RIP Greg Cook

Former QB in the very early days of the Bengals franchise that was derailed by a shoulder injury. Ask some older football fans and a healthy Cook becomes a big "What if he was healthy?"

Bill Walsh insisted that Cook was the best QB he ever saw. Once talked with some old-timers who remembered him and each felt Cook would have been a Hall of Fame caliber player had there been better medical techniques that would have prevented him from throwing his arm out very early in his career.

 

sad to hear ... remember seeing him in a snowstorm at the old Rockpile in Buffalo during his rookie year ... and yes, he should have had quite the career ....

 

One of the the all time "what could've been" figures. Had a tremendous rookie season in which he looked like a budding superstar, and then injuries ruined him from there.

 

At first, I thought this was about the "Cookie Monster" off LSU's 1981 Final Four team. He died seven years ago, I believe.

So now all the Greg Cooks relevant to the sports world have passed...or am I missing one?

 

A good way to compare quarterbacks between generations is to look at average yards per pass. This way you can compare the QB who completes a high percentage because he throws a lot of passes to the running backs and the long ball thrower who tries to hit his wide receivers and has a lower completion percentage.

Quarterbacks of 40-50 years ago typically did not complete as high a percentage of passes but their average yards per completed pass was higher. In his rookie year Cook averaged 9.4 yards per pass. Aaron Rodgers just had an extraordinary season and averaged 9.25 yards per pass. Ah, what might have been.

 

Dr. Z -- bless him -- wrote a nice piece about Cook for SI.com back in 2001:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/inside_game/dr_z/news/2001/10/10/drz_insider/

 

From Mike Brown: "Greg was the single most talented player we’ve ever had with the Bengals."

 

That's a great read. Nice find.

If we'd had today's medical technology four decades ago Cook might be enshrined in Canton today. Instead he's remembered as the ultimate one year wonder.

 

He'd do radio in Cincinnati once in a while. He was pretty good too.

RIP.

 

RIP to the man whose injury begat the West Coast offense.

Edit to add the Cincinnati Enquirer obit piece on Cook since no one had posted it yet:

http://cin.ci/A1e9UV

 

So many athletes from the past you could say something like that about. Don Gullett and Bobby Tolan spring to mind.