NFL: Greg Cook, Cincinnati’s biggest ‘what if’

As the 95th NFL season gets underway, we look at the young quarterbacks and wonder if they’ll reach the heights of previous generations of quarterbacks who wore the same uniforms.  Will Colin Kaepernick do for the 49ers what Steve Young did 20 years ago?  Will Andrew Luck’s career be remembered in the same way as Colts legends Johnny Unitas and Peyton Manning?

Unfortunately, Andy Dalton won’t be measured against what could have not only been the best Bengals quarterback of all time, but possibly the greatest quarterback period — Greg Cook.  And if you’re asking, “Who’s Greg Cook?”, that’s exactly the point.  He had unforgettable talent that was on display for a short, forgotten period of time.  And the story of why that happened is heartbreaking.

Cook had been a record-setting quarterback at the University of Cincinnati, leading the nation in yardage (3,272) and touchdowns (25) in 1968.  He was big, 6’4″, 220 pounds, with a rifle arm.  In a game against Ohio University, he’d thrown for 554 yards.  And he was a virtual unknown.  In those days, ABC televised a game of the week, Notre Dame highlights ran on Sunday morning and if your team didn’t make one of the handful of bowls that existed, you weren’t getting on TV.

Fortunately for the second year expansion Cincinnati Bengals, Cook was playing in their backyard.  An equally unknown Bengals assistant coach named Bill Walsh took notice and convinced owner/head coach Paul Brown to draft Cook with the fifth overall pick, right after the Steelers selected Mean Joe Green at four.

At a time when most quarterbacks sat on the bench for a while, no matter how high they were drafted, Cook was the opening day starter.  He was terrific.  The Bengals won their first two games and were on their way to beating Super Bowl bound Kansas City, when the career of a star in the making was changed in an instant.  Cook was sacked by linebacker Bobby Bell, who landed on his throwing shoulder.  The rookie sensation was hurt.  Medical science wasn’t advanced enough at the time to know it was a torn rotator cuff.

Cook sat out the next three games, but wanting to be loyal to the coach who’d given him the starting job as a rookie, he was back on the field, shot full of cortisone.  “Play through the pain,” was the motto of the day.  Somehow, with a damaged shoulder, Cook gutted out the second half of the season.  The Bengals won only four games, but Cook led the American Football League in completion percentage at 53.8, threw 15 touchdown passes and averaged 9.4 yards per completion on 17.5 yards per attempt.  That’s some long ball throwing.  He was like Joe Namath with good knees.

The shoulder, however, was another story.  The primitive operations of the time, involved cutting through muscle.  Cook had several surgeries, while sitting out the next three seasons. Nothing worked.  He did manage to get on the field long enough to throw three passes in a game in 1973, but the Bengals cut him loose at the end of the season.  Kansas City gave him a training camp look in 1974, but he was finished – done at the age of 27.  Drew Brees, who had a more serious shoulder injury at a similar age, was back on the field in 2005 the season after surgery and had a Pro Bowl year for the Saints, leading them to the NFC title game.

How good could Greg Cook have been?  What if shoulder surgery was in 1969 what it is today?  Walsh, who would later coach Hall of Famers Joe Montana and Steve Young, told NFL Films he believed Cook, “could very well have been remembered or noted as the greatest quarterback of all time.”  He described Cook as having the strength of Terry Bradshaw with the instincts and feel of Montana.  Mike Brown, who inherited the Bengals from his father told City Beat in Cincinnati, “If he had stayed healthy, we would have been the team of the 1970’s, not the Steelers.”

Now here’s the ironic twist to all this.  With Cook out for 1970, the Bengals traded for Buffalo backup Virgil Carter, who had quick feet, but a weak arm.  Walsh designed an offense that involved short passes and Carter led the NFL with a 62.2 completion percentage.  The offense didn’t have a name, but it became the basis for the one that took Montana and Young to the Hall of Fame after they’d hooked up with Walsh in San Francisco.

It’s called the “West Coast” offense, but the reality is it was born in the Midwest in Cincinnati.  Asked how that offense would have worked with Cook running it instead of Carter, Walsh said, “Completely different.  It would have started with the deep strike, and everybody would have played off that.  It would have set records that would never be broken.”

As for Cook, he never expressed bitterness over being cheated out of a career, telling NFL Films, “I had some success and I thank God for that.”  He died in 2012 at the age of 65.  As his former teammate Bob Johnson, who played for the Bengals from 1968-1979 put it, “He was a prince who never became king.”