Brandon Weeden left a five-year baseball career behind and returned to football, ostensibly because football is his comfort zone.
Though Weeden was a second-round pick of the Yankees in the 2002 MLB Draft, his baseball career never took off. In a second round that included Joey Votto, Jon Lester and Brian McCann, Weeden was one of the comparative duds, never rising above Class A.
He bounced around several different baseball organizations, struggling to climb the minor-league ladder, attempting to master pitches other than a fastball – only to end up as a farmhand in his mid-20s, riding the bus for the A-ball High Desert Mavericks, then an affiliate of the Royals.
The High Desert Mavericks play their home games in Adelanto, Calif., located in San Bernardino County, on the edge of the Mojave Desert. It’s a place where ERAs go to die in the heat and thin air.
Weeden racked up more than 2,800 passing yards in a season – second in the state of Oklahoma – while in high school, so a college football career was always a reliable second option as he toiled away in the minors. By the time he quit baseball after the 2006 season, returning to the place where he had last achieved any real athletic success had to have sounded pretty appealing.
Dodging pass rushers and hitting receivers in stride 30 yards downfield? Piece of cake compared to keeping the ball in the yard at a place that has only slightly more atmospheric pressure than the Moon.
So Weeden enrolled at Oklahoma State in 2007 and made the football team as a walk-on. The adjustment wasn’t easy, but he progressed from redshirt to backup to starter to record-breaking NFL prospect.