AJC > Sports > Falcons > Blog > Archives > 2005 > October > 07
Friday, October 7, 2005
Winning without Vick
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Falcons’ quarterback Michael Vick has made some progress over the past two days with the sprained medial collateral ligament in his right knee, but it appears his playing status for Sunday’s game with defending world champion New England will be determined hours before kickoff.
Vick has done limited work in practice this week. His backup, Matt Schaub has taken the majority of snaps, especially with the first team offense. Players say the running game and defense are good enough to pull out a victory with or without Vick.
The Patriots are coming off a 41-17 beat-down by San Diego and have not lost consecutive games since the 2002 season.
Can Atlanta win without Vick or with a limited Vick? At 3-1, should the Falcons rest Vick as a precaution since the outcome against an AFC foe won’t factor into most tie-breaking scenarios?
I know some of you don?t like questions, but these are subject worthy of discussion.
Checking out the champs
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Greetings and salutations old comrades, and hello to the many newcomers who’ve begun to visit since the AJC went freebie on this blog business.
Matt Winkeljohn here, alive and well in atypically-warm New England, where I’ve been checking in on the Patriots. Love this part of the country, although I’ve had virtually no time to see much of anything outside of the Patriots’ absolutely great setup at Gillette Stadium. This would make Arthur Blank salivate, for sure.
They have tons, and tons, and tons of parking around this place, for miles it seems, and you see all these $35 signs. Unless I’m mistaken, that money is revenue for owner Robert Kraft, who owns almost everything in sight. The Falcons, of course, have very minimal parking rights around the Georgia Dome, which is owned by the state. Just one reason the Patriots generate more than $50 million more in revenue per year for Kraft than the Falcons do for Blank.
Anyway, they practice adjacent to the facility, and locker in it. From a hack’s vantage point, very nice, spacious working room with lots of phones. Big differences between NE and Atlanta in that at Belichick’s Wednesday news conference I counted 13 cameras, and a solid 50 people at minimum in the room.
In Atlanta, the norm is 3-5 cameras, and perhaps 15-18 in the room unless it’s a special occasion. Less when the Braves are firing, and/or something else big is going on in the local sports world.
The funny thing is this is — brace yourselves — something of the opposite of a special occasion up here. This place is bozo about the Red Sox. Until their season ends, whether this afternoon, or later, the Patriots — even with three Super Bowls in four years — will always take a backseat to the baseballers. Had the Red Sox already been wiped out, I’m told that a game like the Falcons might’ve prompted even more media!
It shouldn’t be a total shock, I guess, as this truly is regional team, located closer to Providence, R.I. (about 30 miles south), actually than Boston (about 35-40 miles north). Plus, this part of the country is so densely settle, which you can really see from a plane while flying up the coast, that there are scads and scads of newspapers. Basically, you can cover the distance that would be equal to a trip between Atlanta and Macon (in any of three directions), and it never seems to be more than a mile or two before you’re in another town or village. Think of all that countryside, on the other hand, while driving down, or up, I-75, or I-85. Very, very different. There’s not a lot of countryside here relative to what’s outside Atlanta.
Add the fact that neither NASCAR nor college football have much pull in these parts, and you start to get the picture.
Enough rambling.
I can’t decide whether the Patriots are ripe to be had, or primed to leap off the canvas and throw a haymaker.
Injury-wise, they’re in bad shape, of course. The loss of SS Rodney Harrison is huge, not only because he’s so good in run support but so smart, vocal, etc. Last week, Guss Scott made his first start, in that horrible 41-17 loss at home to the Chargers, and he wasn’t very good. Rookie James Sanders might see action this week.
Add the two new inside linebackers, Chad Brown and Monte Beisel, factor in a variety of injuries to others like Pro Bowl DT Richard Seymour, CBs Tyrone Poole, Randall Gay, LT Matt Light, RB Kevin Faulk and others, and you’ve got grounds for a MAS*H situation of sorts. They need a rolling triage unit.
But with coach Bill Belichick, it is very hard, even for long-seasoned local veterans here, to get an accurate read on the injury situation. I just know these guys have issues. And they’re sure not in a good mood.
Add the departures of coordinators Charlie Weis and Romeo Crennel, the topic of a giant blog last spring, I seem to recall, and there’s a funky karma around here. Belichick alluded Monday to some of this, using rare (for him) words like “transition,” and “flux.” This had the local hacks all atwitter. Bill rarely allows himself such commentary.
I asked him about this Thursday, and he said, “Well, I don’t really feel like I said hardly any of the things the way you perceive them. What I thought I said was relative to the last couple weeks. We’ve been transitioning with certain phases of our team from where we were a couple weeks ago. That’s what that the comment was about. I mean, we can go back to how much things have changed since 2000. There have been changes every year players, coaches, stadiums, offices. There’s been a ton of changes, and they’ve been consistent, year after year after year after year. That’s professional sports. That’s the NFL. I wasn’t referring to that at all. I’m sorry if that was misrepresented to you.”
OK. But I still don’t think I misinterpreted the fact his comments displayed uncommon vulnerability, and I asked the same of several regulars around here and they told me I was on beam.
Anyway, Tom Brady fired off on Marty Schottenheimer Wednesday, ripping him (but not using his name) for basically saying after that game that sooner or later you kind of knew injuries would catch up to the Patriots.
I happen to agree with Marty, if not his judgment in making those comments publicly. It was like he was making an excuse for the Pats, and prideful people don’t make excuses nor want others making them on their behalf.
So said Brady: “I just assumed you talk about your own team. You don’t talk about our team. He has no business talking about our team. He’s not our coach. We’ll let our coach talk about our team. We’ll let our players talk about our team. The only thing we ever do is give respect to the other teams because that’s what they deserve. They played a good game. They beat us. That’s what it is - no more, no less - it’s one game.
“There’s not a lot of carry over from week-to-week. We played much better against Pittsburgh than we did against San Diego. It doesn’t mean we’re going to play this way against Atlanta. If we do play that way, it will be tough. But that is not the way we are approaching it. It’s a new week. We’re done with San Diego and moving on to Atlanta, as we should be.”
And on the topic of losing leaders: “We’ve lost some very key players,” Brady said. “We lost some guys who are great talents and great leaders but I think when you say ‘They’re not going to win anymore’ just minimizes what Willie McGinest means to this team and what Mike Vrabel, Corey Dillon, Troy Brown, Deion Branch, David Givens, Christian Fauria or Dan Koppen mean to this team. Those guys are pretty good leaders.”
So again, the local hacks were abuzz Wednesday, and I wrote about Brady in my story for Thursday’s paper. I see ESPN went big with it Thursday night. There was some feeling that Belichick would call Brady into his office and scold him for being so candid, if you can imagine, but asked about his take on his QB’s comments, Belichick said yesterday, “I have a lot of respect for what Tom thinks and what he says. I don’t really have any problem with what he said.”
LB Willie McGinest was asked for a reaction about Brady’s comments, chiefly because Tom’s rarely the guy to attack such issues on behalf of players. That tends to be Rodney Harrison, who’s injured of course, or perhaps McGinest, or Mike Vrabel. Quoth Willie: “He’s on our team so I support what he says. We don’t care what other people say, if we’re slipping or there are chinks in our armor … “
Chinks in armor? Hey, I wrote that. You guys read my stuff on-line, or what?
Anyway, circling around, the Patriots haven’t lost back-to-back games since Dec. 2002, the year they went 9-7 and missed the playoffs. They’re well-versed in coping with adversity, and they still have the master schemer in Belichick.
Their plan in the Super Bowl, to play more 4-3 than 3-4, keeping McGinest in a DE spot as opposed to LB, worked to a great degree to keep McNabb from scrambling, and they also picked him three times and sacked him four.
But if Vick plays, and I have doubts about that, a similar defense won’t necessarily produce similar effects against the Falcons. The Pats admit they want to force Vick to pass, much as McNabb did in throwing for 357 yards. Yet trying to keep McNabb in the pocket, and forcing him to throw, when the Eagles already are a pass-heavy team, is one thing. The Eagles were but a modest threat to run the ball.
Trying to hem Vick in is different. If you over-do it with the backside contain guy, be it a DE or an LB, both or somebody else, you’re subtracting a defender or two from the front-side run defense. The way the Falcons block the stretch, the way Dunn is playing, it’s a different deal.
Still, I’m not saying Atlanta’s got some magical edge.
It may help, though, that the Pats’ offensive weakness so far — running the ball — stacks favorably against the weaker facet of Atlanta’s defense, stopping the run. I think the Pats are going to throw a lot, personally, on mostly quick stuff, and wide plays. They fear Rod Coleman, and know the two rookies on their left side can only be trusted so far.
Belichick seems to beware CB DeAngelo Hall, saying, “You have to know where he is, because if you make a bad throw around him, it’s going the other way. He’s not going to knock it down. It’s going to be a lot worse than that. The quarterback always needs to be aware of the coverage and take care of the ball. He has a lot of quickness and covers a lot of ground in a hurry and has great ball skills. He’s very good.”
Brady later smiled. “He’s a good player. He’s a good player,” was all he said.
It might be fun, and I know it’ll be loud.
