Pro. Jake Delhomme

[Turbine]

Originally posted by RaginCajun08
Do you know what year that picture comes from? Jake looks young.

My guess is the 94 season

[Oldman]

i have a really good picture of jake (full page color)getting ready to throw a pass, in the 1994 year book.
i don't have the equipment to put it up, maybe Turbine can contact me and we could get together.

note: Coach Stokely, Quote, "USL is the only Division 1-A school in the state to post back-to-back winning seasons."

Also in this book: Orlando Thomas, Patrice Alexander, Damon Mason, and others.

[Oldman]

sorry, did you get it? if not I'll try it again.

[Turbine]

Is it one of the pictures in this thread Jake Delhomme 1993-1996?

[Turbine]

If you missed Jakes career at the University of Louisiana,
you might want to check out this page.

Jake Delhomme 1993-1996

[Oldman]

YES!

[NewsCopy]

By LYNN ZINSER

Two summers ago, Jake Delhomme and his father spent a stretch of a bayou summer in Breaux Bridge, La., pulling bricks off a small, old house. The heat soared into the 90's, the humidity as thick and wet as the bayou itself. Jake was moving his grandparents' house a quarter-mile down the road, so he and his wife, Keri, could refurbish it and live in it. People zipping by on the two-lane highway stared in disbelief. An N.F.L. quarterback and his father, sweating through their clothes, tore down the bricks by hand.

"It's funny," Delhomme said. "You get started doing it, and the next thing you know you've got a few friends see you and say, `I'll come help you.' And they do it. That's what I mean by a way of life. That's how people are."

Jake Delhomme laughed at the memory. He was sitting a long way from that house - on some steps outside the Carolina Panthers' locker room in Charlotte, N.C., wolfing down a few slices of pizza, a quick break from the whirlwind that has made him the Panthers' improbable Super Bowl quarterback.

His face, still wide-eyed and boyish at 29, will be beamed around the world this week, as the world's media line up to hear his story in a Cajun accent. They will latch onto the underdog's tale, the guy from nowhere who made it big, built his career the way he moved that house, by hand, brick by brick.

Delhomme has never left Breaux Bridge, a place so special that none of his huge family - none of the 21 Delhomme grandchildren - has moved away. Delhomme moved the house his father had grown up in to a spot right next to his parents, Jerry and Marcia. It is a stone's throw from his brother, Jeff, next to the stables where the family trains thoroughbreds. The extended family can get together for any reason. If someone picks up a couple of sacks of crawfish, a Delhomme reunion is launched.

Jake Delhomme would live nowhere else.

"I think it's a magical place," he said.

The magic that has delivered Delhomme to the top of his sport started in Breaux Bridge, population 7,281 in the 2000 census, a wisp of a town two hours west of New Orleans. The three-block downtown has street signs written in French and English, homage to Cajuns' French-speaking roots.

In this small, quiet place, the ultimate underdog was born. Jake, youngest of the Delhomme grandchildren, always chased the older ones around. He would do anything to stay in their games. The challenges did not look so big when the alternative was being the only one left out.

He had enthusiasm and a belief that he could do anything, and people could not help but get swept up in it.

"I can remember Jake on the back of the sofa with a jockey helmet and a whip, pretending he was a jockey," Jerry said. "Or he'd be running around competing with Jeff in something."

The world saw Delhomme only after he left home. He had played college football a few miles away, at the university now called Louisiana-Lafayette, and he stuck for six seasons with the Saints, two hours down I-10. He could have stayed there, as the backup everyone loved, but the Saints kept bouncing him around, from the practice squad to the roster with two stops in N.F.L. Europe. He believed he could start, but the Saints never did.

With Delhomme a free agent last off-season, the Carolina Panthers saw something in him. They offered him a contract and told him he could compete for the starting job. He felt a few pangs, but he signed.

He broke the news to his hometown last spring at a Breaux Bridge Chamber of Commerce meeting, which usually draws about 50 people but swelled to 400 to hear him. He said he hoped everyone could support him. There was no question everyone would.

"People might be Saints fans," said Jack Dale Delhomme, Breaux Bridge's mayor and a cousin of Jerry's in a town where it only seems as if everyone is related. "But mostly they are Jake fans."

Folks in Breaux Bridge still remember him as a skinny 13-year-old asked to start his first game midway through his freshman season at Teurlings High School, a 100-pound kid surveying a field of juniors and seniors. He led a terrible team to two victories, and no one started ahead of him again.

At his college, then called Southwestern Louisiana, coaches had planned to redshirt him. But at halftime of the first game, the Ragin' Cajuns trailed by 35-0. They sent in Delhomme. He was still skinny. He still stared down a field full of juniors and seniors. And by the end of the game, the score was 35-33. No one started ahead of him again.

In Carolina this season, he was made the backup again after Coach John Fox chose the veteran Rodney Peete as the starter. Delhomme had moved, only to find himself in the same place again.

Back in Breaux Bridge, Delhomme's family watched Carolina's first game against Jacksonville the same way it had watched the Saints games, hopeful he would play but resigned that he most likely would not. The Panthers were losing, 17-0, at halftime when the Delhommes sat down for dinner. Their phone rang. Delhomme's wife, Keri, who was Jake's high school sweetheart, was calling from the stadium with the three words they all waited to hear: "Jake's warming up."

"We ran in the living room, threw the food away and opened the beer," Jerry said.

They watched Delhomme do the same thing he had done in high school and college: take his one chance and run with it. He had always believed in himself. He rarely did anything spectacular. He just won. The trick was getting the chance to make others believe.

Delhomme said he felt the full impact of the moment as it happened. He charged onto the field, manic as always, and high-fived his teammates in the huddle. He saw that they were giving him funny looks.

"They didn't really know me," Delhomme said. "I was the new guy. I remember breaking the huddle and walking up to the line of scrimmage, and I kind of took it in in one instant. I said, `O.K., this is what you've always wanted, make the most of it.' "

His first pass produced a 13-yard touchdown. By the end, he threw for two more scores, the last with 16 seconds left to clinch a 24-23 victory, the largest comeback in Panthers history. No one started ahead of him again.

Back home, the food remained forgotten. The Delhommes's party had no reason to end.

"I was like, if he doesn't do anything else for the rest of the season, I'm fine with it," his brother, Jeff, said. "Just watching his performance, I thought, `At least he's showing everybody he can play.' I told my wife, `I don't care if he wins another game.' "

But Delhomme did win, leading the Panthers to 11 regular-season victories, eight on second-half comebacks. He led them to seven game-winning fourth-quarter drives. He led them to three playoff victories, one thanks to his 69-yard pass to Steve Smith in the second overtime at St. Louis. A stunning road victory at Philadelphia put the Panthers in the Super Bowl, pro football's grandest stage.

Now, in the days leading to the Super Bowl, little Breaux Bridge has taken on a new look: Panthers colors. Shops have bright blue and black bunting hanging outside. Nearly every storefront carries good-luck wishes for the town's favorite son.

The TV trucks are streaming into town to capture the scene. One day last week, they lined up four deep in Jerry and Marcia's driveway, waiting for a sound bite from the quarterback's parents. Members of the news media are streaming into the office of Jack Dale, whom everyone, including Jerry, calls the Mayor. He has become the family's flamboyant spokesman, a wiry man with slicked-back hair waving his arms to punctuate his tales of Delhomme's childhood.

He was in the group watching the games in Jerry and Marcia's living room, everyone in the same seats. They are horse people, and superstitions come naturally. The problem was, the Mayor kept jumping in front of the TV so no one else could see. They shouted him back to his seat.

Now the Mayor fills his calendar with network appearances. One day last week, he was up at 4 a.m. to appear on ESPN2's morning show, "Cold Pizza."

"We all have dreams," the Mayor said. "If you have those dreams, the key is, can you go out and reach those goals? The majority of us, we dream and that's it. We stop there. With Jake, he never let it stop him. They sent him back home and he never quit. And now his dream's being fulfilled. A lot of us want to do that. He did it. He left home."

But did he? Home remains the small, old house next door to his parents, adorned in beige siding now instead of bricks, set back from the road so Delhomme can build a bigger one in front of it when he and Keri, who have a 1-year-old daughter, have more children. But the old house will always stay. A hundred yards away sits the old red barn, filled with thoroughbreds, where Delhomme will still shovel manure out of the stalls. His kids will grow up doing the same thing, on this simple piece of land next to the two-lane highway.

The Delhommes will still get together over sacks of crawfish. They will laugh and love life and will not ever think of leaving.

"It's a fun way of life," Delhomme said. "We enjoy life and enjoy family and we have a good time. That's the way it is. I'm lucky. There's no reason to change."

[snote]

[Turbine]

How would you rate Delhomme as a UL Ambassador?

[NewsCopy]

BREAUX BRIDGE -- Three days remain until hometown hero Jake Delhomme walks onto center stage at Super Bowl XXXVIII, but this tiny Cajun town already has its game face on.

Signs of the times ("Geaux Jake!") are plastered everywhere -- in front yards, shop windows, schools, restaurants, banks and churches -- each expressing the community's unconditional love and undying support for its native son.

A life-size action photo/poster of the Carolina Panthers quarterback stands in the office of second-term mayor Jack Delhomme, a cousin and former youth coach.

Banners in English and French hang on each side of a bridge that leads into town, reading "Welcome to Breaux Bridge, Proud Home of Jake Delhomme, Good Luck in Super Bowl XXXVIII."

Yes, Ali Landry was crowned Miss USA in 1996, and the annual crawfish festival here draws nearly 100,000 in May, but Cajun country has never experienced the likes of "Jake Goes to the Super Bowl."

"Our means of increasing our city budget is based off tourism, our cuisine and our entertainment," the mayor said Tuesday at City Hall. "But what's happened here is unbelievable. As a mayor, I cannot do my regular schedule because of the media requests -- CNN, CBS, ESPN, ABC, New York, Los Angeles, Denver, Boston, The Associated Press, not to mention all the newspapers, radio and TV stations from Carolina.

The rest of the story

Times-Picayune
By Brian Allee-Walsh