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Saturday, November 11, 2006
Grading the Falcons at midseason
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
PASS DEFENSE: F
The good news is they don’t have the NFL’s worst pass defense. The bad news is only an average of .6 yards separate them from Green Bay at the bottom. You can blame the lack of a pass rush and schematic problems, but mostly it’s been horrible play by the secondary. Is there anything lower than an F? Grade F
DeANGELO HALL: B-
He’s always around the ball and a fight. The former is why he sits in a tie for the third-most interceptions with four. The latter is why he gets a slew of penalties. If you take away the one-shoed Hines Ward beating the NFL’s fastest man to the end zone, he has been nearly as efficient as his tongue.. Grade B–
WIDE RECEIVERS: D-
Of the NFL’s top 32 players in receiving yards, none is a Falcons player. What a surprise. The Falcons receivers have been spectacular, but only when it comes to dropped passes. They had eight last week. It doesn’t help their efforts that Michael Vick continues to run, often for his life. D–
MICHAEL VICK: B
His biggest problem has been receivers that act like they are allergic to the ball. He showed against Pittsburgh and Cincinnati that he can pass. He still can run, too. He has more rushing yards than Jamal Lewis, Clinton Portis and Edgerrin James. B
RUNNING GAME: A+
Jerious Norwood is one of the NFL’s most dangerous runners, but he barely can get on the field. Blame it on some guy named Warrick Dunn, only the NFL’s most underrated superstar. It also helps the rushing attack that Michael Vick is the NFL’s most prolific running quarterback. They’ve led the league in rushing during each of the two previous years. A+
COACHING/MANAGEMENT: C
They have adjusted well. The kicking game was awful and they found 46-year-young Morten Andersen, and they’ve shown a willingness to tweak the offense. None of the recent big-splash pickups (John Abraham, Ed Hartwell, Roddy White, Jimmy Williams) is helping much — or at all. C
OVERALL GRADE: B- The Falcons at the midway point are a decent 5-3, but they’ve yet to beat a team that currently has a winning record. They have shown they can win close games (Steelers, Bengals), but when they lose, they REALLY lose (Saints, Giants, Lions). Don’t purchase Super Bowl tickets just yet, but keep your calendar clear for at least a week after the regular season. B–
Permalink | Comments (48) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Bulldogs get off the deck
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Auburn, Ala. — It wasn’t as if Georgia under Mark Richt had lacked definition. For four seasons it was the class of the SEC, a program moving from strength to strength. But what happened here Saturday served to redefine the Bulldogs. At the weakest moment of Richt’s tenure, his flimsiest team showed it was still strong where it mattered.
Strong of heart.
Strong of will.
Strong enough to crush the nation’s No. 5 team a week after losing to a school so unaccustomed to beating Georgia that its fans razed one set of goalposts.
Four years after standing under the Jordan-Hare Stadium bleachers and reflecting on the first pinnacle of his stewardship — the epic comeback that clinched the 2002 SEC East title — Richt stood in the same room and spoke of a victory that accomplished less but maybe meant more. “Considering people’s perception of what was happening in the program, it’s huge,” Richt said. “It’s one of the games most important to me personally.”
An audience accustomed to seeing Georgia win had watched the Bulldogs lose as many games in the course of five weeks as it had in the worst of Richt’s first five seasons. The audience was flummoxed and frustrated, as were the Bulldogs themselves. Said Richt: “We didn’t know how to act, except to try and act in a first-class manner.”
Sometimes class and resolve coalesce at the most improbable moment. Sometimes a team that barely made a single play over those five weeks will, for no real reason, begin to make plays hand over fist. Georgia’s first-half performance against an opponent of this stature would have been a wonder in any season, but coming a week after losing to Kentucky it beggared belief.
Matthew Stafford completed more passes in the first 10 minutes than Auburn’s Brandon Cox did in four quarters. The offensive line blocked with an oomph heretofore missing. Georgia had three touchdowns before Auburn got its fourth first down. Safety Tra Battle caught more of Cox’s throws in the first half than all Tigers players combined.
“Last week was as low as we could get,” Battle said. “But we told each other this week that we had one another’s back, and when we do that we’re unstoppable.”
Auburn still hasn’t stopped Stafford, who on this blustery day justified the massive hype. Georgia’s infamously ham-handed receivers turned into latter-day Swanns and Stallworths. (“The real receiving corps is what you see now,” said Kenneth Harris, who made the prettiest catch of all.) The defensive front shoved the Tigers backward and afforded Cox no time to find anyone save Battle.
“In my mind, it’s the sweetest victory I’ve ever had,” said defensive tackle Ray Gant, who sacked Cox on Auburn’s first snap. “I’m not looking at anything in the past. I’m only looking at the future.”
And suddenly Georgia’s future looks not nearly so bleak as in the week just past. Turns out the Bulldogs can play after all — they just, to date, hadn’t. Turns out Richt and his staff haven’t forgotten how to coach. Turns out there’s life (and much, much pride) left in the Red & Black.
“The No. 1 thing was that we didn’t quit,” said Willie Martinez, whose defense limited to Auburn to 171 yards. “You can’t pull off something like this if you’re not a team.”
Nor can a program spring such a thumping upset if it has ceased to be a program of resources and belief. This won’t go down as Richt’s best season, but in the grand scheme it could be his most important. Success teaches us something about a man; how he responds to failure teaches us more.
We learned four years ago that Richt was shrewd enough to take a program to the top, and we learned Saturday that he and his Bulldogs are stout enough to rescue a season gone bad. Georgia can’t win the SEC this year, but Georgia will win it again soon under this remarkable coach.
“This is about as good as I’ve felt in a long time,” said Richt, who earned every measure of his sweet relief.
Permalink | Comments (106) | Categories: Mark Bradley, UGA / SEC
Tech’s win like lipstick on a pig
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Chapel Hill, N.C. — There is a good thing about already having two losses in November: There’s no need to worry about statement games. Voters aren’t really watching. Computer rankings don’t matter as much. The BCS — it’s all about formula.
When a team has evolved into something significantly north of normal but south of elite, it’s not about style points anymore. And when the offense is managing only seven points against a team that allowed 42 to Furman and 37 to South Florida, feel good that it’s not about style points.
Feel good that when Georgia Tech lands in Jacksonville for the ACC title game, there will be no blockade with security agents saying, “Sorry, but we’ve just learned you only defeated North Carolina 7-0. Please go home now.”
“We got the victory — not the way we wanted it or expected it, but we got it,” center Kevin Tuminello said Saturday. “Luckily, we got it.”
A malnourished 7-0 victory over the worst defensive team in the ACC cemented Tech’s Coastal Division title and a berth in the conference championship game. But the lack of any sort of public celebration afterward fairly well captured the moment.
The Jackets will have a chance to win their first outright conference title since 1990. They will have a chance to go to a real bowl with a real name that you don’t need Mapquest to find. They even can finish in the top 10.
But the way they played Saturday, they won’t reach the Orange Bowl.
They won’t win the ACC title game.
They won’t beat Georgia.
They won’t beat Duke.
OK. They’ll beat Duke.
But what happened Saturday screamed what they are:
North of normal.
South of elite.
Yes, there was so much to celebrate Saturday. It was the season’s eighth win, four games to go. In four previous years, coach Chan Gailey kept hitting his head on the ceiling after seven.
It elevated Tech to 6-1, likely going on 7-1, in the ACC. This comes after the program figured to get dwarfed by the conference’s expansion to Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College.
But please: Somebody burn the films from this one.
“It’s not your worst fear — your worst fear is not winning,” Gailey said when asked about projections of a letdown against a 1-9 team that already has fired its coach. “You keep trying to tell the players how talented they are, how physical they are, and it was true today. They were physical. They were tough.”
They were helped.
The Tar Heels are so bad that their defense had posted only four shutout quarters all season — until getting three more Saturday. They had been allowing 34 points per game. Opposing quarterbacks had a 150.7 efficiency rating. Somebody should have told Reggie Ball, who was 10-for-24 with an interception, rendering Tech’s X-factor, Calvin Johnson, a non-factor.
In the postgame, we heard about how North Carolina played hard, how no game in the ACC is easy, how “hot” it was.
OK, first of all: The temperature at kickoff was 73 degrees. Maybe it got up to 80. For November, it was hot. For Juno, it was hot. But it wasn’t Death Valley.
As for the Tar Heels, any team that has lost 40 out of 57 games over the past five years has issues. Bad teams can play hard. But they’re still bad.
It was homecoming in Chapel Hill. The masses were elsewhere. You could connect the dots in the stands. Butch Davis will draw more fans at his introductory news conference. So much for intimidating surroundings.
The Jackets’ defense was solid. It also got lucky. Twice the Heels were driving for apparent scores in the first half. Twice their quarterback, Joe Dailey, made horrendous throws in the red zone and was intercepted on consecutive possessions.
Somehow, Tech made a second-quarter touchdown stand up.
“It means we get to go to Jacksonville and have the opportunity to win the ACC championship,” Gailey said.
And he stopped there.
Wise choice.
Permalink | Comments (72) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Tech / ACC
Inner voice, ugly wins extend Holyfield’s quest
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
San Antonio — With apologies to Fres Oquendo, who dedicated Friday night’s heavyweight bout in the Alamodome to his recently deceased mother-in-law, and to the Blues Brothers, who spoke of following heavenly voices, Evander Holyfield is the dude on a mission from God.
So says Holyfield. I might say something else after watching the former champ often look older than Methuselah, Moses and their grandparents, but I’m not Holyfield. Not only is he the owner of boxing shorts with Bible verses, but he is religiously in pursuit of becoming the only five-time heavyweight champion ever.
You know, no matter what. That included Holyfield’s 12-round decision (116-111, 114-113, 114-113) over Oquendo that caused eyes to roll. He knocked Oquendo to the canvas with a right hand seconds into the bout, but that was Holyfield’s only highlight. He blamed Oquendo’s awkward style on his inability to use his 44-year-old reflexes to pound his foe when given numerous chances.
“I’m not terribly impressed with myself, but I got the job done,” Holyfield said later. Added Oquendo, who appeared to capture several of the early and middle rounds, “I boxed his ears off.”
Don’t mention “ears” and “boxing” around Holyfield. (Remember that Mike Tyson thing?) Anyway, Holyfield just won something called the USBA Gulf Coast Regional title. Such a title is roughly equivalent to the IHOP championship for consuming blueberry pancakes.
Holyfield prefers alphabets such as WBA, WBC, WBO and IBF after winning for the second time in as many fights since his 21-month absence due to injuries. Said Holyfield, “I told the Lord that, if he allows me to be the heavyweight champion of the world again, I’ll stay out here as long as you want me to stay out here.”
Looks like the Lord wants Holyfield to stay longer. So says Holyfield, who spent 10 years ago to the month shocking Mike Tyson at a packed Las Vegas venue. This time, given the decent but obscure Oquendo, much of Bexar County stayed away, presumably to watch high school football or to do laundry. “If I would have beaten Lennox Lewis [in November 1999], that would have been it,” said Holyfield, referring to his failed chance to become the undisputed champion. “To be the very best that I want to be, that means I have to retire on top and not the bottom. I’m smart enough to stop on top.”
We’ll see. Several of Holyfield’s predecessors evolved into the feeble likes of Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali. To which I say of Holyfield’s desire to keep slugging for just shy of forever: It’s his obsession, and he has the right to continue it along the way to a pretty or ugly finish.
Ugly is another Oquendo away for Holyfield. It’s just that you can’t dismiss the guy in a boxing universe filled with, well, let Hall of Fame trainer Lou Duva tell you. “Can you pronounce the names of any of these Russian champions?” said Duva, referring to Oleg Maskaev, Nikolay Valuev and Wladimir Klitschko. You also have Brooklyn’s Shannon Briggs, the WBO champion. Whatever that means.
It means Holyfield should have the opportunity to face any of the above. According to Murad Muhammad, the promoter for Friday night’s “Holyfield V: The Final Chapter Continued,” Holyfield will fight again in the first quarter of next year. He’ll likely return to Texas, among the few places that will license him.
“Fighters come into this industry for three reasons: To win a title, to make money and to make more money,” said Muhammad, once the security chief for that other Muhammad named Ali. “We ain’t begging here. We’re saying that, if you come to beat us, we’re going to pay. And, of course, to get the money, you have to bring the honey. We believe that the honey is a championship belt, and we don’t care whose waist it’s around.”
Just as long as that championship belt doesn’t involve a Rutti Tutti Fresh And Frutti.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Terence Moore
Holyfield wins but doesn’t impress
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
San Antonio — The way Evander Holyfield sees it, he doesn’t have much time to become the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world again. Not at 44 and counting. So, just a few seconds into his bout Friday night at the Alamodome against Fres Oquendo, the Real Deal used a right hand to the head to send his opponent tumbling to the canvas.
As the crowd nearly yelled itself hoarse over the overwhelming people’s choice, Oquendo shook his head while rising to his feet, and the fight continued.
Too bad for Holyfield. Although he won a highly suspect unanimous decision of 116-111, 114-113 and 114-113 in 12 rounds (“I boxed his ears off,” said Oquendo), he showed an inability to throw more than a punch at a time to counter the multiple jabs and combinations of Oquendo.
If you didn’t know any better, you would say that Holyfield was getting old before our very eyes. Make that older.
After Holyfield’s first-round knockdown, Oquendo gathered himself to throw a series of jabs that were telegraphed, but it didn’t matter. Holyfield couldn’t stop them. There also were more than a few times when Oquendo unintentionally offered his face for pounding, but Holyfield either didn’t respond or couldn’t respond. It was enough for Oquendo to spend much of the early and middle portions of the fight building up points toward an upset.
Frustration covered Holyfield’s face when he left for his stool after the fifth round. He turned the frustration into what eventually was a furious combination to Oquendo’s midsection near the end of the sixth to signal that the old champ was alive and well and vibrant. He also rocked Oquendo with a couple of heavy lefts in the seventh.
Just like that, Holyfield was following the scripture on his boxing shorts from II Corinthians 5:7, which says, “For we walk by faith, not by sight.” What Holyfield saw from Oquendo and himself for the longest time wasn’t good.
Since Holyfield is the Tina Turner of boxing (“We never ever do nothing nice and easy”), you just had the feeling that something, well, uh, different would occur in this one. Maybe somebody would paraglide into the middle of the ring. How about Holyfield’s opponent chewing on either one or both of his ear? Perhaps there would be a mysterious head butt from Holyfield to leave a knot the size of the Alamo on his opponent’s forehead.
Then again, Holyfield could look so drained that he would need somebody such as Benny Hinn to lay hands on him and contradict a misdiagnosis by a doctor.
Oops. Holyfield has been there and done all of that during a career that was stalled for 21 months until he returned in August to clobber an insurance man named Jeremy Bates, who much less potent than Norman Bates. So here was Holyfield, using his aging legs against Oquendo in search of his dream to become the heavyweight champion of the world again for an unprecedented fifth time.
In the end, before an announced crowd of 10,133 (including thousands of freebies to local military personal and the critters that populate this mostly vacant dome these days), Holyfield tried to discover ways to win something called the USBA Gulf Coast Regional title. Interestingly, nobody knew there was such a thing until several hours before the fight. Guess it took a while for the promoters to choose between that name and something even more silly.
Oquendo entered the ring with the Puerto Rican flag leading the way. After all, he was the self-proclaimed Latin heavyweight champion. Then came Holyfield, entering the ring to rousing spiritual music and a purple robe. That is purple as in the Biblical color, as in Holyfield telling everybody and anybody who would listen during the last few months that he will keep fighting because God is telling him to do so.
The question is, when will God tell Holyfield to stop?
Permalink | Comments (54) | Categories: Terence Moore
