Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Where You At?: Scott Dreisbach Edition

The "Where You At?" series continues, this time with former Michigan quarterback Scott Dreisbach.

Scott Dreisbach had one of the more unique career paths of any Michigan player I remember. He played 15 games in is first two seasons, started 11 of the Wolverines' 12 games in 1996, and was a member of the 1997 National Champions. However, Dreisbach only attempted five passes in his last two seasons at Michigan, 47 fewer than he threw in his first game.

It is that first game that Dreisbach is most remembered for by Wolverine fans. In the 1995 season-opening Pigskin Classic against Virginia, he spearheaded a 17-point fourth quarter comeback, capped by a last-second touchdown pass to WR Mercury Hayes (video link via iblogforcookies). The freshman attempted 52 passes in the game, a school record at the time, completing 27 for 372 yards and two scores.


From there, Dreisbach's career at Michigan went mostly downhill. He only played three more games during an injury-riddled freshman season. Although he started the first 11 games of his sophomore season, ineffective play caused him to be benched in favor of Brian Griese during the Ohio State game. He would never start another game at quarterback for the Wolverines. Griese kept the starting job throughout the 1997 season, and a junior by the name of Tom Brady won the starting job in 1998. Dreisbach shared the backup duties that season with freshman Drew Henson, who sucks at baseball. Say what you will about Dreisbach's ability, but you can't say he was beaten out by poor quarterbacks.

Dreisbach went undrafted, but signed a free agent deal with the Oakland Raiders in 1999. After playing in two preseason games, he broke his leg and missed the entire season. His luck didn't get any better from there. Dreisbach was placed on the injured reserve in 2000 with a torn rotator cuff, spent two weeks on Buffalo's practice squad in 2001, and was released from the Lions in August of 2002 after getting sent to the Scottish Claymores of NFL Europe. Despite spending time on three NFL rosters, Dreisbach never saw a minute of playing time during the regular season.

With his NFL dream effectively over, Dreisbach moved on to the Arena Football League. He played for five different teams from 2003-2007, starting two games in 2004 for the Dallas Desperadoes. In 2007, as a member of the Columbus Destroyers, Dreisbach was the backup quarterback, manned the holder duties for 13 games, and even saw time at linebacker(!), recording 11 tackles. In what should come as a shock to no one who has read this article, he broke his arm making a special teams tackle against Georgia, which ended his season early.

Dreisbach has not appeared on an AFL roster (that I can find) since breaking his arm in 2007. However, he has left us with this incredible roster photo, complete with third-grade style background, bedhead, and shirt size. Between this and the Virginia touchdown, I'm pretty content with the career of Scott Dreisbach. Thanks, Scott, and don't ever let anyone tell you that you need a comb or a shirt larger than a children's medium for any picture, ever.

Columbus Destroyers Player Profile
Scottish Claymores Player Profile
Lions dump Scott Dreisbach (CBC)
ArenaFan Online: Scott Dreisbach
MGoBlue Statistics Archive

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My freshman year at Michigan (1996) I was sitting in one of the lecture halls in the MLB and looked down at the writing desk arm of my seat to see someone, I presume a female student, scrawled on the desk "I want to f*&k Scottie Dreisbach."

Anonymous said...

He's running with an upper class USSSA team out of the D nowadays. Seen him around on the diamond a time or two.