Bobby Hebert

Sport: Football

Induction Year: 2000

University: Northwestern State

Induction Year: 2000

By Jimmy Smith, New Orleans Times-Picayune

Nearly a decade ago, then-Atlanta Falcons coach Jerry Glanville was standing in his club’s lockerroom in Suwanee, Ga., gazing over at the man who would eventually take over as his starting quarterback.

“Tougher than a Waffle House steak,” Glanville said of Louisiana native Bobby Hebert, who had helped the New Orleans Saints whip Glanville’s Falcons on more than one occasion.

“Bobby Hebert is the most fearless quarterback I’ve ever been around. He never gives up on a play. He’s fearless, just fearless.”If Glanville only knew.”

There was the time, for example, in July 1983 when Hebert, then the quarterback of the USFL’s Michigan Panthers, received death threats on the morning of the league championship game.

Hebert simply went out and helped the Panthers to the first USFL title, winning most valuable player honors in the process.

Four years later, after joining the Saints, the club was in the midst of a franchise-record nine-game winning streak en route to a first winning season and playoff appearance.

For the previous six weeks, Hebert, who’d suffered cartilage damage earlier in the season in his right knee, had the knee drained weekly of bloody fluid and injected with pain-killing cortisone so he could play.

In 1989, Hebert was knocked unconscious against Tampa Bay, losing his front teeth in the process. But he returned to the game in the second half when backup John Fourcade sustained a twisted knee.

In 1991, Hebert sustained a left shoulder separation in the Saints’ season-opening victory against Seattle. Instead of sitting out the following week, Hebert went to his personal physican, who prescribed pain-killers, and Hebert played through New Orleans’ seven-game winning streak, a start that helped propel the Saints to the only division championship in the club’s 34-year history.

When elbow tendinitis finally forced Hebert to the sideline in the middle of that season for six games, Hebert watched as backup Steve Walsh fizzled and the Saints frittered away their division lead. In the second-to-last game of the regular season, a Monday-night affair against the Los Oakland Raiders in the Superdome, Hebert returned to complete 28-of-39 passes for 320 yards, beating the Raiders 27-0. The next week, the Saints won the NFC West with a 27-3 victory at Arizona.

A Waffle House steak might seem tender next to all that.

Hebert left New Orleans as the most successful quarterback in team history, leading the Saints to a 49-27 record as a starter while throwing for 85 TDs and 14,630 yards.

That’s part of the reason Hebert is being enshrined in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, and the main reason he became the second quarterback – Archie Manning is the other – to join the Saints Hall of Fame.

“This is something I never dreamed,” said Hebert, who grew up in Cut Off, where he guided South Lafourche to a high school state title in 1977. “It’s not like I said this is what I wanted to do. I knew playing here would be tough. I was either going to be a hero or the goat.”But the role of playing for the underdog always suited Hebert.

Converted to quarterback his last year at South Lafourche, his strong arm and mobility, at the time raw and unrefined, helped the Tarpons win the state title.

When it was time to go to college, no major schools showed an interest in Hebert. So Hebert decided to go to Northwestern State. It was there that Hebert came under the tutelage of former NSU coach A.L. Williams.

“Bobby had some hitches,” Williams said some years ago, “but we saw a lot of raw talent there we felt could be developed.”It wasn’t easy. But with assistance from former NFL star Joe Ferguson, who worked with Hebert on fundamentals, and the aid wide receiver Mark Duper and running back Joe Delaney, Hebert improved dramatically.

In his Northwestern debut as a sophomore, Hebert set a single- game Demon record with 465 yards in total offense and tied another with four TD passes.

A knee injury early in Hebert’s junior season limited his playing time and an injury-marred senior season kept the NFL scouts away.

Complicating matters was Hebert’s marriage and a child.

The Heberts lived in a ramshackle house on Third Street near downtown Natchitoches, using food stamps to purchase groceries, when the Panthers offered Hebert $150,000 to sign three months before the NFL draft – $80,000 as a signing bonus and $70,000 in salary.

In seven months, he was the starting quarterback in the USFL championship game and 60 minutes later was the game’s MVP.

In three USFL seasons, Hebert threw for 11,137 yards and 81 touchdowns. In the title-game win over Jim Mora’s Philadelphia Stars, Hebert threw for 314 yards and three TDs. Two years later, in 1985, Mora exacted a measure of revenge when the Stars, then based in Baltimore, beat the Hebert-led Oakland Invaders in the third championship game, the last USFL game ever.

Undrafted by any NFL team, Hebert could enter the NFL as a free agent.

Hebert considered several NFL teams, including the Raiders and Dallas Cowboys, but signed a multi-year, multi-million dollar deal (including a $1.3 million signing bonus) with the Saints in August 1985 and played a year for then-coach Bum Phillips.

Mora took over in 1986, and Hebert won the Saints’ starting quarterback job during training camp. But a broken right foot in the third game of the regular season forced Hebert to miss most of the rest of the year.

The next year, they took off.

“It definitely meant a lot to me,” Hebert said of the 1987 season, “because I’ve been around Saints football since I was a boy.”