Are the Panthers Seeing Greene?
Send a question to Peter
King
We dragged SI's
NFL Insider away from his scouting reports long enough to
answer the latest round of
questions.
Posted: Fri August 15,
1997
What is your take on the Kevin Greene situation? How might
his holdout affect the Panthers' defense and team
chemistry?
—Chris
Winkler
 Kevin Greene is sick and tired of being paid a normal
salary to do extraordinary things. But he is in violation
of his contract, and Carolina
G.M. Bill Polian is a stickler about the sanctity of
contracts.
I think Polian will try to save face by moving some
likely-to-be-earned incentive money onto the front side of
Greene's contract, meaning, in effect that some of his
contract will be guaranteed this
year.
What impact will his holdout have on the Panthers defense?
As long as Greene returns a few days before the season
starts,
none.
I admire and respect
GM George Young of the New York Giants. But since the advent
of free agency he seems to have floundered. Are the rumors
of his impending retirement true?
—Charles
Walker
I covered the Giants for four years in the 1980s for
Newsday, a paper in New York. I learned one very important thing
about George Young: He is the best man in the NFL at
keeping a secret. Every time I ask George about his future,
he is very coy, and talks as though he wants to do this job
for a long, long
time.
My belief is that even though he's 66 years old, Young is
the GM of the Giants for as long as he wants the job. I
can't say the same for personnel boss Tom Boisture. I
believe that if the Giants don't get some significant
impact out of the 1997 draft,
New York co-owner Bob Tisch is going to start asking serious
questions about why the Giants have drafted so poorly this
decade.
Let me give you a startling statistic: Not one of the
Giants' last 66 draft choices before 1997 has appeared in a
Pro Bowl. That's as striking and damning a stat about New
York's front-office failure over the last six or seven
years as anything I've
ever
heard.
Will
J.J. Stokes finally emerge as the 49ers' "other"
receiver this
season? He came into the league with such high hopes.
—Sean
McKenna
 I don't think this will be Stokes's coming-out year. He is
destined to be a major disappointment as a pro. All I keep
hearing from people in San Francisco is that the guy
doesn't work hard enough to be a great player. Anyone is
going to look lazy
compared to Jerry Rice, but I'm not comparing Stokes to Rice. I'm
comparing him to your garden-variety
receiver.
Just because a guy is a No. 1 draft pick doesn't mean he's
going to be put in the starting lineup. Alvin Harper found
that out in Tampa very quickly. You can pay a guy whatever
you want, but if he doesn't have good work habits, drops
the ball in
practice all the time and shows no fervor for becoming a great
player, he's not going to play much. Maybe new coach Steve
Mariucci can give Stokes a wake-up call. At this point in
his career, that's what Stokes really
needs.
Is Elvis Grbac
overrated?
—Henry
Martinez
No, but you and I may have a different opinion of how
highly he's rated. Right now, Grbac is a middle-of-the-road
NFL quarterback. If you were to ask me, say, who the
15th-best quarterback in football is right now, he would be
someone I'd consider for
that
spot.
He's smart, he's got an above-average arm, and he's a near
master of the offense he's being asked to play this fall.
He and Paul Hackett, the Chiefs' offensive coordinator, hit
it off famously in the spring. I look for Grbac to be far
more effective
than Steve Bono was last year.
Is Steve McNair the real deal? Will Oilers coach Jeff
Fisher turn him loose or try to protect him by running
Eddie George 25 times a game?
—Darryl
Arnold
I tend to think it will be the latter. McNair is only 9 of
26 in his first two preseason games, including a really
poor 4 of 16 night last week against Washington. There's
little question that it takes a long time for a young
quarterback to know what
he's doing in the NFL today. But the Oilers have to be growing
impatient with McNair this summer, primarily because they
basically did the two things he really wanted them to do
after last season: Get rid of quarterback Chris Chandler
(traded to Atlanta)
and dump offensive
coordinator
Jerry Rhome. McNair is much happier with Les Steckel as his
coordinator, and he keeps saying this offense will allow
him to take advantage of all his physical gifts. Now, we've
just got to start seeing
that.
With the injury risk so high, shouldn't there be fewer
preseason
games?
—Jeff
Hayward
I don't think there's a real chance the owners will give up
any preseason revenue. Having said that, if someone were to
make me king of the NFL for a day, this is what I'd do:
1) Eliminate two of the four preseason
games.
2) Have teams schedule two scrimmages with other teams.
That way rookies and young players can perform against live
competition. Say the Jets, who train on Long Island, stage
home-and-home scrimmages against the Eagles, who train two
hours away in
Bethlehem, Pa. Jets coach Bill Parcells and Eagles coach Ray
Rhodes could evaluate their young players very easily
without exposing the Neil O'Donnells and Bobby Taylors to
another game where they might get
hurt.
3) In the two preseason games you do play, don't allow the
quarterbacks to be hit. Put a red shirt on them just as you
do in regular practice, so that your QB doesn't take a
meaningful hit until the first regular-season
game.
How do you rank Rams strong safety Toby Wright?
—Kevin
Frederick
In my piece on the best young players at their positions in
this summer's Sports Illustrated Presents NFL Preview, I
rated Wright as the best safety under 30 in the NFL right
now. I really like the guy. New Rams defensive coordinator
Bud Carson likes
his safeties to be assassins, and Wright fits the description.
He's in the 220-pound range, and he's already a David
Fulcher-like masher. I think that come December Wright will
be a unanimous Pro Bowl
pick.
Is there any chance for a major realignment of the NFL,
similar to the plans Major League Baseball is
considering?
—Andy
Brown
Probably not. The NFL has considered many of these plans
over the last few years and gotten
nowhere.
Here's a classic example of why the discussions don't go
too far: What sense does it make for the Arizona Cardinals
to be in the NFC East? None. But Cardinals' owner Bill
Bidwill and New York Giants' co-owner Wellington Mara have
been friends for 40
years. Bidwill wants to come to New York once a year to play
the Giants. So he won't agree to move to another
division.
For the most part, little soap operas like this one will
make it nearly impossible for serious realignment to occur.
At some point, Bidwill won't own the Cardinals. But then
there's Jerry Jones, who wants to play Washington and New
York twice a year.
There will always be some owners who don't want to give up
what they already have, for the common
good.
In the near future, I really don't see it, and I honestly
don't think there are a lot of really good reasons—other
than geography—to
realign.
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