Turns out The Browns weren’t the only team to acquire a 28-year-old quarterback who stopped worrying about football for several years and focused on scoring, home runs, and other baseball terms also related to scoring with women. The only difference between Brandon Weeden and Matt Leinart is they are totally different players.
Weeden “stopped worrying” about football for several years because he was pursuing a minor league baseball career and returned to college after it didn’t work out.
Leinart didn’t really stop worrying about football as much as he stopped playing it well and seemed to have a hard time winning over coaches, and according to photos published on gossip websites, he had no trouble winning over women.
When I did morning radio, we had comedian Brad Williams in studio to promote a show he was doing in town. Turns out Williams was pals with Leinart, and while he tried to bite his tongue, I was able to extract a few things.
Williams said Leinart was the very definition of Big Man on Campus. He said Leinart’s abilities with women were legendary. Like, Matt Leinart’s average Tuesday night at USC was something any of us would remember along with the birth of a child, the big promotion, or winning huge on a random Vegas slot machine.
Williams did say that Leinart was a “super cool guy,” and I think he meant it. He said Leinart was fun to be around, but he never mentioned Leinart’s football exploits once. He never said, “Wow, what a natural athlete,” or “I once saw him throw a football OUT of the L.A. Coliseum.” No Bo Jackson-type stories about Lefty Leinart. Sounds like he was a genuinely fun guy who might’ve got caught up in college life and never should’ve been drafted by the Cardinals.
Who knows why Cardinals management thought an undrafted, hyper-religious, grocery-bagger turned Super Bowl Champion from Iowa would match up well with a Southern California party boy who played for prestigious prep football powerhouse Mater Dei, and won a Heisman and BCS championship with USC. They didn’t match up well, and Warner was even sort of pompous about it.
That said, this is a move that Al would’ve loved — provided they don’t sign Jim Sorgi instead.
Leinart was a fat kid growing up. He had a vision problem that was surgically repaired, but he had to wear glasses and wasn’t a real popular child.
So he had something to prove. Actually, Leinart has a lot to prove.
Last season, Leinart’s collarbone snapped, just like Jason Campbell’s did, after one half of action against the Jaguars. If we were going to judge him based on those two quarters, we’d be both happy and crazy.
Leinart is back in California. With something to prove. He’s a left-handed quarterback playing back-up to Carson Palmer, with a speedy running back who can juke and catch balls out of the backfield … sound familiar?
The last time he was in that position, things worked out pretty well.
