It doesn't take a Montana to win a Super Bowl

It doesn't take a Montana to win a Super Bowl
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By JOE KAY
AP Sports Writer
HOUSTON (AP) -- Starr. Staubach. Bradshaw. Montana. Elway. Favre. The Super Bowl is the place where the game's great quarterbacks go to get rings and form legacies.
Not lately, though.
The last four titles have been won by passers named Warner, Dilfer, Brady and Johnson, a pack of quarterbacks without a single pedigree.
This year, it's Tom Brady -- a sixth-round pick -- matched against undrafted Jake Delhomme, who didn't even start Carolina's season opener.
What in the name of Broadway Joe is going on here?
"It's hard to say," Patriots backup Damon Huard said. "The quarterback is definitely the most important guy on your team."
Important, but no longer indispensable.
Teams don't need a high-round, high-paid passer to win it all nowadays. Some are better off saving their bucks and investing in defense, then letting a caretaker passer take it from there.
Kurt Warner, an Arena Football League refugee, started the trend by taking the Rams all the way and becoming MVP of the 2000 Super Bowl. Then came Trent Dilfer, a journeyman who essentially stayed out of the way as the Ravens' record-setting defense won it the next year.
Dilfer was released a month later, before his championship ring had been cast. Suddenly, championship quarterbacks were a disposable commodity.
The unheralded Brady took over for the prominent Drew Bledsoe and took the Patriots to the title. Last year, Brad Johnson pulled a Dilfer -- he got out of the way and let Tampa Bay's defense win it.
"Watching those guys gives guys like me hope that if you do get an opportunity, you can make the most of it," said Delhomme, the latest obscure passer to emerge. "And look where you could end up -- maybe in the Super Bowl."
That's not how it worked in the beginning.
Quarterbacks ruled the league when the Super Bowl was hatched. They had freedom to run the show, and their teams were a direct reflection of their talents.
The list of winning quarterbacks for the first 19 title games is a Who's Who: Bart Starr, Joe Namath, Len Dawson, Johnny Unitas (with relief from Earl Morrall), Roger Staubach, Bob Griese, Terry Bradshaw, Ken Stabler, Jim Plunkett, Joe Montana, Joe Theismann.
As recently as the 1990s, John Elway and Brett Favre were leading their teams to titles and putting exclamation points on their remarkable careers. NFL teams wanted to draft a quarterback and make him the foundation.
Now, teams are building with different materials.
With the salary cap and free agency turning every roster into a temporary thing, quarterbacks have a more difficult time delivering. Just as the offense starts to gel, it gets torn apart and has to start over.
"It seems players are moving in and out," said Brady, the 199th overall pick in the 2000 draft. "When so many guys are coming in and out of a program, it's hard to continue to evolve as an offense and as a team."
Plus, there's not enough good ones to go around. Teams usually need at least two because of the high risk of injury -- Cincinnati's Jon Kitna was the only NFL quarterback to take every snap this season.
Finally, the salary cap forces teams to spend money wisely.
A franchise can invest tens of millions of dollars in a first-round quarterback, or spread the money around the rest of the roster and win with balance and depth instead of one strong arm.
"Nowadays with the salary cap and so forth, it's probably more difficult to have a franchise quarterback all the way through and build a football team around him," said Bengals coach Marvin Lewis, who was the Ravens' defensive coordinator in their Super Bowl season.
Even if a team can find someone like Peyton Manning in the draft, there's no guarantee he'll get his team to the big game. The Patriots shut down Manning's Colts in the AFC championship.
Most first-round quarterbacks never even get that far. Some fail miserably, dragging down their team's budget and bottom line for years.
"The funny thing about the NFL system is that it's not foolproof," said Montana, a third-round pick who won four Super Bowls, three of them as MVP. "It's been proven over the years that just because you're taken in the first round doesn't mean you're going to be more successful than a guy taken in the fifth or sixth."
The sixth-rounder will be cheaper, too, a factor that can't be overlooked.
"They're more willing to give guys who have done some OK things a chance because they don't have to reward them with a big contract," Delhomme said. "You see how hard it is to pick a quarterback early in the draft, and there's all that money involved."
So, a league known for its copycat tendencies has settled on an approach that works for now. Instead of a remarkable passer, settle on a reliable one, limit his responsibilities and let the rest of the team do the rest.
If the quarterback works out, great. Take the title and move on. If he can do it for more than one year, that's the time to start making a financial investment.
"We all thought that maybe Tom Brady was a one-year wonder two years ago," said Boomer Esiason, whose Bengals lost to Montana's 49ers in the 1989 Super Bowl. "Think about it. That's where Jake Delhomme finds himself. A lot of us will tell you that you have to be in the right place at the right time with the right organization to enjoy success."
Does that mean the days of the Super Quarterback are gone? Or, will another group of great ones emerge and reclaim the ultimate stage?
"It just depends on how successful those young guys are," Montana said. "It may go back and forth. I think the whole thing is cyclical. It will probably come back."