The Cold, Hard Football Facts tossed dirt on the coffin of Drew Bledsoe's career earlier this season. After a dreadful performance in Sunday's 29-6 loss to New England the "pundits" are dancing on the grave.
Bledsoe was 8 of 19 for 76 yards, with three interceptions and an embarrassing 14.6 passer rating – a performance so poor that the passer rating calculator on football.com advises quarterbacks to "turn in your jersey." Bledsoe was replaced in the fourth quarter by rookie quarterback J.P. Losman, who's still recovering from a broken leg, while Buffalo's only points came on a punt return. Even Bledsoe's pass on a two-point conversion attempt fell incomplete.
The bury Bledsoe bandwagon hit the road moments after the game. Boston sportscaster Bob Neumeier, who has a reputation for bombast and verbosity, actually offered one of the pithiest comments: "Drew Bledsoe has no football left in him," he said during the Patriots 5th Quarter postgame show.
NFL analyst and former quarterback Boomer Esiason said "It doesn't look like there's any juice left in the tank" on WEEI sports radio Monday morning.
Even Ron Borges of the Boston Globe, one of Bledsoe's most ardent supporters, admitted in his Monday column that "the end came, for all intents and purposes, at 11:20 last night."
The Buffalo Bills Web site www.twobillsdrive.com offers links to all the obituaries.
There is no getting around the fact that Bledsoe's overrated career is coming to a sad, pitiful, inglorious end. After Sunday's performance, Bledsoe's passer rating for the season has dropped to 70.3, the second lowest number of his career. And as sad as that number is, it's not that far off his average. Bledsoe's career passer rating is just 76.5 and he has posted a passer rating of better than 78.0 just once in the last six seasons. He has thrown more than 20 touchdown passes just once over those same six years. It's not likely he'll reach that milestone this year, either.
More indicting than the passing stats are the performances of the teams on which Bledsoe has played. He's just 22-37 as a starting quarterback since the start of the 2000 season. He's been on just one winning team in those five years – as the back-up quarterback for the Super Bowl champion 2001 Patriots. The last time Bledsoe quarterbacked a winning team was in the Pete Carroll era, when the 1998 Patriots finished the season 9-7.
After gleefully announcing the end of Bledsoe's career, Neumeier did try to backpedal by talking about quarterback's roll in building Gillette Stadium. It's an important part of a legacy that still endears Bledsoe to many longtime New England fans, who know how pitiful the Patriots were before his arrival.
Kevin Rousseau of PatsFan.com puts it best:
"Let me just say that (Bledsoe) does not deserve this fate. He is a decent man, a class act and a good quarterback at times. He could have easily divided the team during the 2001 season but he put his personal feelings aside for the good of the team and it brought the Patriots their first championship."
It's not a bad legacy for a quarterback who's career is over. But it's time to let go.
