MOBILE, Ala. - At 28, Brandon Weeden is getting more questions about his age this week than any other player. Every player here is a senior who has exhausted his eligibility in college hence the name Senior Bowl.
Judging by the constant discussion of his age, Weeden might as well be playing in the Senior Citizen’s Bowl.
The good natured Weeden doesn’t let the questions or jokes (more on those in a moment) bother him, though.
“I love it,” Weeden said. “It doesn’t bother me at all. I acted younger than some of these guys. I’m such an easy guy to get along with and I tell the story and people don’t believe me, but I don’t think most of the guys I came in with knew I was as old as I was until I became a starter. It was a non issue until I became a starter but I loved it, I loved every minute of it.”
Coming into this week, Weeden was widely regarded as one of the top quarterbacks in this year’s class after a record-breaking career at Oklahoma State. By the numbers and his skill set, one could argue that Weeden belongs in a conversation that includes Stanford’s Andrew Luck and Baylor’s Robert Griffin III, if only he wasn’t about six or seven years their senior.
“Possibly,” Weeden said. “I’m not going to discount that. With that being said, I still think my game translates very well to that level and if I was 21, 22, absolutely but I think if a team gives me a shot and you look back at all the guys who have had success in the NFL, a lot of guys didn’t start until their late 20’s, win a Super Bowl until their mid 30’s, 36, 37, Kurt Warner is a perfect example. There are a lot of guys that excelled late into their 30s so my window is obviously a little smaller but it’s not as small as some people think it might be.”
Ten years ago, Weeden never figured he’d be here at the Senior Bowl preparing to do everything he can to impress NFL scouts.
Weeden was just 18 years old at the time and the thought of playing in the NFL might have been on his radar but those thoughts were left behind by Weeden’s decision to sign with the New York Yankees and pursue a career as a pitcher.
Fast forward a decade and Weeden’s baseball dreams have shattered. Now, he sits on the edge of an opportunity to become a professional football player even if he’s doubling as the “Old Man River” of this year’s Senior Bowl.
Even as Weeden looks back on a baseball career that never quite took off, he has no regrets about making the decision he made and passing on a scholarship to play both sports in Stillwater.
“The opportunity I had coming out of high school was just too good,” Weeden said. “When I was 18, I signed a contract and I knew that I wanted to come back and play college football if it didn’t work out. I knew I had that. I had school paid for from the Yankees, so leaving school, getting drafted by your favorite team, getting a chance to pitch in the big leagues, get a pretty nice chunk of change for an 18-year old; it was all the writing on the wall. It was a pretty easy decision. I was going to give myself four or five years and if it didn’t work out, I was going to come do this.”
Weeden’s time with the Yankees didn’t go as planned. He was drafted in the second round of the 2002 MLB Draft and two years later was part of a trade to the Dodgers that sent Kevin Brown back to New York.
By 2005, Kansas City selected Weeden in the Rule V Draft. That was it for Weeden and he opted to return to school to pursue football, a sport he said he never placed behind baseball but one in which he didn’t have the immediate opportunities that baseball provided.
“When you have that opportunity and you’re that high of a pick, I mean you have got to weigh the percentages,” Weeden said. “If I was a later round pick and they didn’t give me any money, it would have been a no brainer; I would’ve played both sports at Oklahoma State and who knows where I’d be today.”
Weeden arrived in Stillwater in 2007, redshirting his first year before appearing in one game in 2008.
In 2009, Weeden played in three games, including a comeback win he directed against Colorado. It wasn’t until that moment that he believed he could one day play football at the highest level.
“That gave me the confidence going into my junior year,” Weeden said. “And then my junior year, I really realized that my game could take off. That gave me the confidence to keep going and keep working.”
With Weeden at the controls of one of the nation’s most potent offenses, the Cowboys rose to heights they’d never reached in 2010 and 2011. In the process, Weeden set school records for passing yards in a season and a game, total offense in a season and completion percentage in a season, among others.
Oklahoma State finished 11-1 in 2011 and captured the Fiesta Bowl championship with a stirring win against Stanford.
Despite assertions to the contrary, Weeden proved more than capable of doing all the things a NFL quarterback must do to be successful at the next level.
“You have got to be a thrower,” Weeden said. “This league for most part is a quarterback driven, throwing league. One of my biggest pet peeves is everybody talks about our style of offense being a system or whatever that is but if you look at the tape, we don’t run screens. We suck at screens; we were a really bad screen team. But we threw digs, we threw posts, we threw comebacks, we threw in routes, we threw curls, we did everything I did today. Making the throws is not an issue. I proved that I can make every throw on Saturdays and what we did offensively.”
In the early part of the week here in Mobile, Weeden looked like the most polished quarterback in attendance. Scouts raved about his ability to fit the ball into tight windows and make good decisions with the ball.
The only thing seemingly holding Weeden back is the date on his birth certificate. He knows teams will ask him about it since Chris Weinke is the only other quarterback of recent vintage to follow a similar path to the league.
Weeden, of course, doesn’t see his age as any sort of detriment.
“My age is more of an advantage for me than anything, I really do think that,” Weeden said. “I think I haven’t been hit very much, my body is fresh, my arm is fresh. I think all of the negatives that could possibly be there are just not there. One advantage I do have is maturity.”
When Weeden says he handles the questions and jokes about his age with no issues, he’s not just paying lip service.
Oklahoma State safety Markelle Martin made a habit of pulling pranks on Weeden that were generally age related. For Weeden’s 27th birthday, Martin showered him with gifts of a cane, some Depends diapers and balloons.
Starting this week, Weeden is more than ready to answer the questions teams will have about his longevity in the league. He says he’ll tell NFL teams the same thing he tells everyone else.
“I told them all the same thing: it’s way more of a positive than a negative,” Weeden said. “My body is fresh, the maturity level is huge. In the NFL, there are going to be some dips, you are going to have some success, you’re going to have some failures and I have dealt with that. I have already played a professional sport and had to deal with failure. We all know baseball is the biggest game of failure there is and to deal with that, I think that has helped me along the way. I’ve got about 40 different reasons but those are a few of them. Age is just a number.”
