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Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Blank admits to ‘investment’ mistake on Price
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Peerless Price was a failure, but his departure should be construed as a success. Having invested so much of himself, figuratively and monetarily, in bringing Price here, Arthur Blank could have insisted his high-profile hire be given every opportunity to succeed. Instead he listened to his football men and agreed to cut his figurative and monetary losses. In the grand scheme, that’s a victory.
“It’s an example of Arthur listening to his support mechanism, and sometimes that’s not the case in our league,” said Rich McKay, one of those football men. “It’s not always the case in professional sports, as we just saw with the Hawks [meaning Steve Belkin vs. Billy Knight regarding Joe Johnson].”
Not every rich owner cares to admit he whiffed so publicly on a big-ticket acquisition. Not every rich owner would have deferred so fully to his employees. On Tuesday we were reminded yet again that Arthur Blank isn’t just rich. He’s also smart.
Only a fool â€â€? or Jerry Jones or George Steinbrenner or Daniel Snyder â€â€? insists on having his well-heeled way when his way isn’t working. Price was imported in 2003 to be the Falcons’ No. 1 receiver, but at the rate he was declining he wouldn’t have beaten out Brian Finneran to be No. 4 on this roster. “We made a very big financial investment, and it clearly hadn’t paid off,” Blank said Tuesday. “We’ve lost a player we paid $15 million. You can’t afford those kinds of mistakes and win in the NFL.”
You can’t afford many of them, no. You can get away with one, providing you address it and move on. Price was never the receiver the previous football regime â€â€? Dan Reeves and Ron Hill, both since deposed â€â€? believed him to be, but the point isn’t so much what Price didn’t do as what the Falcons did in response to his uninspired performance. They didn’t let him linger around Flowery Branch as a conspicuously disgruntled scrub. They dumped him.
A clever GM can always massage the salary cap, but mending a team’s fractured harmony is more problematic. (Ask the Eagles.) Price isn’t the sort of selfless citizen Jim Mora â€â€? or any coach â€â€? wants. Blank isn’t a coach, but he pays attention to the one he has. If anyone believed the Falcons’ talk of an organizational vision was merely a bag of wind, Price’s exit should be most instructive.
“I was very careful in selecting Jim Mora and Rich McKay,” Blank said. “The three of us have a shared set of values. This decision was painful for every single person involved, but it was a group decision.”
Said McKay: “As emotionally tied as Arthur might be to a player, once we do come to a conclusion he’s not a second-guesser. He’s ready to chalk it up as a mistake and learn from it.”
Sure enough, that’s what Blank was doing Tuesday. “This is not about Peerless Price,” he said. “This is about we can avoid making these kinds of investment mistakes in the future… . We need to ask, ‘What is it we could have done to make this work?’ “
Proud men don’t like being wrong, and they like acknowledging it even less. (When was the last time you heard John Schuerholz admit even the smallest tactical error?) Give the Falcons credit for bowing to reality. Keeping a pricey dud on the roster wasn’t going to make him more productive, and it could well have compromised the team. If the veteran doesn’t have to block, Michael Jenkins and Roddy White might have wondered, why should we?
Peerless Price wasn’t what the Falcons wanted or needed. He got open too seldom and complained too much. Asked last month if Price was indeed overrated, a member of the Falcons’ brass said, “Not anymore.”
That he’s gone so soon is cause to celebrate, not to criticize. Even the best organizations make the occasional mess, but only the best organizations sweep up with such dispatch.
Permalink | Comments (47) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Mark Bradley
Richt takes stock entering fifth season
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Athens â€â€? This is four years later. Forty-two victories, four bowl games and one SEC championship later. He’d found the right place.
“A place to raise our family, have a chance to win at the highest level and become part of a community where we can live for a long time. We found all these things in Athens and the University of Georgia,” Mark Richt said.
Actually, give Watkinsville its share of the credit. That’s where the Richt family lives, about a 15-minute drive to the coach’s office. It was the day after Christmas, 2000, when Vince Dooley introduced Richt as the new coach of the Bulldogs. The house hunt was on.
“It came down to two, one in Athens and the one in Watkinsville,” Richt said. “The one in Athens had four upstairs bedrooms with one bath. With four children, that wouldn’t work, so we settled in Watkinsville.”
Watkinsville � where a number of Athenians sleep.
“It has been a blessing in a lot of ways,” he said. “It’s more than football. The kids have done well. It’s church, it’s school, all the things you want for your family. Then, of course, [and he smiled] to have won as many games as we have.”
This was not Richt’s first shot at head coaching. Five years ago, there had been the University of Pittsburgh. Big-time in the East. Lots of media exposure.
“My wife and I talked it over. Was this where we wanted to spend the rest of our lives? And the answer was ‘no.’ “
There had been other suitors, though he hadn’t been actively chasing a head coaching job. “I could still be coaching quarterbacks today and be happy,” he said, which was his duty at Florida State before Bobby Bowden made him his offensive coordinator.
Speaking of quarterbacks, Richt didn’t walk into a program dragging bottom at Georgia. While he was being hired in Athens, the Bulldogs were in Hawaii winning the Oahu Bowl. Jim Donnan was leaving a winner, but that wasn’t enough. Richt knew he had a lot of people to please and a lot of cracks in the armor to seal. Coaching the football team at Georgia is more than a job, it’s a calling.
Richt himself said, “This is where God wanted me to go. To do the best and give it my best. This is the only job I ever worked aggressively to get. I called a lot of people. It has been tougher than I thought, but more rewarding than I expected.”
The highlight came early. “It was that scene in the locker room after we’d beaten Tennessee up there for the first time since 1980, when Verron Haynes scored with five seconds left,” Richt said. “That put the stamp of approval on what we were doing.”
It was Richt’s fourth game, a euphoric moment for the Bulldog Nation. The next season, Georgia won the SEC championship, that setting up his biggest disappointment. “The day I found out that some of our players had sold their championship rings,” he said. “It was a symbol of our success, and they had sold them, like selling their birthright.”
Coaching quarterbacks, as had once been his stock in trade, became like walking a tightrope and doing a juggling act at the same time. David Greene was the dominating all-star, but D.J. Shockley could have been starting somewhere else. Greene was a passer, Shockley a double threat, quick feet to go with a strong arm. Richt put his balancing act to work, gave Shockley enough playing time to keep him content, but Shockley’s father, a high school coach in Clayton County, wanted D.J. to transfer. D.J. stuck it out, but a lot of patience was required.
“We had a great relationship,” Shockley said of Greene. “We had respect for each other. He’s a great guy.”
Now it’s his turn, finally. But Bulldog fans’ last memory of him leaves them jittery. After Greene came down with a thumb injury in the Georgia Tech game, Shockley came on, and it wasn’t good. Five completions in 16 passes, 122 yards, and though one of the passes was for a touchdown, he was booed. Bad form. Richt had to call Greene back for an encore. It might have been a treacherous moment if Reggie Ball hadn’t lost track of the downs when Georgia Tech was threatening.
“Our people were too upset,” Richt said. “One game, in rain and sleet, is no way to judge him. Now D.J. gets his chance, and I hope everybody is pulling for him.”
If there is one thing that worries Bulldogs fans, it’s that Shockley’s style is similar to Quincy Carter’s, whose inclination was to take a glimpse downfield, then make a run for it. Coming up a coach’s son, Shockley is more soundly based, and besides, his Bulldogs coach has confidence in his style.
Permalink | Comments (22) | Categories: Furman Bisher, UGA / SEC
The Tuesday Countdown
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
10: Can somebody explain to me why Denver coach Mike Shanahan is being praised in some corners for cutting his losses now with Maurice Clarett, as if this qualifies him as some sort of visionary?
9: Some clarity: Shanahan wasted a third-round draft pick. If he didn’t draft Clarett in the first place, he wouldn’t be cutting him now.
8: And if an NFL team is going to make a gamble by using a selection on a once-effective college running back who might have just lost his way, it certainly shouldn’t come before round five. Draft picks are like gold for NFL teams, especially in the salary-cap era.
7: But Clarett is still a bigger fool than Shanahan. He turned down guaranteed money ($410,000 signing bonus) in exchange for more potential money ($7 million in incentives) down the road, believing he would hit it big in the league. There’s nothing wrong with that logic, except that it was apparent from the outset of training camp that he was still one screwed up kid with attitude problems. If anything, one would have thought declining guaranteed money would give Clarett extra motivation.
6: Rafael Palmeiro goes 0-for-14 and 2-for-22, then loses his starting job. You don’t need a couch and a shrink to figure this one out.
5: I know. Cry me a river. I only wish Mark McGwire was still playing, if only to enjoy his post-Congressional plummet.
4: Evander Holyfield admits he has been devalued in this country and says his next few fights may come overseas. Think about this: Of all the ill-advised comebacks and overextended careers we have witnessed in boxing, Holyfield’s might be the worst of all.
3: There’s only one thing I have more trouble understanding. My wife ran 20 miles the other day. She is training for a marathon. This will make two things she will have done that I have no interest in: 1) running 26.2 miles; 2) parachuting out of a perfectly good airplane.
2: Think I drive her to do any this stuff?
1: That was one really uplifting photo of Peerless Price in the paper today.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
