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Thursday, January 31, 2008
‘Sharpe’ criticism for Blank
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Phoenix — Courtesy of a blunt tongue that rarely stops flapping, Shannon Sharpe doesn’t have trouble speaking for himself. This time, the future Hall of Fame tight end and NFL commentator for CBS was the strongest voice of many whispering behind the Arizona cacti when the subject was the Falcons and their goofiness of late.
That’s right. Even with the New England Patriots and the New York Giants slated to meet in the Super Bowl on Sunday, the Falcons were discussed often this week among former and present league officials, team executives and players.
They did get a little push from an Atlanta columnist. For instance: What does Sharpe believe omnipresent Falcons owner Arthur Blank must do to keep his team from imploding further?
“Mr. Blank needs to understand that you hired [general manager] Tom Dimitroff and [head coach] Mike Smith to do a job. Let them do their job,” said Sharpe, who grew up in Glennville and resides in Buckhead. “Mr. Blank, you don’t need to be the face of the Falcons, because everybody knows you own the Falcons. We don’t need to see your face to confirm that.
“I know who owns the Steelers. I don’t see Dan Rooney. I know who owns the Giants. I don’t need to see his face. I know who owns the Patriots. We don’t need to see you to confirm how much money and how much authority you have.”
Others concurred in what has been the center of the NFL’s universe with the Super Bowl around. This also has become the definitive place to get a sense of what the Falcons’ peers think of a franchise that has witnessed everything during the past few months from its franchise quarterback sitting in prison to its owner hiring a general manager after a Webcam interview.
Those peers generally responded to it all with a head shake, a chuckle of disbelief and something unprintable for a family newspaper.
That was off the record.
As for on the record, you had Richard Seymour, a former UGA star defensive lineman who plays for the Patriots. “It’s just at this point where the Falcons are looking for some leadership to head in the right direction,” Seymour said. “We, as players in the league, feel like it’s a team that a lot of guys would love to play for. It’s a city that a lot of guys would love to be in, so the Falcons have a lot in their favor.”
Well, not a lot. Did we tell you coach Bobby Petrino bolted for Arkansas before the end of his first Falcons season and left $2.4 million per year on the table?
Sharpe remembered. Not only that, he remembered something else. “Jim Mora [who preceded Petrino] has a job with the Falcons, and then all of a sudden, he’s auditioning for another job [the University of Washington through a radio interview] while on the job,” Sharpe said. “Something is going on. If it doesn’t make dollars, then it doesn’t make sense. Then for a guy like Bobby Petrino to follow Jim Mora and to sacrifice all that money for a college job in a middle of a season, you know something seriously is going on.
“Then you look at Bill Parcells. A couple of weeks earlier, he told Miami he wasn’t interested. Then he goes to Arthur Blank, and Parcells gets [ESPN] to leak the story that he was about to take the job in Atlanta, and then all of a sudden, he’s getting more money to take the Miami job he didn’t want two weeks earlier. Yeah, something is going on with the [running] of the Falcons.”
The question is, can that “something” get fixed before the Falcons drop off the face of the earth? Yes, said an accomplished NFL executive from the past and another from the present.
The past guy was Gil Brandt, the personnel director who contributed to transforming the Dallas Cowboys into America’s team from the 1960s through much of the 1980s. Unlike Blank, Clint Murchison, the owner of those Cowboys, was invisible, while Brandt joined Tex Schramm and Tom Landry in the spotlight. Said Brandt, “It’s like 20 years ago, you had a general practitioner. He took your tonsils out and did all of these things. Today, you open up a telephone directory, and there’s a hand surgeon. So what [Blank] has to do is draw on these people that he has there. If he does that, I think they’ll present him with some very good ideas, because he desperately wants to win.”
The present guy was Scott Pioli, the player-personnel director of a Patriots team that has appeared in four Super Bowls in seven years. He was Dimitroff’s boss before the former Patriots director of college scouting left for the Falcons.
Said Pioli, “Sometimes as an outsider, when it comes to perception and reality, you don’t know. But here’s what I do know: If Thomas wasn’t comfortable with the way he thought the situation was going to be [with the Falcons], he wouldn’t have accepted the position. Thomas was in a situation where he didn’t have to run to whatever job was offered. What he told me is that he had great confidence that he and Mr. Blank would have a good working relationship, and that he also was comfortable with how it was going to be.”
Sounds like Mora.
And Petrino.
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