AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2006 > September > 09
Saturday, September 9, 2006
Tech staff fumbled away Ball’s vast promise
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Reggie Ball had a nice enough Saturday. He threw two touchdown passes (and only one interception) and presided over an offense that scored three touchdowns in the first half against Division I-AA Samford. Then he was given the second half off. He’d done his job.
But anyone who recalls the dauntless Ball first glimpsed in 2003, the one who beat Auburn in his maiden home start, would be forced to confess that more was expected by this stage, much more. Back then, the belief was that Ball would grow into a quarterback to rival Shawn Jones and Joe Hamilton. Three years later, Ball is viewed by many Georgia Tech watchers as a fourth-year starter whose on-field liabilities continue to offset his conspicuous strengths.
Yes, that says something about Ball. But surely it says more about Ball’s coaches.
He’s a talent, no question. If he weren’t, Chan Gailey wouldn’t have demoted A.J. Suggs and redeployed Damarius Bilbo to make the true freshman his starter four Augusts ago. And we saw in that first season why Gailey, who isn’t known for being rash, entrusted his program to a rookie. Ball could make plays. Sometimes he’d override the good with the bad, but you expected such inconsistency from a teenager. What you didn’t expect was that Ball would get no more precise with the passage of time.
Somehow he completed a higher percentage of his passes as a freshman than as a sophomore or a junior. Somehow the mistakes, if not quite so frequent, have come at worse times — the fourth-down throwaway against Georgia as a sophomore, the red-zone interception against Georgia as a junior. Somehow the aptitude inherent in Ball hasn’t yet been developed.
Here it is 2006 and Tech acts as if it still doesn’t know what to make of the guy who has started every game (save one) since Aug. 28, 2003. Such confusion was never more blatant than when the Jackets had the chance to take a 14-point lead on Notre Dame but seemed to settle for a field goal rather than let Ball throw into the end zone.
Patrick Nix, the quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator, insisted Saturday that, appearances aside, Tech does feel comfortable with Ball and his choices. “He’s got experience,” Nix said. “He knows how to handle the ball. We’ve got a lot more confidence in him, and he’s got a lot more confidence in us.”
That said, there was no reason for Tech — with Ball and Calvin Johnson and P.J. Daniels — to finish 103rd in the nation in scoring offense last season. There was no reason for the Jackets to muster only 259 yards against an Irish defense that had hemorrhaged 617 yards in its last outing. There’s no reason except this: Tech’s offense, even in its newly tweaked manifestation, is poorly imagined.
Sometimes Tech tries to run the ball. Sometimes it throws a bunch of dinky passes. Sometimes it remembers Johnson is on the roster. Sometimes it asks Ball to execute a quarterback draw. But there’s never a signature to it, and there’s only one play — the fade to Johnson — that can be described as bread-and-butter Tech.
Is it Ball’s fault that he’s asked to oversee such a mixed bag? Is it Ball’s fault that his fundamental flaws — throwing off his back foot, to name the most obvious — have gone uncorrected? Is it Ball’s fault that his coaches haven’t polished this rough diamond or, failing that, recruited somebody better to take the job?
Asked Saturday where he has improved most since 2003, Ball said only: “Couldn’t tell you.” Part of that answer was surely Ball displaying his raging distrust of the media, but a bigger part was perhaps instructive. Maybe he couldn’t tell us because he knows he hasn’t.
Ball isn’t paid to play college football. (He gets a scholarship but not a salary.) His coaches are. It’s their professional responsibility to make the most of what they have. What Tech has made of the gifted Reggie Ball is, sad to say, closer to being the least.
Permalink | Comments (109) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
Farewell to Grand Champions
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Ball Ground — (Forgive me, I just had to use that dateline one time.) The kind of ball they’re playing up here has dimples in it, the players move about with studied caution and a kind of measured dignity. Most have put aside the rancor and raging fire that go with life in the trenches of the PGA Tour and moved gracefully into what Gil Morgan once branded the Mulligan Tour, others the Second Chance Tour. And if that applies, then this would be the Third Chance Tour, otherwise known as the Georgia-Pacific Grand Champions, contested out here over the velvety roller-coaster contours of Hawks Ridge Golf Club. And for the last time.
Give the PGA Tour hierarchy little credit for this. It was Georgia-Pacific, Atlanta-based, a major player in the world of timber and building supplies, which decided that as the Seniors Tour players aged, the older guys deserved a league of their own. So, as they reached age 60, the Grand Champions division gave them their own tournamnt within a tournament, the winner decided after the first 36 holes of the regular event. Then it was decided they should have their own Tour Championship, with a field of 16 leading finishers among the 60-year-olds. So it was that they came to Hawks Ridge this weekend, and it would be last call, for Georgia-Pacific has been sold to a private ownership which has no interest in carrying on.
While Tim Finchem, the PGA Tour commissioner, has made a sweeping attempt to invigorate the regular tour, as witness the Fed-Ex Cup format coming up next year, little has been done for the Seniors, except to change the name to Champions. Nice connotation but hardly a shot in the arm.
“We’ve always felt like the stepchild,” Raymond Floyd said. He is one of two former Ryder Cup captains who qualified for this G-P Grand Champions Championship, Dave Stockton the other. “I once had a businessman who wanted to sponsor a Seniors Tour event, and I took him in to meet with Tim Finchem. Next thing I knew, his company was a sponsor on the regular tour.”
A few days ago, this item came across news channels, alarming to the Champions Tour. It was purported that the LPGA is now outdrawing the Champions in television ratings. The women have had a few bump-ups, such as the dominance of Annika Sorenstam and an occasional shot in the arm from Michelle Wie, when she isn’t letting her ambitions run amok. But to outdraw a tour that offers Tom Watson, Tom Kite, Hale Irwin and the unorthodox but winning style of Allen Doyle?
Here’s another thing. Loren Roberts, Jay Haas, Fred Funk and Peter Jacobsen have been recent additions to the Champions roll, but hardly a gate-buster there. Not only that, but they can’t seem to break the regular tour habit. Funk played one Champions event, then went back to his old haven.
“And who’s coming along next?” Floyd said. “I wasn’t sure I wanted to play this tour. I’d had a pretty good career, but I decided it would be giving something back. That has all in the world to do with it. Greg Norman became eligible, but he’s having back problems. Seve Ballesteros, but his game has disappeared, Nick Price, Nick Faldo, Colin Montgomerie, but nothing like a Nicklaus or a Palmer of old.”
And who’s to suggest that the Champions Tour can wait another 20 years for Tiger Woods, should he even give thought to extending his career at that level. The regular tour suffers a body blow when Woods isn’t in the field as is. The Canadian Open is watered down this week. Sergio Garcia is playing in Europe, Adam Scott and Ernie Els in Asia, and Phil Mickelson, Davis Love and Chris DeMarco sit it out.
Bob Charles, the elder statesman in this field, suggests another matter needs addressing, and that’s ball structure. “If something isn’t done soon to control ball flight, they’ll find the game has one tough battle on its hands,” he said.
Well, everybody’s got problems, but none like some players had out here last year. As they arrived on a certain hole and walked up to putt, a child’s voice cried out, “Miss it!”
Finally, an official was dispatched to the house abutting the green and a lady came to the door.
“Madam, when our players start to putt on this green they say a child calls out, ‘Miss it.’ Would you mind getting him under control?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but we have no children,” the lady said.
Turns out she did have a parrot, and while I can’t swear to the veracity of that yarn, I’ll let it go at that.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Furman Bisher
40 seasons of erratic flight for Falcons
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
In June 1965, the same month of the first U.S. spacewalk, this city was awarded an NFL franchise.
Perhaps it was this confluence of historical events and things taking flight that prompted some fans to suggest “Falcons” in a name-the-team contest. It stuck, after a Georgia schoolteacher wrote in part, “The falcon is proud and dignified, with courage and fight. It never drops prey.”
Of course, 40 seasons have taught us many things. It turns out that Falcons can drop not only prey, but also the ball. No Atlanta franchise has been such a tease. No other earthly franchise has endured four decades while failing to string together consecutive winning seasons.
No other NFL team manages only two playoff wins in 32 years, then goes to a Super Bowl and lights a city on fire, only to crumble to 9-23 in the next two seasons. No other team opens the season with a Monday night win over the team (Philadelphia) that figures to be its biggest obstacle for a Super Bowl trip, starts the season 6-2, then implodes in the second half, as the Falcons did last season.
It is September again. A new season with new hopes. Expectations have never been higher. Unless you count last season.
The Falcons’ owner, Arthur Blank, mandated improvement. The president and general manager, Rich McKay, orchestrated more moves to strengthen the roster than any other GM. The coach, Jim Mora, feeling some heat, pushed the pedal in training camp. The quarterback, Michael Vick, has seemed more comfortable with the offense.
So why do we keep looking up, expecting a piano to fall?
“Since Arthur has owned the team, we’ve done a very good job of establishing with the fans that we’re going to do whatever it takes to win,” McKay said. “The second phase of that is, you have to win. It’s incumbent upon us to win on the field to prove that our commitment is something we can deliver on. I do think this is an important year because last year was a disappointment. We need to show that year was an aberration.”
Big time.
This is Atlanta, the most fickle of sports markets. As a general rule, fans can concentrate on only two things at once: 1) Georgia football; 2) Something else. The second is forever changing, depending on what’s hot or hip. Disappoint the masses again, and the Falcons will start to slide off the hot-or-hip landscape here.
It is that fragile of a market. It takes something to keep people interested. A star. A style. Dare we say, a championship. After years of baseball misery, this became a Braves town in the early 1990s. Then division titles ceased being viewed as hot or hip. Attendance went down and buy-one-get-one-free nights went up.
The Thrashers were born. They were hot for five minutes. Now they have to win.
I heard the Hawks were hot once. But I’ve only lived here for 17 years, so someone will have to enlighten me.
Jerry Glanville excited the Falcons fan base (even if the disturbed part) in 1991. Then, predictably, the team evolved into a punch line.
Some franchises get the benefit of the doubt. Not this one. History tells us that when something good happens one week, the forecast switches to gray skies and falling meteors. The heart can take only so much stomping.
“You don’t have a lot of people in Atlanta who were born here or grew up here,” Warrick Dunn said. “Those guys are not die-hards. When you win, everybody jumps on the bandwagon. So it’s the talk of the town and everybody wants to be a part of it. But to be a winner and have everybody on your side, you have to be consistent and play winning football. You have to do it week in and week out, year in and year out.”
The Falcons had a good offseason. They acquired one of the game’s premier defensive ends, John Abraham, to boost the pass rush. They imported two veteran safeties, Lawyer Milloy and Chris Crocker, who actually pose a threat of making a tackle. They drafted a tall cornerback with an attitude, Jimmy Williams, and a running back with speed, Jerious Norwood.
Wayne Gandy should be a serviceable left tackle. The late-camp signing of nose tackle Grady Jackson and a trade for wide receiver Ashley Lelie plug two holes.
On paper, things look good. But it’s sort of like folding that paper into an airplane, not knowing whether it will fly straight, bank left or go nose down.
We’ve seen too many drops.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz
