Good pay, and a promise to play.

That’s the sales pitch of a new football league — the XFL — to quarterbacks who sit on NFL benches.

As for which quarterbacks the XFL has in mind, pay attention to what Los Angeles Wildcats offensive coordinator Norm Chow had to say Friday about Chargers backup Cardale Jones:

“You would hope that this league would entice people like Cardale and give them a platform,” Chow said by phone. He also said: “A guy like Cardale would be very valuable in my mind to the XFL.”


Jones, who entered this weekend’s league-wide paring of rosters as the second or third backup to Philip Rivers, will turn 27 next month but over his three NFL seasons has appeared in only one game, as a rookie with Buffalo in 2016.

He’s scheduled for a $645,000 NFL salary this year. XFL Commissioner Oliver Luck — a former NFL backup — has hinted of $1 million salaries to lure quarterbacks to the eight-team startup league, which plans a 10-game season to launch in early 2020.

Hashing out the details could be vexing, involving players whose rights an NFL team would control in 2020. Jones, for example, would be a restricted free agent next offseason if the Chargers keep him this season. The NFL and its union may need to negotiate terms relating to the XFL for the new league to have its best chance to succeed. That negotiation would be complex.

Chow’s department is football, not negotiations.


The quarterbacks he has coached included Rivers, 49ers Hall of Famer Steve Young and Carson Palmer.

Chow, 73, said he was happy working as an “unpaid Uber driver” to his four grandchildren in Manhattan Beach before joining the staff of former NFL linebacker Winston Moss, the Wildcats’ general manager and coach.

At Chargers joint practices this month, Chow watched Jones go against the Saints. The visits also allowed him to catch up with Rivers, his quarterback in 2000 with North Carolina State.

Chow said Jones is a “very impressive young man” who lately seems to have changed for the better.


“I know of him, obviously; and I know that there’s (rookie) Easton Stick, a guy the Chargers probably like as a practice squad guy,” he said.

Jones has played well this month, but with Rivers headed toward his 209th consecutive start and former starter Tyrod Taylor, 31, seemingly locked into the No. 2 role in the first year of a two-year contract, the best chance for Jones to get regular playing time could be the first season of XFL 2.0 if he’s not traded to another NFL team. (The first XFL season was in 2001.)

“Why would a team not be interested in a young man like that?” Chow said. “He’s big, he’s strong, he can throw the ball, he moves OK. He certainly will help some football team somewhere.”

However this works out for Jones, there are too many NFL quarterbacks who sit on benches for years on end. If the business part can be worked out, a developmental league would be good for the NFL. Luck, the father of Andrew Luck, is making a smart play for NFL quarterbacks. In contrast, the Alliance of American Football, which folded in April, offered the same salary — $7,000 per game — to quarterbacks as players at all other positions.


Former quarterbacks Kurt Warner and Jake Delhomme said playing for NFL Europe, a developmental league that folded, accelerated their growth. Both went on to lead teams to the Super Bowl.