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DEL.ICIO.USFalcons catching a break with Eagles’ turmoil
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Flowery Branch â€â€? I would say things have been quiet here, but then that wouldn’t constitute news. This is Flowery Branch. There hasn’t been big news here since bingo was moved to Tuesday nights.
But if you play for the Falcons, you love the peace. You let the serenity wash over you. You light a candle and sit on a pillow and chant and blow colors. And then at night, you make popcorn, turn on ESPN, watch Terrell Owens do sit-ups in his driveway and laugh so hard that the neighbors think, “Wow. Must be some bingo tournament they’re having next door.”
This has been a good training camp for the Falcons. Not because they have won a preseason game. It has been a good training camp because nothing worthy of an inglorious SportsCenter sound bite has occurred — especially when contrasted with the chuckle fest in Philadelphia.
The impact of NFL holdouts can be overstated. More often than not, the player eventually reports and insults are forgotten, at least until the next off-season.
But Owens’ I’m-out/I’m-in/You-Shut-up/No-You-Shut-up slap fight with the Eagles has escalated — or degenerated — to another level. Eagles coach Andy Reid suspended Owens for a week. Coaches generally stay out of players’ contract squabbles because that’s about business and they’re about football. They’re the ones who deal with the athlete on a daily basis, not the guy with the calculator and salary charts.
When Reid suspended Owens, it created a new issue. When Owens returns, he will now be a player coming off a suspension who has openly feuded with the coach. When he performed his suburban driveway workout and managed to appear on all 17 ESPN networks, it made matters even worse. He whined. He picked fights. He took the focus off the team. He actually made his agent, Drew Rosenhaus, look like the calm one.
Owens has turned a bad situation into something that is one elephant short of a circus. Suddenly, this isn’t a simple contract holdout. It is something that is filtering down to Owens’ teammates and causing cracks in the team.
Ike Reese knows this as well as anybody. The linebacker spent seven seasons with Philadelphia before signing with the Falcons as a free agent. He’s also a friend of Owens.
“Those are two major things that happened,” Reese said. “Now everybody is looking at your team for the wrong reasons. Those players have to deal with answering questions about this every day, not just to the media and the public, but amongst themselves.
“All 80 guys they have in camp right now are not on the same page as to how they feel about the situation. That can be a problem. You want your team to have the same mind-set, but everybody doesn’t have the same feelings about what’s going to happen.”
Reese said the Eagles “could put a lid on this if they can keep a camera out of T.O.’s face.”
Is that possible?
“I’m not sure,” he said, smiling.
The Eagles are not the only team standing in the Falcons’ way of a Super Bowl. They’re just the best one. Chemistry can be an overused word in sports, but that’s not the case in football. Talent levels tend to be fairly equal. Nobody has depth. Success usually comes down to injuries and how a team reacts to adversity.
The Falcons had two potential time bombs entering camp. One was Peerless Price and the receiving situation, but Price has worked hard and kept quiet. The other was Rod Coleman, who had another of those pesky driving issues before camp opened. He also has stayed out of the news (perhaps because Jim Mora hid the car keys).
“The guys took it upon themselves to take ownership of the team,” Reese said, “and not let anything get in the way of what we want to accomplish. It’s hard enough to get to the Super Bowl even without distractions.”
Peace doesn’t always carry into the season. As Reese put it, “You’ve got a whole ‘nother ball of adversities you might have to go through.”
The Eagles, Reese said, “are the team to beat in the NFL. But T.O. has to be there for them to have a chance.”
But whether he is there or not, Owens won’t be a calming influence, and damage control may soon be out of reach.
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