Phil Simms: ‘Please pay attention to meeeeeee’

How can you question the expertise of this face?

The 2011 football season has one strong common thread this year between the college and professional ranks, and that thread’s name is Andrew Luck. Whether the Stanford quarterback is leading his team past USC in overtime and into the top-5 of the BCS, jumping up Heisman boards or getting penciled in as the number one overall pick in the 2012 NFL Draft, it seems everything is coming up Luck this season. The quarterback’s ability to win, his accuracy, intelligence and leadership have won him legions of supporters in the professional ranks, including Indianapolis Colts owner, Jim Irsay, and fellow Stanford Cardinal and current Denver Broncos President John Elway, and led to many calling him the next Peyton Manning. It seems that everyone loves what this kid is bringing to the table and see him as a can’t-miss prospect at the next level…well, make that almost everyone.

From NFL.com:

One former Super Bowl-winning quarterback who isn’t gaga over Luck, however, is Phil Simms, who told Sirius NFL Radio on Tuesday that all the hype “is a little too much.”

“There’s a lot to him. I think his best quality, by far, is that he’s big and strong and he’s going to be able to move and run in the NFL. … He manages a game,” Simms said, according to Yahoo! Sports.

“But the one thing I don’t see, I just don’t see big-time NFL throws. I don’t care what anybody says. I’ve watched a lot of him. He never takes it and rips it in there. And you can say what you want but, man, you’ve got to be able to crease that ball every once in a while. We see it every week in these games. Hey, he can develop it but even in the USC game, you know, he’s very careful with it, guides it a lot. That’s what I see.

“There’s not a lot of rotation on the ball and there’s not a tremendous amount of power. Not that you need to have that power arm. I’m not saying you’ve got to have that exclusively but, man, it sure helps when you can do that because there’s four or five plays a game it is about arm strength. And sometimes quarterbacks who don’t have it, they pass those plays up. Why? Well, they go, ‘I don’t know if I can make that throw,’ so they throw it short. That’s why I’m a little more reserved in my judgment than everybody else.”

“Yeah, he doesn’t wing it into coverage to try and make plays, like Jeff George. That guy really slung it in there. Yeah, this kid is no Jeff George, I’ll tell you that right now. This ‘good decision making,’ and whatnot, just not for me.”

Simms has been on a tear of late raining on the parade of future Dolphin or Colt Andrew Luck. Last week, Simms said on his Showtime show that if the Colts got the number one pick, Peyton Manning wouldn’t allow the team to draft Luck because there would be no way that a rookie quarterback could back up one of the best quarterbacks to ever play football…for some reason. Ignoring also that players do not usually have that much pull in the draft room on who the team drafts, unless there was a secret clause in Peyton’s new deal. Manning responded to Simms’ comments yesterday:

“I don’t talk to Phil,” he said, via The Indianapolis Star. “Phil doesn’t talk to me. He did text me after that, saying ‘Hey, sorry to drag your name into this.’

“I wrote back, ‘Phil, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He said, ‘Well on my show, “Inside the NFL,” I made this statement.’

Manning, enjoying himself, went on: “I said, ‘Phil, I hate to break it to you, but I don’t watch your show, along with a lot of other people that I don’t think watch that show.’ (He was) giving himself a little more credit than probably was merited.”

If Peyton wasn’t already in the running for MVP with his team’s complete collapse without him, then blasting the overrated and pompous ramblings of Phil Simms should shoot him to the top of the ballot. Simms’ anti-’what everyone else thinks’ philosophy seems to be a ploy to get him and his soapbox of a show, which doesn’t seem to be doing all that well, some attention so people will care about what he has to say. Personally, I’ll respond to this the same way I do when Simms is commentating a game I happen to watching on Sundays: groan, eye-roll, mute button.