Who is Aaron Brooks?
|  | | Saints backup QB Aaron Brooks passed for a TD and ran for two to fill in admirably for injured Jeff Blake. |
Sporting America, after the New Orleans Saints' smashing 31-24 road victory Sunday over the defending Super Bowl champions, wants to know.
Before the rookie quarterback ran for two touchdowns, threw for another and vaulted the New New Orleans Saints to 8-4 and into first place, Brooks had played exactly three quarters and two plays of professional football. Today he is the lead sports story across the country. As of 10 a.m. central, the Saints beleaguered public relations office already had fielded 24 requests for Brooks' time. Three different ESPN outlets (internet, television and radio) were hot on his trail. The NFL wanted him for its national conference call. USA Today, CNN/SI and FOX are all hoping to profile him.
Sadly, Brooks was not available for comment Monday. He's too busy thinking about the Denver Broncos, who happen to be Sunday's opponent.
So who is Aaron Brooks? Or, as they say in the Crescent City, who 'dat?
He is 6-foot-4, 210 pounds. He is 24 years old. He runs a smoking 4.5-second 40-yard dash and has a jaunty 35-inch vertical leap. Clinical details aside, he throws a nice, firm ball and, man, is he cool under pressure. In the biggest game of his young life, with New Orleans favored to lose by 13½ points, he was laughing and cutting up before the Saints left their locker room at the Trans World Dome.
Who?
When running back Ricky Williams broke his left ankle two weeks ago, the Saints' playoff hopes appeared to dim appreciably. When quarterback Jeff Blake was lost a week ago with a fractured dislocation of his right foot, the party essentially was over. Enter Brooks. In his first NFL start, against the vaunted St. Louis Rams, he completed 19 of 27 passes for 190 yards and a touchdown. He also ran seven times for 34 yards. This, with a backfield consisting of two rookies (Chad Morton and Terrelle Smith) and a fumble-prone veteran (Jerald Moore) who was out of football last year.
And although the Saints may have the league's best-matched set of offensive and defensive lines, Brooks was hardly on automatic pilot. When he had to make plays, he made plays. His leaping 1-yard scoring run with 3:50 remaining was the ultimate difference.
"The guy is calm and cool," marveled New Orleans head coach Jim Haslett after Sunday's game. "Nothing really rattles him."
Said Brooks, "It will definitely get the doubters thinking correctly. It will give me more confidence and give the team a lot more confidence."
While the stench of the Florida presidential election fiasco is still fresh in our nostrils, Brooks is another reminder not to pass judgment before all the votes have been tallied. For all the attention that the celebrated Class of '99 received - from Tim Couch to Donovan McNabb to Akili Smith, to Daunte Culpepper to Cade McNown to Shaun King - another, more distant county has now been heard from.
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All I do know is that I have some catching up to do. There's some work to do, but I've paid my dues, and I'm paying them now. I'm glad to be in the position that I am. ” |
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— Aaron Brooks, Saints quarterback |
King, the No. 50 pick in the draft by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, was thought to be the long shot of the group. Well, we give you Brooks, the 1999 fourth-round pick of the Green Bay Packers, No. 131 overall, and the ninth quarterback taken, via the University of Virginia.
The Rams were hardly the toughest challenge of Brooks' career. He came from a single-parent family in the inner city of Newport News, Va., and started at point guard as a freshman at Newport News Ferguson High School. He regularly guarded rival Hampton High's Allen Iverson in AAU and high school play.
At Virginia, Brooks similarly was overshadowed by Georgia Tech's Joe Hamilton and North Carolina State's Jamie Barnette. Still, Brooks left as one of Virginia's best quarterbacks ever. In two years as a starter, he finished tied for second in TD passes (33), and third in yards (5,118), attempts, completions and total yards. He set the school record with six 300-yard passing games and ran for 547 yards and 13 TDs. He also graduated with a degree in anthropology.
In Green Bay, he completed 5 of 11 passes for 112 yards and one touchdown in the preseason and showed enough skills to make the final roster. But, playing behind three-time NFL MVP Brett Favre and highly regarded backup Matt Hasselbeck, he never dressed for a game his rookie season. Nevertheless, Packers quarterbacks coach Mike McCarthy, who had urged Green Bay general manager Ron Wolf to draft him and saw Brooks every day in practice, was impressed. When Haslett took over as the Saints' head coach in February, he invited McCarthy to be his offensive coordinator. McCarthy was so high on Brooks that Saints general manager Randy Mueller worked out a July 31 trade for him, getting Brooks and tight end Lamont Hall in exchange for linebacker K.D. Williams and the Saints' third-round pick in 2001.
"Aaron Brooks," McCarthy has told several Saints staffers, "is going to be a star in this league."
It's just that nobody, McCarthy included, thought it would be this season.
When Blake went down in the first quarter against the Raiders, Brooks' very first pass was intercepted. He settled down, though, and completed 14 of 22 for 187 yards and 2 touchdowns. With a full week of repetitions in practice, he showed more consistency against the Rams. The Saints converted 10 of 18 third-down situations, a testament to Brooks' poise in the face of a hostile sellout crowd of 66,064.
Trent Green, playing for the injured Kurt Warner, was supposed to be the NFL's best backup, but Brooks clearly outplayed him. Brooks' two interceptions both came under extenuating circumstances; his arm was tipped on the first, and the second followed a deflection.
Brooks' raw athleticism has never been questioned. It was his intelligence, personnel men say, that caused him to slip in the draft. He scored a disappointing 17 on the 50-question Wonderlic intelligence test, a 12-minute standardized test administered to prospects at the scouting combine each year in Indianapolis. Brooks scored higher, for instance, than McNabb and Smith, but short of the mid-20s range that most teams use as the measuring stick for quarterbacks.
McCarthy and Haslett say the test is overrated and insist that Brooks has picked up the offense quickly. It's a good thing, too. With Blake out for the rest of the season, the Saints' playoff hopes rest with Brooks.
"I'll let my actions speak for themselves," Brooks said Sunday. "All I do know is that I have some catching up to do. There's some work to do, but I've paid my dues, and I'm paying them now. I'm glad to be in the position that I am."
Greg Garber is a senior writer for ESPN.com.
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VIDEO
  Aaron Brooks is gaining confidence as the Saints QB. wav: 142 kRealAudio: 14.4 | 28.8 | 56.6 Jim Haslett describes the strides QB Aaron Brooks has made this season. wav: 935 kRealAudio: 14.4 | 28.8 | 56.6 |
