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http://www.wwltv.com/sports/jimhende....82ae1f97.html

Is it time for a quarterback change?

06:44 PM CST on Monday, December 8, 2003

Jim Henderson / WWL-TV Sports Anchor


And you think you've got some important decisions to be made before Christmas. Just imagine Jim Haslett's dilemma.

Yesterday he saw in one game what he's been seeing for three and a half seasons just how good Aaron Brooks can be and just how bad Aaron Brooks can be.

As the Saints essentially fell out of the playoff race – again - Haslett is left to ponder these questions again: "Could we have won that game yesterday with a more consistent quarterback? Will Aaron Brooks ever become that quarterback? Do I have that quarterback behind him on my roster? Could I find that out under these circumstances? And, what would it cost this team, this coaching staff, and this franchise to find out?"

With three games left in this season, I think back to the same juncture in 1989. The Saints had just lost at Detroit to fall to 6- 7 same as they are right now. A frustrated Jim Mora benched Bobby Hebert for a fiery, strong-armed journeyman quarterback named John Fourcade.

Without any playoff pressure upon him, Fourcade catches lightning in a bottle, gets a season's worth of lucky breaks in the last three games, and wins them all. The Saints finish 9-7 Hebert holds out in 1990. Jim Finks gets a "false positive" reading on Fourcade and convinces himself he found the quarterback to take the Saints to the next level in those three games and makes Fourcade the season-opening starter.

After John throws three touchdowns and eight interceptions, the Saints trade for Steve Walsh, go 8-8, squander their Super Bowl chances while blessed with the best defense in team history and begin a decade-long search for a quarterback as good as Bobby Hebert was at that time.

Look at the parade at the position in the 90's: Steve Walsh, Wade Wilson, Jim Everett, Heath Shuler, Billy Joe's Hobert and Tolliver, Danny Wuerffel, Kerry Collins, Jeff Blake. Not very pretty, is it?

Now we reach another crossroads. Suppose the Saints bench brooks for Todd Bouman who becomes John Fourcade and 2003 becomes 1989 all over again.

Suppose he wins the final three meaningless games and Aaron Brooks becomes Bobby Hebert?

Is Todd Bouman the future? Is Aaron Brooks the past? Could Bouman do it over a 16 -game season? And if he falls flat over these final three games would Brooks' confidence be so shattered that you could never rehabilitate him? Remember that confidence is so crystalline in the Saints' mind that they essentially tried to keep Bouman's contract extension last week a secret so as not to imply any displeasure with the status quo.

Fourteen years removed from 1989 we can see clearly that that decision was the wrong one and what it cost those who made it and the fans who supported it.

Fourteen years from now we'll be able to see clearly what replacing or not replacing Aaron Brooks meant for better or worse.

It's certainly not clear at the moment. The only thing that is, is that 14 years from now all of them and some of us will no longer be around the team in all likelihood.

And it's clear that the short-term effects of that decision will determine how long they, as coaches, and you as fans will be around as well.