Progress with Brad? Still not sure

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By GARY SHELTON

© St. Petersburg Times,
published September 1, 2001

ATLANTA -- Perhaps you are an optimist. Perhaps you are replaying his touchdown pass over and over in your mind. Perhaps you are ready for the regular season to begin tomorrow.

Perhaps you are a pessimist. Perhaps you are replaying his interception over and over until you go out of your mind. Perhaps you are ready to call the commissioner's office and ask for a delay of game, in particular, Dallas.

Say this for Brad Johnson.

He's a man of the people.

Johnson provided evidence for both sides of the argument in Friday night's 36-7 loss to the Falcons. Do you believe the Bucs are ready for the season? That question depends upon this one: Do you think the quarterback is?

For the Bucs offense, it is that simple. There have been times this preseason Johnson has looked rough and times he has looked ready. Most of the time, he has hovered in between, as if there were three grades to this offense: The good, the Brad and the ugly.

It was much the same for Johnson against the Falcons on Friday night. For the second week in a row, he threw a touchdown. And for the second week in a row, he threw one to the wrong team as the Bucs approached the goal line.

To sum up, what you saw from Johnson this preseason was a little positive and a little negative. The shame of it is you didn't see him a little more. If the preseason was a car wash, then Johnson's jersey barely would have gotten damp. He played a little more than a complete game's worth of snaps in four games, and if you had to give him a grade, it would be close to his rating of 76.55.

So, in an offense full of Mysterians, Johnson has become the leading Question Mark. For the most part, he has been accurate. On the other hand, only one of Johnson's three touchdown drives was longer than 25 yards.

"Brad's not as sharp as he will be," coach Tony Dungy said. "He's still been with us only a short time, and he's still getting the feel of his receivers. We think he'll get better and better."

He needs to do it, of course, faster and faster. The preseason is complete, and Johnson and the Bucs offense still are a half-step off on their march. They snap, and sometimes they crackle, but they just don't pop. Johnson has not been bad, and there is no reason to think about calling someone else's name. But he also has not been wonderful. At no time has there been the temptation to exhale and say, "Well, at least the quarterback position is cured."

Put it this way: If the Bucs were a week behind after the victory against New England, as offensive coordinator Clyde Christensen suggested, they still have three or four days to make up. The regular season is eight days away.

For the record, Johnson disagrees with the notion he still is chasing his rhythm.

"I'm playing some pretty good ball," Johnson said. "I'm real comfortable out there. The two picks (the past two weeks) were two flukes. It's unfortunate that it happened, especially in the end zone. The key was coming back and throwing a touchdown pass on my next pass."

For those used to worrying about the Bucs quarterback, the interception was particularly vexing. Johnson was flushed from the pocket and rolled right. The veteran move, the move the Bucs brought Johnson in to make, is to throw the ball out of bounds. But Dave Moore flashed open -- Johnson loves throwing to tight ends -- and he tried to float a pass into him. It was intercepted. "It wasn't poor judgment, it was a poor pass," Johnson said.

For those of you who give extra credit for resiliency, Johnson came back immediately. On his next throw, Johnson lofted a ball high, allowing Keyshawn Johnson to jump and catch the ball, as if it were a rebound, for a touchdown. Gee. Whoever thought of throwing to Keyshawn in the red zone?

There was enough there to allow the Bucs to continue to believe Johnson will bring the offense a level of calm, a level of maturity, that has been lacking. They believe he will be unruffled by adversity, a quality more rare than you might believe. In the past, you never could tell how a Bucs quarterback was going to perform from one game to the next, or how he would be affected by success or by failure. Johnson is supposed to cure that.

To those of us who grade harsher than Johnson, however, he still seems to be searching for his timing, as if it were a missing song lyric just beyond his memory. He has been unable to coax his team into finishing drives, which leaves us with every hint it will struggle, once again, at least in the early season.

Eventually, Johnson will be okay. Over his career, he has been an efficient, low-mistake quarterback. There is no reason to believe that will change.

Still, there are things we do not know. He is with a new team, in a new offense, with new coaches. When the game is close in the fourth quarter, will Johnson have the answers?

So far, the only answers are these: Maybe. And maybe not.

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