Add Brady to the list that includes Unitas, Starr and Montana, and you have 14 championship rings among four quarterbacks who have this in common: Nobody much wanted them when they left college.

I asked then-New England quarterback offensive coordinator Charlie Weis why he was so adamant about drafting Brady. I expected some deep-dish analysis. Weis said, "I don't know, call it a gut feeling. To me he had the look of a bulldog."

Go plug that formula into your computer.

Last night, the Indianapolis Colts and Washington Redskins did exactly what everyone had known for months they were going to do: choose Stanford's Andrew Luck and Baylor's Robert Griffin III in the first two selections of the draft. Both are quarterbacks. Both have been groomed for the job of NFL quarterback since high school. At the least a couple of years with a top flight college program is the equivalent for a baseball player of two seasons of Triple-A ball.

There isn't any question that both men have all the required physical attributes, and if they aren't intellectual standouts, the truth is that in the modern NFL they don't have to be. When they step out on the field in their first professional game, most of the work that requires actual thinking will be done for them by a head coach and a brain trust of assistant coaches who have already decided from what formation their quarterback will take the snap, how many receivers will be in on the play, and what kind of defense the opposition is likely to run.

The last great quarterback to call his own plays was probably Bart Starr back in the late 1960s. Compared to the old-time greats, the modern quarterback is less of a leader than an extension of the team's coaching staff. It's like the difference between a dog-fighting World War II fighter pilot and a modern flier working with radar and preprogrammed missiles.

Surprisingly, considering how important the position of quarterback is, this is just the 6th time in NFL draft history in which the first two picks went for passers. Here's hoping for Luck and Griffin that their stories work out better than those number-one and -two picks from previous drafts. Only two of those previous five drafts (1954, 1971, 1993, 1998, and 1999) produced a quarterback who earned a Super Bowl ring: Peyton Manning and Jim Plunkett (the Patriots picked Plunkett No. 1 in 1971while the Saints picked Peyton's dad, Archie Manning, second). Plunkett led the Raiders to two championships, but oddly enough, the rest of his pro career was undistinguished.

Probably the best one-two selection was in 1999 when the Cleveland Browns took Tim Couch while the Philadelphia Eagles went with Donovan McNabb. Couch was a solid professional for several seasons with an absolutely dreadful Cleveland Browns franchise and McNabb, despite the abuse heaped on him by Eagles fans, led his team to five NFC championship games and one Super Bowl.