Pro. Jake Delhomme

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BREAUX BRIDGE, La. — A mysterious vibe, a spirit, exists down in this exotic, lush stretch of south central Louisiana that can't be replicated, much less repudiated. It is most strikingly apparent in the faces of young children. They are joyful. They sing, dance and express their genuine love of heritage, music and good food. Through the thick humidity, you can feel the humanity, envision how Jake Delhomme persevered to survive his disappointments as an NFL journeyman.

Cajuns, a warm, colorful, friendly group in spite of a long history of suffering, love a good party. Their hometown boy, the one who went to college right down the road at his mother's alma mater, Louisiana-Lafayette, has delivered them to the biggest bash in sports, the Super Bowl. The cool, confident Carolina Panthers quarterback is a native through and through, tough, competitive and courageous. He does not have the familiar, almost-unintelligible Cajun dialect, but he does epitomize the optimistic, can-do-it attitude of his brutalized ancestors, the French-speaking Acadians from Nova Scotia. They were banished from their adopted homeland by the British in the 17th century, a period of ethnic cleansing that's referred to as le grand derangement.

"As a boy, he didn't care for going out," says his father, Jerry, seated near his wife, Marcia, in his home. "He liked staying in his room, going out to the barn with the horses. Jake just enjoyed life. He made everything enjoyable around him. We're very positive people."

At Mulate's restaurant, children two-step on a well-worn wooden floor as a small Cajun band, complete with accordion and fiddle, plays. A menu includes fried alligator, grilled frog legs and a 12-point "Are you a Cajun?" tongue-in-cheek quiz to "tell a full-blooded, dipped-in-the-bayou Cajun from someone who just wishes he was." Among the questions: "Does your father consider a six-pack of beer and a pound of boudin to be a seven-course meal?" and "Are you related to your next-door neighbor?" Jake teasingly has been called "Waterboy," a reference to Bobby Boucher, the stereotypical, uneducated Cajun character played by Adam Sandler.

"Years ago, we were ashamed of our heritage," Jerry says. "You wouldn't dare speak French in school because you'd be punished. Now they're teaching it. We've got doctors, we've got lawyers — we've even got shoes. Jake's not what the outside world portrays as Cajuns. He doesn't like it when people make fun of the (culture). He says, 'I am what I am, and I'm proud of it.' "

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Jon Saraceno
jons@usatoday.com

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HOUSTON - Dan Morgan was honest about his ignorance.

The Delaware County-born linebacker from the Carolina Panthers sat in the Brown Convention Center yesterday and entertained questions from a nationwide panel of media members.

So, one reporter asked, had you ever heard of Jake Delhomme before your team signed him last March?

"No," Morgan said. "I had no idea who he was when we picked him up as a free agent. Now I know and I'm glad we got him. He came in and he never looked back."

As illogical as it seems, Delhomme has followed in the Super Bowl footsteps of a bunch of quarterbacks just like himself.

Who had heard of Kurt Warner before he came off the bench at the start of the season and led the St. Louis Rams to the Super Bowl title in 1999?

Who had any confidence in Trent Dilfer's ability to play quarterback before he left the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and won the Super Bowl with the Baltimore Ravens in 2000?

Tom Brady? He's the closest thing the AFC champion New England Patriots have to a star now, but he opened the season as a little-known backup when the Pats won their first Super Bowl two years ago.

"Being around [Delhomme] this year, he's just a cool guy," Morgan said. "In the locker room, at the hotel, he's always the same guy. He doesn't get tight, he doesn't get tense. I think that's what enabled him to make great decisions and be a great quarterback this year."

Though it seems as if Delhomme (pronounced Duh-LOME) has come from nowhere, the truth is he's more like one of those rock bands that toils in smoke-filled nightclubs for years, then suddenly finds itself as a headline act at Madison Square Garden.

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By Bob Brookover
Inquirer Staff Writer

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HOUSTON · ~~~~ Curl, head coach of the 1999 Frankfurt Galaxy, couldn't find his quarterback.

"Anyone seen Jake?" he asked the rest of his team some time after they arrived at a racetrack in the central German city, where he had taken the club on a midweek outing.

Jake Delhomme, who in five days will quarterback the Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl XXXVIII, had gone to the paddock. The son of a horse trainer, Delhomme was naturally drawn to the stables.

And that's where Curl found him that day, lifting up hooves and peering into horses' mouths, telling the owners and jockeys that this horse or that horse was going to be a winner.

That was nearly five years ago, when Delhomme was anything but a winner. Undrafted out of Louisiana-Lafayette in 1997, he had spent two inert seasons with the New Orleans Saints, who sent him off to NFL Europe in 1998 to get some experience with the Amsterdam Admirals.

It was a three-month waste because he was beaten out by a former grocery clerk named Kurt Warner, who went on to take the St. Louis Rams to victory in Super Bowl XXXIV.

And so, it was not surprising that when the Saints asked him to return to Europe to play for Frankfurt, he was hesitant. He was even more hesitant when Curl sat down his two Frankfurt quarterbacks, Delhomme and Pat Barnes, and told them they would split time. Jake would get the first and third quarters, Pat the second and fourth.

"I could tell from their look they didn't entirely trust me," Curl said Monday from his office at the New York Jets, where he now coaches tight ends.

"Coach," he remembered Delhomme saying, "we've heard this before."

But the two quarterbacks talked to their agents and agreed and Curl stuck to the plan the entire 10-game season, even though Delhomme opened one game by completing seven of eight pass attempts in the first quarter.

"Jake looked at me, like, `Are you serious? I'm hot as a firecracker. You can't take me out.' He still kids me about that today," said Curl. "He still jokingly asks me, `How could you take me out?'"

Frankfurt won the World Bowl that year and, true to form, the QBs split time.

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By Charles Bricker
Sun-Sentinel

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In this very space, way back before anyone outside of the Carolinas or Louisiana had any idea how to pronounce his name, these were some not-so-kind words used to describe Carolina Panthers quarterback Jake Delhomme.

He was called Jake the Fake, a media-made phenomenon who had no business getting the attention he was receiving as a free-agent quarterback.

How could a career backup with two NFL starts -- a resumé that would make a roadie proud and the type of game that kept him on the bench in 2002 in New Orleans even though starter Aaron Brooks was hurting with a shoulder injury -- be the quarterback to lead a team to a Super Bowl?

Some eight months later, Delhomme is proving all doubters -- led by the guy writing this story --- wrong in a big, big way. On Sunday, Delhomme will start for the Panthers in Super Bowl XXXVIII at Reliant Stadium against the New England Patriots, one victory away from another where-did-this-guy-come-from story.

It will cap a wild season that has seen him open on the bench behind Rodney Peete and included his leading the Panthers to a 7-0 record in games decided by a field goal or less. Delhomme threw seven touchdown passes in the fourth quarter of games during the regular season, prompting the idea this was his magical season.

We know the kind. A guy comes from nowhere, battles all kinds of odds, plays in any league for any team that will have him and then winds up as a Super Bowl quarterback. And the hero of his hometown -- in Delhomme's case that means Breaux Bridge, La.

It happened with one Kurt Warner, and then Tom Brady. Who says you need to get your passers in the first round of the NFL Draft?

"That quarterback will still cure a lot of ills," one NFC personnel director said. "But you can bet with what's happened the past couple of years, teams will study the not-so-premium quarterbacks, too.

"What Brady and Delhomme have done is going to make a lot of people take note."

The feeling here is premium passers will still make up for not having strength in other areas. Quarterbacks still drive this game. But what Delhomme is doing in getting his team to the Super Bowl is showing what a quarterback can do when he "manages" a game.

That's a buzzword these days around the NFL. Teams want to play good defense, run the ball on offense and just ask the quarterback to manage the game. It's a kind way of saying the passer can't win it with just his arm, but it also appears to be a secret to success.

"I really haven't seen a lot of him, but I would say the big thing is he is a winner," Patriots coach Bill Belichick said. "He is making the plays that he needs to make for Carolina to win.

"That is what a quarterback's job is. It's not about stats. It's about wins."

Delhomme, in the Panthers' system, is a winner. Carolina went 11-5 during the regular season and is 3-0 in the playoffs, including a 14-3 victory over the Eagles last week in the NFC Championship Game.

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HOUSTON -- First things first, and when discussing the Carolina Panthers' quarterback, that starts with his first name.

It's Jake, not Jack, Delhomme.

Not everyone knows that -- not even those who should.

It happened last week, when a reporter called him Jack during a news conference in Charlotte. He is used to people butchering his last name (it's DUH-lome), but blowing his four-letter first name?

No problem, Delhomme said yesterday, when the countdown to the Panthers' showdown against the heavily favored New England Patriots in Super Bowl XXXVIII moved one day closer.

"Jack," Delhomme offered, cocking his head and cracking a smile, "I've been called that all my life. I had a cousin, and older cousin, who was a coach at my high school. He was Jack.

"So it's always been Jack. I just kind of got used to it," he added. "I don't have that much of an ego to let it bother me."

Jack Delhomme no longer is a coach at Teurlings Catholic High School in Lafayette, La. He's now the mayor of Delhomme's hometown, Breaux Bridge.

But still, imagine referring to Joe Montana as Jim, or calling Brett Favre Brent the week before their first Super Bowl appearance.

It just ain't right.

But then Jack, er, Jake Delhomme is not just any quarterback. He is an overnight success story seven NFL seasons in the making, and comes equipped with more rejection notices than the geekiest contestant on "The Bachelorette."

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By CLARE FARNSWORTH
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Clare Farnsworth can be reached at 206-448-8016 or clarefarnsworth@seattlepi.com

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QB goes from Louisiana's bayou to the Super Bowl

HOUSTON -- Six months ago, most folks hadn't even heard of Jake Delhomme.

The NFL diehards probably knew he had knocked around the NFL since the late 1990s, had played in NFL Europe, had spent time backing up Aaron Brooks in New Orleans.

And that was about it.

And now? Well, what don't we know about Delhomme?

We know his name is pronounced Duh-lome.

We know he grew up and makes his home in Breaux Bridge, La., due east of Houston on Interstate 10, roughly two-thirds of the way to New Orleans.

We know Jake, his father, Jerry, and brother Jeff raise and train thoroughbred horses.

We know his grandfather, Herman Bienvenu -- after suffering a stroke late in life -- once received permission from his doctor to be taken by ambulance to watch Jake play a football game at Louisiana.

We know he was the backup to Kurt Warner -- and threw four interceptions, without a touchdown -- with the Amsterdam Admirals in 1998 but helped the Frankfurt Galaxy to the World Bowl title a year later.

We know he replaced former Lions quarterback Rodney Peete in the second half of Carolina's season opener and has started every game since.

And we know Delhomme will be the Panthers' quarterback Sunday when they meet the favored New England Patriots in Super Bowl XXXVIII.

What we also know -- and what Delhomme knows as well -- is that this Super Bowl is not all about Jake Delhomme, certainly not the way Super Bowl XXXI was about Brett Favre or Super Bowl XXXIII was about John Elway or Super Bowl XXIV was about Joe Montana.

"I'm not going to let it get that big for me," Delhomme said Monday. "I'm not going to put it as all the pressure of the world, 'This is the Super Bowl, you have to go out and play great.' Certainly, I'm going to have to play well, but so will all other 45 guys that are going to dress out on Sunday.

"In these last three playoff games, the approach I've taken is be the same guy. Coach Fox preaches that to us all the time. I was the same guy last week in my preparation, I'm going to do the same thing again this week.

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BY CURT SYLVESTER
FREE PRESS SPORTS WRITER

Contact CURT SYLVESTER at 313-222-2621 or sylvester@freepress.com.

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HOUSTON - It is a little town just off I-10 that slices through south Louisiana, just east of Lafayette and hugging the western edge of the bayou, swampland that spreads for miles off the Atchafalaya River.

Breaux Bridge is in the heart of Cajun country. Where every street has two signs, the larger in French, the smaller in English. Where a crawfish dinner is dumped out of a boiling pot onto a table covered in old newspapers or grocery bags. Dig in. Where every family party has a porch band and old men and women sing lilting words in a language all their own, their voices gritty and tinny and thin. Where a po-boy sandwich is so thick it makes your jaw hurt and the shrimp taste as if they were hauled out of the delta no more than an hour ago, and probably were.

At Hebert’s Corner Bar, where a guy named Boogie does the cooking, there’s a hamburger steak po-boy lathered with cheese, onions, bacon and jalapeno peppers called The Jake.

It is named after the most famous of Breaux Bridge’s 7,100 residents, who happens not to be in residence this week.

Jake Delhomme is usually home by now, hard at work in the stables on a rural road off the edge of town where he and his dad, Jerry, raise thoroughbred race horses.

Delhomme lives in the same house in which he was born and raised. He’s married to the only girl he ever dated, Keri, whose door he started knocking on in the seventh grade. It is a land of blue jeans and pickup trucks, fishing reels and hunting rifles, and if you are a football fan you cheer for the Ragin’ Cajuns of Louisiana and the New Orleans Saints of the NFL.

Delhomme, for years, was the ultimate homebody. When it came time for college football he drove no more than 10 miles west to UL, started 43 straight games and passed for a rather sporty 9,216 yards, more than any quarterback at any college in the state. Ever. When it came time to sign with an NFL team, it was the Saints, where he played in six games spread over six years.

But the Saints released him after the 2002 season and Delhomme, an unrestricted free agent, signed on with the Carolina Panthers to be Rodney Peete’s backup. So popular is Delhomme (pronounced Duh-LOME) that a Lafayette radio station signed off the Saints’ network and began carrying Carolina games.

Maybe the station management had a premonition because the Panthers are in the Super Bowl next Sunday and Delhomme, after a fairy-tale season, is the starting quarterback.

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Dave Hackenberg is a Blade sports writer.
» E-mail him at dhack@theblade.com

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CAROLINA PANTHERS PEN-PICS
Parity rules in the NFL.

Just look at the Carolina Panthers, who won just once two years ago but have made it to this season's Super Bowl in Houston where they will face the New England Patriots.

In his second year, coach John Fox has created a no-frills, hard-hitting team who twice beat the defending champions Tampa Bay and also swept past Dallas, St Louis and Philadelphia to reach the big game.

The Panthers may have the same name as the club that finished 1-15 two years ago, but they're a different bunch.

Here is a look at the Panthers.

Coach: John Fox, 2nd year.

Has guided the Panthers to their first Super Bowl appearance in just his second season, a remarkable feat considering the Panthers were just 1-15 when he took over as coach in 2001.

In his first season, the Panthers improved to 7-9. This season, Fox guided the Panthers to their first division title since 1996.

Regarded as one of the top defensive minds in the NFL, Fox served as defensive co-ordinator of the New York Giants from 1997-2001. Was the Giants' defensive co-ordinator when they reached Super Bowl XXXV in the 2000 season.

Will face Patriots coach Bill Belichick, who also was a former defensive co-ordinator of the Giants, in Super Bowl XXXVIII.

OFFENCE:

Quarterback: Jake Delhomme, 6ft 2in, 215lbs, 5th year

Signed a two-year contract with Carolina after playing in just six games over the previous six seasons with New Orleans.

Started the season in a back-up role to veteran Rodney Peete, but came on in the second half of the season opener against Jacksonville and rallied the Panthers from a 17-0 deficit.

Against Jacksonville, he threw a 12-yard touchdown pass to Ricky Proehl on a 4th-and-11 play to give the Panthers a 24-23 win.

Has been consistent in three play-off games, completing 43-of-69 passes for 664 yards, three touchdowns and one interception. Threw a 69-yard touchdown to Steve Smith on the first play of the second overtime in the divisional round victory at St Louis.

Won a World Bowl championship with the Frankfurt Galaxy in 1999. Went undrafted in 1997 out of Louisiana-Lafayette.

Running Back: Stephen Davis, 6ft 0in, 230lbs, 8th year

After being discarded in Washington, Davis signed a five-year, £8.5million deal as a free agent with the Panthers, giving Carolina the impact player they were looking for.

Was a factor from the start this season, rushing for at least 111 yards in each of the first four games.

Finished the season with seven 100-yard games and a career-high 1,444 yards and eight touchdowns en route to earning Pro Bowl honours. Rushed for 104 yards and a touchdown in the wild card victory over Dallas.

Also rushed for 86 yards in the divisional round but suffered a right quadriceps injury early in the second quarter.

After being listed as questionable for the NFC championship game, Davis started and rushed for 76 yards on 19 carries. Spent his first seven seasons with Washington. A 1996 fourth-round pick out of Auburn.

Running Back: DeShaun Foster, 6ft 0in, 222lbs, 2nd year

While Stephen Davis provides the power in the Panthers' running game, Foster is the speed.

Played in 14 games in the regular season, rushing for 439 yards. When Davis suffered a right quadriceps injury in the divisional round, Foster carried 21 times for 95 yards. Rushed for 60 yards on 14 attempts in the NFC championship game.

A 2002 second-round pick out of UCLA, Foster missed his entire rookie season with a left knee injury.

Fullback: Brad Hoover, 6ft 0in, 245lbs, 4th year

Former tailback who switched to fullback prior to the 2002 season, and has stayed there as first-choice ever since.

Played in all 16 games this season, carrying six times for 21 yards. Scored on a seven-yard run in the divisional round.

His biggest moment as a professional came during a Monday Night came in 2000, when he rushed for 117 yards against the Green Bay Packers.

Undrafted free agent in 2000 out of Western Carolina.

Wide Receiver: Steve Smith, 5ft 9in, 185lbs, 3rd year

In his third season, Smith has developed into the club's go-to receiver and will be matched up against left cornerback Ty Law in Super Bowl XXXVIII.

Finished the season with career highs of 88 receptions for 1,110 yards and seven touchdowns. He is also the club's main punt returner and returns kick-offs.

Made a 69-yard touchdown reception on the first play of the second overtime in the divisional round against St Louis and had five catches for 135 yards in the wild card victory over Dallas.

In 2002, Smith came to blows with a team-mate during a photo session, leading to a one-game suspension.

A 2001 third-round pick out of Utah.

Wide Receiver: Muhsin Muhammad, 6ft 2in, 217lbs, 8th year

Ranks as the Panthers' all-time leading receiver with 485 receptions for 6,346 yards and 28 touchdowns.

Muhammad and kicker John Kasasy are the only players remaining from the 1996 team that reached the NFC championship game.

Had a 24-yard touchdown reception in the NFC championship game victory over Philadelphia and will be matched against right cornerback Tyrone Poole in Super Bowl XXXVIII. He finished this season with 54 catches for 837 yards and three touchdowns.

A 1996 second-round pick out of Michigan State, Muhammad led the NFC with 102 receptions in 1999, when he garnered Pro Bowl honours for the first time in his career.

Tight End: Kris Mangum, 6ft 4in, 252lbs, 7th year

Has been with the Panthers since being drafted in the seventh round out of Mississippi in 1997.

Started 25 games over the previous three seasons before becoming the full-time starter in 2003.

Finished with 17 receptions for 199 yards while playing in all 16 games and has one catch for no yards in three play-off games.

Is more of a contributor in the Panthers' power running game.

Left Tackle: Todd Steussie, 6ft 6in, 308lbs, 10th year

A mainstay on the Panthers' offensive line, Steussie started all 16 games for the third straight season.

Protects quarterback Jake Delhomme's blind side and will be matched up against right end Richard Seymour in Super Bowl XXXVIII.

Signed with the Panthers as a free agent in 2001 after spending his first seven seasons with the Minnesota Vikings, with whom he won Pro Bowl selection in 1997 and 1998.

Selected 19th overall in the first round in 1994 out of California.

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[CajunCall]

"Cajun, and ragin’, to the core"

[RCAJUN90]

I'm looking for a really good color picture of Jake as the Cajun QB. Does anyone have one?