Here’s something you don’t expect to see: Malcom Gladwell being interviewed on a sports web site and comparing himself to quarterbacks, particularly one whom I happen to like and who nevertheless breaks my heart every year.
To stretch the quarterback analogy here, I’m Jake Plummer: I work in an offensive system designed to make me look way better than I actually am. Speaking of which, how fascinating was the Plummer meltdown in the Pittsburgh game? People have been beating up on Plummer, saying that his true colors emerged in that game. I prefer to look at it the other way. Shanahan managed to put in place an offensive system so brilliant and so precisely tailored to his quarterback that he could make Plummer — Plummer! — look like a great quarterback for 17 consecutive games. That’s pretty remarkable. The Plummer story is not about the frailty of individuals. It’s about the redemptive power of environments. As I said, I think I’m Plummer.
Poor Jake. He did not play well in that game, but it was really the Broncos defense that lost it. They let Pittsburgh score at will early on, so Plummer was forced to try to be a miracle worker, which is not his forte, and the Broncos had been so good all year that he didn’t really have any practice at coming from behind.
In fact, he played better the Roethlisberger did in the Super Bowl, but Pittsburgh’s defense was stout in that game, so he’s still Big Ben. Kind of like Terry Bradshaw’s first Super Bowl, in which he threw for less than 100 years. (I was a huge Bradshaw fan as a kid and still think he was one of the game’s great quarterbacks, but numbers don’t lie.)