This blog has moved! Yes, already!
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
October 2008
Take Stafford over Tebow, Dogs over Gators
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tim Tebow is a great player. Tim Tebow is the Heisman holder. Come Saturday, Tim Tebow will be the second-best quarterback on the field.
Matthew Stafford has become the Matthew Stafford Georgia fans envisioned when he arrived from Dallas. He has stopped throwing the ball to the wrong team, and he has long thrown the prettiest ball in college football. But throwing isn’t everything, and there have been times where we wondered if Stafford the quarterback would measure up to Stafford the arm. We wonder no more.
He was the difference at LSU. Jarrett Lee’s first pass went to Georgia linebacker Darryl Gamble, and after 20 seconds the Tigers were chasing seven points. As hard as they chased, they could never get ahead. Stafford kept his team moving, kept making the throws that finally revealed the Georgia we thought we’d see.
Two Stafford passes, both in the third quarter, that were the finest he has made as a collegian. Both times LSU, desperate to force a turnover, brought a blitz, and both times Stafford stepped into the rush and delivered down the left side. One ball went to A.J. Green - 49 yards and a touchdown. The other went to Aron White, the tight end who’d never caught a pass at Georgia - 48 yards and a vital first down.
“He’s standing in there when everything is flying around him,” Mark Richt said afterward, and never has Stafford stood taller than those 3 1/2 hours in Death Valley. And now, if you’re voting for All-SEC quarterback, who’s the pick? The Heisman holder and living legend, or the guy who leads the conference in yards passing and total offense?
As good as he has become, Stafford still needs a championship of some sort for full validation. All he has to do to win the SEC East is to outplay the most famous player in the land. The belief here is that John Matthew Stafford will. • More coverage: Matthew Stafford page
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Hawks are no joke, for now …
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Orlando — Remember Josh Childress? Now a Grecian earner? Maybe he wasn’t as indispensable as we thought.
Remember the bench? The one ESPN.com called “a FEMA disaster zone”? Maybe it’s not so crummy.
Remember the Hawks? Remember them taking Boston to a Game 7? Maybe that wasn’t just a spring fling.
Game 1 of the new season saw them pick up when they left off, and not in the blowout Game 7 but in those three rousing postseason victories at Philips Arena. The Hawks opened against the defending NBA Southeast champions and waxed the parquet floor with them.
“We know we can play at play at this level consistently,” said Josh Smith, terrific in his first real game after landing that $58 million contract. “There’s a different vibe in the locker room. Being a year better helps. It helps as far as our maturity, and it helps as far as knowing we can win on the road.”
The Hawks led the Magic by 15 points after 10 1/2 minutes, by 18 in the second quarter, by 19 after three. The home side had begun the evening with the usual elaborate introductions, which ended with the famous Atlantan Dwight Howard telling the crowd: “We want to bring a championship back to Orlando.”
Then Howard went out and missed his first shot against Al Horford and had his second blocked by Smith, his former AAU teammate who has known Howard since the two were in preschool. Said Horford: “We got after it defensively.”
Said Stan Van Gundy, the dazzled Magic coach: “We already know the Hawks are quick and athletic, but they got after it tonight. They played way too hard for us.”
And here was the best part: A flying start wasn’t squandered for lack of reinforcements. Even with a short bench — with Marvin Williams serving his one-game suspension for decking Rajon Rondo in Game 7, Maurice Evans was bumped up — these much-lampooned reserves stuck a harpoon in the Magic.
“I feel very comfortable with our bench now,” Mike Woodson said. “Having Mo [Evans] and Flip [Murray] is huge because they’re veteran guys who’ve played in other systems, and Zaza [Pachulia] is playing like he did when we first got him.”
This is the Zaza Pachulia who drifted through the last regular season but roused himself to stare down Kevin Garnett in the playoffs. Even on a night when Joe Johnson did his usual starring bit, and Murray scored 14 points in his debut as a Hawk, the talk of the locker room was Zaza from (the other) Georgia.
Said Smith: “Zaza played big as hell.”
Said the Hall of Famer Dominique Wilkins, shaking Pachulia’s hand: “That’s the way to come to work, big fella.”
Pachulia had eight points and eight rebounds in 11 1/2 minutes, and his presence helped force the splendid to work overly hard for his 22 and 15. Asked if the rush from the Boston series had indeed transformed him, Zaza said, “Yes, it did. That was a big experience for me. It was my first time in the playoffs, and we were playing a great team — the future world champions. I learned a lot of things from that. I have a better idea what it takes.”
What it takes to win at a high level in the NBA is exactly what the Hawks supplied Wednesday night. They were forceful and measured, poised and precise. They didn’t look like a team that peaked the first week of May. They looked like a team capable of scaling higher and higher mountains. They looked as if they’re bent on making this winter as intriguing as they made the spring.
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Loss of Childress dampens Hawks’ buzz
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
There should be a buzz. A team makes the playoffs for the first time this century and returns all the starters who pushed the NBA champ-to-be to the limit in Round 1, and there has to be a buzz. But do you hear one?
“To be honest, not really,” Hawks forward Al Horford said. “I’m sure people are looking forward to the season, but I know this is the South. It’s still football season.”
Well, yes. But over two careening spring weeks, something seemed to happen in our fair city. When the Hawks beat the Celtics three times in a frenzied Philips Arena, it felt as if this was becoming an NBA town.
Back then there was a real roar. Today there’s no buzz. There’s barely a murmur.
So what happened? Josh Childress happened. Josh Childress left to play in Greece. As harmful as his departure was to the Hawks in terms of talent, its symbolism was far more debilitating. It was the first time the organization had to act to keep its prized young core intact, and for some reason Childress was allowed to bolt. Talk about your comedowns.
Not three months after they played Game 7 in Boston, the bold new Hawks were seen as the same ol’ Hawks. And even the subsequent re-signing of Josh Smith, their other free agent, didn’t disabuse anyone of the notion that this remains an operation dedicated to doing things on the cheap, as opposed, say, to winning.
Such a belief isn’t unfair, but it is unfortunate. Because this team still has front-line talent, and Rick Sund, the new general manager, did seek to compensate for the loss of Childress by signing Flip Murray, who’s an avid shooter, and Maurice Evans, who last season started for division-winning Orlando.
In sum, a thin team lost its best reserve but now has at least the makings of a second unit. That’s if Acie Law IV, whose rookie season was marred by injury and overcoaching, continues to develop, and if Zaza Pachulia, who famously squared off against Kevin Garnett in the playoffs, plays the way he did before he unaccountably forgot how to play.
The bench has become a big deal because, with the addition of Mike Bibby, the starting five became quite good. Sund believes teams can play for championships when three of their starters rank among the league’s 10 best at their positions, and he believes two Hawks — Horford and Joe Johnson — do. And there’s real hope that Smith, who re-upped for $58 million over five seasons, will continue to work his way upward.
Even if Bibby isn’t quite what he was and could be marked as trade bait if Law proves himself, and even if Marvin Williams never becomes what Billy Knight thought he’d be, that’s still a formidable five. And that’s why it’s distressing that many national voices are forecasting the Hawks to regress and miss the playoffs.
It is not, it must be noted, distressing to the Hawks themselves. “We can’t look at what they’re predicting us to do,” Smith said. “We want to be one of those teams that slips under the radar. We expect a lot of ourselves.”
We’ll soon have some idea of what’s what. Six of the first eight games are on the road, and five of those are against postseason qualifiers. A slow start could replace the absence of buzz with the rumble of discontent, but let’s not be negative so soon.
With one notable exception, this is essentially the same team that made us remember how much fun pro basketball can be. At this early stage, optimism should be our watchword. Optimism, I say!
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No fun when Dogs, Gators refuse to talk
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This is no fun. Florida’s not talking. Georgia’s sending out a 700-word statement that’s three months old. This isn’t what we want. We want passion! We want hate! We want the solemn vow that somebody is going to dance in the end zone!
Instead we get the Urban Crier telling reporters, “Let’s move on.” (Funny, I like him better when he’s whining.) We get Mark Richt ordering his players not to talk — “coaching ‘em up,” in his words — about that which everyone else is talking nonstop. Why, it’s enough to make a teetotaler order a round of cocktails.
Toward that end, this teetotaler tried to tempt the Georgia coach. As Richt was leaving the cramped interview room in Baton Rouge, I said, “I’m not saying you don’t have guts, but if you really had guts you’d have your team take a victory lap around the stadium when you score next week.”
And then, playing fast and loose with my dwindling portfolio, I said, “I’ll give you a dollar if you do.”
(Being a stickler for procedure, I subsequently e-mailed Georgia publicist Claude Felton to ask if I’d broken any NCAA rules. His response: “No violation. But don’t make the same offer to the players.”)
Richt being Richt, he was noncommittal regarding this lavish proposal. You know this already, but here it is again: I consider him a really good coach and a really nice guy, and it’s both grossly incongruous and weirdly fitting that his one moment of bad-boy behavior resonates 51 weeks later.
Georgia’s celebration, which didn’t go according to Richt’s script and for which it was penalized twice and for which he keeps apologizing, is the single smartest thing he has done as a coach. It changed the dynamics of a series that, from the Bulldog perspective, was past due for a change. It served its purpose leading into last season’s game, turning his team’s focus from the usual Jacksonville gloom and doom to something brighter — how are we going to celebrate? — and it has become the gift that keeps on giving.
Not quite complying with his coach’s gag order, the famous Tim Tebow admitted to the Orlando Sentinel that the Gators have a photo of the dancing Dogs in their locker room. Think about that: A team that won the 2006 BCS title is concerned with the team that, until 2007, was its personal doormat. And the run-up to this year’s game will be dominated by one line of discussion:
How will the Gators respond? Have they planned something themselves? What if Georgia springs a new “spontaneous” display? Does Urban Meyer have a counter-counter-celebration in his famous playbook? And will Tebow and Co. be so bent on vengeance that they forget to execute those famous plays?
The burden of proof falls on the team that, before last season, had proved it owned Jacksonville. Georgia goes to the land of jacked-up hotel prices with a swagger unseen since Vince Dooley was outcoaching Doug Dickey and Charley Pell.
Maybe these Gators are good enough to reimpose their will on the World’s Largest Outdoor Et Cetera, but suddenly they’re the side that’s reacting. And that’s a major paradigm shift.
The Gators are really good. I believe Georgia is better and will win again, but I am, as you know, often wrong. Only this time I’m on the hook for something tangible: If a victory lap breaks out after Georgia’s first touchdown, I owe somebody a dollar.
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Bradley’s Buzz: It’s a celebration!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Who does Georgia play this week, anyway?
Just kidding. You already know. And so did the many voices who weighed in on the Bulldogs’ Baton Rouge beatdown of LSU. Esteemed former colleague Mark Schlabach, who now works for ESPN.com, spun things forward (as we say in the news biz) toward the game in Jacksonville. So did Dave Curtis of Sporting News Today, who delved deep into a certain celebration from yesteryear.
Writing for CBSsports.com, Gary Parrish focused on the maturation of Matthew Stafford, which becomes more evident with each week. Meanwhile, Pat Dooley of the Gainesville Sun believes the hated Gators are peaking at the right time.
In the Orlando Sentinel, Mike Bianchi reports that Tim Tebow and his mates declined comment about Georgia’s celebration, which Mikey — he’s a friend — takes as a sign the Gators are, you know, ticked. And Stewart Mandel of SI.com opines that “emotion/revenge” will tell the tale of Florida-Georgia.
To which I say: Uh, no. Emotion is a major part of any sport, sure, but execution is a bigger part. It always cracks me up when somebody watching the Super Bowl says, “It will come down to which team wants it more.” No, it won’t. Both teams want it as much as humanly possible, but only one team will make the requisite plays.
So which team has better playmakers? I say Georgia. You might say otherwise.
Les Miles and the English language
As noted by this correspondent last January, LSU coach Les Miles has a flair for verbiage uncommon to most football coaches. And I mean this not sarcastically but sincerely. I appreciate anyone who uses words adroitly.
After the Georgia game, James Varney of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, quoted linguistic Les as using the phrase “has to be comfortably corrected.” And Randy Rosetta of the Baton Rouge Advocate offered this Les-ism: “Losses, no matter how they are configured, are not what you want.”
Me, I say that beats the heck out of “Winning isn’t everything — it’s the only thing.”
Atlanta is a lousy sports town (Part 17)
The only thing new about Ryan McGee’s rip of our fair city on ESPN.com is that it takes us to task for, of all things, not supporting NASCAR. So add racin’ to the list of sports we don’t back with our pocketbooks: The Braves in the postseason, the Hawks in the regular season, the Thrashers in any season, the Falcons if they’re losing, Georgia Tech football, Georgia Tech basketball, Georgia State basketball, the Atlanta Dream and the Atlanta Silverbacks.
Just one thought, though: Has Ryan McGee noticed that everyone’s pocketbook has gotten demonstrably thinner lately?
Little love for your Atlanta Hawks
Wasn’t it only yesterday that the Hawks were supposed to be the rising team in the NBA East? So what the heck happened? Did Josh Childress mean that much?
Apparently so. ESPN.com surveyed its NBA analysts, and six of the 10 are projecting the Hawks, who last season made the playoffs for the first time since 1999, to miss them this time. And it’s worth noting — indeed, it’s rather remarkable — that the name most mentioned by these pundits isn’t Joe Johnson or Al Horford but Josh Childress, who didn’t start but who apparently made quite the impression.
Marc Stein picks the Hawks to finish 12th in the 15-team East, citing concerns about “in-house chemistry.” John Hollinger, who lives in Atlanta, picks them to finish 13th, claiming the bench “is a FEMA disaster zone” without you-know-who.
For an even more revealing assessment, check out this view from an opposing scout, as parlayed by Ian Thomsen of SI.com. The scout isn’t high on Johnson, Mike Bibby, Flip Murray or Maurice Evans, but likes Horford a lot and proclaims himself “a Mike Woodson fan.” (This makes a total of one.)
The scout also contends the Hawks would be better served using Marvin Williams as a sub and says they won’t maximize their potential until Horford plays power forward, as opposed to center. I know two people who vehemently disagree with the latter notion: One is Rick Sund, the Hawks’ new general manager; the other is yours truly.
For the record, the print edition of Sports Illustrated, on stands now, tabs the Hawks 11th in the East — again, out of the playoffs. But Marty Burns of SI.com puts the Hawks 17th overall and eighth in the East in his preseason power ratings. So there’s hope, sort of.
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Georgia sends Gators a warning
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baton Rouge, La. — Alert the Urban Crier. The Georgia Bulldogs’ final act of a giddy day in Death Valley was — you guessed it — to dance in the end zone. Only this time they waited until the final horn had sounded and the refs had departed to do it.
“Just spontaneous,” said Knowshon Moreno, the lead dancer among the chorus line of Dogs. “Just having fun.”
What we witnessed here was a team that spent seven games playing under pressure remembering how sweet it feels to be the aggressor. Georgia hung half a hundred (plus two) on the reigning national champ at the absolute proper moment — seven days before the World’s Largest Outdoor Grudge Match.
“We’ve been hearing about [the celebration penalty] since that [Florida] game was over,” said Rennie Curran, the linebacker. “We know [the Gators] are going to use that play to get fired up.”
And you know what? Let ‘em.
Because when Georgia plays the way it did here, Georgia is — pause for effect — the class of the SEC. Yes, Florida beat LSU by 30 points, but that was in the Swamp. Nobody comes here and does what the Bulldogs just did. And what the Bulldogs just did was what we’d been waiting for them to do for two months.
They attacked from the first snap. Heck, they scored on the first snap, and LSU did the snapping. Darryl Gamble, the linebacker starting only because Dannell Ellerbe is hurt, read Jarrett Lee’s eyes and took a short pass the other way. (Gamble would do the same thing three hours later, thereby rendering him Lee’s most productive receiver.) In between Georgia did everything we’ve waited, not entirely patiently, to see.
A.J. Green separated from Jai Eugene for a 49-yard touchdown one play after dropping a pass. Moreno outran Darry Beckwith, LSU’s best defender, at the end of a 68-yard burst. The maligned O-line yielded one measly sack, and Matthew Stafford threw the ball and managed the game like a No. 1 draftee-to-be.
“With our age and the injuries we’ve had, we knew it would take time,” Stafford said. “We weren’t disappointed that we weren’t winning by that many points — but maybe some other people were.”
A week ago this correspondent conceded that he might’ve overrated Georgia, but this 52-38 thumping changed a changing mind. (OK, I’m fickle. Sue me.)
If you can do this to LSU in frothing Tiger Stadium, you need have no fear of Florida or anything reptilian.
Said Curran: “The way we’re coming together as a team, we feel we definitely can hang with any team in the nation.”
We knew coming in that the LSU game wouldn’t write the story of Georgia’s season: Either way, it would only drop a hint as to what will happen in Jax. We now have reason to believe the Bulldogs will meet Florida’s ire with fire and — might as well say it — will win.
And if they do, this much is certain: The Bulldogs will dance again at the Gators’ expense. Said cornerback Asher Allen: “It would be lovely to be able to do that.”
Asked Saturday about last season’s scripted penalty, Mark Richt said: “We’ve got a release — a text — of what I said in Birmingham [in July] that we’re going to give anybody who asks explaining what happened.”
“Call me,” said Claude Felton, Georgia’s helpful publicist.
By Sunday, Richt said, he’ll “have coached [the players] up on what to say” about the celebration, but as of Saturday his message of muteness hadn’t been imparted. So here was Curran, when asked if the Bulldogs had something new planned for Florida.
“Not that I know of,” he said. And then, smiling: “Maybe the seniors have something up their sleeve.”
Urban Meyer, you have been warned.
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UGA’s season-defining stretch has arrived
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When we talked about how arduous Georgia’s schedule would be, we didn’t mean the home games. We didn’t even mean consecutive road dates in Columbia and Tempe. We meant this:
Four games in four weeks, none in Athens. The first against the 2007 BCS winner, the second against the 2006 titlist. Plus two more road games after that.
And now the season-defining stretch has arrived. Georgia plays at LSU on Saturday, and if the game isn’t fully make-or-break - the Bulldogs could still win the SEC East if they lose in Baton Rouge - it’s the acid test for any national championship hopes. Beat the Tigers and Georgia is fully in the discussion. Lose and the Sugar Bowl surely becomes a best-case scenario.
As underwhelming as the first seven games have been, they have done the Bulldogs no lasting damage. At No. 7 in the BCS rankings, Georgia is positioned well enough. If it has seldom appeared the best team in the land, the preseason No. 1 still approaches Halloween with all goals intact. Not many expected a team facing this schedule to finish undefeated, and 12-1 with an SEC championship would hoist the Bulldogs near the top of every poll come Dec. 7.
“Yes, sir,” said linebacker Rennie Curran, impolite only on the field. “We’re right where we want to be.”
Think of this closing stretch as September in a pennant drive. If Georgia outruns everybody from here on, nobody will remember how halting its early steps seemed to be. “Hopefully we’ve got the players to do that,” said cornerback Asher Allen, and they do. For all the disarray along the offensive line, nobody in the nation has three better playmakers than Matthew Stafford, Knowshon Moreno and A.J. Green.
The Florida game in Jacksonville next week stands to be a test of playmaking. The collision in Tiger Stadium should come down to brute force. When last the Bulldogs faced a team so blunt-edged, they trailed by 31 points after 30 minutes. We’re about to see if they learned from the Alabama indignity.
“I don’t think we’re lining up every down and just executing, just road-grading,” said Mark Richt, speaking of his cobbled-together offensive line after the Vanderbilt game. “I don’t think anybody’s thinking we’re in the groove.”
Grooves, however, are funny things. You can’t know when the groovy feeling is about to arrive. Off the dubious strength of a last-gasp escape from Nashville, did anyone expect the 2007 Bulldogs to embark on a closing burst that carried them to No. 2 in the final Associated Press poll?
Waiting in Baton Rouge is the only team that finished ahead of Georgia last January. Having shed so many players from that championship team, the Tigers weren’t expected to be vintage this time around. But this is a program that has grown skilled at finding ways to win.
When last the Bulldogs entered Tiger Stadium, LSU found a way that rankles Richt still. On Sept. 20, 2003, Georgia had scored the tying touchdown on a 93-yard screen pass to Tyson Browning with 4:25 to play, whereupon Devery Henderson returned the kickoff almost to midfield.
“We’ve got real good film on that,” Richt said. “They just grabbed us — two guys! They just tackled us to the ground.”
No penalty was called. Matt Mauck found Skyler Green for the winning touchdown with 1:22 to play, and LSU was en route to an SEC title and a national championship. Similar destinations could await Georgia if it wins today. The guess here is that it will.
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The real story of the YouTube ref
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Courtesy of YouTube, more people have seen Wilbur Hackett make a tackle as a referee than ever saw him play linebacker. Hackett - invariably identified as “Wilbur Hackett Jr.” in wire-service accounts - was the SEC umpire who nailed South Carolina quarterback Stephen Garcia last weekend, and by now you’ve seen the clip.
What you might not know: Wilbur Hackett was a big deal long before Garcia tucked the ball under his arm and headed around left end.
“Hack was a great player,” said Jeff Van Note, who played alongside Hackett at Kentucky in 1968, “and he’s a wonderful leader and a great person.”
Wilbur Hackett - there was no “Jr.” attached when he was a Wildcat from 1968 through 1970 - was a terrific linebacker and an even better example. He was the first African-American to start for any Kentucky team, and he would become the first black football captain in SEC history.
Hackett had been a high-school All-American at duPont Manual High in Louisville and, according to a 2004 Los Angeles Times story, he was bound for Michigan State before changing his mind and signing with Kentucky. He arrived in Lexington in 1967, and if you have any grasp of sports and race relations you know 1967 as the year after Texas Western, with its all-black starting five, beat all-white Kentucky for the NCAA basketball title.
Wilbur Hackett, see, was one of my heroes. He recovered a fumble inside the 5-yard line as Kentucky upset No. 8 Ole Miss and Archie Manning in 1969 on a Saturday night at old Stoll Field. It was the first college game I ever attended, and it seemed only proper to this 14-year-old that the best Kentucky player would make the biggest play.
The year before, Hackett and Kentucky had played Manning and the Rebels in Jackson, Miss., and the environment was so charged in the deep South that extra security was needed. Van Note recalls some of his mates - we remember the grizzled Noter as the Falcons’ center, but he was then a defensive end - telling their leader, “Hack, don’t stand too close to us in the huddle when you call signals.”
They were kidding, the way teammates do. Said Van Note: “We knew what was going on, but I don’t think any of us had any idea what Hack and Houston Hogg [a fullback who was Hackett’s roommate] and Nat Northington [who was the first African-American to play in the SEC] were going through. We were just guys playing football together.”
According to David Wharton of the L.A. Times, Hackett wound up sacking Manning that day in Jackson. Wrote Wharton: “Manning jumped up, helped Hackett up and told him, ‘Nice hit.’ “
I’ve never met Wilbur Hackett. (I arrived at UK three years after he left.) But Van Note, who still keeps a house in Louisville, sees him from time to time. They had lunch together last year. “A great man of leadership,” Van Note said, “and a good football player.” He laughed. “He was a really big linebacker.”
Stephen Garcia knows all about Hackett’s capacity to deliver a blow. One right forearm from the unpadded umpire clocked the Gamecock as pretty as you please. (The SEC has absolved Hackett of any blame, determining that he was only protecting himself.) And Van Note, who has seen the clip many times, is happy his old friend, who’s closing in on 60, is getting his 15 minutes of Internet-driven fame.
“I think it’s great,” he said. “It was just part of the game. And if Hack gets some publicity out of it, I think that’s wonderful.”
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The Professor’s gone, but not forgotten
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Pete Van Wieren was Dick Smothers, or Dan Rowan, or Dean Martin when suave Dino was half of Martin & Lewis. Pete wasn’t the guy who told the jokes, but he was the guy who made the jokes resonate. He was the straight man to Skip Caray’s smart aleck, the balance in the last great booth of an era now officially at its end.
The Professor announced his retirement Tuesday, and his leaving is altogether fitting — why keep talking when you’ve done everything you’ve wanted to do and said everything there is to say? — but massively sad. We as listeners are left with no link to the formative days of TBS and their silly slogans (remember “One Crazy Summer”?) and the giddy sensation that Ted and the boys were flying by the seat of their khaki pants.
Those were the Braves before they went corporate, before they started winning. It was a time when cable TV wasn’t treated as an inalienable right but as the coolest Christmas present any of us ever got. Those were the Braves of good ol’ Ernie and funny ol’ Skip and the learned Professor, and those were, in the grand scheme of things, as good as broadcasting ever got.
Pete would give us the numbers. Skip would laugh at the guy in the mezzanine wearing the funny hat. Ernie Johnson, his voice as comfortable as a broken-in slipper, would say, “We’re zippin’ right along.” Ol’ Ernie was pretty much gone by the time the Braves got good, but Pete and Skip zipped merrily along, becoming not just a novelty act but the aural chroniclers of one of the best baseball runs ever.
As nice as the tributes to Skip were in his passing, the one regret was that Pete wasn’t quite given his due. As good as they were with other partners, they were matchless as a pair. Skip played off Pete and Pete set up Skip. Two Skips would have been too much, and two Petes not enough, but together they were just right.
One of the truly inside bits of inside baseball was this: Pete’s a funny guy himself. He just left the funny business to others while on-air. On Tuesday he noted he had two granddaughters and a third on the way, and he said, “That means I’ll get to see a lot of movies with the words ‘enchanted’ and ‘princesses’ in the titles.”
Pete Van Wieren’s dream job was to be the play-by-play voice of the Rochester Red Wings, his hometown minor-league team. He never got to do that, but the Red Wings did, he said, “give me a brick in their Walk of Fame. So that was nice.”
The Red Wings were not, however, one of the three entities that called within two hours of his announcement to offer work. “If I’d known that would happen, maybe I’d have done this 10 years ago,” Pete said, but Pete doesn’t want a job. He wants to stop doing the job he did so seamlessly — that’s a John Schuerholz word, and here it fits seamlessly — for 33 years.
“I never wanted to get to the point where I couldn’t do this anymore,” Pete said, “because if you can’t do this you can’t do anything — all you’re doing is sitting and talking.”
We who sat and listened will miss him every bit as much as we’ve missed Skip, maybe even more. See, Pete’s was always the harder part. He had to do the homework and make sense of everything. He had to tell us how many outs there were when Skip was cracking jokes about alimony. Pete had to be the professional, and that’s the only real way to remember him.
Pete the pro’s pro. Pete the Professor. Pete Van Wieren — another great Atlanta voice gone but not forgotten. Never ever forgotten.
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Ryan, Horford make past blunders forgettable
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We Atlantans had come to regard two words - “the draft”- with the fear and loathing Bostonians held for Bucky Dent. We watched as Aundray Bruce and Bruce Pickens and Adam Keefe and Ed Gray became, albeit briefly, part of the local landscape. We saw the Falcons trade up to get Reggie Kelly. We saw Billy Knight snag Williams after Williams but not, alas, Deron Williams.
But now, for one shining moment, we have arrived at a point in Atlanta sporting history when all, draft-wise, is bliss. When last the Falcons picked, they took Matt Ryan. When last the Hawks picked, they landed Al Horford. Both were the No. 3 selections overall. Neither was a sure thing: Some wanted Mike Conley Jr. instead of Horford, and many preferred Glenn Dorsey to Ryan. Happily, both No. 3s are better than we dared dream.
Horford should have been the NBA’s rookie of the year. (He finished second to Kevin Durant.) Ryan will be the NFL’s offensive rookie of the year. Horford’s addition turned a loose collection of talent into something stronger, something finally capable of playing beyond the 82nd game. Ryan’s advent has rendered Michael Vick and Bobby Petrino yesterday’s news.
As Mike Smith, the Falcons’ coach, said after Ryan’s stunning performance against Chicago: “Matt’s got It. We’re not sure exactly what ‘It’ is, but Matt’s got It.”
So does Horford, who has the bearing of someone 10 years older. That was evident at Florida, where he was first among equals on two national championship teams. As essential as Joakim Noah and Corey Brewer and Taurean Green and even Lee Humphrey were, Horford was the Gator to whom others deferred. (Noah — and only Noah — called him “Horfy.”)
Horford spent last season making us forget he’s a rookie, and Ryan gives increasing lie to that designation with every week. Horford and Ryan are already linchpins of their organizations, and those organizations look better than they have in years because of these two men.
Ryan took command of the Falcons’ huddle on his first day of minicamp and took ownership of the locker room by spending $10,000 of his $72.5 million for a new sound system. Horford’s audience was less skeptical: The Hawks hadn’t done anything in a decade, and here was a hard-edged rookie who had two NCAA titles to his name. Even famous athletes gravitate toward winners.
And on one spring Saturday, the new stars aligned over Atlanta. On the day the Falcons drafted the quarterback from Boston College, the rookie from Florida helped power the Hawks to a playoff victory over the Boston Celtics at Philips Arena. First the rookie from Florida screened an inspirational DVD of the Ali-Foreman fight for his older mates, and then he ripped the imperial C’s with 17 points and 14 rebounds. Thus was the day of Matty Ice’s arrival the night Horfy fully arrived.
Because of these two draftees, hope grows in a city where the draft had become a continuing source of dread and the Falcons and Hawks had become unfunny jokes. The Hawks made the playoffs, and these Falcons just might. And if enthusiasm is indeed contagious, is drafting excellence about to become a civic epidemic?
Let’s recall that the Thrashers also had the No. 3 pick in the June draft, and the 18-year-old defenseman Zach Bogosian is already in the NHL. If he turns into Bobby Orr, or even Al MacInnis, we’ll know our long-beleaguered franchises are really and truly onto something.
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Bradley’s Buzz: T(otal) B(lackout) S(aturday)
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“You haven’t missed much.”
The folks at TBS are taking a pelting. The network pulled one of the all-time whiffs by losing the broadcast of the first 20 minutes of Saturday night’s ALCS Game 6. Deadspin called it an epic failure, and AwfulAnnouncing.com wondered why baseball hadn’t sold the rights to “a real station.”
Writing in the New York Daily News, Bob Raissman quoted an unnamed network source as calling the failure “mind-boggling” and “somewhat embarrassing.” Someone posting on a Los Angeles Times blog opined that TBS “should stick to reruns of ‘Family Matters.’ “
Never mind that TBS pretty much pioneered baseball on cable three decades ago. A big-time network simply can’t lose a signal and put up a rerun of “The Steve Harvey Show” and expect no one to notice. And nowhere did they notice more than in — you guessed it — cranky New England.
An enterprising Sox fan posted the office number for TBS sports president David Levy on a Boston Globe blog. Tony Massarotti of the Globe raised the possibility that the dreaded glitch might give MLB a way to opt out of its postseason contract with TBS. And the Boston Herald dared to ask spokesman Jeff Pomeroy if the network planned to compensate Red Sox fans financially for their pain and suffering at having missed 20 minutes of baseball. Pomeroy’s response: “We’re talking seriously?”
You can understand Pomeroy’s failure to find any humor therein. You’ve doubtless read Kristi E. Swartz’s reports of Turner Sports and its ongoing court case against Texas car salesman David McDavid in the ol’ AJC.
It didn’t help that TBS’ Chip Caray welcomed viewers by saying, “You haven’t missed much.” (Actually, they’d missed the game’s first run — a homer by Tampa Bay’s B.J. Upton.) National pundits have lined up since last season to rip Chip. Phil Mushnick of the the New York Post wrote that the announcer “worked hard to confuse simple realities with crazy talk,” which was almost gentle compared to last year’s evisceration by Richard Sandomir of The New York Times.
A personal note: I tend not to watch postseason baseball on TV; I listen instead on XM Radio. When I do watch, I usually turn down the sound because I can’t stand the bloviation. But I had the volume up during Boston’s Game 5 comeback, and what I wanted to hear — a discussion of whether Coco Crisp was wrong to try (unsuccessfully) for second base after driving in the trying run — went undiscussed by Caray, Buck Martinez and Ron Darling.
Perhaps Steve Harvey has some thoughts on the matter.
Smitty, sitting pretty
The Falcons’ stunning start has prompted two nice features on Mike Smith, the coach of whom few had heard. Pete Prisco of CBSsports.com recounted Smith’s salty address to his troops before their win at Lambeau Field. And Michael Silver of Yahoo! Sports goes to great length contrasting Smith and Bobby Petrino, which isn’t exactly news but still makes for interesting fare.
A Georgia team in a BCS game?
In ESPN.com’s weekly bowl projections, Bruce Feldman has Georgia Tech going to the Orange Bowl. Which means Feldman thinks Tech will win the ACC. Which it just might.
Grim tidings for Fulmer?
Last week Dave Hooker of the Knoxville News-Sentinel spoke with Tennessee athletics director Mike Hamilton, and the printed report of their conversation couldn’t have been happy reading for Phillip Fulmer. Given a chance to say the school would stand behind the coach no matter what, Hamilton said nothing of the sort.
As Mark Wiedmer wrote in the Chattanooga Times Free Press, Fulmer’s response to Tennessee’s dismissal of Mississippi State was a cheery, “Not dead yet.” In another column, Wiedmer noted that Haywood Harris, Tennessee’s beloved publicist, missed his first home game in 48 years. Harris has been ill. Cracked Wiedmer: “There is no truth to the rumor that the Vols’ struggling play made him sick.”
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Bulldogs playing below caliber
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Athens — I need to apologize. I’m afraid I’ve misled you folks. I thought Georgia would be a great team. It isn’t.
It’s a pretty good team, but not the sort of team I anticipated — and I expect you anticipated — in the heat of August when the Bulldogs were No. 1 in both polls and on the cover of Sports Illustrated. These Bulldogs haven’t yet had a game that made anybody stand back in awe, and they’ve played more than half their regular season.
Asked if Georgia had played to its potential, cornerback Asher Allen said: “As a team? No, I can’t say that, and today was a good showing as to why.”
On Saturday the Bulldogs outgained Vanderbilt by 180 yards but didn’t score the clinching points until the final minute. This came a week after they outgained Tennessee by 249 yards and won by 12. Even as we congratulate Georgia for finding ways to win six times in seven tries, we must now ask: Is this all there is?
“As much as we tried to separate from them,” said Mark Richt speaking of the mighty Commodores, “we couldn’t do it.” And surely, this far into the season, such a thing tells us more about Georgia than about Vandy.
For all their talent (and they have scads), the Bulldogs haven’t once played anywhere near capacity. The closest they came was against Arizona State, but pesky hindsight informs us that the Sun Devils are 2-4.
Said receiver Mohamed Massaquoi: “We’re still leaving too many points on the field, and the defense is still having trouble with penalties.”
About the latter: Richt was actually buoyed that his team was penalized only five times Saturday — “Five’s acceptable,” he said, smiling — but two pass-interference calls (one iffy, one clear-cut) enabled Vandy to halve Georgia’s lead before halftime, and from there nothing was easy. The Bulldogs should have put it away with 2:50 remaining, but Blair Walsh’s field goal thunked off the right upright and Georgia’s defense had to stop the nation’s 117th-ranked offense one last time.
“We’re moving in the right direction,” Richt said, but at this glacial pace Knowshon Moreno will be a 10th-year pro by the time Georgia hits its stride. Speaking of Moreno: He gained 172 yards on 23 rushes but unaccountably didn’t run from scrimmage on consecutive third-quarter possessions, a curious span during which understudy Caleb King carried four times.
“We leave it up to Knowshon,” said Richt, seeking to describe Georgia’s substitution policy. “He takes himself out. When he’s standing by the [running backs] coach, he’s ready to go back in. When it’s a new series, he’s ready unless he’s injured.”
So why, with 2:08 left in a seven-point game, did the first call go to the freshman King, who lost six yards? Richt really couldn’t say. (To be fair, Moreno did carry the next two downs.)
There have been, sad to say, too many inexplicable moments these seven games. Georgia will look breathtaking for a few minutes — Moreno dancing, Matthew Stafford throwing, A.J. Green ascending — and then you look up and the score’s only 14-7.
“We’ve had some good games,” said Rennie Curran, the fierce linebacker, “but no dominating games.”
Domination isn’t a requirement for winning a championship, but at some point a great team has to prove its greatness. Georgia will have that chance these next two weeks against the past two BCS titlists, but I’m starting to wonder if the team that I believed possessed everything it needed indeed has what it takes. Heck, I’m starting to wonder if Georgia is the best team in Georgia.
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Acie Law fearless once again
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
His name is Acie Law IV, and the Hawks haven’t yet seen one-fourth of what he can do. At Texas A&M, he was fearless. As an NBA rookie, he played scared.
He was afraid he’d mess up, afraid he’d get benched, so afraid of doing the wrong thing that he didn’t do much of anything. This isn’t uncommon with rookies, rookie point guards especially, but Law knew even as he was hesitating how hesitant he’d become.
“I was tense [last season],” he said Wednesday, following the Hawks’ exhibition loss to Phoenix. “I wasn’t aggressive. I was real passive. I was kind of trying to play mistake-free and not to make coach mad.”
Over the summer he watched video of himself and barely recognized the guy he saw. Had he left his collegiate persona — Captain Clutch, as he was known — in College Station? Whatever became of the daring young man who’d starred in a series of televised Big 12 instant classics?
“I’ve got to get back to that,” Law said, and he does. “Last year was a learning experience. I was trying to play for coach and I had a lot of injuries.”
Mike Woodson, the Hawks’ coach, points to the latter as the cause of that forgettable rookie season. (Law sprained his right wrist in November and again in February.) Said Woodson: “Last year he was hurt, and when a young player gets hurt and misses time you’ve got to go through a month of reprogramming. He was on and off so much he never got in the flow.”
It’s also worth noting that Woodson’s coaching mentors are Bobby Knight and Larry Brown, neither of whom is renowned for patience with younger players. When Law did play extended minutes, he all but forgot about his jump shot for fear of missing one. (When a veteran misses a jumper, the typical coach says, “Oh, he’ll make the next one.” When a rookie misses the same shot, the same coach says, “Get him out of there.”)
“I was in between,” Law said. “The coach says he wants me to be aggressive, but I’d be afraid of being aggressive and making a mistake. … I lost confidence. Some games I could feel it — I didn’t want to miss a shot. And I knew I could always get to the basket, so I tried to do that.”
What made Law special at A&M was his capacity to hurt an opponent either way: Play him tight and he’d drive; back off and he’d nail the trey. He all but abandoned the latter part as a Hawk, more than halving his effectiveness.
And now for the good news: He’s again starting to dance with what made him a lottery pick. He’s thinking less and playing more.
It was Law’s layup with 4.6 seconds left that beat Charlotte on Monday, and he drove again at the end of Wednesday’s game with the Hawks down two. This time Louis Amundson blocked the shot, but even Woodson conceded, “Acie made a great play at the rim.”
Would Law have been so bold a year ago? “Probably not,” he said. “I’m not going to lie. I probably would have passed off.”
Some folks have forgotten about Law. They shouldn’t. His development will be a major consideration as this franchise moves forward. If Law matures quickly, the high-salaried Mike Bibby could be dealt at the trading deadline. Granted, there’s a wide gulf between doing mop-up duty, to which Law was relegated in the playoff series against Boston, and starting at the point for a playoff team, but he’s skilled enough to negotiate it.
“That won’t be the last time we make the playoffs,” said Law, speaking of those seven games against the Celtics. “And, God willing, I’ll be leading the team.”
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Would the Braves let Manny be Manny?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The local team needs a big bat and a left fielder. Manny Ramirez swings a big bat and plays left field and is a free agent. If you’re the Braves, do you chase him?
Yes, he’s a Scott Boras client, and the Braves regard Boras as the root of all evil. But Manny is also the kind of professional run-producer they lack, and his work with the Dodgers in the final two months and especially the postseason, during which he reached base two-thirds of the time, indicates he’s a young 36.
Yes, but he’s also Manny Ramirez. He loafed his way out of Boston, the same adoring city that toasted Manny the 2004 World Series MVP to the max. He’s as strange a character as there is, and the Braves have an aversion to strange characters. (John Rocker wore out his welcome in about eight seconds, Kenny Lofton in 10.)
Yes, but the Braves need a Manny in the worst way. This has become a team without oomph and without personality, and Manny, for better and worse, would supply both. He’d enliven the clubhouse, energize the batting order and re-ignite the fan base.
Yes, he’ll cost a fortune. That’s why he loafed his way out of Boston: He wanted to be traded to a team that would waive his option for 2009 and thereby left him be a free agent. The Braves’ way isn’t to pour big money into any one player, and they’ve already stated their intention to import two starting pitchers. Is there any way they could afford Manny on top of that?
The guess is that they won’t even try, and in any other case I’d applaud their prudence. But these past few months have only underscored what has been evident for years now — that there are a lot of big hitters but only one Manny. The imperial Red Sox wanted him gone but have been lessened by his absence. (Ask the slumping Big Papi if he misses his old buddy.)
Ordinarily I’d want no part of a guy who loafs and whose mind wanders so conspicuously. (You might recall a young Manny getting picked off first base by Javy Lopez in Game 2 of the 1995 World Series.) But Manny, being Manny, defies ordinary classification. He’s one of a kind. Me, I’d take the chance. Me, I’d chase him to the ends of the Earth.
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5 things to watch for in college hoops
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This week marks the official beginning of college basketball practice, and really there’s only one plot point: Who’s No. 2? Because the team that figures to win the ACC tournament in the Georgia Dome on March 15 and the national championship at Ford Field in Detroit 22 days later might not lose a game.
And if you don’t yet know that star-spangled team’s identity … well, that’s why we hand out these cheat sheets.
Is North Carolina the greatest team ever?
Maybe not ever. (Indiana was pretty good in 1976, and the Heels weren’t bad in 1957 and 1982.) But in the era of early NBA entry, this is as potent as a collegiate squad can get. If Carolina loses a game, it will be a major upset.
Guards Tywon Lawson and Wayne Ellington and forward Danny Green all entered their names in the draft last spring, and all three withdrew.
The presence of those three would have put the Heels in any Top 10, but there’s another key contributor. Maybe you’ve heard of him.
Is Tyler Hansbrough overrated?
The folks at NBAdraft.net project the big Heel as the 20th pick in the 2009 draft. Some take such projections to mean he’s mostly hype.
Wrong.
Psycho T is the best college player of the new millennium because he plays every possession as if possessed, and also because he has expanded his game every season. Ask Rick Pitino about the jump shots Hansbrough hit to undo Louisville in the East Regional final, the same jump shots he wouldn’t have even considered as a freshman.
Can anybody give Carolina a game?
Michigan State plays the Heels in Detroit on Dec. 3, and Psycho T goes to Duke for the annual psychodrama on Feb. 11. Beyond that, it’s hard to imagine any team mounting much of a threat until the NCAA tournament.
The class of the rest of the field stands to be Louisville, Connecticut and Purdue. The best player other than Hansbrough is Oklahoma’s Blake Griffin. The most intriguing coach will be Tom Crean, who left Marquette to clean up Kelvin Sampson’s mess at Indiana.
Will this be a big year for Georgia Tech?
Truth to tell, the games themselves will be almost incidental. The Jackets were 15-17 last season and lost their leading scorer and their leading rebounder. They should finish near the bottom of the ACC.
But all is not yet lost: Rivals.com rates Tech’s four early commitments as the fourth-best recruiting class of 2009, and the Jackets are vying with Georgia and four other schools for the services of South Atlanta’s Derrick Favors, ranked the nation’s No. 1 prospect by Scout.com.
Can Georgia build on its mighty March run?
The Bulldogs are still coached by Dennis Felton, who might have been fired had his team not won four games during the tornado-tossed SEC tournament.
But Georgia, which already had to replace Sundiata Gaines and Dave Bliss, suffered more attrition when starter Billy Humphrey was dismissed from the team this summer. On the bright side, freshmen Howard Thompkins and Dustin Ware come highly regarded.
And even if the Bulldogs finish fifth in the SEC East, they have a March pedigree now.
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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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Georgia wary of Vols despite record
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Big Orange is no longer so big. Tennessee hasn’t won an SEC title since 1998, hasn’t finished in the Associated Press Top 10 since 2001 and hasn’t beaten Florida since 2004. The only thing the Volunteers remain adept at doing is messing up Georgia’s season.
Tennessee has won three of the past four meetings. Two of those losses — in 2004 and again last year — denied good Georgia teams a chance to play for the conference title. The 2006 game was a 51-33 thrashing that prompted the AJC headline — “Vols Put Dogs In Their Place” — that Gov. Sonny Perdue found odious; more tangibly, it touched off a four-losses-in-five-games reversal that remains the nadir of the Mark Richt era.
On Saturday the Vols will kick off against Georgia bearing a losing record for the first time since 1994, when they were 0-1. Naturally, that team beat the Bulldogs. Not since 2001 has Tennessee entered this game as the higher-ranked team, and lately it hasn’t mattered. Georgia was No. 3 when it lost to the Vols in 2004, No. 10 in 2006 and No. 12 last year.
This time Georgia is a chastened No. 10. The Vols didn’t receive even one vote in either major poll. But Richt, mindful of recent history, lauded Tennessee to the max in his media briefing Tuesday, saying the Vols could be 4-1 as opposed to 2-3 and praising them for their stout effort in a 13-9 victory over … er, Northern Illinois. (It didn’t hurt that Vince Dooley, the king of opponent-trumping-up, was seated in the audience.)
Of his team, Richt said: “We’ve got a wonderful opportunity to turn [this season] around. I see nothing out there that makes me think we won’t turn it around.”
There’s no reason Georgia shouldn’t beat Tennessee handily. (Oddsmakers have installed the Bulldogs as 12-point favorites.) The Vols lost to Florida by 24 points in Knoxville and managed 191 yards against Auburn. Then, having changed quarterbacks, Tennessee mustered 225 yards against … er, Northern Illinois.
Still, the tale of Georgia football in the 21st Century would be rather different if it hadn’t lost to lesser Tennessee teams. When the Bulldogs arrived in Knoxville last October, the belief was that Philip Fulmer had to win the game to save his seat. He won 35-14. (Speaking of job security, former coach Johnny Majors, whom Fulmer shouldered aside in 1992, told the Chattanooga Times Free Press last week: “Frankly, I think [defensive coordinator] John Chavis has saved [Fulmer’s] job for 10 years.”)
The Bulldogs claim not to care about such things. “People may say that [Tennessee spoiled seasons], but that was last year and two years ago,” Knowshon Moreno said. “We’ve got to keep moving forward. This is a new season.”
It was only after being thumped in Knoxville that the 2007 Bulldogs began to find themselves, so in some ways the memory of that loss has been reconfigured as a positive. Said Matthew Stafford, rejecting the point: “I don’t think anyone after that game was thinking, ‘This is going to be a turning point for us.’ “
A year later, an emphatic dismissal of Tennessee could help Georgia right itself after the egregious Alabama game. Said Richt: “This game is huge as to how our season is going to be remembered.”
It’s not that Tennessee is so good anymore. It’s just that it keeps getting in Georgia’s way. “Any loss messes up a season,” said fullback Brannan Southerland, and losing to these underwhelming Vols would derail what still could be a championship run.
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Georgia’s O-line is seldom O-utstanding
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Two things Mark Richt hasn’t yet done as Georgia’s coach: Play for the national championship (although he came close in 2002 and last season) and build a series of formidable offensive lines. Up front the Bulldogs always seem to be reaching and retooling, which is going to happen some years. But every year?
The best line Richt has had was in the aforementioned 2002, and those seniors were Jim Donnan’s recruits. Two linemen - Jon Stinchcomb and George Foster - were taken in the 2003 NFL draft. Only three Bulldog O-liners have gone in the five drafts since: Max Jean-Gilles in 2006, Ken Shackleford in 2007 and Chester Adams this year. For a program that recruits at such a consistently exalted level, that’s a failure.
Richt points out that, due to the coaching changeover and the resultant recruiting gap, the 2002 line departed without understudies at the ready. And many of the new guys - Jean-Gilles, Nick Jones and Daniel Inman - wound up manning the not-bad line that helped win the 2005 SEC title. But the 2006 line was comprised of upperclassmen and wasn’t very good, and last season the Bulldogs went with three freshmen.
Two of those - Clint Boling and Chris Davis - are starters still, and the other, left tackle Trinton Sturdivant, would have been but was lost to injury. Again Georgia is scrambling, moving guys hither and yon. Chris Davis, who was projected as the starting center, is back at guard. Kiante Tripp, listed as the No. 1 right tackle in preseason, is now a backup tight end.
Perhaps it’s unfair to criticize overmuch, what with Sturdivant’s absence, but a program this good at all other positions shouldn’t be underwhelming along the line of scrimmage year after year. But when last did we see a Georgia line block the way Alabama’s did two weeks ago? When last did the Bulldogs simply push a worthy opponent backward? (The 2007 Florida game might qualify, although Gator fans will insist their defense was too young to bear up.)
Both line coaches under Richt - first Neil Callaway, now Stacy Searels - are regarded highly in the fraternity, but it’s intriguing that Georgia’s O-line isn’t held to the demanding standards that seem to apply to Willie Martinez and his defense. There’s no reason the Bulldogs shouldn’t be able to find and develop offensive linemen the way they’ve found and developed quarterbacks and defensive tackles. No reason at all.
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Stafford more than your average John
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Athens — If he leaves after this season, Matthew Stafford might well be the first player chosen in the NFL draft. He’s as talented as any quarterback on any campus, Tim Tebow included, and he’s the most gifted quarterback Georgia has ever had.
But his, as we know, is a funny position. As Stafford himself said, “The biggest judge of a quarterback is winning football games,” and this quarterback is 22-5 as a starter but hasn’t yet led the Bulldogs to even a division championship. And that’s why there are some folks who suggest Stafford is overrated.
His big buddy Knowshon Moreno isn’t among them. “John is a really good quarterback,” Moreno said Tuesday, and here a listener flinched. John? John Unitas? John Brodie? John Parker Wilson?
“John is his real first name,” said Moreno, smiling now. “Brannan [Southerland] told me that at lunch, and I said, ‘That’s his new name for me.’ “
Said Southerland: “That’s pretty funny.”
Said John Matthew Stafford, clearly unamused: “I don’t care — whatever.”
Mark Richt has worked with some of the best collegiate quarterbacks of the past two decades — Charlie Ward, Chris Weinke, David Greene, D.J. Shockley — and he said he believes Stafford “is a great quarterback.” But then: “To say someone is the greatest ever, he’d probably have to have a championship.” And then: “Hopefully [you’ll] write the part that doesn’t make it seem like I’m dogging him out.”
Stafford is twice the player he was two seasons ago, when as a gifted-but-occasionally-addled freshman he seemed to keep both teams in the game. He threw 13 interceptions in 2006; he has thrown one this season, that a speculative deep ball at the end of the forlorn first half against Alabama. He completed 52.7 percent of his passes as a freshman; he has completed 59.7 percent as a junior.
He leads the SEC in passing yards per game and in total offense, and he’s third in passing efficiency. (Tebow is first.) But Stafford, for all his arm strength, has never had a 300-yard passing game. Greene had seven in his four seasons, and he led Georgia to two Eastern Division titles and an SEC championship to boot.
“I came here to win,” Stafford said. “I want to win.”
Remember the bit about it being a funny position? The quarterback is expected to lift the rest of his team, but it’s possible to wonder if Stafford hasn’t been dragged down by Georgia’s ongoing struggles to build an offensive line. Would Greene, who left school as the biggest collegiate winner ever, have won so often behind a collection of freshmen?
“He’s really developed,” said Moreno, speaking of his pal John. “You can see it in the decision he makes and the accuracy and power of his throws. … His reads [are so much better now]. He’s seeing things before they happen. I definitely see a change in the huddle — he shows that leadership.”
Surely the NFL likewise sees such attributes. Stafford has one of the truly big arms. But so did Jeff George, who was drafted No. 1 overall and who never won anything of consequence. Stafford doesn’t much care to discuss his future — “I’m playing here, trying to do the best I can, trying to help the team win” — but it would be a shame if a quarterback so skilled didn’t deliver a championship of some kind before he departs.
It’s not mandatory, mind you. As Richt said, “Was Archie Manning a great quarterback? I think most people would say he was.” But it would be nice for all concerned if John Matthew Stafford went ahead and rendered the point moot.
• More coverage: Matthew Stafford page
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Bradley’s Buzz: SEC coaches raise a fine whine
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Apparently there is crying in football
The SEC prides itself on football and misses no opportunity to note that five conference coaches have won national championships. Surely the SEC will be further heartened by the news that six of its coaches — half the league, in other words — have made the FoxSports list of the sport’s 10 biggest whiners.
I won’t dispel the drama by revealing which famous SEC coach FoxSports ranks No. 1, but I will offer this tease: In a major upset, the Urban Crier is only No. 9, which places him behind Bob and Mike Stoops. If I were Florida, I’d whine that my coach wasn’t given his due. I might even file a formal protest.
Respect the Ramblin’ Wreck!
If it isn’t careful, Georgia Tech is going to ruin its value as a stealth team. Too many people are taking notice. Stewart Mandel of SI.com suggests Tech will be in the ACC race to the finish.
Having covered the Tech-Duke game, Heather Dinich of ESPN.com is apparently of two minds. In one post she calls the Jackets maybe the ACC Coastal Division’s best team, while in another she contends that, among conference members, only Virginia Tech and Wake Forest deserve to be ranked in the Top 25.
For what it’s worth, Mark Schlabach of ESPN.com foresees Tech playing in the Music City Bowl, while his colleague Bruce Feldman has the Jackets bound for the Champs Sports Bowl. Both writers, you should know, ticket Georgia for the Cotton Bowl.
More scrutiny for O’Leary
You’ll recall that George O’Leary came in for criticism after Dustin Vaitekunas claimed the coach ordered Georgia Tech players to slam into him during a practice in 2000. Now at Central Florida, O’Leary’s methods were the subject of an Orlando Sentinel investigation after a player — wide receiver Ereck Plancher — died after collapsing in a March workout.
The story, by Josh Robbins, quotes former players — including former Jackets Ken Celaj and Zach Piller — as being both pro- and anti-O’Leary, but it reaches no real conclusion. Not surprisingly, O’Leary wouldn’t consent to be interviewed. Neither would any current UCF player.
Bad news for the Atlanta Spirit (Part 1)
The Thrashers open their regular season Friday, and early prognostications don’t see them playing beyond their 82nd game. The Canadian site TSN ranks them as the NHL’s second-worst team. Ross McKeon of Yahoo! Sports tabs them as 25th-best in a 30-team league, and Scott Wraight of SI.com pegs them No. 26 overall.
And, in a category totally foreign to me, The Hockey News ranks the Thrashers last in something called the Goalie Confidence Index. Which makes sense, sort of. If you were a goalie and you saw you were rated as the league’s worst, you wouldn’t be too full of yourself, either.
Bad news for the Atlanta Spirit (Part 2)
The Hawks are practicing, which John Hollinger of ESPN.com suggests they need to do. He projects them as a 31-win team, which would mean they’d finish six games worse than last season. His colleague Marc Stein rates the Hawks 22nd-best in a 30-team league.
But there are, you’ll be relieved to know, glad tidings to be found. Writing for SI.com, Steve Aschburner does not — repeat, does not — include Mike Woodson in his list of five NBA coaches on the hot seat. Although, pragmatically speaking, there’s no way Woodson returns for 2009-2010 if the Hawks regress.
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Tech’s best offense is its defense
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This will sound strange, especially after a game in which a receiver caught passes for 230 yards and a back rushed for 159, but here it is: For all the discussion of Paul Johnson and his stylized offense, that unit isn’t even Georgia Tech’s best. The defense is better.
Who said so? Why, the head coach himself. Asked why he didn’t take the ball after winning the coin toss Saturday, Johnson said: “We’re pretty good on defense. The strength of our team is the defensive front.”
Asked if an offensive man can delight in watching such defenders at work, Johnson laughed and said: “If it’s mine, I do. I don’t know that I’d take much pleasure going against one like that.”
With nine minutes left in the game, Duke had run 34 plays and had amassed, if that’s the word, 45 yards. That’s an average of 1.3 yards per snap, which means you could have granted the Devils seven downs and it still would’ve been eighth-and-1. The offense prepped by David Cutcliffe, the man who tutored every Manning except Archie, mustered four first downs in 51 minutes.
And even that miserly yield, you should know, didn’t satisfy the ravenous Jackets. “We’ll have to work on that,” linebacker Sedric Griffin said. “We want no first downs.”
Duke would finish with 132 yards, the third-lowest output by any ACC opponent against Tech. (It would also finish with nine whole first downs, sending Griffin into a state of deep depression.) On a day when Johnson’s option-based spread was slow to score — it was still 3-0 with 11 minutes gone in the third quarter — the defense made scoring almost superfluous.
Tech is 4-1 because Johnson has brought a new system and a new energy, yes, but it’s also 4-1 because a bunch of proud Chan Gailey holdovers are playing better than they ever played under Jon Tenuta.
“It’s a good feeling, going three-and-out,” said defensive coordinator Dave Wommack, and Duke went three-and-out six times on its first eight possessions. “Our [defensive] kids were saying on the sideline that they were hungry to get back out there.”
Said Vance Walker, a defensive tackle: “Third down was our area of weakness. We knew we had to build on that.”
Before Saturday, Tech opponents had converted 44 percent of their third downs. Duke was 2-for-12.
Asked what went wrong, Cutcliffe told reporters: “We just couldn’t block them. We didn’t have an answer for those ends.”
Tech’s ends are Derrick Morgan, a terrific sophomore, and Michael Johnson, the towering senior who last week told Sporting News Today, “Don’t be surprised if we end up 11-1.” Asked Saturday if he truly believed as much, Johnson said, “Yes, sir. It’s like I said: The only team that can beat Georgia Tech is Georgia Tech.”
Not many opponents can or will handle this defense, the foundation of which is that mighty front four. But with the new offense drawing most of the attention, does the D-line need, like, a snappy nickname?
“Last year we — Michael, Darryl [Richard] and I — were the Three Amigos,” Walker said. “With Derrick, I heard somebody say we should be the Quadruplets.”
Said Morgan: “We call ourselves a family — we take care of each other.”
Said Richard: “It’s got to be The Perfect Storm — led by Hurricane Mike.”
Actually, the great minds in Tech’s sports information department are toying with the idea of having fans vote on a nickname via RamblinWreck.com. But if you consult Hurricane Mike, nothing so trivial is needed.
“We’re just the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets,” Michael Johnson said. “We win together.”
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The buzz is back with Georgia Tech
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We on the periphery tend to regard college football in this state as Georgia first, Georgia second, Georgia all the time. We tend to forget the proud program sitting off North Avenue, the program of Dodd and Heisman and the Morrises and the Swillings. We tend to forget until some driven man steps forward and demands that we pay attention.
Four games on the job, Paul Johnson seems such a man. He isn’t deferential to anyone or anything. Sometimes Tech people tend to be too circumspect for their own good. Paul Johnson doesn’t dabble in circumspection or, for that matter, circumlocution. He says what he thinks.
Johnson has Georgia Tech at 3-1 with a good chance of being 5-1 when it plays at Clemson on Oct. 18. At a time when the national spotlight has centered on Georgia’s presumed pursuit of various titles, the Jackets have launched a grass-roots campaign. They’re out to remind us that this is a two-program state. They’re looking to win championships of their own.
This week Michael Johnson, the tall and talented defensive end, authored an as-told-to piece for Sporting News Today, in which he averred: “Don’t be surprised if we end up 11-1 … Georgia Tech is the only team that can beat Georgia Tech.”
Boldness plays well with this constituency. Reggie Ball became infamous for, among other things, saying of Georgia: “Come on, dog. It’s just a game.” Tech people cringed. Tech people want to hear that their beloved Institute takes football every bit as seriously as the hated Mutts in Athens.
Tech people never got that feeling about Chan Gailey, who, the consensus held, played not to lose. Tech people want a coach who plays to win, and they believe they’ve found one. “[Paul Johnson] has unified the fan base,” says Jason Hill, a Tech grad from Conyers who has been quoted in this space before. “He’s gotten the excitement back and the teamwork back.”
Gailey, as we know, never beat Georgia. The last Tech coach to manage that was George O’Leary in the 2000 game that got Jim Donnan fired. Johnson has Tech folks feeling they’ll get Mark Richt and the Mutts, if not this year, then surely soon. Says Hill: “It was that way with O’Leary. You got the feeling he wasn’t scared of anybody and he’d take on anybody anywhere. We took a lot of pride in that.”
Viewed alongside other zealots, Tech people really don’t ask for much. They want to beat Georgia two times of every five, and they want their team to wear gold. (This one does, if in a garish configuration.) Most of all they want a coach who’s skilled at what he does. “Tech people understand business,” Gailey once said, and what doomed him was the consensus that he was forever underperforming.
Four games on the job, Johnson has instilled a different sensation: He knows what he wants and isn’t shy about sharing. “He’ll jump on a guy when he makes a mistake,” Hill says. “That really hits with Tech people. People want a coach who looks like he’s mad when they’re mad.”
Yes, it’s early. For all Michael Johnson’s bravado, the Jackets still could lose four or five games. (If they were unlucky to lose at Virginia Tech, they were lucky to win at Boston College.) And we forget this now, but Gailey’s first team started 4-1. But Gailey — partly because he followed O’Leary, partly because he was hired by Dave Braine — was never embraced even on his best days.
Paul Johnson has been embraced. Paul Johnson has made Tech people believe that happy days are here again. The buzz, long dormant, is back.
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Is Chipper a Brave for life?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Chipper Jones wants to finish his career as a Brave. Chipper Jones also wants that career to span four more seasons. For his sake, I hope both things happen. Being a pragmatist, I don’t think both will.
Jones is 36. The batting title he just won offers further testimony that he’s one of the great hitters of the age. But even with his skills undiminished, his body remains an issue. He was diagnosed Wednesday with tendinitis of the shoulder, and the Braves’ post-MRI press release said “the overall structure of the shoulder looked normal for a player of Jones’ experience.”
And that’s the thing. Chipper has logged 14 full big-league seasons, and it shows. Only once in the past four has he played as many as 130 games. This year he played 128 - three as a designated hitter, 10 as a pinch-hitter. As Frank Wren, the Braves’ general manager, said this week: “We’re going to have to assume [120 games] is the number.”
Jones is under contract through next season. He has already renegotiated his deal once to defer money and help his team payroll-wise. Would he do it twice? Would this proud player take another hometown discount when there figures to be an opportunity in that other league as a full-time DH?
And what of the Braves? In 2010 or 2011, would a 120-game third baseman satisfy their needs? Would they move Jones to first and thereby displace Casey Kotchman, whom Wren regards as an “80-to-100 RBI man”? (For the record, Chipper drove in 75 runs this season, the second-lowest total of those 14 years.) And would any of us care to see Jones languish on a team going nowhere, which this one could well be?
I was here in July 1990, and I remember how traumatic the severance with Dale Murphy was. But I also know Bobby Cox, then the GM, waited two years too long to trade Murph, and the delay did no favors for either the player or the team.
I wish I could say I see a happy ending for Chipper and the Braves, but I’d be lying. I’m thinking the greatest everyday Brave since Aaron will wind up the way Aaron did - in some other team’s uniform.
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Waddell fills Thrashers’ biggest hole
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Some people won’t want to hear this. Some people don’t want to give Don Waddell — the Teflon Don, they call him, referring to his uncanny ability to remain general manager — credit for anything. So here’s a warning: Those folks should stop reading right now.
For the rest of you, here goes:
The Teflon Don has had a pretty fair offseason.
These Thrashers may or may not make the playoffs, but this will be the best-defending team in franchise history. For nearly a decade the Thrashers sought to win games 5-4; this team should be able to win a game 4-3 or even 3-2. That might not sound like an improvement — fans, as we know, tend to like offense — but in the grand scheme it should be.
“A huge upgrade,” said Waddell, speaking Wednesday of Blueland’s blue line. “We’ve got four legitimate top four [defensemen]. And that’s not counting Garnet Exelby, who’s been a good soldier for us, and Zach Bogosian, our No. 1 draft pick.”
Last season’s Thrashers tied for last in the NHL in goals yielded and were dead last in shots allowed. Even if the rest of the team had been really good, being slack at the back would have doomed those Thrashers to mediocrity. And if you’re starting over — which, in the post-Hartley, post-Hossa world, this franchise is — the way to do it is get sound first and leave the sizzle for another day.
By signing Ron Hainsey as a free agent; by extending Tobias Enstrom’s contract for four years, and by importing Mathieu Schneider from the Ducks at the steep salary of $5.7 million, Waddell has made a statement. At a time when the Thrashers are perilously close to becoming an Atlanta afterthought, he has added players in the place where his team has been lacking and, even more significantly, he has spent enough money to give temporary lie to the notion that the Atlanta Spirit doesn’t care about hockey.
“Our ownership has sent a strong message,” Waddell said. “When I went to them with the Schneider deal, there was great support for it.”
The belief among NHL watchers is that the Thrashers have nobody to score beyond Ilya Kovalchuk, and that’s why a Hockey News columnist lists them as 15th-best in the 15-team Eastern Conference and why SI.com ranks them 26th-best in a 30-team league. Waddell, not surprisingly, sees it differently. He sees offense coming from his ramped-up defense.
“We were 29th in points from our defensemen last year,” he said. “If you just add what Hainsey and Schneider did last year to that, we go from 29th to 14th. And I’d much rather make sure we take care of our own zone first.”
Should that happen, perhaps Kari Lehtonen, the gifted goaltender, might finally play to his potential. Should that happen, the fairly faceless John Anderson might look like a shrewd hire as head coach. Said Waddell: “John loves defensemen to jump in the play and join the rush. Our guys are saying, ‘This system is different than what we’ve been playing, but we like it.’ “
His many critics will insist this is just another round of spin control from the Teflon Don, who could, as the saying goes, sell ice cubes in the Arctic Circle. But if you think dispassionately, there’s logic here: A Southern team coming off a dud season isn’t apt to attract goal-scoring free agents, and being solid defensively hasn’t yet proved a detriment in any sport at any level.
“We’re a much better hockey team,” Waddell said. “No doubt.”
The Teflon Don has issued a proclamation. Feel free to hold him to it.
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