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Sunday, October 7, 2007
Losing trust, Crumpler sees phase-out of veterans
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Nashville — They changed the quarterback and lost anyway. They changed the quarterback, had an opponent try to hand them two scoring drives in the final minutes and still did a faceplant.
They changed the quarterback and the problems didn’t go away. The problems turned into Mount Vesuvius. If you believed a locker room meltdown might come late in a losing season, you were wrong. The Falcons didn’t even make it to the bye week.
“I’ve never been in a game where we had that many opportunities — and a miracle, with a [botched] punt — and we still couldn’t score,” tight end Alge Crumpler said. “When we cross the 50, we’re the worst offense in the National Football League.
“We’re trying to trust them. They keep telling us, ‘Trust us, trust us.’ We’ve been trying to trust them the whole time.”
The “we” would be the players. The “they” would be the coaches.
This is Week 5. When you’re hearing “we” and “they” on the same team, it’s not a good sign. More likely, it’s just over.
Crumpler, one of the team’s leaders, was among several players to vent after Sunday’s 20-13 loss to Tennessee. He effectively questioned Bobby Petrino’s play-calling. He suggested an “agenda” that is minimizing the roles of veterans in the offense, while increasing the roles of younger players to prepare them for the future.
Do you still believe that Byron Leftwich replacing Joey Harrington is going to change much?
“If [the defense is playing] a cover-two and we’ve got Michael Jenkins running down the middle of the field, or myself running down the middle of the field, why aren’t we getting opportunities to make plays?” Crumpler said. “That’s what I’ve been doing my whole career. But I haven’t caught the ball one time since this regime has been here, in practice or anything. So I’m scratching my head. I’m trusting, OK? I’m trusting. But 1-4 makes you think about a lot of things.”
First, Petrino lost DeAngelo Hall. Now he’s lost the room.
Tennessee tried to hand the Falcons this game. They committed five turnovers. Four of the Falcons’ last five possessions started at the Titans’ 42, 45, 21 and 19. The results: interception, missed field goal, interception, fourth-down sack.
Vince Young threw an interception at the Titans’ 21 with 4:15 left. Then Leftwich threw one back. Punter Craig Hentrich was buried by Demorrio Williams at the 21 with 2:24 remaining. An 18-yard run by Warrick Dunn moved the ball to the 1.
Then Petrino, the offensive wizard, got too cute. He had Leftwich attempt to execute a pitch to the right to Dunn. Don’t offensive wizards like to ram the ball up the middle — with four tries to get one yard?
Petrino defended the call, saying, “We had it blocked.”
Didn’t matter. The Titans’ Albert Haynesworth broke through to grab Leftwich, altering the pitch. Dunn never really got it, then fell on the fumble at the 9. The possession ended with a sack at the 12.
“Johnny Stockton,” Crumpler said when asked about the missed opportunities. “Great passer, great assist man. But we were missing layups.”
And then he blew.
“It’s weird. This is a young guys’ game we’re playing now. It’s been taken out of our hands. … It’s just been taken out of the veterans’ hands. When we get into situations, we’re not being given opportunities.”
Why? “Figure it out.”
Asked again if his role in the offense needs to be bigger, Crumpler responded: “Offense? There’s never been a time I’ve asked for the football since I’ve been in this organization.”
But?
“It just seems like the agenda that we have offensively is preparing the guys that we have in this locker room for the future. I’m not saying the coach isn’t trying to win the game. But there just seems to be too much going on.”
The offense is a mess, with any quarterback. Until the last five minutes of the first half, the Falcons’ only first down was the result of a successful fake punt.
Fullback Ovie Mughelli, signed as a free agent but seldom utilized, called this “a bad dream.”
Warrick Dunn defended Harrington, saying he has been hurt by poor pass protection. He also put the onus on the offensive line for the team’s poor running game, adding the running game’s failures “is not because Warrick Dunn is too old.”
Harrington got it right when he said, “There’s no individual story here.” One quarterback replacing another can’t fix everything. And the mountain just blew.
Permalink | Comments (533) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz
Gordon’s smart all the time
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Talladega, Ala. — Maybe you wonder why some folks hate Jeff Gordon. Besides the part about him being ridiculously rich and oppressively handsome — he used to be married to Miss Winston, now he’s wed to a former model — there’s also this: He’s a great driver in the way too many of his NASCAR brethren aren’t. He’s bold when he has to be, and he’s smart all the time.
Jeff Gordon led only the last of the 188 laps run here Sunday. He won a rather important race without racing until the very end. He bided his time until there was no time left to bide, and then he made one of those Gordon-type moves — a hard jerk to the right coming off the final turn — and just like that the UAW-Ford 500 had an improbable winner and the Chase for the Nextel Cup had a new leader.
“It was the hardest race I’ve ever had to be in,” Gordon said. “We were just running half-throttle at the back.” He laughed. “We were getting amazing fuel mileage.” And then, a bit later: “I’ve never yawned in a race car, but I yawned today.”
To recap: Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, his Hendrick Motortsports teammate and the Chase leader until lap No. 188, allowed an uncertain day to play itself out. This was the first restrictor-plate race staged with the newfangled Car of Tomorrow, and nobody knew what havoc the collision of the much-disliked vehicle and the much-dreaded track would spawn. (Sure enough, an 11-car pileup on the 146th lap culled the field.) Sometimes, see, discretion is the better part of racin’.
“It wasn’t fun,” Gordon said of his strategy. “It went beyond patience. … But I knew it was the smart thing to do.”
And who was near the front, making his usual grandstand charge? Dale Earnhardt Jr., who hasn’t won a race this year and won’t win another until he joins Gordon and Johnson in the Hendrick stable next year. Earnhardt is, as you doubtless know, the people’s choice everywhere, but at this track he’s as popular as Big Papi in Boston. You don’t have to watch a Talladega race to know when Junior has taken the lead: You only have to listen to the crowd.
But Earnhardt was gone 52 laps from the finish, having blown yet another engine. “I love leading laps [he led 31, or 30 more than Gordon],” Earnhardt told reporters, “and [his fans] like that, too. I’d look in the stands as I’d go by and they’d be cheering. I get excited about that. I just try to keep it up front as much as I can because that’s what they come to see — at least my fans do.”
Gordon, by way of pointed contrast, is more interested in winning championships. (He has four, or four more than Earnhardt Jr.) He’s essentially the anti-Junior, and the response to his victories at Earnhardt’s “home” track is always illuminating. The Junior legions get really excited when their man makes his bid, and then they throw beer cans and make obscene gestures toward Gordon when he wins.
It happened here in April, when Gordon won his 77th race to pass Earnhardt’s dad on the all-time victories list. (The Intimidator’s backers couldn’t stand Gordon, either, because he refused to be intimidated.) The signature victory was greeted with a shower of garbage. On Sunday Gordon made his last-lap move and won this meticulously plotted race, and then he made another move: He did the traditional winner’s smoky burnout smack in front of Junior’s enraged fans, and this time only one beer can flew.
“I’m a little disappointed [that there was only one projectile loosed],” Gordon said, kidding. “They might be throwing Mountain Dew [Junior’s new sponsor] next year. … But I’m OK with them throwing things, as long it’s when we’re doing the burnout and we’re winning.”
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: Auto Racing, Mark Bradley
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