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Monday, November 21, 2005
What are they made of?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Flowery Branch — Here’s where we find out about Jim Mora. Is he the bright young thing he seemed 12 months ago, or is he simply a guy who inherited Dan Reeves’ players and a healthy Michael Vick and had everything break right? Is he the NFL’s next great coach or just another one-year wonder? Can he lift the Falcons from the first hole of his tenure, or are burial services in order for this season of promise?
“This is the only way to find out about people — I know that’s a cliché you can read in every book,” Mora said Monday. “Hopefully I’m here for a long time, and if I am there will be other times like this. This is just the first time.”
It is. The Falcons have lost two in a row. (They lost two in a row last season only after they’d clinched the NFC South and were resting people for the playoffs.) If the playoffs began today, the Falcons wouldn’t qualify. They have fallen into terrible habits — of falling way behind early, of not being able to stop the run, of making just enough bad plays to lose. This doesn’t seem a team that’s playing for the NFC’s No. 1 seed, which was once their stated goal; on the contrary, these Falcons haven’t looked all that good since beating Minnesota on Oct. 3.
“There are lessons to be learned every week,” Mora said. “I think it’s great.” Here he grinned. “I know that sounds completely insane.”
Mora’s message: There’s a reason the Falcons can’t stop the run anymore. (In 10 games, five opposing backs have had 100-yard games.) They’re simply too young up front. “I hate excuses,” said Mora, sounding suspiciously like he was making one. “But we’re not building for one year — we’re building for many years. When you’re moving past [jettisoned linemen] Travis Hall and Fish [Ed Jasper], you’re in a transition phase. Other than [Keith] Brooking and Pat [Kerney], five of our front seven are young guys. That can catch up to you on a series. It’s transition — it’s not an excuse.”
About here, someone felt the need to ask for a clarification: Was Mora saying the Falcons, who once spoke boldly of making Super Bowl XL, are actually in a rebuilding year? “Absolutely not,” he said. “This is a building year. We’re building something here. There’s always going to be transition. That’s part of building something strong, going through adversity.”
And it is. Every team faces a moment of truth. The big-time teams handle theirs and move onward and upward. “It’s not like we’ve lost five in a row,” Mora said. “We’ve lost two in a row. Let’s not turn that into three or five in a row the way some organizations do.”
Since Mora arrived in January 2004, he has taken pains to paint his regime as a Class Operation. Three weeks ago, in defending his team’s silly policy of muting its offensive linemen, he took a shot at previous Falcons linemen and mentioned that this organization had never had consecutive winning seasons. His point being: There’s a new sheriff in town, pardner, and by gosh he’s a winner.
But look now. These Falcons are 6-4, facing four road games in the next five weeks, and there’s no longer any guarantee that the long-sought back-to-back winning seasons are at hand. Mora is glib and ambitious, but he needs now to show he can do what the Belichicks and the Cowhers do as a matter of annual course: He needs to right a team going wrong.
“I think we’re a pretty tough team,” Mora said, “a pretty darn good team.” And these Falcons might well be. If they are, they’ll show the nation by winning in Detroit on Thanksgiving. But there’s a reason the best NFL coaches tend to keep winning year upon year. The best of them are skilled not just at sketching X’s and O’s but at riding out reversals. Jim Mora looked spiffy as a frontrunner last season. Let’s see how he does playing from behind.
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