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Thursday, December 20, 2007
Time to wake up, Mr. Blank
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Proving that Falcons owner Arthur Blank isn’t familiar with Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity, here’s a quick summation:
It’s spending your public time either downplaying or ignoring a slew of things involving franchise quarterback Michael Vick (flipping off the hometown fans, water bottle, Ron Mexico, stolen watch, blunt on Internet), and then saying you’re shocked when he stands before a federal judge in black-and-white prison stripes on charges associated with illegal dogfighting.
It’s hiring college coach Bobby Petrino to run your NFL team, when you know college coaches historically reek in such a role, and when you know Petrino has a habit of lying and leaving. You hire Petrino anyway. Then you say you feel “betrayed” when Petrino becomes Petrino by lying and leaving with three games left in his first season.
It’s trying to hire the notoriously fickle Bill Parcells as your football guru despite everything in his past, ranging from a couple of ugly flipflops with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to his attempt to bolt the New York Giants 20 years ago for the Falcons while still under contract. Not surprisingly, after he reaches “an agreement in principle” with you, he reneges to play footsies with the Miami Dolphins.
It’s those things, combined with Einstein’s actual words on insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. If you don’t wish to believe Einstein, then take it from Ron Wolf, the legendary NFL general manager who built championship teams in Tampa Bay, Oakland and Green Bay.
“Obviously, somebody didn’t do their due diligence on Petrino. I mean, to me, what happened there? Golly days,” said Wolf, 69, chuckling over the phone from his home in Jupiter, Fla. “And how can you have a deal [with Parcells], and then all of a sudden, you don’t have one? Just how do you get to that point? First and foremost, you lose a player the caliber of Michael Vick. When that happens, you’re going to struggle, because everything you do is based upon him. You can say we’re going to do this and do that without him, but you just can’t.”
Exhibit A: The 3-11 Falcons, with horrors throughout their roster. They also have no permanent head coach and an overmatched general manager in Rich McKay, who is on the verge of a demotion.
So, if approached, would Wolf leave six years of retirement to become the miracle worker the Falcons need?
“No,” Wolf said quickly. “It’s very nice that you would ask me that question, but [being a GM] went past me.” Then Wolf laughed when asked if he still dabbles in consulting with pro teams, saying, “I’m nothing. I was a consultant with Cleveland for two days, and that was awhile ago.”
That said, Wolf is among the all-time experts on knowing how to blow a breath into a lifeless franchise. In the early 1960s, when the Raiders were even worse than they are now, he joined Al Davis in building Oakland teams that would win three world championships. In the 1990s, Wolf resurrected Green Bay’s glory days after the Packers managed just four winning seasons during their previous 24 years. He traded for a guy named Brett Favre from the Falcons, signed free agent Reggie White and went to consecutive Super Bowls.
In between Oakland and Green Bay, there was Tampa Bay, where Wolf was the vice president of football operations during the Buccaneers’ infant years. “People tell me how bad they’ve got it, but no one can top what I went through,” said Wolf, recalling a 2-26 stretch for his Buccaneers during the late 1970s. “It got done. In four years, that team was playing as an expansion team in the NFC championship game.”
Which means the expansion-team-like Falcons need to do what?
“I wish I had some form of wisdom that I could impart with you, but you don’t learn a darn thing in those situations,” Wolf said. “I mean, when you’re getting your guts kicked out every day, there is no enjoyment. But eventually, the worm turns.”
Well, if you don’t keep turning over the same worm.
Permalink | Comments (48) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Of odd men out, McKay’s situation oddest by far
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
The weirdest thing that happened Wednesday wasn’t that Bill Parcells changed his mind and made a team look foolish — he has done that before, several times — but that the Falcons chose to reveal Rich McKay’s impending demotion in such an offhand way. Here was the next-to-last sentence of Arthur Blank’s statement: “Rich McKay remains president of the club and will retain general manager responsibilities until a new GM is hired.”
Think about that: The No. 2 man in an organization is about to become something less, and it’s a footnote? How far and how fast has McKay fallen if he doesn’t even warrant his own press release, to say nothing of a full-blown news conference?
It took Blank almost two calendar years after buying the team to hire a GM, and when he did the move was hailed as a coup. McKay had helped build a Super Bowl champion in Tampa Bay, and now he was coming to an organization that had never known consecutive winning seasons. And for the first 13 months, everything was bliss. McKay found Jim Mora and Blank hired him as coach and the Falcons played for the NFC title in January 2005.
This was the hierarchy then: Blank, McKay, Mora, Michael Vick. Of the four, only Blank remains in place: Vick’s in jail, Mora’s in Seattle, McKay’s in flux. A franchise that seemed built to last has fallen to pieces, and we’re left to wonder the last time any of McKay’s decisions truly panned out? Signing Rod Coleman in 2004? Drafting DeAngelo Hall the same year?
(No, wait. Here it is: Picking Michael Boley in Round 5 of the 2005 draft.)
You could tell something was up when Blank spoke to reporters before the Saints game 10 days ago and referred to Bobby Petrino as “the CEO of our football team,” failing conspicuously to mention McKay. On Wednesday it became official, albeit in a backhanded way: McKay is out as a power broker, and now the Falcons are looking to fill two jobs, not just Petrino’s.
Blank is on his third coaching search and now his second GM hunt in four years. The preferred procedure would be to hire the general manager first and let him find the coach. (Given McKay’s history with Mora and Petrino, that seems a sound notion.) But making two high-profile hires in tandem will take a while, and Parcells has already done his part to gum up the works.
Will anything ever again go right for this star-crossed franchise?
Permalink | Comments (200) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Quick Hit
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