Word: staubach
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Such is the view from behind the face mask of the Dallas Cowboys' Roger Staubach, one of the most calmly efficient quarterbacks in N.F.L. history. At 36, he is at the height of his skills. Roger the Dodger, the U.S. Naval Academy scrambler who came into the pros ten years ago with a pronounced tendency to gallop away with the ball, has long since matured into a sharp-eyed passer whose forte is picking apart the secondary, not romping down the sidelines. To avoid destruction, Staubach goes to ground with a hook slide that would do a major league...
...Staubach did that often enough during the past season to rank near the top of pro quarterbacks in completions: 231 of 413 passes (55.9%) for 3,190 yds. and 25 touchdowns. The man whose legs won him the Heisman Trophy in 1963 now lives, as do all N.F.L. quarterbacks, by his arm. His hands, gnarled and disfigured, reflect his trade: the index finger on his throwing hand still shows the marks of off-season surgery, and the little finger on the same hand zigs at right angles from one fracture, then zags back again from a second break...
Utterly methodical in everything he does (father of five, he has a small library of volumes on child raising), Staubach is fascinated by the intellectual challenge of dissecting pro defenses, especially one as sophisticated as Pittsburgh's. "I'm really learning new things all the time," he insists. "I'm constantly growing." Head Coach Tom Landry calls the Dallas plays, and while Staubach would prefer otherwise, he admits that the system frees him to search for telltale flaws in a defense. Like Bradshaw, Staubach knows all the tactics that his opponents are likely to use in given...
...Staubach's rapport with Drew Pearson, Billy Joe DuPree, Tony Hill and the rest of his fleet of receivers has been built, like all of his skills, on years of hard work. He has been playing football since age twelve, with four years off for Navy duty after graduation from Annapolis. Even in Viet Nam, however, Lieut, (jg) Staubach chucked a football on the docks at Danang. His arm is neither as poor as early detractors claimed nor as great as revisionists insist: just a good solid arm harnessed to the needs at hand...
...Staubach's greatest asset, however, is his fierce competitiveness, fierce even by the standards of a league filled with men who brood for days after a defeat. In the simplest matters, Staubach's instincts inevitably take over. Says Wide Receiver Pearson: "He's 36, and I'm 27, and he doesn't want me to beat him in anything. We can just be running laps and it becomes competitive. He's keeping his ego intact because he says that he can still beat the younger guys, and I'm trying to keep mine...