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Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Falcons’ McKay suddenly disappears
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
No doubt, Rich McKay has done some nice things for the Falcons. He acquired the potent likes of Michael Boley, Rod Coleman and John Abraham, for instance. He added effective leaders such as Lawyer Milloy and Joe Horn. It’s just that he also botched the team’s kicking situation before each of the past two seasons, formed a dysfunctional offensive line and assembled a flawed group of quarterbacks.
That’s for starters.
Given the Falcons’ ongoing plunge under McKay since they reached the NFC championship game four seasons ago with 20 of those 22 starters coming from McKay’s predecessor, we have questions. We’d like answers from McKay, especially since he is the Falcons’ president and general manager. Instead, we’ve seen the face of King Tut more in recent days than that of McKay, who is theoretically more accessible to the public than a 3,300-year-old mummy.
Theoretically.
Ever since McKay spoke openly and boldly in January about that water-bottle mess at Miami International Airport involving Michael Vick, McKay has become the incredibly vanishing man. Throw in No. 7’s dogfighting issues, the sniping throughout the locker room directed toward the college coach that he hired for the pro game, and a nasty start in the sorry NFC South, and only victories for the Falcons are becoming more invisible than McKay.
So what’s up with this? Can’t tell you, because the supposedly media-savvy NFL executive when he joined the Falcons from Tampa four seasons ago rarely has returned phone calls to reporters for months. When you do see McKay around the Falcons’ practice facility or at the Georgia Dome, don’t blink. He’ll disappear in a flash. If you didn’t know better, you’d get the impression he can’t stand the heat from the inferno around Flowery Branch. It’s an inferno that is torching the Falcons’ chances for decency in the short and long runs. It’s an inferno that he helped spark.
This makes no sense. We’re talking about the Falcons sliding and McKay hiding through it all. He remains so popular in west central Florida that you get the feeling that one of those bridges from Tampa to Pinellas County will bear his name someday. That’s because his father, John McKay, was the Buccaneers’ cherished first coach, and because Rich McKay did the impossible. Under his guidance, the Bucs went from sorry during the 10 years before he became general manager (.270 winning percentage, 10 straight seasons of double-digit losses) to significant during his nine years (nearly a .600 winning percentage, 41 Pro Bowl selections in a six-year stretch and the foundation for a Super Bowl winner).
“I mean, they still talk about Richie around here, and he’s well-liked, and they respect the guy highly as somebody who was a mainstay of their football team,” said Wayne Fontes, the former NFL head coach who lives in the Tampa area. When John McKay left his legendary stint at Southern Cal for the expansion Buccaneers, Fontes was one of McKay’s assistant coaches with the Trojans who came along.
Added Fontes, reflecting on the 48-year-old McKay, “Other than the first five or six years, I’ve known Richie all of his life. As a little kid, he was very competitive, and he was a win-at-all-cost type of young man, and he was really respected at his age by his peers.
And, of course, he grew up, and that’s when he became well-liked here around Tampa with his dad.
“The thing about Rich McKay is that he’s a winner. He’s been a winner all of his life, and remember: All good things take time, which means Atlanta will be fine. In Tampa, people liked him in that building process, because he was very easy to talk to.”
Not in Atlanta. Here’s another difference between the McKay of the Buccaneers and the McKay of the Falcons: No Tony Dungy, the brilliant coach that he hired for the Buccaneers who continues to do great things in Indianapolis. And, no Jerry Angelo or Tim Ruskell. They were McKay’s top assistants in Tampa. Angelo departed to build a Super Bowl team as a general manager in Chicago, and Ruskell departed to build a Super Bowl team as a general manager in Seattle.
That left McKay. Maybe he misses those guys. Wish we could ask him.
Permalink | Comments (53) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
As usual, Curry does credit to task
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
When last I saw Bill Curry on Sunday night, he was on my television screen, broadcasting from Robertson Stadium in Houston. University of Houston was playing SMU, and he was analyzing. He got to bed at 12:30, arose at 3:30 and caught a plane to Atlanta, where at noon he would be the speaker at the weekly Touchdown Club luncheon.
The Touchdown Club is an American original, like a Rockwell painting or the disc jockey. A lot of such organizations have fallen victim to the intrusion of pro football or other community influences. But the Touchdown Club of Atlanta forges on, and it may be the oldest surviving function of its kind. My memory tells me it chugged into action in 1938, but I might be off a year or so. It has remained true down the line, to college and high school football, with hardly a burp in its mission. It turns to the sideline, the broadcast booth and the press box, mainly, for its headliners each week.
This time, it was Curry, and for him, it was like trying to squeeze toothpaste back into the tube. He was tired. It showed on his face, but not in the volume of his message. The gallery at Fox Sports Grill was primed for him, and he delivered. As a kid, Curry told them, he had plans to be a pitcher for the New York Yankees. Football changed all that, and while he was a solid center at Georgia Tech, he was never a headliner. Centers rarely are. NFL teams had 20 draft choices in those times, and when the Green Bay Packers came to No. 20, Vince Lombardi is said to have told his drafting delegate, “Make it something good and funny.”
Or at least that’s what Curry said. He was their No. 20.
“Instead of pitching for the Yankees, I wound up pitching between my legs to Bart Starr and Zeke Bratkowski and Johnny Unitas,” he said.
He put in eight seasons between the Packers and Colts, and added a couple in the twilight of his time in Houston and Los Angeles, and in the course of it, was elected president of the players union, a capacity he did not relish. As a center, he said, “You learn how to snap the ball and be run over slowly.”
He coached, put in some miserable times at the old school (see below), some high times at Alabama — where he was a target of abuse because he wasn’t Bear Bryant — and Kentucky, and there the bus stopped. What coaches with a command of the language can do after that is turn to the broadcast both, with the title of “analyst.” It requires resilience and honorable perspective, for all analysts would rather be coaching, and it isn’t easy to sit high above the roiling action, grit your teeth and not say, “That’s not the way I’d have done it.”
In the midst of those miserable times, he pulled off the upset of the ages. It was a tie. Notre Dame came to Grant Field in 1980 ranked No. 1 in the land and had to kick a field goal in the gloaming to settle for a 3-3 score. Then he won an SEC championship at Alabama, and a Bobby Dodd Coach of the Year award at Kentucky, and there one of his players was shot dead on the porch of the place where the player lived, and I don’t know if it was ever solved, but he gave up coaching not long afterward.
What the Touchdown Club does is bring in such coaches as Paul Johnson, Pat Sullivan, Mark Richt, Chan Gailey and George O’Leary, as in this season, and the members get a closeness to the men they see only on the sideline otherwise. Another feature is the designation of the high school team and lineman and back of the week, and a coach of the week, on this occasion, Tommy Webb. Tommy has coached Fayette County High out of the doldrums up to a glowing level, and plays Starrs Mill on Friday night in what might be loosely designated the “Fayette County Bowl” game.
Not that this is the mission of the speaker — mainly he’s there to be looked at and be funny — but seldom, if ever, will the TD Club have been sent away with a more inspirational message ringing in their ears than Curry’s. All he needs is a team.
Permalink | Comments (31) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Tech / ACC
The Lack of the Irish
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
THE TUESDAY COUNTDOWN…
10: Just one question, in view of the possibility that the Thrashers’ Don Waddell would make his Bobby Cox-like transition down to the bench permanent: Is there a John Schuerholz equivalent in the NHL to replace him as general manager?
9: I’m just waiting for the days when Tom Brady has to avoid a pass rush — as well as Godzilla, a swarm of locusts and some burning bushes, super-imposed by TV techno-geeks — to throw a pass. I mean, I think we’re almost there …
8: It’s bad enough outlets like ESPN skew news coverage to enhance their broadcast properties and artificially inflate ratings. But it’s mind-boggling and nauseating that a network would artificially pump crowd noise into a broadcast feed, as CBS may have done during the Patriots-Colts game Sunday. I mean, isn’t the game big enough? Do you really need to enhance the noise in a sold-out dome stadium?
7: Background: The Patriots complained that the Colts artificially pumped noise into the RCA Dome to make it difficult on their offense. The Colts have since been cleared — it was typical Bill Belichick paranoia. But a skipping sound from tape feedback during the CBS broadcast indicated the network did something to enhance the broadcast for viewers. Networks have admitted this in past, even inserting chirping bird sounds during golf broadcasts. CBS has denied comment beyond the NFL statement, which was that the unusual noise was “tape feedback in the CBS production truck.”
6: You know what would be really cool? If CBS could, like, impose Godzilla or a swarm of locusts on the field! Then Tom Brady would have to fight through the pass rush AND MONSTERS. Of course, he’d still find Randy Moss in the end zone. But think of the ratings!
5: On a related note, I’m working with AJC.com to have a laugh track inserted on blogs that don’t quite work.
4: Never has their been less pressure on a 2-6 NFL head coach. Aside from the Falcons’ personnel problems, Bobby Petrino has nothing to live up to from the previous regime in the second half of the season. Jim Mora went 2-6 (2005) and 2-7 (2006) down the stretch the last two seasons.
3: Nothing against Georgia, which has managed to climb back into the BCS picture. But if the Bulldogs, with losses to South Carolina and Tennessee, and a last-second win over Vanderbilt, is the 10th best team in the country, we might as well be throwing darts in BCS bowl match-ups. One more reason to dump the BCS.
2: Please, no more complaints from Notre Dame/Charlie Weis apologists that, “We just don’t have any players.” Hey, it’s Notre Dame. You’re not giving scholarships to Fred from the bowling alley. You shouldn’t be 1-8. You shouldn’t lose five straight at home. And you certainly shouldn’t lose to Navy for the first time in 44 years. Or is the excuse going to be now that Navy has recruiting advantages?
1: Locally, the biggest ripple effect from the Lack of the Irish: Chan Gailey can’t use that opening win as a reason to keep his job.
Permalink | Comments (41) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
