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Bernie Kosar

Learning to Scramble

By Bernie Kosar with Craig Stout

Enlarge We are backed up in our own endzone during the Jets double overtime game in 1986. In this photo, I am talking to Ozzie about a corner route which I threw to him about 25 seconds after this shot was taken.  Enlarge Jimmy Johnson and I leaving Tampa Stadium after a miraculous win over the Florida Gators in which I connected with Eddie Brown on a 12-yard touchdown with seven seconds left. 'Canes' love to beat the Gators.  Enlarge My high school quarterback coach, Jack Hay, is still a close friend. He was one of the first guys to really help me with my accuracy through the use of his net drill.

Any football fan knows that scrambling is the way a quarterback can gain more time and more opportunity. But anyone familiar with Bernie Kosar’s football career knows he didn’t beat you with his physical prowess. Possessing slow feet, an awkward throwing motion and unorthodox mechanics, the kid from tough, blue-collar Youngstown, Ohio did not look like a prototype NFL quarterback. How he beat you – and he beat a lot of people over the course of his college and NFL career – was with a savant-like level of football intelligence and an indomitable will to win.

Chronicling his rise from the hard-up steel town of his birth, to prominence as the leader of the University of Miami’s first national championship team, and then to glory in the NFL with the Cleveland Browns, the ride was not smooth and seldom came without a high cost. Kosar’s well-documented struggles came largely after his playing career ended, and the combination of physical, marital, familial, and financial issues transcended his uncanny ability to break down “Xs and Os” and ultimately cost him heavily.

Exploring his personal battles, “Learning to Scramble” is an unvarnished and completely authentic account of an extremely talented man’s ability to not only learn from his mistakes, but to evolve and develop new ways of approaching life. It’s a distillation of what can be done with just a little more time and a little more opportunity – all you can accomplish when you learn to scramble.