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Thursday, February 14, 2008
No one is safe in Falcons’ rebuilding project
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
By the time this is over, when the locker room in Flowery Branch looks like Main St. in Tombstone, there are going to be players and agents who will say that Thomas Dimitroff has blood on his hands.
Don’t listen.
A team falls apart. A franchise crumbles with it. The win column shrinks from 11 to 8 to 7 to 4. Home games slide so far off the radar that the marketing department can’t even fabricate numbers about a season-ticket waiting list any more.
If there is any absolute about the state of the Falcons these days, it’s this: Nobody is indispensable. Some teams have a nucleus to build around. The Falcons barely have an embryo. So if you see suspicious looking wires running from the locker room to Dimitroff’s office, and the general manager pushes down on the plunger as early as today, don’t feel the need to cover your eyes.
You’ve already seen the worst.
You’ve seen the games.
Some general managers have options when they start a rebuilding project. But when you’re looking at a condemned city block, it doesn’t make sense to level every second building. Dimitroff is about to pick the only real option he has: Just level everything and start over.
Don’t think of the Falcons losing so many “good guys.” Think of it as a necessary turning of the page. Arthur Blank, by all appearances, has taken a step back. Dimitroff has assumed construction duties from Rich McKay. Mike Smith is the new coach, replacing some passing apparition from the nether world.
A new structure and a new plan require new heartbeats. Some players will keep their jobs, either because they’re actually pretty good or at least have the potential to be: Michael Boley, Roddy White, John Abraham and Jerious Norwood among them. But most will fall into one of two categories: 1) Bad; 2) Average or below, and possibly not worth what ever they’re being paid. The number of players Dimitroff and Smith keep from the second category depends largely on the draft and what bargains they can find among street free agents
The endangered list reads like the jersey rack at a fans-wear store: Dunn, Brooking, Milloy, Crumpler, Coleman. You know them, you love them, but trust me — you can live without them. If you start to feel bad when the plunger is pushed, just think about the 24-3 loss at Minnesota that opened the season, or the 34-point loss at Tampa Bay, or the 20-point home loss to New Orleans. Think of the second-half collapses that buried playoff hopes in 2005 and 2006.
Yes, there were significant issues: The dog-fighting quarterback. The draft busts. The injuries. An increasingly lax attitude under Jim Mora. Discontentment and disorganization under Bobby Petrino. But when there are so many fizzles and so few victories, it becomes clear that the team lacks more than just talent. It lacks bonding agents. In short, none of the veterans so often cast as leaders were able to lead this team to much.
The Falcons won four games with them. They can win four games without them.
Dimitroff will have nine picks in seven rounds this draft, including four among the first some-100 players taken (pending compensatory picks). They could have a shot at either Arkansas running back Darren McFadden or LSU defensive tackle Glenn Dorsey, or both. Either would be a rarity — a building block.
There is a decision to make on cornerback DeAngelo Hall, who, for all the baggage, probably is the team’s best player. Tight end Crumpler would be the best talent on the offensive side of the ball if he weren’t injured so often. The question is whether it’s worth the risk releasing the tight end, only to suddenly have his knees not creak on another team’s roster.
But beyond a select few, most of these cuts won’t be difficult. Sentimentality became a non-factor a long time ago. Cover your ears, but not your eyes.
Permalink | Comments (155) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz
Some fans dishonor Dooley with honor
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Even when Georgia tries to do right by Vince Dooley, someone will insist it’s wrong. It has been this way since 2003, when Michael Adams erred in forcing Dooley out, and it is, regrettably, that way still.
Dooley’s many friends and admirers did him a disservice in that supercharged summer of ‘03, when they overplayed their hand to the extent that the man himself had to ask them to stand down. (It was at the Bulldog Club of Atlanta’s meeting that year that Mark Richt, who had just orchestrated Georgia’s first SEC football championship in two decades, wasn’t given the privilege of speaking last. That went to Dooley, lending the night the feel of a political rally.)
By now, we know where the Dooley zealots stand: They love him and hate Adams. They’re entitled to those feelings, but they help nothing by seeking to create a “cause” where none exists. The school has moved to build a garden — Dooley’s a big gardener, as we know — featuring a massive statue of the coach, and also to rename the part of campus where most of Georgia’s sports facilities are housed the Vince Dooley Athletic Complex. A nice gesture, right?
Not enough, two of Dooley’s former players told the AJC’s Chip Towers. Too little too late, said Buck Belue, and in the wrong place to boot. And what, Jeff Harper wanted to know, about renaming the stadium for Dooley?
I haven’t been the biggest fan of Adams, but at such moments I have some sympathy for the president (who can be both ham-handed and imperious). His fight with Dooley damaged him beyond repair — he was booed heavily during halftime at the Sugar Bowl — and nothing he does now will ever placate the Vinceniks.
By reacting so adversely to what should be a warm fuzzy moment, Dooley’s advocates have all but guaranteed that there’ll be no edifice-renaming — whether it’s Sanford-Dooley Stadium or Dooley Field at Sanford Stadium — until Adams is gone. The president, see, retains a considerable amount of pride.
I’m on record as saying the big hedge-holder should eventually become Sanford-Dooley Stadium, but I cringe every time his forces conjure up some fit of pique. Dooley was a great coach and a splendid AD, and he remains a prince of a guy. That said, a man of such grace would be the first to remind folks that it’s unseemly to look askance at any honor.
The best course is always to smile and say thanks, which is exactly what Vince Dooley did. “For me personally,” he told Towers, “I’m just appreciative and really humbled by the whole thing.”
Be magnanimous in any victory, however small, and maybe the next president will see fit to do something bigger.
Permalink | Comments (147) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Thrashers / NHL
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