Gesser has the NFL intangibles
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Columnist
It is the custom at the NFL scouting combine to X-ray any part of a player's body that has been injured, a process that understandably took a while for Jason Gesser, who led Washington State to the Rose Bowl while seemingly held together by medical tape and tenacity.
The hope is that somewhere between the head-to-toe X-rays and exhaustive magnetic resonance imaging scans, the assembled scouts and talent-evaluators also took due note of one part of the 6-foot-1, 200-pound quarterback's anatomy that nobody has dared to question, his heart.
If, after a couple days of probing, prodding and, oh yes, some passing drills, too, they put as much stock in Gesser's instinct and ability as his Wunderlick and Rorschach scores, somebody is bound to walk away from last weekend's combine with a steal come draft day.
Who that might be, or what round his call will come April 26-27, is, at this point, anybody's guess. Especially Gesser's, it seems.
"I've got no clue right now," he said after emerging from the combine. "You talk to somebody and they seem really interested in you and then you see them talking to the next guy and they seem really interested in him, too, so it is hard to tell. I think I did pretty well (at the combine), but you always think you could have done better. I just want to get the chance to show what I can do."
Among the 17 quarterbacks invited to Indianapolis, Gesser was well down the rankings list of the draft gurus, hardly the most physically imposing or the most celebrated.
Which is nothing new for the Saint Louis School graduate who has managed to thrive at every level.
"Coming out of high school, being recruited, I heard a lot of the same things about my size and everything," Gesser said.
Indeed, to look at the impressive body of his work for the Cougars is to know that Gesser has a lot going for him.
"We had a lot of guys come out (of WSU) and play quarterback in the NFL — (Ryan) Leaf, (Drew) Bledsoe... and Jason broke all their records," said Mike Price, his coach at WSU.
"Everybody that came to look at him, the first thing they said was that he was a lot bigger (than they thought) and the second thing was that he had a much stronger throwing arm," Price said. "That has to tell you something."
What it tells Price, and he reiterates to anybody who will listen, is that, "I think Jason will be a real bargain for somebody. I think he'll go into the NFL making less than a million and come out making millions. He'll be a guy they'd get as a coup, a bargain, and he'll end up taking somebody to a Super Bowl."
