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Saturday, September 8, 2007
Falcons need Dunn more than ever
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
To paraphrase the words of an old gospel song, if the Falcons never needed Warrick Dunn before, they sure do need him now.
That’s on and off the field. Dunn knows it, too. “Probably when you talk to people who research and do studies, they feel like the Falcons are going to have to do more to recover their image,” said Dunn, the NFL’s secretly great running back who nevertheless has been openly superb during his 11 seasons as a role model outside of shoulder pads.
Which brings us to this: Given the highly publicized ugliness surrounding Michael Vick’s conviction for dogfighting, the Falcons’ ownership and management is obsessed with trying to separate themselves from the quarterback that they designated as the face of the franchise. As a result, the Falcons’ regular season begins Sunday in Minneapolis, along with the paranoia of their politburo.
Actually, that paranoia is just continuing. It used to be that the Falcons’ politburo would assign Big Brothers from its public relations staff to surround Vick at all times during interviews — as in coddling, which contributed to many of Vick’s issues. Now Vick is headed to prison, but those Big Brothers are still around. They’ve become even more prevalent in the Falcons locker room, because their new assignment is to swoop in from the shadows to monitor the proceedings of any player conversing with any media person.
Dunn glanced at the two Big Brothers rushing toward his locker this week in Flowery Branch during an interview. Then he forced a chuckle and said of the Falcons’ heightened PR push, “It’s the focus groups. I guess they feel like that these are things that you need to do to improve such and such. But as players, we’re just going to rely on the guys who have been around here. Lawyer [Milloy]. Wayne [Gandy]. Alge [Crumpler]. Keith Brooking. Guys who have played in this game a while, but guys who also have been there and done it.”
Guys such as Dunn, an ongoing miracle, with more rushing yards in his NFL career (9,461) than any active player not named Edgerrin James or Fred Taylor. This is some trick for somebody who packs maybe 180 pounds around a frame of maybe 5 feet 9. Plus, courtesy of his 32-year-old legs, he is ancient for a running back. He also had back surgery to start training camp.
Even so, Dunn plans to start every game of a Falcons season for the fourth consecutive time.
Good. The more of Dunn for the Falcons, the better. This isn’t only because he can use his prolific running, catching and blocking to ease the transition from the frequently erratic but always dangerous Vick to however you would describe his replacement, Joey Harrington, owner of a 23-43 record as a starter in the NFL. This is mostly because Dunn’s eyes, nose and everything else were more suited than those of Vick to become the face of the Falcons franchise, anyway.
There is Dunn’s Homes for the Holidays program to help single mothers become first-time home-owners. He was selected as one of Oprah’s “Angels.” He has been recognized by more than a few publications as everything from a good guy for the ages to one of sports’ most influential persons. He also won the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year award.
“Myself, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve wanted to do more. Not just with the things that I do, but to get more involved in teammates’ activities and different things that go on in the city,” Dunn said. “I want to do those things, because I care about what happens to people. It isn’t just for the headlines. Any time any of us has time to do something, I’m sure guys are going to step out, and it’s not going to be because it’s being stressed from upper management that, ‘You guys have to do this.’ “
No, but upper management wouldn’t mind as much. It has those Big Brothers around to prove it.
Permalink | Comments (41) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
A rout is a rout by any name
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Well, what did you expect? Georgia Tech just beat the heck out of Notre Dame last week, and, “we are the Samford Bulldogs!” Little ol’ Samford from Birmingham, just dropping in to pick up the check. This is not the kind of visit Pat Sullivan is accustomed to making to Grant Field, before it became Bobby Dodd Stadium. He used it twice as a platform to make his case for the Heisman Trophy, and he won it in 1971, his crowning season as quarterback at Auburn. Before his men of Samford University left the field Saturday, press box historians were having to dig back through the ages to the infamous 220-0 Cumberland game of 1916 in search of matching records.
By the way, in case you haven’t noticed, the only two Heisman Trophy winners now head coaches in the USA both happened to be in our state at the same time. Sullivan won it in 1971 and Steve Spurrier, winner in 1966, had an appointment in Athens Saturday night. You see, Heisman Trophy winners usually choose to take their game to the NFL, where even if they don’t make it, there’s money in endorsements and other baubles.
Oddly, both Spurrier and Sullivan had their fling in the NFL, but neither lit it up. This is Sullivan’s second run at head coaching, a considerable retreat from the years he spent at Texas Christian. His six-year tour at that level didn’t turn out shiningly, so he came home as an assistant at Alabama-Birmingham. He is just a homebody kind of guy, anyway, and when the job at Samford opened right there where he grew up, he was available, and here he was on Grant Field again, but this time the worm had turned. You get to the Samfords of world football and your own little football paladium has only 6,500 seats, you have to make sacrifices to balance the budget, and this was budget-balancing day for Samford, by the crushing score of 69-14.
It still wasn’t the worst licking Samford ever took, though the name was Howard College then. In 1920, Centre College of Kentucky shredded the Bulldogs, 120-0, this the same Centre College that destroyed (I jest) Harvard, 6-0, in the greatest college upset of all time — until last Saturday in Ann Arbor.
On the Georgia Tech side, the 45 points in the first half were the most scored in a first half since the 126 scored against Cumberland in 1916. There were various and sundry other scoring records broken, or tied, or approached, more than concerns even Chan Gailey. And speaking of coach Gailey, who happened to coach at Samford in the season of 1993, he was just dishing out a taste of the medicine he suffered that season. Central Florida laid 48 points on him and Troy State followed up with 52 while he left a record of 5-and-6.
Now, what he got out of this game was the satisfaction of having Taylor Bennett put his passing touch on display. This was not a “lackluster” performance, referring to prior grading of his day at South Bend. He completed eight of nine passes for a modest 85 yards, then took a sabbatical. Thereafter, Georgia Tech kept the ball on the ground mainly. The offensive high command was trying to keep the scoring down, but the nervous lads from Birmingham weren’t gracious recipients. Dropped passes, jittery passing, fumbles and careless tackling set them up like ducks on a pond.
Tashard Choice stayed around long enough to collecet ll0 yards, then, too, retired to the sideline, and in result, Jonathon Dwyer, a freshman from Kell High in Marietta, led the ground game with 138 yards and three scores. Names and faces uncommon to the crowd of 40-some thousand kept rolling off the sideline onto the field, and the Jackets kept rolling along. (Oh, and speaking of rolling, the Model-A Ford mascot, made its return from the disabled list, leading the team onto the field, as is custom.) By the end of the game, Bennett and Choice were but sweet memories,
Gailey was naturally was pleased as could be, and as is custom, careful not to allow himself to be too cheerful. Poor Pat Sullivan, on the other hand, handled his situation as well as the captain of any wounded ship. “We were like a deer in headlights,” he said, and then outlined the misbehavior of his troops like a father in pain. Next week, the Bulldogs drop back to their own level with Presbyterian College, and the Jackets brace for the invasion of Boston College, fellow member of the ACC fraternity.
Permalink | Comments (26) | Categories: Furman Bisher
Witnesses to something ‘magical’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Even when it was over, Jeff Francoeur wasn’t quite willing to concede. Ronnie Belliard’s liner had dropped cleanly into right field, and by all rights that should have quashed John Smoltz’s masterwork six outs shy of culmination.
But the right fielder Francoeur, being young and indomitable, took the ball on one hop and thought for a long instant about trying to throw Belliard out at first base. “If Tex [first baseman Mark Teixeira] had been on the bag, I’d have probably tried it,” Francoeur said. “But I’d have probably thrown it into the dugout.”
Imagine how that would have been. A no-hitter preserved on a 9-3 groundout. In the history of baseball, had such a thing ever happened?
It didn’t happen Friday night, either. Overriding his impulses, Francoeur simply returned the ball to the infield. But that’s how it is when history is at hand: Nobody wants to see it slip away.
“That’s what I told these three knuckleheads,” said paying customer Jon Nalepa of Walton, pointing to his 12-year-old son and his son’s two friends after the 7-1 win. “They didn’t realize what they were watching. I told them, ‘Watch this — you may not ever see something like it again.’ “
And his reaction when Belliard messed everything up? “I was disappointed,” Nalepa said.
Pretty much everybody was. Said Smoltz: “It had a chance to be a magical night … Unfortunately I ran out of gas.”
Seeing Belliard’s single, vacationing Matthew Will of Biloxi, Miss., said, “I groaned for a second.”
Only an inning before, Will and the other Turner Field patrons had cheered when Austin Kearns’ grounder in the hole was ruled an error on rookie shortstop Yunel Escobar. “I’d never heard people cheer an error before,” Will said.
For the record, the 40-year-old Smoltz wouldn’t have been the oldest man to work a no-hitter. (Nolan Ryan did it at 45.) Smoltz wouldn’t have even been the oldest to throw a no-hitter at Turner Field. (Randy Johnson was 40 years, eight months and eight days old on the night of his 2004 perfect game against the Braves.) Still, it would have been something to see, and not just for the customers.
“There’s disappointment [when it doesn’t happen],” Francoeur said. “To do something like that at his age — not saying he’s old — would have been unbelievable.”
Here Francoeur laughed. “OK, I’ll say it. He is old.”
Did Smoltz have no-hit stuff? “He has no-hit stuff every night,” said pitching coach Roger McDowell. Was McDowell deflated that Smoltz came so close? “It would have been a great thing for him. [A no-hitter] is something that doesn’t come along very often.”
Will had never seen a no-hitter, he said, and his girlfriend, Samantha Newman, hadn’t even seen a big-league game in person before Friday night. The two will try again to witness something extraordinary tonight.
“We’ll be here [for Saturday’s game],” Will said. “I think Chuck James is pitching then.”
Permalink | Comments (20) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Mark Bradley
