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Sunday, August 20, 2006
Richt makes the smart, safe choice
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Yeah, the quarterback is positioned to win a game quicker than anybody, but he’s capable of losing one with similar rapidity. And there you have the reason Mark Richt did what he did: If Joe Tereshinski III isn’t apt to throw for 200 yards in a quarter, neither is he likely to turn the ball over three times in five minutes.
Ten days ago, Tereshinski spoke of the quarterback’s job not in terms of throwing 70-yard rainbows but of simply “managing a team.” On Sunday night Richt named Joe T III his starter for Georgia’s opening game, saying, “Joe really understands what we’re doing.”
Thus did the quadripartite quarterback challenge end with what some will wrongly deem a whimper. Going with experience over talent — where’s the sizzle in that? Why not let the vastly touted Matthew Stafford throw it 40 times a game and accept the consequences?
Because letting a true freshman start at quarterback for a big-time program would only invite such consequences. Because Stafford isn’t as ready to help Georgia win at this moment as Joe T III, who’s a fifth-year senior. Because having a big arm is only part of what makes a quarterback. David Greene isn’t to be confused with John Elway when it comes to authoring tight spirals, but Greene won more games than any collegiate quarterback ever.
The surprise Sunday night wasn’t that Joe T III was No. 1: In a competition this close, what coach wouldn’t err on the side of familiarity with the offense and the program? The surprise was that Stafford wasn’t even No. 2, the backup position falling to the redshirt freshman Joe Cox. Stafford and Blake Barnes, Richt announced, were “co-No. 3,” which means we shouldn’t plan on seeing the kid from Dallas anytime soon. It takes a lot to get one quarterback ready to play, even more to prepare two. Deploying a third quarterback in anything more than a medical emergency or an abject rout simply isn’t done.
The order could still be subject to change, Richt allowed, saying the rankings would hold “for the moment, anyway.” The cold reality of football suggests that change will be slower to arrive than some Georgia fans — an opinionated Web-based contingent has made no secret of its desire to see Stafford as No. 1 — would prefer. Speculation has long held that Stafford would displace Tereshinski at the first sign of trouble, but doesn’t the No. 2 quarterback get the next shot if the starter struggles?
Such is the swath already cut by the heralded freshman that the first two questions asked on Sunday’s teleconference concerned not Tereshinski but Stafford. “He’s done a lot of good things,” Richt said, “but he’s a true freshman. He’s made up a lot of ground. We’re not disappointed in any way, shape or form with Matthew.”
And that could well be true. Fans have little concept of what playing quarterback in an offense as complex as Richt’s fully entails. One of the highest compliments the coach ever paid Greene was in saying the quarterback didn’t just make good plays — he prevented bad ones via his sagacious check-downs at the line. No true freshman was going to be able to run a team the way Richt wants his run. Even if Tereshinski has made only one start as a Bulldog, that one was more than the other three quarterbacks combined.
There will be those who continue to see Joe T III as no more than a place-holder, but that underrates a 23-year-old who has paid his dues to the extent that he has served as personal protector (i.e., the last blocker) for Georgia’s punter. Tereshinski has, Richt said, “held off the young bucks,” and the third-generation Bulldog is, not to put too fine a point on it, a bulldog at the business of competing. Tereshinski has waited four years for this chance. Don’t be shocked if he makes the other three — Cox, Barnes and even the gifted Stafford — wait until 2007.
Permalink | Comments (72) | Categories: Mark Bradley, UGA / SEC
Woods bludgeons all comers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Medinah, Ill. — Tiger Woods took on the world again this weekend, and once again the world lost. It was on a familiar battleground, the Medinah No. 3 Course where he had won a PGA Championship in 1999, and where, as he said as he became guardian of the Wanamaker Trophy a third time, he likes these grounds so much he looks forward to coming back again. And why not.
Once his name rose to the top of the leaderboard Saturday, it never came. It was a leaderboard dotted with names from a variety of nations over which he prevailed, Australia, England, Spain, Canada, Korea and Sweden, represented by Adam Scott and Geoff Ogilvy, Luke Donald, Sergio Garcia, Mike Weir, K.J. Choi and Henrik Stenson, not to mention the herd of usual victims from the United States.
It was headline stuff that this was the 12th time Woods had carried the lead in one of the four major tournaments into the fourth round and that he had won all the previous 11. It was this matter that Ogilvy, then resting three strokes off Woods’ lead at the end of 54 holes, had addressed at the close of play Saturday.
“At some point he’s not going win one of these when he’s leading [after 54 holes],” Ogilvy said. “You know he’s not going to go his whole career leading after three rounds and winning. Someone is going to beat him one day.”
Well, this would not be the day, as the following 18 holes bore out. However, one must concede Mr. Ogilvy the privilege of his opinion, since he is the current national champion of American golf, duly earned in the Open at Winged Foot in June. His challenge here ended early in the round Sunday, when he bogeyed the second hole and double-bogeyed the third. He was as close at the start as he would be the rest of the day.
Woods set out at a birdie pace, on the first, the fifth, sixth and eighth holes, and never looked back, nor was he ever pressured. He played like a man with a world to conquer, which is no variation from his usually cold-steel style. For the most part, it appeared he used an approach similar to the game he put on display winning the British Open at Hoylake, mainly fairway woods and an occasional iron off the tee, playing position golf, then putting like a demon. It was confirmed that Luke Donald, the English student who studied at Northwestern University in nearby Evanston, was overwhelmed. He never had a birdie, and after starting the round even with Woods, he finished six strokes back in a tie for third place with Scott and Garcia at 276. Donald, now 28, had been paired with Woods three times before, including one round in the British Open at Royal St. George’s.
“It gets easier every time,” he said Saturday. Sorry, but that streak came to an end at Medinah.
There were times when one or another challenger would pick up the cudgel and make a move on the World’s No. 1 player. First, it was Weir, who was having a repeat experience. When Woods won his first PGA Championship over the Medinah course in 1999, Weir was tied with him going into the fourth round but swiftly disintegrated. Woods himself played only at par level and had to fend off the then 19-year-old Garcia at the end. Meantime, the ill-fated Weir checked in with a round of 80.
He drew within three strokes of Woods on the 10th hole Sunday, but there his challenge was over. Garcia, too, made a move, and Choi, but in the end only Shaun Micheel, who won the PGA at Rochester three years ago, was in Woods’ rear-view mirror, and that threat ended when Micheel bogeyed the home hole.
Even when Woods found trouble, he was able to chop and slash his way out of it. When he reached the back nine, tougher of the two nines, he surged into what would have been a record winning margin, had he been able to sustain it. When he and Bob May tied at Valhalla in 2000, they were both at 18-under par. That’s still the record, though Woods reached 19 under on the 11th hole, then gave it back with his only bogey on the par-3 17th, a severely challenging hole all week. It was there that Billy Andrade’s championship came to grief Saturday with a devastating 7.
Say this, Woods may have broken a record previously held by Ben Crane, notably the slowest player on the PGA Tour. Woods spent much of his time surveying, pacing and plotting his putt, though let it be said, he gave his gallery more excitement than Crane, once he did move into action. I suppose that one of these days Woods is going to lose again, and then my word processor will choke down.
Permalink | Comments (17) | Categories: Furman Bisher
Jackets good enough to outrun past
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
There’s no reason for this season to end in a podunk bowl in the Pacific Time Zone. There’s no reason Georgia Tech shouldn’t be playing on — or even after — New Year’s Day. A team can’t have much more going for it than this one appears to have.
A three-year starter at quarterback. An All-American at wide receiver. A big-time talent at tailback. Four returning starters along the offensive line, five if you count the tight end. Six returning starters on defense. A head coach whose job status seems to have been clarified via a contract extension. What’s not to like?
History.
It isn’t as if Tech hasn’t won big games under head coach Chan Gailey. On the contrary, the Jackets have beaten six ranked opponents in his four seasons. Trouble is, each of those seasons has ended the same way — with seven wins and an appearance in a who-cares bowl. Says Mansfield Wrotto, a senior: “We’ve been a consistent 7-5.”
Alas, there’s never anything consistent about the way Tech gets to 7-5, which is why both the AP and the ESPN/USA Today preseason polls omitted this conspicuously gifted team from the Top 25. If that’s ever going to change, this is the year. Tech has enough glamour games — and, just as important, enough apparent gimme wins — to break upwards.
Wrotto again: “The only thing keeping us from our goal is ourselves. … We’ve got a lot of talent and a lot of depth on this team.”
A case in point: Wrotto. A three-year starter at defensive tackle, he’s now the right tackle on offense. (He missed time with a tender ankle last week but has returned to practice.) Such a positional shift seems a sign not of weakness but strength. There were times under Gailey when Tech had too many holes to play at a high level every week, but those days have passed. If Tech winds up 7-5 and back in Boise, it won’t be for lack of manpower.
Wrotto yet again: “We’re looking for 10 wins, or nine wins or more, and to play for the ACC championship.”
Can that happen? Heck, it wasn’t far from happening last season. Had Tech not lost winnable games against N.C. State and Virginia, it would have tied Virginia Tech atop the Coastal Division. The Hokies would have played in the ACC championship game by virtue of beating the Jackets head-to-head, but still: A 9-2 regular season would have sent Tech to a much better bowl and would have helped reconfigure public perception. Instead the Jackets managed road victories over Auburn and Miami and still came across as the same ol’ flaky Tech.
“The consistency factor is very important to us,” Wrotto says. “One of our goals is to be more consistent.”
Such words could come from almost any other player at any other school, but only at Tech do they carry such resonance. A case can be made that this is, on both sides of the ball, the best-looking bunch of Jackets since the 11-0-1 UPI national champions of 1990. (The highly regarded teams in the latter days of George O’Leary were repeatedly undone by their inability to stop people, a failing Jon Tenuta has rendered moot.) Tech historians will recall that the 1990 team was similarly unranked in preseason, but that comparison is actually a contrast.
The 1989 Jackets had closed fast, winning seven of their last eight games, but hadn’t graced a bowl and were only two seasons removed from a 3-8 finish. These Jackets haven’t had a losing season under Gailey and have had ample opportunity to hammer out a profile for themselves. To their chagrin, they have. They’re regarded as the flightiest team in the land.
That can change. That should change. There can be no excuses if December arrives and the Jackets aren’t ranked. A program gets only so many chances to prove its worth before it proves instead that serious consideration is unwarranted. For Tech under Gailey, this is almost a last chance.
Permalink | Comments (63) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
Falcons have big issues on defense
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Green Bay, Wis. — Goodness knows, the Falcons showed long before the ninth game of last season that they couldn’t stop anything rushing their way in cleats and a helmet. It’s just that their run defense reached the epitome of silliness in November at the Georgia Dome, where they spurred the transition of Samkon Gado from fifth-string running back for the Green Bay Packers into Paul Hornung, Jim Taylor and John Brockington.
That’s why, with big and bad Gado across the way Saturday night at Lambeau Field, the Falcons’ starting defenders were even more obsessed with trying to use an otherwise meaningless exhibition game to take mighty steps toward solving their most glaring weakness.
Oh well. Big, bad Gado didn’t play against the Falcons’ starters this time, but it didn’t matter. With Brett Favre spending the first half on a cool Wisconsin evening slinging and connecting at will to Donald Driver on mostly slants patterns across the middle in a 38-10 victory, it was clear that the Falcons had another problem: They couldn’t stop the run or the pass. Worse, despite the addition of John Abraham to complement the splendid pass rushing skills of Patrick Kerney, the Falcons’ starting front seven couldn’t make Favre scramble for his life on his nearly 37-year-old legs.
Whether these are temporary problems or extended ones for the Falcons is debatable, but this is for sure: They still have issues on defense. Big ones. As a result, with the absolutely loaded Carolina Panthers three Sundays away, the Falcons are more of a championship tease than a championship threat at the moment.
Just last week in the Falcons’ exhibition opener, New England Patriots rookie Laurence Maroney became the Falcons’ latest Gado by torching what supposedly is an enhanced defense. So this was a huge moment in Lombardi’s house for Falcons defenders, both physically and mentally. In addition to Gado, the Packers have Najeh Davenport, a wonderful backup to Pro Bowl runner Ahman Green. Still, given its deficiencies at guard and center, the Green Bay offensive line doesn’t resemble Washington’s Hogs of lore. Try something like the Five Little Pigs, which is why the San Diego Chargers terrorized Favre last week for two sacks and five other clubbings before he mercifully was lifted.
Favre wasn’t sacked against the Falcons. Favre barely was touched.
Worse for the Falcons, somebody named Noah Herron also became Samkon Gado on at least one play. Not only did Herron plow through the middle of the Falcons’ defense with the greatest of ease (do you sense a theme here?) for a 10-yard gain, but Falcons cornerback DeAngelo Hall sprained his ankle along the way.
Not good. None of this is good for the Falcons. Given the Gado gashing of last season, and the Maroney mess of last week, the Falcons’ defense had even more of an incentive to get it right this time.
“The way you play preseason games, when you only have your first team out there for so long, it is paramount that you have a fast start, because you don’t have a third and fourth quarter to heal the wounds,” Kerney said, before reflecting on Gado, a guy so obscure that he carried the Bible more than the ball during his four years at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University.
Even so, against the Falcons last year, Gado averaged more than four yards per carry along the way to 103 yards and two touchdowns. He also caught four passes for five yards and another touchdown. In the end, the Falcons suffered one of their most embarrassing losses ever (and that’s saying something for this franchise) with three turnovers that turned into 14 points for the Packers.
“The biggest problem was that we had an awful slow start, and we pretty much expended everything we had just to get back even with them,” Kerney said. “I’m not sure that was the tipping point of the season for us last year, but the Packers were sort of a [reeling] team at the time, and it never does help your confidence to lose to a team in that situation.”
Afterward, the Falcons dropped six of their last eight games, with opponents running at will. Opponents still are doing so, and every team that the Falcons play this season will have no less than a good running back. In order, we’re talking about DeShaun Foster, Cadillac Williams, Reggie Bush and Deuce McAllister, Edgerrin James, Tiki Barber, Willie Parker, Rudy Johnson, Kevin Jones, Reuben Droughns, Jamal Lewis, Bush and McAllister (again), Clinton Portis (if healthy), Williams (again), Julius Jones, Foster (again) and Brian Westbrook.
We’re also talking about the Falcons defense needing to get a clue.
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