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A Super distraction Falcons finding out what it takes to play in the Big One
Posted: Thursday January 21, 1999 10:59 AM
By John Donovan, CNN/SI SUWANEE, Ga. (CNN/SI) -- When the Atlanta Falcons finished practice Wednesday, on an unseasonably mild day during this unbelievably wild ride they're on, the coaches and players and staff looked up to see something they'd never before seen at their modest facility in suburban Atlanta. Rumbling down the hill to cut them off at the pass was a phalanx of cameras and tape recorders and notepads, more than 60 quote-hungry, khaki-wearing, shirttail-flying media members from Denver and Atlanta and New York and many points elsewhere. If the Falcons, surprise opponents to the Denver Broncos in next weekend's Super Bowl, didn't quite grasp the magnitude of what they've gotten themselves into, they're certainly starting to get an arm around it now. "Obviously, you look around and see all this media attention and you know: This is different," said Jessie Tuggle, a veritable tackle-machine at linebacker who has spent 12 lean years with the Falcons. "I've been waiting a long time to get here. I'm a Georgia native, and I absolutely love being from Georgia. I guess that's why this is extra special for me. I wanted this for so long." Yes, the once-feckless Falcons are finally, after 33 lean seasons in the NFL, shockingly in the Super Bowl. Now they have to figure out how to handle it all. "Most of all, it's the distractions," said Eugene Robinson, the first-year Falcons safety who is in his third straight Super Bowl after two seasons with the Green Bay Packers. "This," he said, waving an arm at 15 media sharks swarming around him and a lot more churning in the waters outside the Falcons' locker room, "is distracting." Robinson, in his past two seasons with the Packers, has seen the Super Bowl hype at work and has been in both a winning and losing locker room after the game. The team that better handles all the extracurricular junk that goes with being in professional football's biggest game, he said, is the team that has a leg-up. "Everyone and their sister is going to have a camera and a microphone," said Robinson, who never met a camera or a microphone that he didn't like -- and intimately. "But you have to be level-headed and take a break from that stuff." What most of the Falcons don't quite yet realize is this is the break from that stuff. The heaviest hype won't hit until the team lands Sunday in Miami. Starting that day, and for the next four days after that, players and coaches are required to attend interview sessions with media members. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, every player and every coach must attend. And that's just one of the distractions of being a Super Bowl team. There's getting tickets for family members (who seem to multiply come playoff time), extra media requests from the big networks or big media outlets, player parties, parties for sponsors, transportation concerns, making sure what time the team curfew is, team meetings, position meetings, studying the playbook .... Oh, and practice. The Falcons are trying to unseat the defending Super Bowl champions, after all. "I've seen it all," says Atlanta coach Dan Reeves, in his ninth Super Bowl as a player and coach. "And every time you think you have everything covered, something else comes up." It's all new to most in the Atlanta franchise, but there are a few who know what the short-term future holds. Besides Reeves and Robinson, linebacker Cornelius Bennett has been on four Super Bowl losers as a member of the Buffalo Bills. Wide receiver Tony Martin and cornerback Randy Fuller have one Super Bowl appearance each, Martin with the San Diego Chargers in the 1995 game and Fuller with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1996. Both of them lost those games, too. So it's up to Reeves and those four players to make sure the rest of these high-flying Falcons are grounded in reality when game time finally rolls around next Sunday night. "I tell these guys: All the hoopla and the success you've had -- this is not it. The football game's the end," Robinson said. "If you can kind of shift the focus ... I mean, I know what's meaningful and what's not. Everything depends upon this one game." If the Falcons didn't know that before Wednesday, they're starting to get the hint.
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