What a LONG career of "coulda been" after "coulda been" after "coulda been"! Career quite similar in unfortunateness to Steve DeBerg's but definitely with more potential!
For starters, he could have had quite a run with the Raiders had he not gotten on Al's bad side. Schroeder starting over him - come on! Bills win AFC in '90 anyway, and maybe they beat Raiders by a noticeable margin anyway, but perhaps with Beuerlein at QB quite a ways from a notoriously historic '51-3'!! And then Marinovich, Hostetler (who I also think wasn't as good as Beuerlein)...
Yes, he wasn't going to start in Big D (not that it's anything to be ashamed of) but still showed some great stuff in '91 leading them to that 5-0 finish against quality competition and then winning at Chicago 1st-Rd! He forged a 7-9 finish in the desert his first year there, Bugel's last year, only to get a new HC who could not have been more QB-(make that offense-period)-unfriendly! Brunell gets nod over him in Jax, Kerry Collins gets nod over him in Carolina's '96 Cinderella season! He ends up getting starting job soon enough but when the team's not as good. He had that tour-de-force Pro Bowl/barely-miss-the-playoffs season in '99, was the starter yet again in '00, but then Seifert goes ahead and pushes him aside for Weinke thus - perhaps - costing himself a spot in Canton to this very day, likely permanently.
Goes to Denver but by then he's in his late-30s. Injuries didn't help his case vs Brian Griese and then Jake Plummer enters in the picture then that's, pretty much, that.
Definitely a case of wrong-place-at-wrong-time/whatever-COULD-go-wrong stuff.
Thoughts?
Heck! I would have loved for he to carry the Mark Malone-to-Big Ben baton all that time!
Steve Beuerlein
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Gary Najman
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Re: Steve Beuerlein
HIs 1999 production was one of the best seasons I saw by a quarterback up to that year, but unfortunately, Kurt Warner had still a better season and also won the Super Bowl. I was shocked when four years earlier Mark Brunell beat him for the starting spot in Jacksonville first season in the NFL.