, the Giants’ all-time leading rusher, was booed by the Big Blue fans at halftime last season. Collins, undoubtedly, would be given a standing ovation.
Only, that wasn’t it for Kerry Collins. At 31 years of age and as a nine-year veteran of the league, his time spent under center to that point could have made for a nice storybook career. Picked up off the scrap heap, he’d led the biggest American city’s team to a Super Bowl appearance and reshaped his legacy in the process. Nice, right? End scene. Fin.
But there was so much more to this story. He’d sign with Oakland, another franchise looking for a savior under center. Only there, he’d fail to ignite any form of success, be shown the door after two seasons, and left on that scrap heap, once again. Time after time, career high was met with punishing career low. But Kerry Collins never went away.
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With even less media fanfare than what came with his retirement, Collins quietly signed with the Tennessee Titans after the Raiders debacle. Backing up Vince Young—a player, who just like him, had been drafted as the team’s franchise quarterback a few years earlier—Collins played the veteran mentor role, manning a clipboard and a headset. When Young went down with a mid-season injury, it was Collins—then 37 years old—who stepped under center and led Tennessee to a miraculous 13-3 surprise season. He’d go to the Pro Bowl, in his 14th season as a pro, and earn the Titans home-field advantage throughout the postseason. If Alge Crumpler doesn’t fumble the ball in the second half of a slugfest with the Ravens, Collins could have played in a second Super Bowl.
In the end, Kerry Collins won’t be considered for the Hall of Fame and his name will never be mentioned in the same breath as Manning or Marino. But he leaves the game with one of the sport’s better career stories, a winding path of ups, downs, mountains, and valleys. Aside from hoisting the Lombardi Trophy, Mr. Six Flags pretty much did it all in his 16 years as an NFL quarterback.
He retires with more career passing yards than Johnny Unitas and Steve Young, more career touchdown passes than Ken Stabler and Bob Griese, and just as many NFC Championship Game victories as Donovan McNabb and Drew Brees.
Collins’ 16-year NFL career is a study in redemption, a study in maturity, and a study in one man’s ability to evolve, transform, and survive in an effort to master one’s craft.
I can’t name one Kerry Collins NFL Films “moment” I’d watch on YouTube. In truth, there’s not one play or career-defining performance I can even recall.
But hell, that career, viewed as a whole? It’s just about everything an incredible narrative is made of. There may have been no NFL journey like it.
—Photo AP/Wade Payne
I thought the hall of fame was about being a great player. He is right up there with the greatest quarterbacks in league history. So does this tell us more about the sports writers and other people picking entrants. It kind of makes a mockery out of the Hall of Fame. It comes down then to what a small group of people think not how good you were. It sounds like the US government. We elect the jerks and then they tell us what we are allowed to do and not do.
great article, Kerry Collins was as underrated as they come and always seemed to get the job done