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Thursday, October 18, 2007
Saints should bury Falcons
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
In what must be pure coincidence, given the timing of this week’s Embalming Bowl between the 1-5 Falcons and the 1-4 Saints, officials from the University of Illinois anthropology department said they are missing several body parts.
Of particular concern is the disappearance of a skull, prompting Steve Leigh, the head of the department, to comment: “It is very difficult to get such materials. If people insist on stealing them, we will run out.”
The Falcons wouldn’t offer any explanation Thursday, but acknowledged they are suddenly bumping up against the salary cap and issued a new quarterback depth chart that reads: Byron Leftwich-Joey Harrington-Abby Normal, according to the team’s chief of scouting, Igor “What Hump?” McKay.
Leftwich will make his first start for the Falcons on Sunday in New Orleans. For his protection, he wasn’t introduced to his offensive line, nor was he granted visitation rights to see Harrington, who has been sacked 21 times in the seven minutes that the Falcons’ offense has actually held the ball this season.
The Saints believe they have finally turned a corner after starting the year with four losses.
I’m not sure what the Falcons believe. But coach Bobby Petrino said Wednesday he is confident Leftwich is the answer. He then said he would meet the team in New Orleans and left to begin looking at property in Baton Rouge.
The Saints are favored by nine points.
Or is that working organs?
The long walk through the graveyard continues. The nine is covered. Falcons drilled.
Keggers
• Army at Georgia Tech: In the past four weeks, Tech has lost to Virginia, beaten Clemson, lost to Maryland and won at Miami. And lineman Darryl Richard said with a straight face: “I think we are definitely becoming more consistent.” All-righty then. Should be an easy win this week. But do “Tech” and “Should” ever intersect? Jackets win. But not by 24.
• Tennessee at Alabama: I’m sure when Alabama gave Nick Saban $4 million a year and a house on one of them newfangled paved roads, the last thing it expected was a three-point escape at Mississippi. On a related note, the replay official who overturned that long Rebels’ pass play last week now goes by “Governor.” Tide wins a pick ‘em.
• Canes and (Un)Ables: Miami-Florida State used to decide national championships. Now it decides who goes to Boise. Next, on ESPN, The Ocho: Noles win. But take the Windbags and 5 1/2.
• Upside Bowl: Kentucky is coming off a win over LSU, which beat Florida, which dumped Tennessee, which lost to Cal, which lost to Oregon State, which lost to Cincinnati, which nobody even realized had a football team, which leads me back to Kentucky. So take that Bear Bryant! Now who’s got the last laugh! Meanwhile, back on earth: Gators cover 6 1/2.
• Auburn at LSU: Auburn’s Josh Thompson said this week of the Baton Rouge experience: “People are mooning you, people are throwing water at you, throwing bottles at you, beating on the buses.” And that’s in the nice restaurants. So what kind of mood do you think they’re in after losing to Kentucky? The 10 1/2 is so covered.
• Vanderbilt at South Carolina: Steve Spurrier was wondering how he could win recruiting battles with Mark Richt. Turns out all he has to do is compare tapes from the Vandy games. Roosters win (but take the Commodores and 13).
NFL Smallpack
• Godzilla at Miami: New England has won games by 24, 24, 31, 21, 17 and 20. Tom Brady has a touchdown-to-interception ratio of 21-to-2, which, I imagine, is slightly better than his ratio in sexual roulette. So how do you feel about giving up 16 1/2 in a road game? Yeah. Thought so. Pats cover.
• Ravens at Bills: Buffalo’s defense is allowing 421.4 yards per game, which ranks behind the Bengals, the Falcons and France. Ravens cover 3.
• Colts at Jaguars: The last time these teams met, Jacksonville ran for 375 yards and won 44-17, which clearly devastated Peyton Manning because the Colts are 11-1 since, including a Super Bowl. Some are projecting upset. Let me know when you figure out why. Indy covers a skinny 3.
TREADING WATER
• Last week: 5-4 straight up; 3-6 against the line.
• (Pro/Re) gress report: 43-29 straight up; 31-37-4 against the line.
• Weekend Predictions Book Club: Buy any three selections and win a copy of “Hawks’ Secrets to Being Atlanta’s Best Sports Hope.” Chapter 1: “Don’t play a game. The end.”
Permalink | Comments (45) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz, Tech / ACC, UGA / SEC
Damage caused by Vick sets team back for years
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Flowery Branch — We’re only beginning to see the scope of the damage. Six games into their first post-Vick season, the Falcons have turned to a quarterback who wasn’t on their (or anybody’s) roster 32 days ago. They’re trying anything and everything, and they’re learning that nothing much works.
The best estimates as to how far Michael Vick set back this franchise start at three years — mercifully, this counts as one — and ratchet upward. This season is gone, and next year shouldn’t be much better. (Even if the Falcons draft Andre’ Woodson or Matt Ryan, could you risk ruining a rookie behind this offensive line?) That gets us to 2009, by which time the team might be ready to give the young quarterback a chance, but how many young quarterbacks effect an immediate upgrade?
And then it’s 2010 and Vick will probably be playing again — for some other team, we should stipulate — and the one he destroyed figures to be in rebuilding mode still. That’s the bill for believing in a man who wasn’t what he seemed. That’s a grim tale, and it doesn’t stand to get any brighter anytime soon.
Byron Leftwich is the new quarterback, tapped to replace the uninspiring Joey Harrington. The best that can be said of Leftwich is that he might be the difference between 2-14 and 4-12. He’s not the long-term answer. (If he were, he’d still be a Jaguar.) He’s just another guy trying to man the position left vacant by Vick, another guy who’ll remind us that, wishful thoughts to the contrary, this franchise really did revolve around the man who’s gone.
The Falcons have won 43 games (counting playoffs) over the last five-plus seasons. Vick was the quarterback in 39 of those. The combined record of non-Vick starting quarterbacks since 2001 is 4-17. You can say he wasn’t a classic passer and you’d be correct, and you can say he wasn’t a good person and you’ll have a signed felony plea to support your claim, but you cannot make the argument that he didn’t offer the Falcons their best shot at winning.
He broke his leg in the 2003 preseason and the Falcons made brave noises about not being a one-man team. Then they went out and disproved the point. (That team finished 5-11, three of the victories coming after Vick returned.) This bunch talked the same talk in camp, but six games have been played and five have been lost and reality has arrived like a falling anvil.
Vick gave the Falcons a fighting chance every week. Without him, they’re hoping against hope. Their quarterbacks have been sacked 22 times in six weeks. How many negative plays might Vick have turned into 15-yard gains? How many drives could he have sustained via singular improvisation? How good would he have been under Bobby Petrino?
Truth to tell, Harrington wasn’t as bad as had been feared. He threw only four interceptions and completed 63.1 percent of his passes. He just couldn’t get his team into the end zone. The plan now is for Leftwich to throw deeper balls. “That’s what he does best,” Petrino said Thursday, and then he offered this chilling caveat: “We have to make sure of our protection. That’s the key to throwing deep.”
This isn’t to say the Leftwich switch is a mistake. When you’re 1-5 and can’t score, there’s no use fighting the obvious. Harrington isn’t a playmaker. Leftwich is more of one, and he’s also a more upbeat personality, which can’t hurt in this season of gloom. “I think the guys know my résumé,” Leftwich said. “I don’t know what it was like before I got here, but there’s a lot of energy in this room.”
We have, alas, heard that before. We’ll hear it again, next year and the next, and with each forlorn hope we’ll come closer to grasping the full depth of this despair. Michael Vick has hurt the Falcons more than one player has hurt any franchise in any sport, and it’s a hurt that will keep on hurting.
Permalink | Comments (149) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Mark Bradley
Hartley lost team, job last spring
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Bob Hartley’s failure wasn’t a six-game blip. It dated back to last season, which was never all it should have been. Yes, the Thrashers made the playoffs for the first time, but in what was billed as their breakthrough season they won only two more games than they had in 2005-2006, when they were unbelievably unlucky to have been undone by mass injuries to their goalies.
Even with their rolling start last season — they were 12-3-3 on Nov. 8, 2006 — the Thrashers might well have missed the playoffs if not for Don Waddell’s deadline deals for Keith Tkachuk and Alexei Zhitnik. The Thrashers wound up scoring only one more goal than they yielded and actually won one fewer game than second-place Tampa Bay, and that’s how close the breakthrough came to being a total bust.
Hartley is a hard nose. He can be tough on rookies and, according to Waddell, he wasn’t “getting the most … out of our veterans.” (Who’s that leave as his core audience? Second-year men?) Hartley had been here since January 2003. Even with one season lost to the lockout, that remains a long time without much to show for it. (Yes, we can say the same of Waddell, but that’s a separate issue.) And Hartley’s conduct during the brief series against the Rangers seemed awfully panicky for a man who has won a Stanley Cup.
In hindsight, Hartley lost more last spring than a four-game series. He lost his team. When you come off an advertised breakthrough by taking zero points from your first six games and by getting outscored 27-9 to boot, there’s more wrong than a shaky defense pairing. There’s a blatant disconnect between coach and player. Hockey, as we know, is a sport where sheer effort carries disproportionate weight, and you don’t get outscored by an average of three goals by giving maximum effort.
This isn’t to say Waddell has been perfect, or even pretty good. He hasn’t found a first-rate defenseman in nine years of trying, and his prized draftees — Ilya Kovalchuk and Kari Lehtonen — look less special the older they get. But firing the GM would have had no immediate effect on the team itself, and this franchise can’t afford to spend the next 76 games wallowing in self-pity.
For the sake of those 76 games, a change had to be made. That change had to be the coach.
Permalink | Comments (41) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Quick Hit
Most hopeless Falcons team I’ve seen
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
I’ve been watching the Falcons play football since the first kickoff — which the kicker fanned, by the way. (That should have told us something.) I’ve seen good Falcons, and I’ve seen bad, and the latter has outnumbered the former by a bunch, and some have laid an egg as big as Stone Mountain.
I remember the day Dave Hampton reached 1,000 yards rushing in a season. Then, danged if he didn’t get thrown for a big loss and finish short of 1,000 yards.
I remember the day Claude Humphrey, kingpin of the “Gritz Blitz,” walked in, said he’d had enough and went home to Memphis in the middle of the season.
I remember when Steve Bartkowski “crashed” two weekends in a row, and Leeman Bennett said, “He’ll never take another snap for me.” And he didn’t. Before the day was out, Bennett found himself sandbagged by the two guys he thought were allies and was fired. “I thought we were in this together,” he said, with a sadness in his voice.
Then there was the time Pat Peppler, the general manager, complained about Marion Campbell so much to Rankin Smith that Rankin said, “If you think you can do any better, you take over,” and handed him the key to the executive toilet. Peppler did, and he didn’t, and he was soon gone.
Norm Van Brocklin and some of his disgruntled Falcons were having such a hassle that one day I suggested to Rankin, “Why don’t you tell the Dutchman you’d like to have a private meeting with the team and maybe you can smooth it over.”
Unfortunately, he took my advice — after a few martinis — and almost set off a locker-room free-for-all.
There have been some good times, like the trip to the Super Bowl, but they even found a way to muck that one up. I refer you to Eugene Robinson here. Then the coach who got them there gets fired, and on it goes.
The regime of Arthur Blank was “swooshing” right along, looking slick as a casino boss. The Falcons had even beaten Green Bay at Lambeau Field. Then they had their capital chance at the big banana two years later but lost to the Eagles in Philadelphia, and it has been downhill ever since.
What I’m getting around to here is, I’ve seen a few good times and a boatload of bad times in the years since the Falcons opened the door for business in 1966. They played nine games before they finally won one. Their drafts were like pitching darts with the lights out. In the early years, one of the younger Smiths had his own personal pick and drafted John Wayne, though it never passed the board. The first year they drafted a sportswriter, who became one only after he’d failed to pass the physical.
Oh, what times they were. The Smiths clung onto their toy longer than the average shelf life under such conditions. With Blank there came fresh hope, and it crested at one time, then hit the chute. However could you have imagined an NFL team being sacked by a quarterback so concerned with fighting dogs that they blocked out his vision of a Super Bowl?
What I’m getting around to is, including all those seasons, all the few high-highs and numerous low-lows, I’ll have to say this is the most hopeless season of the Falcons I can remember. Any game they win the rest of this stretch might come under serious scrutiny. They appear to be headed directly into an imperfect storm. The offensive line can’t block. The defensive backfield can’t break up a pass. The field-goal kicker has heart, but his leg doesn’t know it. The coach has fire in his eyes, but it isn’t spreading. The quarterback, poor fellow, hasn’t been able to get a pass away before the cascade strikes, and if he should, somebody drops it.
This is a disaster developing at a gallop. Is there no way out? Another quarterback is not the answer, unless he’s suicidal. If anybody has a secret answer, it’s time to step forward. But don’t dare be talked into suiting up, unless you have a taste for the ecstasy of defeat.
Permalink | Comments (93) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Furman Bisher
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