Homeless Oilers can't win
Send a question to Peter
King
Posted: Fri September 12,
1997
Quite a few questions and comments this week mocked me for
my Week 1 reassessment of the New York Jets. I'm not
backing down. Despite their loss to Buffalo, I still think
the Jets are as good as any team in the
AFC East except New England. Bill
Parcells's teams are always supremely conditioned and play well in
November and December, a time when other teams are tiring.
Mark my
words: The Jets will finish
second.
 Everybody's picking the Steelers or the Jaguars to win the
AFC Central. What about the Oilers? With
RB Eddie George and a solid defense, don't they have a
shot?
—Bryan
Gardner
I don't think so. The Jaguars are playing without starting
quarterback Mark Brunell, and they still opened the season
2-0. The Jacksonville offense has proven it can absorb an
injury at the most important position on the field. Yes,
Tennessee's defense
is in the same league as Jacksonville's, but
I just don't think the Oilers match up offensively with the
Jags.
Jacksonville will play eight games this year in front of a
rabid home crowd. The Oilers, conversely, will get on an
airplane in Nashville and fly across the state to Memphis
for their "home" games. Unless the people of
Memphis surprise me, Tennessee
will be playing 16 road games this
year.
The Patriots have looked awesome so far, but you seem to be
pretty down on them. Do you honestly believe Bill Parcells was
that big a piece of the
puzzle?
—Philip
Benincasa
In the preseason I said the Patriots were probably the
fourth-best team in the AFC, behind Jacksonville, Denver
and maybe Pittsburgh. I said I thought they had been
fortunate to avoid a championship matchup at Denver last
January.
And
I said that I thought Pete Carroll would be a very good
replacement for Bill Parcells and the Patriots would be a
double-digit winner and a division champion. Maybe that's
being down on a team, but I don't think
so.
The Patriots have had the best and most diverse offense in
the NFL through two weeks, and their defense is playing
with a fire that few teams can achieve. Carroll has pressed
all the right buttons. Right now,
I put New England, Denver, and Jacksonville
atop the AFC—in no particular
order.
 If Dennis Erickson doesn't get results with the Seahawks in
the near future, will management attempt to hire George
Seifert?
—Brett
Rieger
The Seahawks are being run by an absolute bottom-line
duo—Paul Allen, the owner, and Bob Whitsitt, who is
running the front office. I believe that if the Seahawks
continue to struggle, Allen and Whitsitt will totally clean
house.
Seifert is clearly the most logical choice for a team
looking for a high-profile coach. He wants to coach again,
he wants to coach on the West Coast, and the fact that he'd
likely want $2 million per year to do it won't be a problem
for Allen (the
cofounder of
Microsoft).
I hear Seifert would want to bring in former 49ers G.M. John
McVay as his G.M. instead of one of the guys Whitsitt might
target—Pittsburgh's Tom Donahoe or Carolina's Bill Polian.
All this will be moot if Erickson can turn it around. But
that's looking
more and more
unlikely.
Why don't teams run the power sweep anymore? The Green Bay
Packers won two Super Bowls with
it!
—LeRoy
McDaniel
First, there are too many quick outside linebackers,
defensive ends and defensive backs in the
NFL today for the beefy offensive linemen to block. In the old
days, three or four pulling offensive lineman could
obliterate anything that got in their way.
This change occurred in the 1980s when guys like linebacker
Lawrence Taylor started to catch very fast running backs
from behind on
sweeps.
Second, although teams are putting a premium on quick
offensive linemen, there are still a whole lot of plodding
330-pounders who just aren't fast enough to pull and be
lead blockers for running
backs.
Third, so many teams now have incorporated the short
passing game into their offense that it seems almost
redundant to send quick backs on sweeps when you can throw
the ball and get it to the backs and wideouts that much
sooner.
The power sweep, however, is not totally passé.
Watch a Rams game this year and you'll see coach Dick
Vermeil trying to get Lawrence Phillips around the corner
three or four times per game. Watch how Philadelphia
offensive coordinator Jon Gruden tries
to get Charlie Garner and Ricky Watters wide. It's not a
totally lost
art.
Dan Marino is the Dolphins' leader. I don't understand why
Jimmy Johnson has been threatening to replace him. What, a
quarterback can't have a bad day anymore? What is Johnson
thinking?
—Tony
Williams
Johnson started thinking about this long before Marino's
poor first week. I talked to Jimmy in camp about this, and
I got the impression that he doesn't think Danny Legend is so
legendary anymore. Jimmy also loves Marino's backup, Craig
Erickson, and
wouldn't hesitate to put him
in.
Why is Jimmy doing
this? Just a
guess: I think he believes it will motivate Marino. Personally,
I don't think it will. Marino might play better, but I don't
think it will be because Jimmy is breathing down his
neck.
I feel badly for Barry Sanders. The new running game the
Lions are using stinks. In two games he's done virtually
nothing. Shouldn't coach Bobby Ross let Barry do what he
did in the past—i.e., run circles around defenses like he
did when he was allowed to
freelance?
—Manuel
Kelakis
On Sunday night, ESPN had a great clip of Sanders's lead
blocker, fullback Tommy Vardell, leading him around left
end. Only it didn't appear that Vardell was leading. It
appeared actually that Vardell was sort of a roadblock for
Sanders, that he was
gumming up the works. So count me among those who are skeptical
that Sanders needs a lead blocker to be
successful.
I think Bobby Ross is a very smart man. I think he is smart
enough to look at the films this week and to realize that
his lead blocker needs to be pretty far out in front of
Sanders to be effective. If Vardell is cluttering up
Sanders's space, the
scheme won't work. Give Ross a week or two more before we hand
down an indictment from the King Grand
Jury.
I went to Memphis and saw the Oilers defeat the Oakland
Raiders in their Tennessee debut. The media reported that
there were only 31,000 fans there, but I'm telling you that
the Liberty Bowl was packed. Would the Oilers purposefully
understate their attendance in order to validate the
league's decision not to put an expansion team in
Memphis?
—Joda D.
Holt
You must be big into Kennedy conspiracy theories and
The
X-Files. The pictures
I saw from that day showed empty corners and lots of empty
seats high on the 30- and 40-yard
lines.
The problem in Tennessee is not any great conspiracy
against Memphis. But many people in Memphis are irate at
being jilted by the NFL. They are particularly galled to
have lost out to Jacksonville in the expansion
race.
Putting the Oilers' home games in Memphis for two seasons
might have been one of the dumbest decisions in the history
of the NFL. How could the Oilers expect the fans in
Memphis—angry about the Jacksonville decision, angry about
cross-state rival
Nashville's getting a team—to support this team
enthusiastically?
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