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As of Thursday, Feb. 12, this little blog has relocated to a new home on AJC.com. It’s the same newspaper, the same Web site and the same writer (feel free to groan) — there’s just a new URL.
New features: Bigger type, more graphics, comments that load 10 times faster and a larger and more recent photo that makes me look pretty doggone old. I think you’ll like it (the blog, not the photo). But I am, as we know too well, often wrong.
Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2008 > October > 13
Monday, October 13, 2008
Falcons’ fortunes change in 11 seconds
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Eleven seconds changed everything. Eleven seconds took us from seeing the Falcons as we thought they’d be to assessing them for what they’ve become, and what they’ve become is a team with:
• The leading candidate for offensive rookie of the year;
• A strong candidate for coach of the year;
• A should-be lock for executive of the year.
What they’ve become is a franchise that, in the course of 11 seconds, distanced itself from an inglorious past and took real strides into the future. In those 11 seconds these Falcons began to validate everything that has happened these past 10 months, and the key thing was that one smallish rookie general manager made one humongous choice.
Said Thomas Dimitroff: “It’s funny, but I was just thinking: ‘Can you imagine if we’d been watching Matt throw one of these games for somebody else?’ “
Today we can’t, but there was a time when the loudest voices insisted the Falcons had to draft Glenn Dorsey or be relegated to that special circle of oblivion occupied by the Trail Blazers, who took Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan, or our own Hawks, who didn’t grab Chris Paul. What those voices never grasped was that this is the NFL, where everything starts with the quarterback.
As Jimmy Johnson once said of Troy Aikman, “He’s the guy who can sink the 8-ball on the break.” The Falcons have been favored in only one game but have won four times because they have a quarterback who has that game-changing capacity.
As well as the Falcons played Sunday, they’d have lost if the rookie hadn’t made the one throw he had to make. Had Ryan taken four steps (as opposed to five) in dropping back, Michael Jenkins wouldn’t have gained the requisite yardage. Had Ryan flinched, time would have expired. Instead he delivered on cue in the face of a rush and loosed as pretty a ball as any quarterback has ever thrown at such a pressurized moment.
“As a former defensive coordinator,” Smith said, “I know how it is to have to defense a quarterback. I know how many sleepless nights you have.”
Ryan gives the Falcons a chance in every game now, a chance they wouldn’t have had if they’d opted for a defensive tackle. This much-lampooned offensive line didn’t yield a sack against the ravenous Bears, and who could have imagined that? Said Dimitroff: “There’s a nice unity between the offensive line and Matt.”
It all starts with Ryan, but it’s not just Ryan. Dimitroff again: “Any successful team I’ve ever been around and any successful team Mike Smith has ever been around has been built around the team concept. It’s not just big plays being made by one player.”
On the day of the most dramatic escape of Arthur Blank’s ownership, the reference was pointed. Before Sunday, the most exhilarating victory under Blank was the overtime game against Minnesota, in which Michael Vick gained 173 yards rushing and 173 passing. But that was one player making all the plays. Now it’s Ryan throwing and Roddy White catching and Michael Turner rumbling and even Jamaal Anderson sacking.
This isn’t to say Dimitroff’s team is fully formed. But these Falcons have already won more than many outlets projected, and they’re getting better as they go. “In any process, you don’t know how long it’s going to take,” Smith said. And then: “We have accelerated some of our milestones.”
Sunday was the biggest yet, bigger even than winning at Lambeau Field. Eleven seconds to show what coaching means and what a quarterback can do. Eleven seconds to turn 3-3 into 4-2 and to have a team whose watchword is “process” begin to ponder another powerful word, one that also begins with a “p.”
Playoffs.
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Bradley’s Buzz: Feel-good Falcons, SEC coach questions & more
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Atlanta is happy; Chicago is most assuredly not
The Falcons’ astonishing victory prompted Don Banks of SI.com to turn the first half of his weekly Snap Judgments into a bouquet for the guys from Flowery Branch. The NFL’s story of the year, Banks calls this team, and wasn’t it just yesterday that the Falcons were a different kind of major national story?
Esteemed former colleague Steve Wyche knows all about last season. He covered it for the AJC. Now with NFL.com, Wyche wrote Sunday that Matt Ryan has a very Brady future — and that’s Brady as in Tom, not Marcia. And Peter King of SI.com calls Ryan the game’s next great quarterback.
Writing for ESPN.com, Pat Yasinskas passed along this delightful factual nugget: Sunday’s finish marked only the third time since the 1970 NFL-AFL merger that an NFL team took the lead with fewer than 15 seconds remaining and didn’t win. And the first of those happened in 1970, when Tom Dempsey booted his 63-yard field goal to beat the Detroit Lions.
Dempsey’s famous 63-yarder — here’s the video from YouTube — stood for nearly 28 years as the longest in NFL annals. It was matched in 1998 by a kicker for the Denver Broncos. His name: Jason Elam.
And, just to prove that for every delirious winner there’s a grumpy loser, here’s Greg Couch of the Chicago Sun-Times ripping into the Bears for blowing the unblowable game. Couch makes the salient point — why squib-kick with only 11 seconds remaining? — but also hammers Bears defensive coordinator Bob Babich for playing the exact wrong defense on Ryan’s pass to Michael Jenkins at 0:01. And here’s David Haugh of the Chicago Tribune breaking down just what happened on that fateful throw.
Southern discomfort
Auburn dumped its offensive coordinator. Tennessee and Clemson have changed quarterbacks. But there’s a greater issue at each outpost: Are these deflated programs, each of which began the season ranked in the Top 25, about to change head coaches?
Late-breaking update: We now know about Clemson. Tommy Bowden is out. I must confess I considered him the worst coach in the country. I mean, how much talent did that guy squander?
After Auburn lost to Arkansas — and Bobby Petrino, wouldn’t you know? — Kevin Scarbinsky of the Birmingham News wrote that he smells jet fuel, a reference to the infamous 2003 flight to Sellersburg, Ind., that nearly rendered Tommy Tuberville the former Auburn coach.
After Tennessee lost in Athens, Ron Higgins of the Memphis Commercial Appeal opined that Phillip Fulmer needs to go coach elsewhere. This follows a column by Mark Wiedmer of the Chattanooga Times Free Press in which Johnny Majors, over whose back Fulmer unceremoniously climbed in 1992, said Vols defensive coordinator John Chavis had saved Fulmer’s bacon for the past decade.
Is Tex great, or just good?
Mark Teixeira is considered the biggest non-pitching free agent on the winter market, but Joel Sherman of the New York Post quotes (anonymously) one of Tex’s ex-teammates as suggesting he’s more a creature of numbers than a bona fide big-timer.
Having viewed Teixeira as a Brave for parts of two seasons, I can’t say I’d disagree with that (anonymous) assessment: He’s a very good player but not necessarily a difference-maker. (Manny Ramirez, who’s also a free agent, is a difference-maker.) But a blog from Robert Kuwada of the Orange County Register contends Teixeira’s professionalism was never going to influence some Angels teammates the way the club hoped.
And today’s question for discussion: Who’s the anonymous teammate? Someone from Texas, where Teixeira wasn’t terribly popular? Or some Brave who saw Tex get lots of hits but never many big hits?
Marian Hossa, cover boy
Marian Hossa was featured on the cover of this week’s Sports Illustrated, but the achievement carries a Ford-Frick-style asterisk. The Hossa cover was issued only in Detroit and Canada. Everyone else in the continental U.S. received the issue with the aforementioned Manny Ramirez on the front. As Arash Markazi of SI.com notes, the NHL hasn’t been featured on the main run of an SI cover since October 2002.
Given that the sport has such a high profile in the ol’ US of A, perhaps I should explain that Marian Hossa, who now plays for the Detroit Red Wings, used to play for the Thrashers, the Atlanta-based entry in something known as the National Hockey League. Perhaps I should also explain that ice hockey is a game played on … well, ice.
Don Waddell on thin ice — this time for sure!
Again turning to puck-crazy SI.com, Allan Muir predicts the Thrashers will finish last in the NHL and be in line to land the No. 1 draft pick, and the only general manager they’ve ever known won’t be around to exercise it if they do.
Me, I say you count out the Teflon Don at your peril. Many among us have tried, and none of us has been right yet. And I also note that the Thrashers, with three points in their first two games, are way ahead of last season’s no-points-in-six-games pace. Good news for the Teflon Don. Better news for John Anderson.
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