A Few Cupcakes Is All Bledsoe Needs To Bounce Back To Form

Let’s not lay Drew Bledsoe on a couch and ask him probing questions about his childhood quite yet.

Three games into the season, the next Dan Marino hasn’t thrown a touchdown pass, his left shoulder is aching and the whole of New England is ready to fry Bill Parcells and the Patriots.

But …

The prime reason Bledsoe has zero TDs is: (a) the Browns, (b) the Dolphins and (c) the 49ers. Two are Super Bowl contenders and Cleveland surely will make the playoffs. This is a grisly opening three games.

Now Bledsoe has the bye week to rehab the slight separation in his shoulder and, when he gets back, the amateur football shrinks can clock out.

The Patriots’ next six games are against the Falcons (road), Broncos (home), Chiefs (road), Bills (home), Panthers (home) and Jets (road).

I’ll wager the guy has at least a dozen TD passes by the time he runs up against the Dolphins again in Game 10.

Meanwhile, the newspapers and air waves will be filled one more week with improbable explanations about The Bledsoe Problem. He locks onto tight end Ben Coates and doesn’t see his other receivers. He’s got a swelled head since signing a $42 million deal. He was overrated in the first place.

All this is nonsense.

Bledsoe is not playing with the same confidence and sharpness he displayed in the second half of 1994. But he has had three balls dropped in the end zone and there is no criticizing him for locking on.

Last year, he spread 50 receptions or more around to five receivers - Coates 96, Michael Timpson 74, Leroy Thompson 65, Vincent Brisby 58 and Kevin Turner 52.

Bledsoe doesn’t “lock onto” anyone. Like all quarterbacks, he stays with his go-to guy a little longer. So does Steve Young with Jerry Rice or Dan Marino with Irving Fryar.

But when your go-to is a tight end fighting bumps in traffic across the middle, you don’t recognize your completion potential as quickly as you do with a wideout running in open space. He’s going to have to do something about that.

As for the money, if anything, Bledsoe is feeling the pressure to perform, not complacency. That’s the kind of player he is.

It is critically important that Bledsoe snap back. He is one of the few young quarterbacks in the NFL today with the ability to fill the marquee roles of Dan Marino and John Elway when they retire. That’s critical.

Look around. This league has a serious and growing quarterback crisis once you get past Marino, Elway and Troy Aikman.

Warren Moon of the Vikings seems to have lost his deep touch. He’s also 38. Mike Tomczak of the Steelers put on an astonishingly poor performance Monday night against the Dolphins. Jim Kelly is staggering through his final year as the Bills’ starter.

And there is virtually no young talent behind them.

From 1990 to 1994, 13 quarterbacks, including supplementary pick Dave Brown of the Giants, were taken with their teams’ first pick in the draft.

Want to get alarmed? Three of them are out of the NFL Tony Sacca (1992), Todd Marinovich (1991) and Andre Ware (1990). Two are third-stringers - Browning Nagle (1991) and Dan McGwire (1991). The only starters are Bledsoe (1993), Brown (1992), Jeff George (1990), Rick Mirer (1993) and Trent Dilfer (1994).

Only Bledsoe has performed at a high level. George is close, but he has been close for three years. When does he take the final step up?

The others are Heath Shuler (1994) and David Klingler (1992). I left out the 1995 crop because it’s too early to expect anything of them.

Thank goodness for Brett Favre of the Packers, a second-round pick who developed. But who else stirs your emotions. Craig Erickson? Scott Mitchell? Stan Humphries? Steve Walsh?

Some day, someone is going to compute the dollars wasted on the bust quarterbacks of the last five years. Hopefully, it won’t include Bledsoe’s $42 million.

As for Dilfer …

If anyone was going to make it in the NFL, this was the guy, right? He wasn’t a scrambler, but he was big (6-foot-4, 235 pounds), had a prodigious arm and came out of a pro-style college offense at Fresno State.

“We can’t believe he dropped into our laps,” said Bucs coach Sam Wyche when he was still there at No. 6 in the first round last year.

But he isn’t progressing well. Last week against the Bears he threw four truly awful interceptions.

He does his best work throwing to spots. He completed three 15-yard comeback routes off play-action fakes, putting the ball right on the spot. But he seems to have consistency problems hitting moving targets.