Croyle sticks around KC to show he wants to stick as starting QB

His pickup truck is splattered with mud from front to back, with empty foam coffee cups in the truck’s two front-seat cup holders and a few more on the floor, plus a well-used tin of dipping tobacco tucked somewhere between the seats.

The 24-year-old smiles big and has a mop of dark brown hair. He speaks with an Alabama twang and wears T-shirts and sneakers on work days and off days, the joy of youth and the comfort of home.

“There’s nothing big-time about me,” he says. “I’m just a starting quarterback in the NFL.”

Brodie Croyle is an average man with an oversized job. The Chiefs’ quarterback says all the right things and is trying his damnedest to do them, too. He and Kelli, his wife of seven months, bought a house in the Johnson County community of Stilwell and put down roots. Said they wanted to stay for a long time.

He could be in the South, enjoying the warm weather and his family’s company — at his parents’ ranch near Birmingham, Ala., or with Kelli’s family in Mississippi. Instead, he is here, where there are constant reminders that the Chiefs lost all six of Croyle’s starts in 2007.

So many of his teammates — at least half of them, a team spokesman says, but Croyle suspects it is more — blew town after the Chiefs’ last game. They headed to Las Vegas or Hawaii or wherever home is, anywhere that would wash away the memories of a 4-12 season, anywhere but Kansas City. But Croyle settled into Middle America, where he bundled up and braced himself for cold weather and criticism.

“If we’re going to play here, if this is going to be our team, we want it to be our city, too,” he says. “We don’t want to be going from here to there to there. We want to have a home, and we want a place to call home. Kansas City is it.”

Most days, Croyle rises before dawn, goes hunting in the Kansas woods and heads to Arrowhead Stadium. He spends three or four days a week at the stadium, he says, almost every hour spent as the only player there. Coaches have noticed his commitment and even admire it. They say more players should have Croyle’s drive.

But it might not be enough. The NFL draft is in two months, and the Chiefs have a prime choice at No. 5 overall. They have other holes, but coaches might be tempted to take an elite college quarterback.

This season will be Croyle’s third in Kansas City. He is neither a rookie nor a veteran; neither proven nor untested. Coaches have no idea what to think about Croyle because he has neither won nor lost the long-term starting job. He has no defined identity, and that has kept the Chiefs from fully embracing him as their long-term answer at quarterback.

Coaches say his decision to remain in Kansas City this offseason suggests he is committed. Now he must prove himself — one way or the other. Coaches hope Croyle shows he is anything but average.

“We’re really at a crossroads right now,” Chiefs quarterbacks coach Dick Curl says after thinking for a long time about Croyle’s future here. “We’re at that point that we still need — this won’t sound good, maybe — a little bit more time to see where we’re going to go. He’s certainly shown he has the ability to play. But this is a bottom-line business, plain and simple. It’s not about doing good things. It’s about winning. And he needs to win.”

•••

The look never changed, and neither did the questions. For six consecutive Thursdays, the day of the starting quarterback’s weekly news conference, Croyle stood at a podium with a beaten-down expression and told reporters he didn’t know why the Chiefs were losing.

Was it the system? Was it injuries? Was it him?

“You really just don’t have the answers,” he says now. “At some point, you kind of get tired of it. You just say the standard book answer week in and week out.”

It is a responsibility that comes with the starting job, but it was one Croyle never warmed up to. He often looked frustrated and uneasy, and the media were not the only ones to notice. Chiefs coach Herm Edwards says Croyle looked uncomfortable at times shouldering the team’s load and being its face.

He would show promise, sure, and make outstanding plays in impossible situations. Then he would try too hard, as young quarterbacks do, and remind Edwards how far Croyle had yet to go.

“He had flashes where you’d say, ‘Hey, man, wow,’ ” Edwards says. “Then all of a sudden, he’d be a rookie again.”

Edwards says it is not uncommon among inexperienced passers. In fact, Edwards compares Croyle to a young Chad Pennington, who endured similar difficulties under Edwards during Pennington’s first season as the New York Jets’ starter.

But Pennington had been groomed for two seasons behind Vinny Testaverde; Croyle’s move to the starting lineup was part of a youth movement that will continue throughout this offseason. Croyle was sacked 10 times in his first three starts and started six of the nine games Kansas City lost to end the season.

Pennington never endured that, and Edwards admits Croyle had a more difficult task than Pennington. The coach says he was careful after each game to remind Croyle it was a Chiefs problem — not a Croyle problem.

“He knows who he is, and he knows what he is,” says John Croyle, Brodie’s father. “He knows what it takes to win. Nothing in college, high school or life comes easy. He’s had to work hard his whole life.”

Curl says the staff has draped Croyle in positive reinforcement to maintain his confidence. It was not easy as Kansas City finished its worst season in 30 years with Croyle standing in front of his locker in the Jets’ locker room. Other players were making offseason plans, packing bags and babbling about flights to somewhere other than Kansas City. Some laughed, and some said goodbye to teammates.

Croyle, meanwhile, was one of the last to depart the Meadowlands locker room. He slid on a pair of cowboy boots and wrapped a scarf around his neck. He told the media to fire away, but his eyes darted toward the exit.

The questions kept coming. As usual, there weren’t enough answers, so Croyle stood there with the same look on his face he showed for six long weeks.

When the questions were finished, Croyle left the locker room with his eyes pointed toward the floor.

“You have to be very careful with that position,” Edwards says. “You’re asking him to do certain things. No, he wasn’t comfortable. That was because we didn’t win. That bothers him to no end, more than people can even imagine. Whatever happened last year, he’s got to get that out of his thinking. You can’t let a season change who you are.

“There have been a lot of quarterbacks in this league that have been put in that spot, being young, and they never recover from it.”

•••

Four months. That was Croyle’s mental recovery timetable, a period he had to prove he wanted this responsibility and the expectations, from the last game to the draft. He was used to the spotlight and chaos — he played for three coaches in four years at Alabama, which never lost more than three consecutive regular-season games while Croyle was there. Losing was never part of the equation. Not like this.

“It sucks. There ain’t no doubt about it,” he says in that Alabama drawl. “I’ve never really been a part of losing. It played on me pretty hard. It still does.”

Croyle left Kansas City for 10 days in January to go duck hunting in Arkansas. It was the only time he left Kansas City until last weekend, when he went to Alabama to appear on a television show on hunting. Croyle returned from Arkansas and met with Edwards. The coach told Croyle to remember one thing during the offseason and beyond: Keep his mouth closed. Edwards told him not to worry about trying to be a leader because, regardless of what Croyle tried in the past, NFL players are different. They don’t listen to just anybody, and a young quarterback without a win to his name has little credibility with veterans.

For now, Edwards told Croyle, just play. It was the same thing Edwards told Pennington before Pennington led the Jets to the 2002 AFC East championship.

“You can’t lead until you win,” Edwards says. “That’s just the way it is.”

Croyle listened, and he settled into the offseason schedule. The film sessions are long, but Croyle says they help him. Curl says Croyle’s presence gives the offense a head start on the 2008 season. It would not be possible if Croyle had departed Kansas City longer than a few days.

He has, however, been within earshot of radio call-in shows and outspoken fans who hope the Chiefs draft a quarterback in the first round, a star who eventually would force Croyle into a backup role. Boston College star Matt Ryan is the hot name. Some suggest Ryan is such a talent the Chiefs would have to take him if he falls to No. 5. And there is this: The Chiefs have nine more draft picks, and NFL executives don’t like not knowing who their quarterback will be.

Croyle has heard the talk but says he ignores it. He might not even watch the draft, he says. Maybe he’ll go hunting.

“You hear it, but what do you do about it?” he says. “All I can do is come up here and get ready to go. My head coach has said, ‘He’s my guy; he’s the guy I’m going with.’ The easy out is to take another quarterback, and he’s going to be this, that and the other. Does it bother me? No. If it happens, it happens.”

•••

Croyle’s feet hit the floor before the alarm clock has a chance. It is 4:30 a.m. Daybreak is nearly two hours away. He dresses in camouflage and loads his white pickup with plastic ducks and geese, decoys that attract the real ones. Croyle drives to the hunt site and slides his duck boat, his first big purchase after signing with the Chiefs, into the water of some pond in Overland Park or Stilwell or anywhere Croyle has a friend with hunting land.

“Some people like playing golf. Some people like going to Vegas,” says Croyle, who tries to hunt every day. “I like waking up early and going out, throwing decoy spread and shooting ducks.”

He might be here for 30 minutes or five hours. He enjoys the peace and the company of his dog, Teal. At some point, he will head back and slip into his other life, as an NFL quarterback.

Some days, he and Kelli ride through the back roads of suburbs or try new restaurants. Other days, he smiles and shakes hands at community events, such as when Croyle was the centerpiece at the grand opening ceremony of an Independence hunting and fishing superstore last week.

“Those are my people,” Croyle says with a smile.

Most of his other people, his Chiefs teammates, will return to Kansas City gradually during the next few months. They will begin throwing and catching and loosening their muscles. Croyle will have been here, and he hopes coaches continue to notice.

His presence means something, but it does not mean everything. Edwards says he wants to see Croyle play an efficient game early next season. Making first downs and scoring in the red zone would prove Croyle can lead a team. With that, Edwards says, winning will come. Still, Croyle must prove soon that he can do more than hang around. It will be then that the Chiefs learn whether he is the future at quarterback. If they can afford to wait, that is.

Asked if he could definitively say Kansas City will not choose a passer with its first draft pick, Edwards paused for a moment and shook his head.

“No,” he says finally. “You’ll never say that. You can’t.”

Part of that is because the Chiefs, like all NFL teams, are playing poker — and revealing their intentions would be showing their hand. But the team just is not sold yet that Croyle is the long-term answer at its most visible position.

“I don’t think you could make a rational argument that he’s better than the bottom third of the league,” says Randy Cross, an NFL analyst who called a late-season Chiefs game for CBS. “He’s got some of the intangibles. But you can’t do it on potential. He’s not capable of carrying a team, but I don’t think there are many of those guys.”

And, says another CBS analyst with Kansas City experience, there is little time for Croyle to prove himself.

“He has a year,” says Rich Gannon, Chiefs quarterback from 1995 to 1998. “If they’re still not winning, you have to go get somebody else who will win.”

This season will be critical for Croyle. The Chiefs think enough of him that they likely will resist the temptation of drafting a quarterback in the first round. They likely will draft one in the later rounds, proof they don’t think so much of Croyle that they do not want insurance.

Until draft weekend, when the Chiefs show how they really feel about Croyle, the young quarterback will continue to be around. He will keep getting up early, hunting and heading to the stadium. He will show he is committed to the Chiefs — even if the Chiefs cannot say they are committed to him.

“He needs to have a fresh start,” Edwards says. “It’s up to him and us to be successful. He’s going to get an opportunity, and that’s all he wants. He wants to prove to himself he can be an NFL quarterback and win in this league. At the end of the day, he’s got to perform.

“He went through tough times last year playing. He didn’t anticipate that. He didn’t at all. He’s going to find out a lot about himself now.”

To reach Kent Babb, Chiefs reporter for The Star, call 816-234-4386 or send e-mail to kbabb@kcstar.com.