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Before Steve McNair was the co-MVP of the NFL, before he fell a yard short of leading a game-tying drive in the 2000 Super Bowl, before he was shot and killed Saturday in Tennessee, he was almost a Carolina Panther.
In early 1995, the Carolina Panthers had yet to play a real NFL game but were feverishly preparing for their first NFL draft. They held the No.1 pick. The Panthers eventually narrowed their choices that April to a field of three: McNair, Penn State running back Ki-Jana Carter and Penn State quarterback Kerry Collins.
To hedge their bets, the Panthers sent mock jerseys of all three to New York for the NFL draft. But then on draft day, they traded down from the No.1 to the No.5 pick, where they would select Collins. Cincinnati traded with Carolina to get the top pick, picked Carter No.1 and suffered for years after the running back became an injury-riddled bust.
Collins had a stormy four seasons in Charlotte. He guided the team to a playoff appearance in its second season but was gone early in his fourth season, undone in part by a drinking problem he would later admit and curb.
And McNair?
That's the player Carolina should have picked. Selected No.3 overall by the Houston Oilers – who would later become the Tennessee Titans – McNair had the best career of the three players Carolina seriously considered.
If the Panthers had chosen “Air” McNair No.1 in 1995, it's quite possible he would have been the franchise's starter for the next decade. Instead, the Panthers had seven starting QBs during that time.
Bill Polian, the Panthers' general manager during those expansion years, was sold on Collins, however. And to be fair, Collins remains in the NFL and has had a fine career. He's a 15-year veteran and still starts for the Titans team McNair once led. Like McNair, Collins once got a team to the Super Bowl (with the New York Giants) but lost.
But Collins was never the co-MVP of the entire league – the award McNair shared with Peyton Manning in 2003.
Jake Delhomme long considered McNair one of the five best quarterbacks in the NFL, marveling at his toughness and physical ability. But there were many questions about McNair leading into that 1995 draft, most stemming from his small-school background at Alcorn State and the fact he was a black quarterback at a time when far fewer African Americans played the position.
Charles Chandler, our primary Panthers reporter then and now, visited him while McNair was still at Alcorn State to ask him about possibly being the Panthers' first draft pick.
Said McNair then: “Don't look at the school I go to. Don't consider me just a black quarterback. Consider me as a person first and consider me in what I do on the field. That's going out there doing my best, giving 100 percent every play and doing what it takes to win. I don't ever have in my mind that I'm going to fail. I won't let you down.”
The careers of McNair and Collins will always be linked by that 1995 draft and the fact both played quarterback for the Titans during some of the team's best seasons.
McNair also was always appreciative that Collins got a $7million signing bonus in 1995 as a rookie. That allowed McNair to get a couple more million dollars guaranteed for his first contract with Houston.
“Tell Kerry thanks for that,” McNair told me once.
I visited McNair in September 1995 while he was still a backup for the then-Oilers. I remember he was eating M&Ms during our interview while giving thoughtful answers to my questions.
Collins was about to start his first game for Carolina, but McNair was still two years away from becoming the full-time starter for his team.
“Kerry must be excited, huh?” McNair said. “I'm sure he's got to be very happy. I know I would be.”
I don't pretend to know the particulars of McNair's death. But I sure remember him in life. And I wonder even more now how different that life would have been had it been McNair holding up that mock Panthers jersey at the NFL draft in 1995.
