This blog has moved! Yes, already!
As of Thursday, Feb. 12, this little blog has relocated to a new home on AJC.com. It’s the same newspaper, the same Web site and the same writer (feel free to groan) — there’s just a new URL.
New features: Bigger type, more graphics, comments that load 10 times faster and a larger and more recent photo that makes me look pretty doggone old. I think you’ll like it (the blog, not the photo). But I am, as we know too well, often wrong.
Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2008 > November
November 2008
Bradley’s Buzz: Dress this in white and gold!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This just in — Tech beats Georgia
If you’re a Tech fan, you can’t read enough about what transpired Saturday. (If you’re a Georgia fan, you’ve already read too much. So feel free to skip to the next Buzz topic. You might like that one better.)
So, just for the enjoyment of all Jacket backers, here’s David Paschall’s game story from the Chattanooga Times Free Press. And here’s Gennaro Filice of SI.com singing the praises of Paul Johnson.
And here, for the benefit of those who live in the Atlanta area, is a byline you probably don’t see very much — Paul Newberry of the Associated Press. As the lead sports writer for the Atlanta AP bureau, Paul covers the same events the AJC covers, which means we almost never run his stories because we run our own. But he’s a tremendous writer — in my view, the best AP writer in the country — and here’s his gamer from Tech-Georgia.
And here, for no real reason other than it gives me a chance to say thanks to Tech’s Roddy Jones, is a roundup from Sporting News Today that features a big picture of Roddy Jones. Back in August, Mr. Jones was kind enough to offer me a tutorial on Tech’s new offense, and if he’d done the same for Willie Martinez the outcome might have been different. Speaking of whom …
Anyone need a defensive coordinator?
There’s a good one available. John Chavis, long of Tennessee, is now out of work, as Mike Strange of the Knoxville News-Sentinel noted before the Vols beat Kentucky. Earlier in the season, a still-bitter Johnny Majors had told Mark Wiedmer of the Chattanooga Times Free Press that Chavis had saved Phillip Fulmer’s job for 10 years.
Now I know Mark Richt has said he’s not looking for scapegoats and he isn’t anticipating staff changes, but if I were an SEC coach looking to shore up my defense, I wouldn’t look any further than Chavis. Again, that’s just me.
No. 1 versus No. 2 in the A-T-L
That will happen Saturday at the Georgia Dome, and frequent Buzz contributor Greg Doyel wrote on CBSsports.com that the No. 1 team — that’d be Alabama — shouldn’t bother to show up. (My guess is that Bama will. My guess is that it will even win the game.)
Whatever happens, we can all be thankful that the SEC championship participants weren’t chosen by computer. Here’s Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports railing about the latest injustice in college football, which is always music to these ears.
Speaking of Michael Vick …
Which we actually weren’t, but what the heck. Here’s former colleague Mike Tierney writing in the New York Times about Matt Ryan winning over Vick fans. And here, just because good ol’ Greg makes this Buzz job entirely easy, is the aforementioned Mr. Doyel averring that he’ll never forgive Vick.
Keeping Mike Bibby
That’s what Marc Stein of ESPN.com believes the Hawks will do, despite speculation that the point guard would be traded come February. Me, I see two key reasons Bibby will be here through season’s end: The Hawks are off to a good start and can’t in good conscience dump salary when they’re making a playoff run, and Mike Woodson doesn’t yet trust Acie Law IV to run the team.
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Georgia’s loss falls on coaching
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Athens — From No. 1 in these United States to No. 2 in this state: That’s how complete Georgia’s failure was. Yeah, these Bulldogs won nine games, but who among us will recall those? Instead we’ll remember:
The first-half no-show against Alabama. The second-half swoon in Jacksonville. And now a third-quarter collapse against the school they’d owned since Mark Richt moved north from Tallahassee.
When the going got tough, the 2008 Bulldogs didn’t just flinch — they fainted dead away. On Saturday they turned a 16-point halftime lead into a seven-point deficit is less time than it takes to say, “Willie Martinez, your realtor is on Line 1.”
Afterward Martinez, the defensive coordinator, would point with pride to the three-and-outs his unit managed in the first half — the total was two, plus one four-and-out — but the trouble after halftime wasn’t so much keeping Tech off the field as barring it from the end zone. Twice the Jackets scored on one-play “drives,” and suddenly the favored team was so addled Richt had to gather his players on the sideline to remind them there was still football to be played.
But there really wasn’t. Tech had hit its domineering big brother between the eyes, and Georgia reeled the way it had reeled twice already this underachieving autumn. Forget the final score: All you need to know is that the Bulldogs, playing between their hallowed hedges, never had the ball and the chance to nose ahead over the final 16 minutes.
“We missed tackles,” said Martinez, against whose defense opponents managed 40-plus points three times (and 38 points in two other games). “There were guys there to make the plays.”
Said Rennie Curran, the linebacker: “We were well-coached.”
Said Josh Nesbitt, the Tech quarterback: “They had no idea what we were going to do.”
Georgia yielded 45 points — OK, so there was a defensive touchdown thrown in — and 428 yards against a Tech team that completed one pass. The Bulldogs weren’t disciplined enough to defend the option for more than two quarters, and why at this late date should a lack of discipline surprise us?
Working after a full season of practice, Georgia finished as it had begun — by being flagged for seven penalties. Twice its placekicker couldn’t keep the ball in bounds, and setting up a trailing team at its 40 coming off halftime is just asking for that team to do what the Jackets did to Georgia.
A squandered season? “Definitely not,” said both Curran and Knowshon Moreno, but how else can we characterize it? Back in August, was anybody saying, “My dream is to be champion of the Capital One Bowl”?
Said cornerback Asher Allen: “I don’t think we met our expectations.”
Said Richt: “You can’t control if you play for the national championship, but you can control if you win your division and conference … This was not a season where we reached our specific goals.”
This was the first abject failure in eight seasons under Richt — even his 2006 team won its final three games — and this looked to be his most talented squad. Speaking of Martinez, Richt said: “When things don’t go exactly the way you want, people try to find someone to blame. And I’m not going to do that.”
But Georgia was rarely (and then only briefly) the Georgia we expected to see this season. Perhaps it has gotten too easy to play for Richt. Perhaps it has become too easy to work under him. For the Bulldogs to close the gap on Tech — after seven seasons, saying such a thing sounds strange — this winter, it would behoove them to get tougher.
This team didn’t fail because it lacked talent. It failed because it never developed an edge. And that’s a failure of coaching.
Permalink | Comments (675) | Post your comment | Categories: Tech/ACC, UGA/SEC
Field Guide for Tech, UGA fans
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’m asking: What would Thanksgiving be without the annual Field Guide to Tech fans and Georgia fans to make each side fling a gravy boat in anger? Less fun, I’d submit, and not nearly as messy. Napkins at the ready, here we go:
• Tech fans believe Jonathan Dwyer will be their version of drought-breaker Theron Sapp. Georgia fans feel like saps for making hotel reservations in Miami.
• Georgia fans giggle over Tech’s conference. Tech fans giggle over Georgia’s curriculum.
• Tech fans wonder where Mark Richt gets his tan. Georgia fans wonder where Paul Johnson gets his gall.
• Georgia fans screamed when Knowshon Moreno jumped over that Chippewa. Tech fans screamed when they heard Florida had scored again. (And again … and again …)
• Tech fans will welcome Urban Meyer’s volleyball-playing daughter to their campus. Georgia fans figure she’ll fit right in.
• Georgia fans built a Web site imploring Moreno and Matthew Stafford to stay. Tech fans are hacking into it as we speak.
• Tech fans are wild about Johnson’s Perfect Option. Georgia fans believe the perfect option would be for Willie Martinez to resign.
• Georgia fans consider Tech’s calculus requirement a bunch of hooey. Tech fans contend they need advanced math to keep track of all the Bulldogs who’ve been arrested.
• Tech fans think it’s hilarious that Georgia gets flagged for so many penalties. Georgia fans think it’s criminal that Rogers Redding, the SEC’s head of officiating, is a Tech grad.
• The Georgia fan’s lowest moment of the season: “Timeout, Florida.” The Tech fan’s lowest moment of the season: Gardner-Webb.
• Tech fans know their A-backs usually go in motion. Georgia fans wonder where their team’s “A” game went.
• Georgia fans were crushed when their latest Blackout flopped. Tech fans see color-coordinated crowds as gauche — even when it’s their school doing it.
• Tech fans can be a little snooty. Georgia fans can be a little obvious.
• Georgia fans always take note of the empty seats in Bobby Dodd Stadium. Tech fans always take note of the empty bottles outside Sanford Stadium.
• Tech fans don’t mind that Johnson’s offense makes him old-school. Georgia fans worry that Richt’s sunglasses make him look too cool.
• Georgia fans don’t know what to do with all the preseason magazines they bought that proclaimed the Bulldogs No. 1. Tech fans would be glad to offer a suggestion.
• Tech fans appreciated Michael Johnson leading cheers via the Bobby Dodd message board. Georgia fans did not appreciate Alabama affixing 31 first-half points to the Sanford scoreboard.
• Georgia fans will arrive early Saturday for the dedication of Vince Dooley’s statue. Tech fan Taz Anderson is ready to erect a downtown tower honoring Dan Radakovich, the man who canned Chan Gailey.
• Item of clothing no Tech fan would ever wear: A Reggie Ball jersey. Item of clothing no Georgia fan would ever wear: Jean shorts.
• Georgia fans are mad at some AJC guy named Mark Bradley for touting the Bulldogs too highly. Tech fans pretty much stay mad at yours truly, whom they long ago renamed “Bark Madly.” (FYI, Mr. Madly still thinks the Bulldogs will win. If you’re a Georgia fan, you should be very afraid.)
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Bradley’s Buzz: Tech, Georgia trade places
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Same time, next year
Last season Georgia played against Georgia Tech with part of its focus elsewhere. Had Kentucky beaten Tennessee that day, Georgia would have played LSU for the SEC championship. (And Mark Richt believed his team could have beaten the Tigers, who would win the BCS title.) So, in the grand scheme of things, the Vols’ game was huge.
It went to overtime just as Tech and Georgia started their second half at Bobby Dodd Stadium. The next half-hour was a whirlwind, at least in the press box. Guys kept running back and forth to watch Tennessee-Kentucky on TV. (I remember the man from the Athens Banner-Herald running back to his seat and yelling, “Kentucky just missed a field goal!”)
Tennessee won in the fourth OT. In case you’d forgotten, here’s Mike Strange’s game story from the Knoxville News-Sentinel. I mention this because something similar could happen in Athens on Saturday.
Tech and Georgia will kick off at the same time Virginia and Virginia Tech do in Blacksburg. If (Virginia) Tech loses, (Georgia) Tech wins — the Jackets will play for the ACC title in Tampa. And even though (Virginia) Tech is an eight-point favorite, stranger things have … well, you know.
(Georgia) Tech came very close to clinching the Coastal Division last Saturday. As Randy King noted in the Roanoke Times, (Virginia) Tech committed five turnovers on its first six series against a lousy Duke team that was playing without its quarterback. The Hokies’ second (and last) touchdown came off an interception return, and here’s an endorsement from Aaron McFarling of the Roanoke paper for defensive coordinator Bud Foster to be named coach-in-waiting, as is apparently all the rage.
As for (Georgia) Tech, Heather Dinich of ESPN.com wrote that the Jackets can only sit and wait. Although technically Tech won’t be sitting come Saturday. They’ll be playing Georgia. And Dinich, in another posting, surmises that the ACC would be better served by having (Georgia) Tech and Florida State in its title game. And in yet another, she rates (Georgia) Tech the ACC’s best team, with (Virginia) Tech only sixth-best.
Greg Doyel likes something!
The columnist for CBSsports.com is known for being caustic. Here’s his appraisal, written after the South Carolina game, that Georgia was overrated. (Which I guess it was, though I’d note that one of Georgia’s “bad group of receivers” — Doyel’s characterization — has turned out pretty well. He wears No. 8.)
Doyel — whom I like as both a person and a writer — covered the Falcons’ defeat of Carolina and, astonishingly enough, fell in love with the home team. I don’t need to say anything else. Just click and enjoy.
Another writer likes one of our teams!
Writing for SI.com, Ian Thomsen lists five reasons why the Hawks are for real. And here I should stipulate that Thomsen — another good guy and a good writer — was perhaps the only Bostonian (he lives there) who gave the Hawks a chance to win Game 7 at TD Banknorth Garden in May.
It didn’t happen for the Hawks that day, but it’s starting to happen now. And, as you might have discerned, I have a soft spot for writers who agree with me.
More on A-Mo
You’ll recall that Anthony Morrow, now of Golden State but recently of Georgia Tech, set an NBA record for points in a game by an undrafted NBA rookie and did it in his first pro start. Well, Morrow followed that 37-point outburst against the Clippers with a 25-point performance against Portland.
This prompted Greg Beacham of the Associated Press to write a who-is-this-guy feature, and it turns out the guy in question sometimes rides BART — that’s San Francisco’s version of MARTA — to work. And Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury-News called Morrow the best thing to happen to the Warriors in years.
And, proving that even staid publications are suckers for an underdog-makes-good story, Liz Wolgemuth of U.S. News referenced Morrow as an inspiration to us all.
Vince’s vote
According to Sporting News Today, Vince Dooley puts Oklahoma ahead of Texas on his Harris Poll ballot. Me, I’m shocked. This one seems a no-brainer — they played on a neutral field and Texas won by 10 points — and Dooley is a famously smart fellow.
Pat Dye also has Oklahoma ahead of Texas, but that doesn’t surprise me. I’ve never turned to Pat Dye for clear thinking.
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Ryan playing like no rookie before him
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It was a moment in a game that was slipping away, and if this game slips away then maybe this improbably sunny season does, too. Third-and-10 at the Atlanta 45-yard line, Carolina having closed within 17-13, and here the Falcons looked at their rookie quarterback and said, “Make a play.”
The play as designed fizzled on the launch site. The pocket collapsed and the rookie was forced to scramble to his left, away from his first read, and now he had a choice: He could keep running and come up short of the vital first down, or …
Running left, he threw to his right. Michael Jenkins caught the ball and skittered for 19 precious yards, and five snaps later the Falcons had an 11-point lead. And right about here the realization struck:
In Matt Ryan, we are watching the greatest rookie quarterback ever.
Tom Brady threw three passes his rookie season; Brett Favre threw four. Bart Starr and Joe Montana each started one game as rookies. Troy Aikman had to be benched midway through, having gone 0-11 as a starter. Peyton Manning threw 28 interceptions his first season. John Elway completed 47.5 percent of his rookie passes, Terry Bradshaw 38.1 percent.
Joe Namath was 3-5-1 as a lavishly salaried — he was making $400,000 — rookie. Fran Tarkenton was 2-8 as a first-year starter; Johnny Unitas was 4-3, Bob Griese 3-7. Ben Roethlisberger was 13-0 as a rookie quarterback on a loaded Pittsburgh team but didn’t start until Week 3. Sammy Baugh made All-Pro as a rookie but threw six more interceptions than touchdown passes. Bob Waterfield was league MVP as a rookie but started only four games. (Doubtless he got bonus points for being married to Jane Russell.)
Dan Marino is considered the gold standard of rookie quarterbacks, but his first start only came in Week 6, and he joined a team that had reached the Super Bowl the previous season. And now we consider Matt Ryan, who has started from Day 1 for a dilapidated team the Sporting News pegged to finish 1-15, who stands now as the chief reason the refurbished Falcons are 7-4.
He completed 17-of-27 passes for 259 yards against Carolina Sunday. He completed nine of his first 11 passes in staking the Falcons to a 17-0 lead. Said Roddy White, who ran under a 30-yard rainbow off a Ryan pump-and-go on the second snap Sunday: “Sometimes you luck up and get the guy. We got the guy.”
Eleven games in, the Falcons have stopped waiting for Ryan to have a Rookie Moment. “He hasn’t given me a reason to [expect one],” said Mike Mularkey, the offensive coordinator. And then, asked if Ryan has already absorbed the entire playbook and thereby given the Falcons license to call anything at any time, Mularkey said, “Yes.”
We saw it again Sunday, same as we’ve seen it since August. We saw it in the fourth quarter, the Panthers having drawn within a field goal again, the Falcons facing third-and-11 at their 25 with eight minutes left. We saw Ryan drop back and step forward into a big rush and loft the ball down the right side for Douglas to snatch, and the 69-yard gain positioned the Falcons to bang home the clincher.
“I threw it on time, actually a little early,” Ryan said. “He had man coverage, and I was hoping he’d roll his hips back toward me. But he was able to put his foot in the ground and stop [and make the catch]. It was a great play by Harry Douglas, not me.”
That’s typical Ryan. Everybody else makes the plays. He just carries out his assignments. But we on the periphery, having watched all along, know better. We know this rookie quarterback has made a difference in a way no other rookie quarterback — not Marino, not Roethlisberger, not anybody — ever has.
• More coverage: Matt Ryan page
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Richt: Dogs have unfinished business
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Athens — Mark Richt didn’t like the questions. More precisely, he didn’t like their timing. He was in no mood this week to reflect on Georgia’s season because, as he noted a half-dozen times in a half-hour, the season isn’t done.
“I’ve been hearing a lot of talk lately, even on my call-in show, about next year, next year, next year,” Richt said. “I’m like, ‘Hold on, folks. We’ve got the most important game of the year right now. Let’s not forget.’ “
As tempting as it is for fans and media to write off 2008 as a failed mission, the Bulldogs coach sees two more games — Georgia Tech next Saturday and a bowl, probably in Florida on New Year’s Day. And that “failed mission” can turn into the sixth Top 10 finish a Richt team has managed in the past seven years. (“We’ve got a very realistic shot at that,” he said.)
So, when a visitor asked if Richt is disappointed over this season, he said: “I’m not. I was very disappointed after Alabama, very disappointed after Florida — but not disappointed at being 9-2.”
Georgia is where it was a year ago entering the Tech game, with one huge difference: The 2007 team wasn’t ranked No. 1 in preseason. Being No. 1 mattered to a lot of people. It mattered less to Richt.
“It was the first time in the history of Georgia football we’re preseason No. 1,” he said. “From that perspective, I didn’t think it was a bad thing. But you’ve got to play the cards you’re dealt — it’s not like I tried to mastermind [being No. 1] in any way. As it became pretty evident it was a real possibility, all I was trying to do was say [to his players], ‘Men, this doesn’t mean anything except that it’s a compliment to what you’ve done and it’s a responsibility.’
“And I wouldn’t say they didn’t work hard. We did work hard. We did prepare.”
Did Richt ever regard his team as the best in the land? “I don’t feel like this team was any better or any worse off than some of the teams of the last six years. I felt like this team had a chance to win the East and, if you win the East, to win the SEC, and who knows at the end? But I thought that the year before and the year before that and the year before that.”
That shouldn’t be read as an indictment. “It’s not a downgrading of this group,” Richt said. “Every team’s got some things going for it and every team’s got some issues … I really believe it was just another year that we had a chance to do the things we’ve been trying to do all along, I guess.”
At issue, at least in some fans’ minds, is whether coordinator Willie Martinez will take the fall for the defense’s underperformance. Richt declined to address the issue of possible staff changes. He did, however, bristle when his visitor opined that the defense had “fallen apart.”
“Last week [at Auburn] they didn’t fall apart. In the fourth quarter of the Kentucky game they didn’t fall apart. They had three stops in a row when the offense was fumbling the game away. This last game we held [Auburn] to 13 points. We wouldn’t have beat South Carolina if the defense hadn’t played good.”
As for the egregious 49-10 loss to Florida: “I felt bad for our defensive players. They started out playing pretty stinking good. [Florida took the] ball on the 41, the 29, the 1, the 9 — it’s tough to defend any offense there, let alone the highest scoring team in the league. We had three shots in the red zone. What if we score touchdowns in the red zone?”
Nor was Richt particularly illuminating about the status of Matthew Stafford and Knowshon Moreno, who could declare for the 2009 NFL draft. “They will have a lot to think about, not that they’re not thinking about it now,” Richt said. “Hopefully they’ll get some good solid unbiased information and make the decision that’s best for them.”
With the conversation near its end, the visitor posed “one last question.” Smiling thinly, Richt said: “You’ve already had three or four ‘last questions’ … You sound like a Baptist preacher.”
The question involved the rash of arrests that have dogged Georgia this year and the number of penalties the Bulldogs have incurred: Is there a correlation? Said Richt: “I’d say it’s more coincidental. If somebody did a study … I don’t think there would be a pattern.”
Moments earlier, it had been suggested that, should Stafford and Moreno return to play behind an offensive line that Richt claimed has “done a terrific job” and isn’t yet “what it’s going to be,” his Bulldogs could be preseason No. 1 again in 2009. To this, he said:
“That’s interesting. But not before [playing] Georgia Tech.”
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Impressive performance by Jackets, Johnson
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It wasn’t quite a sellout, and it wasn’t nearly a whiteout, but it absolutely was a wipeout. Georgia Tech played like the best team in the ACC if not the whole wide world.
Thus will Paul Johnson’s first Tech team finish in no worse than a tie atop the Coastal Division. “We’ll at least be co-champion, tri-champion, quad-champion, something,” he said afterward. “Nobody’s going to have a better record than us.”
That’s true, and so is this: Tying for first in anything is a massive achievement for a program that changed coaches and offenses and thereby changed itself for the better. If Year 1 under pugnacious PJ is this sweet, what might Years 2 and 3 hold?
Although Johnson always seemed a terrific tactician and an inspired choice, nothing prepared his new constituency for this much this soon. In one autumn the Jackets have whipped Clemson and Florida State and Miami, schools that take the sport seriously. But something often overlooked, at least outside the Perimeter, is how serious the Institute is about football, and once again it has a coach who’s every bit as driven.
Miami has claimed five national championships in the past quarter-century, but against the Jackets it was made to look less robust than Gardner-Webb. The ‘Canes defense played as if it hadn’t scouted the option-based spread — a grievous oversight, wouldn’t you say? — and the Miami offense looked the way we’ve come to expect a Patrick Nix offense to look.
Nix was the Tech offensive coordinator who turned Reggie Ball into … well, Reggie Ball. Apparently the Auburn grad has taken that special touch to Coral Gables. The first touchdown Thursday was a function of a Ball-like lapse. Miami’s Robert Marve sought to throw a screen pass and failed to note the presence of Michael Johnson — a grievious oversight, given that Johnson stands 6-foot-7 — and flung the ball into the defender’s gut.
Tech fans groused about the offense throughout the tepid Chan Gailey era. They grouse no more. Johnson is among the best offensive minds anywhere, and for all his emphasis on the run he isn’t afraid of the newfangled forward pass. The Jackets threw on each of their first three snaps — they would pass only three times thereafter — and the first was delivered by Demaryius Thomas, who’s a receiver.
Tech being Tech, it got around to running. Jonathan Dwyer took the first snap of a second-quarter possession for a 58-yard touchdown, and Nesbitt touched off the next drive by gaining 54 yards. When Dwyer gained only 2 yards on the next play, PA announcer Chris Capo informed the assembled media, “That breaks a string of consecutive 50-yard rushes at two.”
With 2:07 left in the third quarter, Capo made another announcement: “Georgia Tech has rushed 38 times for 395 yards.” By then the score was 41-10, and the only defensive adjustments Miami had made was to turn Lucas Cox into Larry Csonka. A 32-yard touchdown burst had given Cox 75 yards on the night — he would finish with 78 — but made him only the fourth-leading gainer among Jackets. Amazing.
There could have been no finer ACC culmination for Johnson and his team than this. Said Dwyer: “You could see it in everyone’s eyes on the bus to the stadium. We knew this was a big game for us and a big game for the program. We had a chance to make history.”
For Tech to play for the ACC title, three other teams must lose. The Jackets can do nothing about that, but they’ll have some control over what happens in Athens on Nov. 29. And they could beat Georgia. They really could.
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A vote of confidence for the Hawks
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Having spent nearly a quarter-century doubting the Hawks, erring on the side of optimism demands a considerable effort. But here’s where I take a deep breath and say:
They’re going to be fine.
The Hawks nearly fell to 6-5 Wednesday night. They trailed a lousy Washington team for most of the game and were working without their second- and third-best players. (Despite the shortened bench, Acie Law IV got only nine minutes. What’s up with that?) But they steeled themselves at the end, and at such times it’s easy to say, “You know what — a year ago they wouldn’t have won that game.”
Well, you know what? They wouldn’t have.
This is no longer an assemblage of young guys learning what the NBA requires. This has become a band of youngish veterans who are either in or are approaching the full flower of their careers. We Atlantans have waited, not always patiently, to see these players grow up, and finally they have.
They’re not going to win 60 games — you don’t go from 37 to 60 unless you add Larry Bird — but they should come close to 50. Their rolling start wasn’t an aberration. On the contrary, the subsequent losses were the red herring, coming as they did without Josh Smith, who just gets better and better. The Hawks should beat Charlotte on Friday to get to 8-4, and given the degree of early difficulty anybody around this team would have taken 8-4 in a heartbeat.
The Hawks have too much talent to stay down for long. The only thing (besides injury, duh) that can keep this from being a playoff team — and not just as a wriggling-in eighth seed but as a threat to have the homecourt in Round 1 — is if Mike Woodson tries to overcoach it. And he might.
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President-elect, UGA president agree on playoff
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A president raised the idea, and now the President-elect of these United States has endorsed it — an eight-team playoff to determine the champion of college football. Barack Obama said Sunday on “60 Minutes” he’d work to implement one, and Michael Adams said hooray.
“I was watching the interview,” Adams said Wednesday. “What he said was identical to what I said last January.”
The University of Georgia president outlined his proposal in the AJC 10 1/2 months ago. Adams was hoping to use his influence to spark debate within the NCAA. Later that month his fellow presidents evinced little support, and the grand plan fizzled. But the American presidency, as has been noted, makes a bully pulpit.
“I’ve been right on some things and wrong on some things,” Adams said, “but I do think I’m right on this one. The closer you get to the current system, the more flawed it appears. And I’m not one to try to predict the future, but I think it’s unrealistic to expect a number of one- or even two-loss teams to fit into the plus-one model.”
Plus-one — a championship game tacked on after the bowls — is seen by many as the corrective to the current BCS mechanism. Plus-one was put forward for discussion by Mike Slive, the SEC commissioner, at the BCS meetings in the spring. “It was rejected,” Slive said Tuesday. “And that made it clear that, over the next four-year cycle, the format wouldn’t change.”
Two days after Obama made his televised declaration, the BCS announced a new television agreement for that four-year cycle (2011-14) with ESPN. Speaking on a teleconference, ACC commissioner John Swofford — who succeeded Slive as BCS coordinator — said: “After lengthy debate, it became evident there was not enough support to change the current format.”
Will Obama’s imprimatur alter the dynamics? Said Slive: “My sense is that it may increase dialogue, but the eight-team playoffs has been vetted so thoroughly [by college presidents and conferences] that I don’t think it will [have much effect].”
Adams claimed to have seen encouraging internal signs for his (and now Obama’s) eight-team plan. “There’s been a lot of behind-the-scenes talk [among presidents],” he said. “I don’t think there’s been as much movement in the Big Ten as the Pac-10. It will be interesting to see if there are several one-loss teams this season and USC is one of them.”
Does Adams believe the BCS is swimming against public opinion? “I don’t know if I’d characterize it like that, but a majority of people do seem to want some kind of playoff. The presidents are key in this … And there are so many new presidents that I would not just assume that because it was one way a couple of years ago it will be that way always. Presidents do have to pay some attention to public opinion.”
And presidents have to listen when the President-elect speaks. Said Slive: “[His] interest in postseason football reflects the national interest; it’s not just a regional game anymore … If he and I had an opportunity to talk, I would try to talk him out of an eight-team playoff — plus-one would allow us not to have the regular season curtailed.”
On it goes, this debate among learned folks over what’s best for what is, at bottom, a billion-dollar game played by students. The belief here is that big-time college football will never have a true playoff because the bowls pay too much and the six BCS leagues will never willingly cede a scintilla of power, but with the president-elect revealed as an interested party, who knows?
And who knew Michael Adams, pilloried in this space and others for his handling of Vince Dooley, would stand revealed as a visionary? Speaking of the President-elect, Adams said: “I think he’ll do everything I suggest — don’t you?” Then he laughed.
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Bradley’s Buzz: Much ado about Jake (and others)
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sittin’ around the crowded hot stove
The trade that didn’t happen (yet) was the talk of cyberspace. The Padres balked and Frank Wren walked, at least figuratively, away from a big deal for Jake Peavy. Here’s Scott Miller of CBSsports.com reporting that negotiations had broken down, and here, just for fun, is the same Scott Miller’s assertion of two days earlier that a deal was imminent.
Writing in the San Diego Union-Tribune, Tim Sullivan paints an unpretty picture as to why the Padres are looking to peddle Peavy. For one thing, team owner John Moores is getting divorced — here’s Bill Madden of the New York Daily News on the same subject — and you know how costly and contentious those negotiations can get.
Speaking of interpersonal relationships, Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe looks at the class of free agents and suggests pitcher Brad Penny, often identified as a Braves target, needs to get away from “movie-star girlfriends and horses.” (As we know, the two can lead to much distress. Ask Jack Woltz, the unfortunate movie producer from “The Godfather.”)
Speaking of negotiators who play hardball — I’m thinking of Vito Corleone and Tom Hagen — here’s a chilling suggestion from Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times: The always-helpful Scott Boras could wind up brokering a trade that would send Andruw Jones back to the Braves.
Speaking of more sensible Braves scenarios, Allan Ryan of the Toronto Star writes about pitcher A.J. Burnett. Joel Sherman of the New York Post identifies Derek Lowe as a Mets target. And here’s Bob Dutton of the Kansas City Star describing the difficulty the Royals could face in keeping pitcher Zack Greinke, whom I know from recent personal experience is a favorite of AJC.com bloggers.
OK, back to Peavy. Ken Rosenthal of FoxSports.com reports that the Yankees are now on the trail, which is bad news for all clubs who have financial constraints. And Peter Gammons of ESPN.com suggests that, because of the flagging economy, most clubs do. And that’s why, writes Buster Olney, also of ESPN.com, relatively unassuming pitchers like Penny and even Mike Hampton are desired commodities.
Enough baseball. How ‘bout those Hawks?
For one brief shining moment, our local NBA team was No. 2 in John Hollinger’s power ratings on ESPN.com. (Having lost three in a row, they were down to No. 4 at last check. And Peter Vecsey of the New York Post credits Marvin Williams’ improvement as a 3-point shooter not to Mike Woodson or shooting coach Mark Price but to general manager Rick Sund.
Tech man makes good
Perhaps you missed it, but Anthony Morrow, recently of Georgia Tech, set an NBA record for undrafted rookies by scoring 37 points in his first start as a Golden State Warrior. Janny Hu of the San Francisco Chronicle quotes former Warrior Baron Davis as saying, “Oh my god. Who was that guy?” And Marcus Thompson II of the Bay Area News Group reports that Morrow, who was known as “A-Mo” at Tech, now answers to “Ant.”
A personal note: I’ve always liked A-Mo — sorry, force of habit — as a player and a person, and here’s a little something I wrote about him last spring.
Conference championship not required
Remember last December? Remember how so many folks said Georgia didn’t belong in the BCS title game because it didn’t win its league? Well, Brad Edwards of ESPN.com offers a look at how ludicrous things might get this year if only conference champs were allowed to play for the national title. It’s fun reading if you hate the BCS, and boy do I.
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Falcons just didn’t have it this Sunday
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“This is part of our process,” Falcons coach Mike Smith said for the hundredth time this calendar year, and it is. The team that didn’t figure to be favored many times this season had finally lost as a favorite, and the realization that it was one of those vintage NFL losses — one play either way — offered no solace. On the contrary, it made this a hundred times worse.
“I kind of blew it,” said Roddy White, who dropped a ball in the corner of the end zone that would have made the Falcons winners at the end. “I feel responsible.”
Said Keith Brooking, the linebacker: “That play didn’t lose the game. … We [the defense] definitely left some plays out there.”
Three times these Falcons had lost, but each was a road game against a presumably stronger opponent. This was the first time they’d lost at home, lost when they figured they could and would win. “It’s frustrating,” said Todd McClure, the center. “We saw some things on film that made us think we could get our running game going, and we couldn’t.”
Maybe they’d gotten ahead of themselves. Maybe they viewed this middle game of their homestand as the creamy filling in the Oreo, Denver as a middle-tier AFC opponent arriving between two NFC South brethren. None of the Falcons would admit as much, but something was a hair off. Michael Turner needed 25 carries to gain 81 yards. Matt Ryan threw his first interception in the Georgia Dome. And White, who has snagged everything all season, couldn’t grab the ball that would have overridden everything.
“We should be celebrating right now,” said White, beating himself up, but in fairness it would have been a terrific catch — fighting a defender and trying to toe the sideline while running under a ball delivered from 50 yards away. Still, he had both hands on it. On another day he hooks it and the Falcons dance away as merrily as they did after those 11 seconds against Chicago.
Apart from those 11 seconds, the Falcons hadn’t trailed in the Dome this season. They fell behind 5-1/2 minutes into this first half and again five minutes into the second. They punted only twice and turned it over just once — Ryan throwing off his back foot and being intercepted by Dre’ Bly — but there was no rhythm to their work. They didn’t lose because they were wretched; they lost because they didn’t play quite well enough.
Smith even coached cautiously. He was trying to set up a free-kick-field-goal near the end of the half, but Brett Kern’s punt was fair-caught at the Atlanta 44-yard line. Smith didn’t think Jason Elam could kick a 66-yarder even unrushed and, with nine seconds left, didn’t want to have Denver turn around and try a field goal of its own. But if that setting — ball on the 44, final 10 seconds — sounds familiar … well, there’s a reason.
The Falcons had taken possession at the same spot with six seconds left against Chicago. This time Ryan didn’t throw to Michael Jenkins; he didn’t throw at all. Smith chose to have his quarterback kneel and to accept a six-point halftime lead, six as opposed to a possible nine. And that seemed strange. The Falcons, who had been the clear aggressor in this building all season, acted as if they were protecting something.
And that is, not to be trite, part of the process. A young team has to learn to stay hungry once it starts to win. On this given Sunday we saw something we wouldn’t have believed we’d see two months ago: We saw the Falcons looking slightly fat and happy, and that’s not a look that becomes them.
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Wren wise to not buckle to Padres’ demands
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Getting Jake would have been, to use a dated expression, jake. But getting Jake Peavy would almost have been too easy. The Braves’ starting pitching falls to pieces and they go out and land one of the best in the business — no muss, no fuss, the rich get richer.
Only that’s the thing. The Braves aren’t rich anymore. They’re not the moneyed club that raided San Diego for a fairly productive first baseman on July 18, 1993, for the modest price of Melvin Nieves, Donnie Elliott and Vince Moore. The days of the Braves dealing from a position of absolute strength have gone the way of the Crime Dog.
In this post-Time Warner era, the Braves have become just another mid-level organization. They’ve got a handful of nice big-league players and their usual array of heralded prospects, but they’re unable to make a Fred McGriff-type move without having it hurt. That’s surely why Frank Wren has backed away from his protracted negotiations with the Padres — they wanted an awful lot, and Wren’s club is no longer positioned to give.
It’s believed the Padres were asking for prospect Tommy Hanson, and the best Wren was prepared to offer was Charlie Morton with Yunel Escobar as a sweetener. And therein you see the problem: Even the lure of a young starting shortstop plus a young starting pitcher wasn’t enough to sway a general manager whose team lost 99 games this summer. Because if these dangled young Braves were so good, how’d Atlanta manage to lose 90?
Peavy made financial sense. He’s under contract for $59 million over the next four seasons. That’s a lot of money, but it’s not nearly what CC Sabathia will command as a free agent. Trading for Peavy wouldn’t have broken the bank — dented it, yes — but Wren would have had to bankrupt his minor-league chain to swing such a deal, and that he cannot do.
Because what if Peavy, splendid as he is, comes up with a bum arm? Then you’re without the big-ticket pitcher, and you’re also without Hanson, whom Wren has told reporters could one day be a Peavy. Then you’re where the Braves wound up 12 months after they traded for Mark Teixeira, and that’s not a place an organization can visit more than once.
Dealing five prospects for a one-year rental — John Schuerholz’s parting gift to Wren — left the new GM with a defoliated farm system. Trading for Peavy would have made a loud noise, but so did dealing for Teixeira, who departed for Anaheim with barely a whimper. With the unerring wisdom of hindsight, that brief noise was poor compensation for a raft of lost youth.
The Braves didn’t lose 90 games just by getting unlucky. They lost 90 games because they went too long without developing a Peavy of their own. (And it’s only through Wren’s deft trade of Edgar Renteria that they have Jair Jurrjens.) Their aging pitchers finally broke down, and there wasn’t a yet a next wave behind them. Hanson and Jurrjens and maybe Charlie Morton could be that next wave, but the Braves know better than anyone the cost of buying age with youth.
In August 1987 they traded Doyle Alexander to Detroit, where he went 9-0 and helped win a division title. The kid pitcher the Braves got for Alexander is bound for Cooperstown. Maybe Tommy Hanson will turn out to be more a Pete Smith than a John Smoltz, but in all of baseball there’s still no greater commodity than young pitching. Give Wren credit for hoarding his. Give Wren credit for not making the best trade he’ll ever not make.
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A loss on the scoreboard, a win everywhere else
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“This is very impressive.”
“In some ways this is more impressive than any of those six wins.”
“This is a completely different team from the one that went to Game 7.”
“This game won’t go away, and these Hawks won’t go away.”
That wasn’t me talking to myself last night, though it could well have been. Those were the comments — respectful bordering on gushing — of the Celtics’ radio crew during the fourth quarter of the greatest regular-season loss in Atlanta Hawks history.
There’s nothing snootier than the Boston media, but there was nothing snooty about Sean Grande and Cedric Maxwell. They kept giving reasons why the Hawks shouldn’t even be close — Josh Smith didn’t play and Zaza Pachulia hurt his shoulder; Al Horford and Solomon Jones were in foul trouble, and above all the team was working the second night of a back-to-back — and the longer the game stayed tight the more they lauded the visitors.
I listened on XM Radio because I wanted to hear if an outsider’s take jibed with mine, and it absolutely did. The Hawks met fire with fire. (“The NBA at its highest level,” as Mike Woodson told reporters afterward.) They pushed a champion to its limit on the famous parquet. They lost not because they did anything wrong but because Paul Pierce did one last thing right.
I’m not a believer in moral victories in professional sports, but how could this have been anything else? Three victories over Boston at Philips Arena lit the fuse for this rousing 6-0 start, and now a one-point loss on a contested shot with 0.5 seconds left has supplied the validation. Borrowing Maxwell’s admiring line, the Hawks wouldn’t go away Wednesday night, and they’re not going anywhere anytime soon.
I wrote it the other night, but here it is again: Ladies and gentlemen, we have ourselves a basketball team. And that rumble you hear is the sound of a bandwagon cranking up.
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Smitty’s no Belichick or Parcells, except in results
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mike Smith has silver hair but no silver tongue. His postgame briefings at the Georgia Dome are fascinating for what he doesn’t say. He deals mostly in platitudes, and he leaves the impression of a dutiful assistant who’s afraid of revealing too much lest he offend his boss. And that makes sense, given that his bosses — Arthur Blank and Thomas Dimitroff — are in the room listening.
It also makes sense when you consider that Smith, who’s 49, has never before been a head coach. He’s not accustomed to addressing folks wearing coats and ties. He’s a career assistant who has made a career of dealing with sweaty guys in shoulder pads. And that’s why you don’t really get the full Smitty effect until you see him with his players.
He’s not a hands-off head coach. He’s a yeller and a cajoler, a teacher and a taskmaster. (“Taskmaster” is one of his favorite words.) He doesn’t hold himself above the fray. On the contrary, he enjoys frays.
Put simply, the guy who measures every word with the media speaks the players’ unadorned language. Pete Prisco of CBSsports.com reported that Smith sent the Falcons onto the hallowed Lambeau tundra by saying, “That [expletive] field is 100 yards long and 53 1/2 yards wide just like all the other [same expletive] fields.” Duly informed, Smitty’s men went out and whipped Green Bay’s, er, hindquarters.
There’s none of Belichick’s paranoid genius to this coach, none of Parcells’ raging bluster. He’s just Smitty. (Even his wife calls him Smitty.) But this isn’t to say the players nod benignly and pay him no mind. As the massive Grady Jackson, who has played for enough coaches to know the bad from the good, said Sunday, “It’s a treat to see guys buying in.”
For all the laurels draped on Dimitroff for his personnel decisions, these players would have amounted to nothing had they been entrusted to Elmer Fudd. Instead they were handed to a Real Football Man, one who knows how to relate to working adults as opposed to teenagers on scholarship. (Yes, that was a Bobby Petrino reference.)
When you ask these Falcons when they began to believe in themselves, you get a surprising answer. It wasn’t after Matt Ryan made his first NFL pass a touchdown. It wasn’t when they won in Green Bay. It wasn’t even after those 11 seconds against Chicago. It was, said the center Todd McClure, “in OTAs [organized team activities] and training camp. We thought then we could really be special.”
Why? Partly because of the Dimitroff-driven talent infusion, but mostly because these Falcons gained an instant respect for Smitty and staff. These coaches — Mike Mularkey and Paul Boudreau and Keith Armstrong and Ray Hamilton — know what works in the NFL and what resonates with NFL players. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to win football games; you just have to put talented players in the right positions and persuade them to play hard.
Yes, it sounds so simple as to go without saying. But then you hear the safety Lawyer Milloy, who won a Super Bowl under the scheming Belichick, praise Smith’s rudimentary approach: “He says, ‘Go out and play hard, and more times than not you’ll like the outcome.’ That’s his favorite saying.”
It’s not half as catchy as “Just win, baby,” or even, “Finish the drill,” but the sentiment expressed therein has lifted a lunch-bucket team to 6-3. Which tells us, in a way pretty words never could, that Smitty can flat-out coach.
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Bradley’s Buzz: Honk if you love the Falcons
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Hey, these guys are pretty good
You might recall that Sports Illustrated’s eminent Dr. Z picked the Falcons to go 2-14. Well, as of Monday morning the same Falcons have cracked Peter King’s top 10 in his weekly Fine Fifteen on SI.com. They’re No. 9, and ol’ Pete — I’ve known him for nearly 30 years, I should stipulate — confesses: “I really like the Falcons.”
So, journalistically speaking, does Steve Wyche of NFL.com. Having covered Sunday’s game in the Dome, my esteemed former colleague was so moved he likened this Falcons’ season to the Saints’ improbable ascent in 2006.
Also on hand was Pat Yasinskas of ESPN.com, who goes to great lengths to laud the Falcon defense. I would, however, quibble with one of Yasinskas’ points: He claims the Falcons have only one playmaker — John Abraham — among their front seven. I’d nominate Michael Boley as a playmaker.
And Michael Silver of Yahoo! Sports, rejecting the assertion that Drew Brees is the NFL’s MVP, suggests Matt Ryan is even more valuable. He also suggests what has become increasingly apparent: That Ryan is at worst the second-best rookie quarterback in modern NFL history, trailing only Dan Marino.
Honk (softly) if you love the Hawks
There’s not yet a groundswell of appreciation for the unbeaten local NBA franchise. Indeed, the Hawks’ rise to 5-0 garnered only a fleeting mention on ESPN.com’s Monday morning Daily Dime. And the best I could do for an updated power rating was Marty Burns of SI.com, who had the Hawks No. 8 as of last week. (They’ve won three times since.)
Late-breaking update! At 5:50 p.m. Monday, I found Marc Stein’s latest rankings on ESPN.com. And he, believe it or not, has the Hawks fifth. Hooray!
I also found something on the Bleacher Report, where someone by the name of Coach Samuel contends the Hawks are legit. And who might Coach Samuel be? According to his online bio, he lives in Atlanta, coaches high school basketball and “is a regular on Sekou Smith’s Atlanta Hawks blog on AJC.com.”
Unsolicited endorsement: I’d advise everyone who isn’t already to become a regular on Sekou’s blog. It is, in a word, outstanding.
Diagram this one, will you?
Writing for the Athens Banner-Herald, David Ching reports that Georgia’s winning touchdown pass against Kentucky came on a play called F-Jet 346 Crimson, which doesn’t really mean much since the whole thing collapsed. As Ching notes, Georgia won because Matthew Stafford scrambled and A.J. Green ran along the back of the end zone and a broken play would up golden.
Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?
You’ve just gained 74 yards and scored two touchdowns to lead your North Carolina Tar Heels past Georgia Tech in a key ACC tilt. If you’re Ryan Houston, how do you celebrate? According to Lenox Rawlings of the Winston-Salem Journal, the 242-pound back planned to hop in the tub and watch “SpongeBob SquarePants.”
Didn’t Bronko Nagurski used to do the same thing?
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Falcons have the make of a good team
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This is no longer just a good story. What we’re watching is a good team. The Falcons need only to win the rest of their home games to finish 10-6, and 10-6 puts you in any playoff discussion any year. And how stout have they been at home?
They’ve played 240 minutes in the Georgia Dome this season. They’ve trailed for a total of 11 seconds, and those 11 — the time it took the Falcons to lose the Chicago game and then win it — are part of NFL history. This is a team that keeps tending to business with such dogged resolve that we are, believe it or not, coming to regard winning as business as usual.
“You keep hearing that Atlanta is going to fail at some point,” said Lawyer Milloy, the free safety, “but this is happening the right way.”
Here he smiled, and you should know that Milloy is stingy with his smiles. “Every year there’s a team that has you scratching your head, that you never saw coming. Why not us?”
It sounds silly until you watch this team play, but when you do you see no silliness about it. You see a team that comes to work, that hits really hard and plays really smart. On Sunday the Falcons took the ball from New Orleans on the first snap and saw the frazzled Saints use the last snap to cut their deficit to 14 points. In between the Falcons were dominant.
Forget total yardage, for it meant nothing. All that mattered was that the Falcons needed barely five minutes to score their first touchdown and Drew Brees, hailed as the NFL’s best player, required 50 minutes to get one for his team. All that mattered was that Brees threw 58 passes and accomplished less than the rookie Matt Ryan, who didn’t throw half so many.
“I liked the way we played,” said Mike Smith, the Falcons’ coach, and how could you not? There are no Glanvillian gimmicks in these Falcons, no Mora-like false chatter. This a simply a collection of proud pros — hey, even rookies can have pride — that has developed a sense of itself and has cottoned to its coaches.
Said Todd McClure, the center: “It’s about time everybody else started thinking we’re a good team.”
It is. It’s November, and by now any football flukes have begun to wilt. The Falcons are gathering strength. Maybe they surprised themselves back in September, but no more. They’ve played nine times and haven’t been routed yet. Why shouldn’t they expect to win?
“We’ve been very fortunate with our acquisitions,” said Thomas Dimitroff, the general manager, and never had those acquisitions stood out more than Sunday. Ryan worked another lovely game. Erik Coleman, a free agent, stole Brees’ first pass. Domonique Foxworth, acquired by trade, broke up three passes. And the third-rounder Chevis Jackson capped it all by scoring on a 95-yard interception return.
“I can’t stress this enough,” Dimitroff said, “but all our new guys are about the team. It’s not just about them.”
And we saw — or at least we thought we saw — a moment Sunday when Smith appeared to make the same point. Jerious Norwood had scored on a 67-yard yard catch-and-run. But, by breaking into high-step at the 27, he was nearly caught by Usama Young. Thus did it come as no shock that Smith waved the back over.
But not for a dressing-down. “I was just congratulating him,” Smith said. “I said, ‘Nice run, Jerious.’ “
Really? “Sometimes you’ve got to let them go,” said Smith, shrugging.
Then, reconsidering: “But we may talk about it Monday or Tuesday.”
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Hawks making it look easy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ladies and gentlemen, we have ourselves a basketball team. This will be a difficult notion for some among us to accept, seeing as how we’ve spent the past decade lampooning the Hawks, but here it is November 2008 and change has come.
We have ourselves a team, and we know this because the team is unbeaten against four opponents that figured to be better than these Hawks. In the span of 10 days they’ve taken on Dwight Howard and Elton Brand and Chris Paul and Chris Bosh and have run the star-spangled table.
They’re 4-0, having dominated three of the games, and in the fourth they overrode a 23-point deficit. They’re 4-0, and they’ve won 12 of the 16 quarters. They’ve assembled a really good starting five, which we knew already, and their second unit has also become something to behold, which absolutely nobody other than Rick Sund would have guessed.
A confession: From force of habit, I keep expecting to see J.R. Rider slumping on the baseline or Jason Terry throwing the ball away or Billy Knight drafting somebody else named Williams. I keep expecting to wake up and find that these Hawks are a real dream team, as in utterly imaginary. But then I watch another game and see the Hawks flex another set of muscles and I tell myself, “This is really happening.”
On Wednesday the Hawks went to New Orleans and whipped a team that hadn’t lost, and on Friday they undressed the Raptors, who arrived at Philips Arena a robust 3-1. The Hawks led Toronto 10-2 after 3 1/2 minutes, and in a sport built for comebacks, the visitors never stirred.
The Hawks kept raining treys and blocking shots and running the floor, and even with Josh Smith absent for the final three quarters (high ankle sprain) and Al Horford and Zaza Pachulia in foul trouble, the lead only grew. Solomon Jones and Randolph Morris provided worthwhile minutes against Bosh and Jermaine O’Neal, and when it was done, the Hawks had won breezing.
Every night brings a mini-revelation. Pachulia was splendid in the first two games, and the newcomer Flip Murray has been a shining asset from the first. And the Hawks’ defense has grown a new set of teeth — four years on, we’re seeing why Mike Woodson was considered a defensive coach — and the offense continues to develop in the nicest ways.
To wit: Mike Bibby made five 3-pointers in the first half Friday, and four came off feeds from Joe Johnson. “If [defenders] stay at home, Joe can hurt you,” Woodson said. “And if you double him, he knows our other guys can all make shots.”
Said Bibby: “We’re playing off Joe. We help each other.”
When you play the way the Hawks have, basketball can look easy. Past seasons have been squandered because simplicity yielded to ostentation, but this one won’t be. The Hawks are going to lose some games — even the greatest team in NBA history lost 10 times — but they aren’t going to fall on their face. They’re too well-rounded, too tough-minded.
Yes, we’re talking about the Hawks. Yes, really. “We’re trying to play for something here,” Woodson had said before Friday’s game, and it shows.
Too many times we Atlantans have been built up to be let down. Michael Vick wins a playoff game at Lambeau Field but breaks his leg in August. The Thrashers win their division but start the next season 0-6. We had no way of knowing how these Hawks would handle their first taste of success, but now we see. They liked it. They liked it so much they want more, more, more.
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The better 7-2 season? It’s Tech’s
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Both Georgia and Georgia Tech are 7-2, but all 7-2’s aren’t created equal. Given a choice, you’d rather be the team:
- That began the season ranked 80th by Sports Illustrated and is now No. 20 in the BCS standings, as opposed to starting No. 1 in the polls and slipping to No. 13 in the BCS.
- That has a realistic chance to play for its conference title, as opposed to needing two major miracles.
- That has done more with less, as opposed to doing less with more.
- That has lost two games by a total of 10 points, as opposed to being beaten by an aggregate 50 points.
- That entered the season with a new coach, a new offense, a new quarterback and a new feature back, as opposed to changing almost nothing.
- That ranks 33rd among 119 Division I teams in fewest penalties, as opposed to ranking 119th.
- That hasn’t once been embarrassed, as opposed to having twice been.
- That has 26 sacks, as opposed to 16.
- That ranks 16th in pass defense, as opposed to 75th.
- That could call it a heartening season even if it loses every remaining game, as opposed to the one that won’t be deemed a success even if it wins the rest.
In sum, you’d rather be Tech. And if you should win in Athens on Nov. 29, you’d really rather be Tech.
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Timid Georgia fails to embrace potential
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The schedule didn’t undo Georgia. Actually, the schedule turned out kindly. Arizona State hasn’t won since Sept. 6, and Tennessee is so bad Phillip Fulmer just announced his resignation. The Bulldogs didn’t fail because of an ambitious itinerary. They failed because they didn’t give their ambition a fighting chance.
Even when Georgia was No. 1 in preseason, being No. 1 was treated as much as a nuisance as an honor. “It’s just a big bull’s eye,” Mark Richt said on Media Day, and you could almost sense the relief when, after only one game, his Bulldogs were No. 1 no more.
This time a year ago, a band of LSU seniors were on a crusade — not just to finish first in the SEC West but in the U.S. of A. True, those Tigers were lucky to lose twice and be afforded a chance to play for the BCS title, but they carried themselves the way a champion-to-be should. They played big in big games, and when they did lose they lost at the last gasp. Maybe it’s because Georgia doesn’t have as many seniors, but these Bulldogs lacked the same audacity of purpose.
They wanted to win it all, sure. Who doesn’t? But they were fairly timid in stating their intention, and they were unaccountably timid in their play. They were splendid in Baton Rouge and good at Tempe, but the other victories were more the work of great talent than a great team. And their two losses were simply shocking.
Alabama led Georgia by 31 points after 30 minutes. When you see such a score involving two brand-name schools, you figure the team on top must have returned a kick or a pick (if not both) for a touchdown. The Tide did not. It lined up and drove to five consecutive scores.
Before the Arizona State game, receiver Mohamed Massaquoi had said of his team, “We’ve got playmakers on both sides of the ball.” This was only technically true. Georgia’s defense includes one big-timer — linebacker Rennie Curran. The secondary hasn’t covered, and the front four hasn’t pressured. Georgia has but 16 sacks in nine games, and three of those are Curran’s.
On his Sunday teleconference, Richt again bemoaned the youth of his offensive line — “We’re playing a bunch of puppies,” he told reporters — but the offense has held up its end. The Bulldogs lead the SEC in total yardage. Alas, Georgia is ninth in total defense, 10th in scoring defense and 11th in pass defense.
Did injuries hurt Georgia? Sure. Trinton Sturdivant and Jeff Owens were huge losses along the two lines, but Georgia hurt Georgia even more. Penalties fueled Alabama’s first two drives, and a hands-to-the-face flag overrode a Tim Tebow interception on Saturday. I know some Bulldog backers feel the SEC has been out to get Georgia since last year’s celebration, but all five of those calls were legit.
I’ve defended coordinator Willie Martinez before, but I can see no reason why a team of Georgia’s pedigree should ever have a pedestrian defense. There’s no greater insult among SEC teams than being called soft on D — indeed, Florida’s Charlie Strong told reporters he’d used that label to goad his men — but that’s what the Bulldogs have become. And what, under Brian VanGorder, they never were.
Nor has this been Richt’s finest hour. He seemed wrung out after the LSU game, and that was the season’s apex. For whatever reason, this team hasn’t played with the focused fury of the 2002 Bulldogs, whose stated mission was to Knock The Lid Off. And now a grand opportunity has come and gone, and the shame of it is that Georgia seldom seemed to be knocking very hard.
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Bradley’s Buzz: OK, I was wrong
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A compendium of my own greatest misses
Because I’m a jolly good fellow and a great sport, I’ve changed the Buzz format a bit. Today I’m going to start by linking to myself — and all the times I was wrong about Georgia and/or Florida. If you’re a Gator backer, this will make for entertaining reading. If you’re a Georgia supporter, you won’t care one way or another because you’re still hiding under the mattress. Either way, here goes:
In May I predicted Georgia would win the national championship. In July I gave 10 reasons it would win the same national championship. A few days later I offered an 11th reason. (Getting to be a stuck record, wasn’t I?)
In September I rated Georgia the SEC’s best team. Earlier that month I’d said Georgia would be 5-0 and beyond worrying about style points. (Reality check: Alabama stacked 41 real points on the Bulldogs to drop them to 4-1.) After the LSU game I got really excited and again averred that Georgia was the class of the SEC and would beat Florida.
You’re aware that Georgia fell a mere 40 points shy of beating Florida over the weekend, and if you’re asking me was I surprised — well, what do you think? I wouldn’t have spent the previous six months proclaiming the Bulldogs’ worth if I believed they were going to lose the biggest game of the year 49-10.
Nor would I have called Matthew Stafford a better quarterback than Tim Tebow had I known Stafford was going to throw the ball to the Gators nearly as often as Tebow did. But I still would have tweaked Urban Meyer, who’s a fine coach but something of a pill.
And I won’t recant my belief that Florida fans are the SEC’s most obnoxious. The past 48 hours clinched that title in perpetuity. (Not that I’m bitter or anything.)
But enough of my writings and ramblings …
Here are some links to some writers who were actually in Jacksonville. (I wasn’t. I covered the Hawks’ home opener.) Matt Hayes of Sporting News Today leads with a taunt from Mrs. Urban Meyer. Esteemed former colleague Mark Schlabach of ESPN.com leads with Mr. Urban Meyer’s use of timeouts.
Writing for CBSsports.com, Dennis Dodd claims no team is playing better than Florida. If that sounds like a familiar Dodd theme, there’s a reason: He wrote essentially the same thing about Alabama after it beat Georgia. So there’s the formula: Beat the Bulldogs, impress Dennis Dodd.
Here, from the Gainesville Sun, is Pat Dooley writing about Florida’s defense, which Mr. Meyer branded “soft” after last season’s loss to Georgia. And Gene Frenette of the Florida Times-Union writes about Gator defensive coordinator Charlie Strong, who has made a career of thwarting Georgia.
Tech to Miami! Georgia to somewhere else!
In their weekly bowl projections for ESPN.com, Schlabach and Bruce Feldman both have Georgia Tech heading to the Orange Bowl as the ACC champ. Schlabach tickets Georgia for the Capital One Bowl, Feldman for the Cotton. And who, before the season began, would have figured Tech would be part of a BCS game and Georgia wouldn’t? (Not me. See above.)
Peter King on many Georgians
Tucked inside the dense verbiage of his Monday Morning Quarterback feature, Peter King of SI.com names Matt Ryan and John Abraham the offensive and defensive players of the week. He also quotes St. Louis safety Corey Chavous as calling Stafford “Jeff George with a team-first attitude.” And Peter, who sometimes writes as if he’s determined to fill up every last megabyte of cyberspace, also quotes, via NFL Films, Mike Smith’s slightly edited diatribe against the officials after the Adam Jennings non-muff in Philadelphia.
Disease of the week — J-Smoove
Tucked in the dense verbiage of his NBA preview, Bill Simmons of ESPN.com labels Josh Smith the league’s “biggest cancer.” Now it’s not like I’m never wrong about anything — see above — but has Bill Simmons ever met Josh Smith? Because I have, and what I see is a young man striding purposefully toward maturity.
FYI, here are the Cancer Man’s stats through two games: He’s averaging 17 points, 10 rebounds and five blocks, and he has made 54.5 percent of his shots. And his team, it must be noted, is 2-0.
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Pachulia, Hawks impress
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Hawks’ home opener began as if Philadelphia was Florida and the Hawks were … well, you know. But a funny thing happened on the way to a fairly colossal letdown: From 23 points down, the Hawks roused themselves and delivered a fairly emphatic beatdown.
And now they’re 2-0, having whipped two of the East’s better teams, which leads us to believe that these Hawks might themselves be one of the East’s better teams. “I think we’ve shown something,” said Josh Smith, who had no points in Saturday’s first half but was terrific again late. “We’ve matured.”
“Maturity” wasn’t the first word that seemed to describe the Hawks when Philadelphia led 44-21. “Mediocrity” seemed more fitting, or “maddening.” How could a team play so well in Orlando on Wednesday and lay such an egg back home?
But then, just as everyone was beginning to ponder that metaphysical stumper, the game changed and another question leapt to mind. Namely, what in the name of the Mvktari River has gotten into Zaza Pachulia?
As good as the center from (the other) Georgia was against the Magic, he was better this night. “We gave him the game ball, and he deserved it,” Mike Woodson said. “He changed the whole game.”
Said Smith: “He’s just playing great. He has a newborn son, and that’s made a difference. And we’re loving it.”
Davit Pachulia was born Oct. 9, and let the record show that his father’s team is unbeaten since the blessed arrival. “It’s made all the difference,” Davit’s dad said, tactfully omitting that other life-changing moment of calendar year 2008 — staring down Kevin Garnett in Game 4 of the Hawks-Celtics series.
Eight months ago, Zaza Pachulia had gotten really good at fouling and falling down. Now he’s playing so effectively that you can’t believe it’s the same guy. There came a four-minute stretch in the fourth quarter Saturday when everything the Z-man did was — I ask your forgiveness in advance — zensational.
An offensive rebound and a feed to Smith underneath. A follow after Flip Murray missed. A defensive clearance after Andre Miller missed. A muscled-home layup off a Murray pass to bring the Hawks within two. Was this Zaza Pachulia or Vlade Divac? Zaza Pachulia or Bill Walton?
“Zaza,” said Horford, who closed his day as both a happy Gator and a happy Hawk. “Ah, man. He came out and changed the game.”
Whereupon Smith and Murray and sublime Joe Johnson won it. Johnson put the Hawks ahead for the first time off Smith’s rebound and precise outlet. Then Murray, who’s nothing if not fearless, drove to give his team a lead it would keep. And then Johnson, whose prowess as a last-second shotmaker was doubted by an unnamed NBA scout quoted on SI.com, bounced off Thaddeus Young out high and drained the killing 32-footer.
That’s correct. A 32-footer. Nothing but net.
Said Smith: “It shows the relentlessness of this team.”
Said Horford: “It shows we’re growing as a team.”
Yes, these are just two games, two of 82, and this is but the first week of a six-month regular season. But those among us who wondered if the Hawks had banked anything from their Boston experience now have an answer. They did. They have taken what they learned and begun to run with it, and good for them.
“Team basketball at its best,” said Pachulia, the sudden star. And then, when it was suggested that he has become a major part of this rising team, the bullish Zaza almost blushed.
“When I hear something like that,” Pachulia said, “all I can say is, ‘Thank you.’ “
Don’t mention it, Z-Daddy.
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