Dateline: BIRMINGHAM, ALA. – What might have been, for Doug Flutie, could be reduced to simple mathematics.
“What did we score in the fourth quarter, 21 points?” Flutie asked. “Over a whole game, that’s 84.”
And that would have been ample to overcome the 38 points scored by the Heismanless Birmingham Stallions here Sunday. That many points, or even half as many, may have justified Flutie as an adult quarterback for the New Jersey Generals, if not the most recent savior of the United States Football League.
Alas for Flutie, they still count the actual points scored in each quarter before adding them up, even in the USFL, and he thus will forever have to live with the indelible fact that he was a loser, 38-28, the first time he had a chance to show anyone why he is worth $7 million.
“I made no promises when I came into this league,” Flutie said. “I don’t owe anything to anybody.”
Well, that is not exactly true. He owes a small debt to whoever taught him his times tables, if no one else.
Flutie might just as easily have multiplied his first-half completions by two, which would still have been zero. In fact, he could have gone all the way until two minutes were left in the third quarter and not have projected a completion for himself, unless you count the two he threw to Birmingham.
By the end of the game, Flutie was 12 of 27 for two touchdowns and three interceptions, but until his last futile flurry, he played like a baby with his thumbs on backwards.
“I just wasn’t on the money,” Flutie said, intending no pun.
Other great athletes have had ineffective starts. Someone was mentioning that Willie Mays went 0-for-50 or something when he broke in, but of course, someone was throwing the ball at Mays, not just handing it to him.
“No one said it was going to be easy,” Flutie said.
Of course they did. Everybody said so. Anyone who saw him whip Miami with his miracle pass or applauded him for taking the Heisman without blushing thought so. Certainly Donald Trump, Flutie’s new landlord, who paid him all that money and traded veteran Brian Sipe to unclutter the backfield for him, thought so.
Watching Flutie flail away at his own myth for most of his first game was like watching a shiny new Ferrari turn into just another used car.
The first four passes he threw did not touch another human being. His fifth pass bounced off Herschel Walker, who has a Heisman of his own, and his sixth pass was swatted down by 300-pound tackle Doug Smith, who is big enough to be sliced into several Fluties and frozen.
Flutie’s seventh pass finally found a companion, though it happened to be David Dumars of the other team. No. 8 was a time zone too long and No. 9 came down in the arms of Birmingham’s Chuck Clinton.
Cynics as well as realists were trying to get up a pool in the press box on when Flutie would complete his first pass. I took August.
It wasn’t until Flutie introduced the ball to teammate Clarence Collins that the game ball had anyone’s fingerprints on it but Flutie’s and his enemies’.
Once he completed his first pass, with the score 31-7, Flutie outscored Birmingham by 21-7, but it was still another interception, by Dennis Woodberry of the Stallions with seven minutes to play, that stopped whatever chance Flutie had of working his magic.
On this day, there was nothing up his sleeve, except a rather ordinary arm, shorter than most.
“It was frustrating and irritating,” Flutie said. “I was angry at myself for not getting off to a better start. I just . . . shoot, I just wish I could have done it the whole game.”
Flutie was asked, quite properly, if he possibly had any trouble seeing over the Birmingham linemen.
“No comment,” said Flutie, who was game to talk about everything but why he has never grown bigger than your average placekicker.
He did not alibi on his lack of preparation, a mere two weeks of training with the Generals.
“If I had only one day of practice, I still would have felt I should start,” Flutie said.
And yet . . .
“What I need,” Flutie said, “is more game experience. Week after week, game after game, I will get better.”
The pressure of his debut, he said, was no bother.
“I was relaxed and I was calm,” Flutie said. “I knew what I was doing.”
And yet . . .
“I know what people will say,” Flutie said. ” ‘Flutie didn’t win his first game. When’s he going to win one?’ There will be more pressure.”
But what happened against Birmingham?
“We didn’t have the ball,” Flutie said, which was true. In all, New Jersey had the ball for only 18 minutes, just two minutes in the second quarter and three in the third. “When you make a mistake, you like to get out there and fix it. I didn’t work up a sweat until the third quarter.”
And when Flutie did, a few of the things for which he became notable began to happen.
“We’re a running team,” Flutie said, “but I feel more comfortable when things are helter-skelter. When I have to think on my feet, I react better. I don’t feel like a robot, just handing the ball off.”
That is a matter for his coach, Walt Michaels, to solve. The fourth- quarter Flutie was much preferable to the first-, second- and third-quarter Flutie, and if he is to be anything close to what the USFL imagines him to be, Flutie may have to play the game on the edge, as he did in college.
“I don’t give a damn about stats,” Flutie said. “If I was 0-for-30 and we won the game 6-0, I would be happy.”
That would make one. PHOTO: AP Laserphoto. Doug Flutie, New Jersey’s $7-million man. PHOTO: AP Laserphoto. Doug Flutie passes under pressure Sunday during his first regular-season game with the New Jersey Generals. He completed 12 of 27 for 189 yards and had 3 interceptions.