PressBox: July 27, 2007: The Good, The Bad and The Boller

July 27, 2007: The Good, The Bad and The Boller

By Brian Biederman

Since arriving in Baltimore, Kyle Boller has not really been given a fair shot at success. Now before every non-female Ravens fan jumps all over me for my claim, hear me out for a bit. For starters, head coach Brian Billick didn’t do him any favors by starting him in his very first game in his rookie year. And this wasn’t just any old game, it was the Pittsburgh Steelers. Talk about being thrown into the lion’s den. Not knowing what to expect from the NFL and starting at a 10 on a scale of most hostile places a Raven could play did not bode well for young Kyle. Ever since that day, Kyle has had that deer-in-the-headlights look when things around him don’t go as planned. First impressions can last a lifetime, and so far his first impression of NFL seems to have stuck with him.

But wait, there’s more.

Until this past season, on a good day, the Ravens offensive line was a C, but from Sunday to Sunday they were playing mostly D-level football. Who did this hurt the most? You got it, Kyle Boller. Instead of yelling at the man for tripping over his feet when he would drop back to pass, did anybody ever wonder why this kid was in such a hurry? Yes, Boller is frenetic and moves fast, but could you blame him for feeling that way? He would receive the snap and before taking one step back, the opposing team’s D-line was already all up in his grill. The bond between a line and his quarterback is sacred, and the line is supposed to die for their quarterback. For one reason or another, the Ravens had it backwards, and it all fell on a young man with a fragile mind.

I’m not done yet, there’s still more.

The No. 1 reason Kyle Boller has been unable to succeed so far in Baltimore is because he has had nobody to really learn from. And I don’t mean learn how to throw, or to learn the system. I mean to learn the things that only a skilled veteran could teach you. What to do when the pocket collapses, how to pick up things a defense is doing, and other intangibles such as those. Why did he not have the opportunity to learn these things? The Ravens did not bring in a solid veteran to help Kyle, instead he was learning from Anthony Wright, a former backup for the Dallas Cowboys. The brainless one was not capable of teaching Kyle what he needed help with most. Poise. Because Wright himself was a questionable decision-maker at best, Kyle was unable to learn how to make the right choice under pressure.

Until last year when he sat behind Steve McNair and saw what poise was, Boller only knew the definition of the word as it reads in a dictionary. However, now after watching McNair play and learning the things that have made Steve so successful, Boller might be poised to take one more run as the Ravens starting quarterback. Filling in for McNair last year, Boller had good numbers, posting substantially more touchdowns than he did interceptions. Going back to the end of the 2005-06 season, this has been a trend for Kyle.

If McNair retires after this year or in the near future, and Kyle is willing to re-sign with the Ravens for the right price, the kid deserves one more chance. Because after all this is how it should have been done from the beginning.

Posted on July 27, 2007 at 2:26 p.m.