AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2006 > September > 26
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Woods’ run evokes streak of ‘45
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH: I saw an unusual golf magazine the other day. Tiger Woods wasn’t on the cover. His loss to Shaun Micheel in match play in England aroused this question: Did Byron Nelson, who died Tuesday at age 94, have a match-play event included in his record streak of 18 straight in 1945? No, but one event was the Miami Four-Ball, in which he was partnered with Jug McSpaden. … And whatever became of Eddie LeBaron?
• Around the PGA Tour, Loren Roberts is commonly referred to as “Boss of the Moss,” referring to his prowess on the green. Actually, he hasn’t won the tour putting title since 1994. Champion last year: Arjun Atwal of India, at 1.71.
• That brings up another PGA Tour-related item. At one time this year, 17 countries were represented among the top 125 earnings leaders. To find your fortune, take your bag to America, young man.
• When the baseball-addicted attorney Abe Schear talked with Darrell Evans in one of his interviews, he asked, “Where were you when Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run?”
Said Darrell: “I was on first base.”
• Here’s a neat one: When Joab Lesesne retired as president of Wofford College after 22 years, he became an assistant on the football coaching staff. He has now moved up to head of football operations, proving that there’s always a future for a guy who wants to get ahead. Actually, a man finally doing what he loves.
• Ever hear the name Matt Cassel? One season he was backup to Carson Palmer, Heisman Trophy winner, and another to Matt Leinart, another Heisman winner, at Southern Cal. Now he backs up Tom Brady with the Patriots. How’s that for patience?
• Peyton Manning has contributed a million dollars to the Tennessee athletics department to upgrade its sports center. One way or another, it seems these Manning kids are reflecting a good upbringing.
• Mike Scully, the golf pro at Medinah, where the PGA Championship was recently played, was an offensive lineman at Illinois and played one season with the Washington Redskins. In the process, from football grunt to golf pro, his weight has dropped from 325 pounds to 253.
• I went into a quaint little eatery the other day. It had a boothside jukebox, two plays for two bits.
• After 33 years as one of the leading referees in college football, Jimmy Harper finally found the job he didn’t like. He retired after a couple of years upstairs in the booth, as what is known as “communicator” on one of those instant replay teams. Speaking of one of his favorite associates on the field, he said, “He didn’t know the rules, never read the book, but after he threw a flag, he’d say, ‘I don’t know what it is, but he can’t do it,’ and he was always right.”
• So they say:
Lee Corso: “Of all the places in America, the best place to be on a football Saturday is Lincoln, Nebraska.”
Chan Gailey (on poll voting): “I don’t see Texas Tech, I don’t see Oregon State or Stanford. I may see a few clips of them on TV, but I don’t see enough teams across the country to vote with any conviction.”
D.J. Shockley: “I was patient, but it wasn’t easy [waiting his turn behind David Greene at Georgia]. We had a great relationship. He was such a good guy, and we liked each other.”
Corso again: “There’s nothing like walking out on that field on Saturday afternoon with the stands full and rocking. That’s why both Jim Donnan and I would like to be coaching again.”
• Name of the Week: Ashley Lelie, exotic dancer? Hardly, the Falcons’ new receiver. … Selah.
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Falcons unmasked at Saints’ party
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Flowery Branch — I hate to ruin the moment here. I mean, it’s so easy to get caught up in the warm embrace of the New Orleans Saints’ return home the other night, especially with ESPN slamming it over your head every 12 seconds. But you might have missed something:
The last time the Falcons looked this embarrassing on a Monday night, Arthur Blank felt compelled to issue apologies three years ago to ABC, the fan base and anybody who ever walked into Home Depot for a role of duct tape.
Has that been lost on everybody?
Every conceivable Falcons’ flaw that was masked in wins over Carolina and Tampa Bay was unmasked in New Orleans.
It was like seeing the “before” picture of Jessica Simpson in that Proactiv commercial.
The offensive line couldn’t pass block — again. Receivers couldn’t get open and dropped passes when they did — again. Michael Vick overthrew and underthrew and lacked any sense of rhythm — again. For the third straight week, a field goal was blocked, as was a punt. The Falcons already have two special teams coaches. Maybe now they need to add a field goal protection guru.
If the Falcons aren’t necessarily the team that managed only two first downs and three punts on their first four possessions against the Saints, they’re certainly not the wrecking ball that rushed for 558 yards against Tampa Bay and Carolina. Dude, they have issues.
This doesn’t mean they won’t make the playoffs (they will). It doesn’t mean the Saints will make the playoffs (they won’t). (Clip and save.)
But how this bunch reacts to being made to look so pedestrian — and a pedestrian under a bus — will help define this season.
Jim Mora said he told his players in the aftermath of the 23-3 loss to the Saints: “There will be a lot of people who will offer you up excuses.” About the environment, the fact the rest of the globe was pulling against them, etc.
He also told them not to fall into that trap: “We’re still responsible to play to a certain standard, regardless of the circumstances. We’ve got to play better. That’s what mature and successful teams do.”
Things fall apart, and everybody looks for the easy answer. Romantics get swallowed up by the Saints’ return to the Superdome. Short-sided knuckleheads fall back on the standard: It’s all Michael Vick’s fault.
Vick wasn’t faultless Monday. But Y.A. Title couldn’t have made a difference behind that offensive line and with those receivers, who were long on thumbs and short on separation. So let’s not even play that Matt Schaub-is-better card, OK?
Vick doesn’t block. He doesn’t catch. (In that respect, he fit in with everybody else.) But his 12-for-31 performance reinforced suspicions that he has little to fall back on when his legs can’t carry him out of trouble.
Clearly, this is still an offense in transition, and nobody is certain what the finished product is supposed to look like. Last week, when we all were praising the running game, Mora said: “Teams will adjust, and we will be forced to adjust again.”
He then went out of his way to compliment the passing attack, even though the Falcons had thrown for only 232 yards in two games, and added: “There is going to come a time when we are not going to be able to run the ball for 200 yards a game and we are going to depend on the passing game, and I feel confident that it is ready to go.”
But it isn’t. It wasn’t. And suddenly we see the flaws. Questions about the offensive coordinator, Greg Knapp, will resurface, and should. The week before, Knapp was credited for adding the wrinkle of the option to the Falcons’ offense. But Monday he failed to find a way to counter whatever the Saints were doing.
A football team doesn’t lose 23-3 because the world is rooting for a nice story. Twenty-point losses aren’t about one subplot or one quarterback or one dropped pass in the end zone by the tight end.
A team loses 23-3 when several flaws all show up at once. Somehow, that got lost in New Orleans in the postgame glow.
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Odell Thurman’s career is doomed
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
10: More on this later today, after I’ve had a chance to survey the wreckage in Flowery Branch. But there was much more to the Falcons’ loss than, “Gee, everyone wanted New Orleans to win.” Emotion counts for only so much.
9: To put it another way: It’s amazing how one loss can unmask a team’s every conceivable weakness.
8: We lost the Ryder Cup. Am I supposed to care? Golf is the ultimate sport of individualists. And this isn’t the Olympics, so let’s get off this whole patriotism thing.
7: For all of those people who blasted me with e-mail and phone calls after I criticized Georgia and Mark Richt for not being tougher in dealing with Odell Thurman, I have a question: Where are you now?
6: Thurman’s a knucklehead and he always has been. Yes, he had a tough home life growing up. I know. I’ve heard it ad nauseam. But he was surrounded by enablers at home and in Athens. It’s as if nobody ever said, “Odell, you can’t do that.” So he did that. Often.
5: Thurman, who already was serving a four-game suspension when he was arrested for DUI the other night, probably is gone for the season. He might want to take the time to practice this line, “Would you like to Super Size that?” Because that’s where his career is headed.
4: Thurman is drinking and partying his way right out of the NFL. He was an immature kid at Georgia. What did anyone expect was going to happen once he turned pro, he had money in his pocket and he didn’t have a class schedule?
3: If you were the Cincinnati Bengals right now, how much would you pay to put David Pollack’s head on Odell Thurman’s body?
2: The Tampa Bay Buccaneers maintain that Chris Simms may return this season. Is that the good news or the bad news?
1: It’s just another late-September Braves-Mets series that doesn’t mean anything.
Permalink | Comments (81) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
Falcons in a no-win situation
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
New Orleans — Somebody had to draw the short straw. Somebody had to oppose the Saints on their first night back in the Superdome, and it wasn’t as if no Atlanta team had ever served as the designated somebody.
The Braves played the Mets at Shea Stadium on Sept. 21, 2001, in the first sporting event staged in New York after the Twin Towers fell. It was a rousing night, awash in tears but brimming with patriotic pride, and it ended the only way it could have ended — with Mike Piazza crushing a two-run homer in the eighth inning off Steve Karsay to give the stricken city something to celebrate.
Five years later, nobody remembers that the Braves were the losing team that star-spangled night. Five years from now, nobody will recall that the Falcons were the guests for the game dubbed “the rebirth.” That will be just fine with the Falcons, who, on a night to remember, gave a performance to forget.
To be fair, nobody outside Atlanta wanted the Falcons to win. To be fair, Monday was treated as a civic holiday here, as evidenced by the throngs clogging Poydras Street five hours before kickoff. To be fair, the Saints were jazzed for this night in a way no team will again be jazzed.
“My [pregame] tears were for the fans,” said Joe Horn, the receiver. “My tears were for the kids who might have been staying in the Superdome [after Katrina] but who now had a chance to see their team play.”
The Saints took the field to a roar that had been building for 13 months, their arrival heralded by the combined efforts of U2 and Green Day — for this occasion, one platinum-selling band wasn’t enough — and words written for the occasion by Time magazine’s 2005 Man of the Year. “The Saints are coming,” Bono sang, and here they came.
Perhaps Bono should consider doing pro bono work as a special teams coach. Somebody neglected to alert the Falcons to the Saints’ Steve Gleason, who burst up the middle to snuff Michael Koenen’s punt and hand the returning heroes a touchdown not 90 seconds into the rebirth. It was stirring stuff for the locals, who need a lift in the worst way. It was stirring for everyone save the Falcons, who acted more shaken than stirred.
The rest of the half went thusly: Michael Vick threw twice as many incompletions as completions; Alge Crumpler dropped a gilt-edged touchdown; Morten Andersen had his second kick of his second stint as a Falcon blocked; Kevin Mathis was called for shoving Joe Horn, the penalty enabling the Saints to kick a field goal at the first-half horn. That made it 20-3, soon to become 23-3, and by then it was clear the football equivalent of Mike Piazza in the bottom of the eighth wouldn’t be required.
This being an Atlanta newspaper, the custom is to laud an Atlanta team when it wins and rip it when it doesn’t. There can, however, be no ripping after this one. This was, in the starkest sense, a no-win game for the Falcons. They were villains coming in and foils once the first kick was blocked, and losing badly in such charged setting tells us nothing about their immediate future. They’re better than this, and they’ll never play in another game quite like this. Let’s hope there never has to be another game like this.
And when this one-of-a-kind game was done, Saints owner Tom Benson broke out a parasol and resurrected the Benson Boogie to communal glee, the same Tom Benson who is still locally believed to be plotting his team’s move out of town.
On this one night, all was temporarily forgiven. On this one night, all of the Crescent City boogied along. Before the game, Benson’s granddaughter Rita Benson LeBlanc had said: “Tonight at kickoff, we win.” That simplistic sentiment captured the feeling from sea to shining sea. This was always going to be the Saints’ night of nights. They and their city had waited 13 months.
They and their city had it coming.
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