uarterbacks, yellow buses, fans converge to fill Vidinha StadiumBy NICK ABRAMO TGI Sports Editor LIHU’E — Is the next Dan Marino in town or what? Jake “The Snake” Plummer of the Arizona Cardinals stole a page out of Marino’s book
uarterbacks, yellow buses, fans converge to fill Vidinha StadiumBy NICK ABRAMO
TGI Sports Editor
LIHU’E — Is the next Dan Marino in town or
what?
Jake “The Snake” Plummer of the Arizona Cardinals stole a page out of
Marino’s book and won his second straight NFL Quarterback Challenge
yesterday.
And like Dan Marino did in 1990 and 1991 on Kaua’i, Plummer won
it in dramatic fashion with high-scoring read-and-recognition tosses at the
very end.
Back in the early 1990s, Marino was unbelievably accurate,
scoring a 60-point bulls-eye on his final deep throws.
Plummer wasn’t quite
as accurate yesterday, just missing the deep bulls-eye, but scoring large
amounts of points to overtake Chris Chandler of the Atlanta Falcons.
“It’s
just really fun to be here,” said Plummer after the victory. “And I’ll be
sticking around a few days to do some more things on Kaua’i. We played a little
golf, a couple of rounds, and it was great to get to know the other
quarterbacks. You get to talk to them, which is something you can’t do much of
during the season, and then you realize that they’re all great guys. You sit
down and eat dinner with them. You go swimming with them. It’s like we’re all
kids again. We’re all big kids anyway.”
The Vidinha Stadium parking lot was
filled with yellow buses and the stadium was filled with fans, mostly students
who were given the opportunity to get out of school for a few hours to see the
quarterbacks up close.
The NFL paid for the transportation for any school
on the island that wanted to send its students.
It was a win-win situation.
The kids got the rare opportunity to see NFL players, and the NFL got a filled
stadium which will enhance its national television broadcast of the event on
CBS Sports in July.
The plan backfired, in a way, because many of the buses
and students had to leave before a winner was decided. The reason for the
exodus was to get the students back to school so they could catch the
end-of-the-day bus home.
Cade McNown, who will be entering his second NFL
season with the Chicago Bears later this year, took the early lead by winning
the speed and mobility event.
Although he placed behind Chris Chandler of
the Atlanta Falcons in accuracy, the consistent Plummer took the overall lead
after two events.
Donovan McNabb of the Philadelphia Eagles showed his
might in the distance event. He and McNown were tied with throws of 72 yards,
but McNabb ripped off a 76-yarder to win the tiebreaker.
In the read and
recognition contest, in which the quarterbacks try to hit targets attached to
moving golf carts, Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts took a slim lead by
coming up with a semi-deep throw for 27 points.
But Chandler grabbed the
lead by cranking off a 45-point deep toss, just missing the 60-point bulls-eye
that Marino hit almost a decade ago.
Plummer was the last to throw, and it
was a do-or-die situation. He needed 58 points on four throws to successfully
defend his title.
On his second throw, Plummer hit the same deep 45-point
near-bulls-eye as Chandler, needing just 13 more points to win.
On his
third throw, “The Snake” whipped one right into the center bulls-eye of a
closer moving target for 24 points, the victory, and $65,000.
For good
measure, Plummer heaved one for another 45-point score on his last
throw.
NFL Quarterback Challenge
Overall Winner
* Jake Plummer
(Arizona Cardinals)
Individual Event Winners
* Speed/Mobility
Cade McNown
* Accuracy Chris Chandler
* Distance Donovan McNabb
Read/Recognition Jake Plummer
Other Competitors
* Peyton Manning, Tony
Banks, Jim Harbaugh, Brad Johnson.
