Charlie Whitehurst
Former Clemson quarterback Charlie Whitehurst has been traded from the San Diego Chargers to the Seattle Seahawks. To get Whitehurst, the Seahawks swapped second picks with the Chargers (40 for 60) for next month’s draft and they will send give them a third round pick in the 2011 draft.
Seattle has singed Whitehurst to a two year contract that, including incentives, is worth (in my best Dr. Evil voice)… ten million dollars.
Whitehurst has not played much in San Diego. He’s been backing up Phillip Rivers and has only taken four snaps his entire career. Even though he’s never thrown a pass in the regular season, there were a couple of teams that were interested in acquiring Whitehurst. Arizona was one of those teams, but apparently Whitehurst preferred Seattle to Arizona so the Cardinals signed Derek Anderson instead.
With the move to Seattle, Whitehurst becomes the heir apparent to 34-year-old Matt Hasslebeck.
I’ve always considered Whitehurst one of the more underrated quarterbacks to play at Clemson. The guy just won games. Never lost to USC, beat Florida State, beat Tennessee, beat Miami. Tommy Bowden was switching offensive coordinators almost every year he played and he still managed to put up numbers.
One of Tommy Bowden’s biggest blunders was throwing Whitehurst under the bus after a 10-9 loss to Georgia Tech his senior year. Whitehurst had been playing all season long with a nagging shoulder injury and Bowden indirectly blamed that for the lousy offensive game. Granted, Whitehurst did not have a good game ( two fumbles and an interception) but Clemson would have won the game had a touchdown pass not been called back because there were only 10 men on the field. Who’s fault is that again?
Whitehurst sat out the next game in favor of Will Proctor, but returned to finish the season with two wins over Florida State and USC.
After the season ended, rather than give Whitehurst credit for becoming one of the all-time great passers in Clemson history, Bowden touted Proctor as the better suited quarterback for the “mad scientist” Rob Spence’s system. I think we all know how that turned out.
Coincidentally, Bowden and Spence are currently unemployed and Whitehurst just got 10 million dollars richer. Funny how things work out.
