 |
| |
|
 |
 |
||
 |
 |
||
 |
|||
EVENTS
CENTERS
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
|
 |
Favorite Martin
This is the 16th in a series of postcards Sports Illustrated's Peter King will e-mail from his NFL training camp tour. Saturday, Aug. 18 Team: New York Jets
Site: Ravens-Jets preseason game, won by New York, 16-3, at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. The field looked a little worn down in the center after the MetroStars season and a Jags-Giants game two nights prior. It's good having grass. It's not good having worn grass the third weekend of August. Five observations from practice that you just can't get anywhere else: 1. Learn the name John Abraham. You'll need to know it when the AFC Pro Bowl squad is announced in December. Playing left end in 4-3 defense at a too light 256 pounds, Abraham was the most impressive defender on the field Saturday night. Three tackles, a sack and a strip/deflection of Elvis Grbac on an aborted pass play. This is the kind of player Simeon Rice should be. 2. My favorite Jet name, seventh-round guard Siitupe Peko (pronounced "see-ee-too-pay pee-coe") also has my favorite college major from the training camp tour: Parks, Recreation and Tourism, at Michigan State. I wonder what the class trips were like. 3. I love the leg of Jets kicker John Hall, but he makes me nervous as heck on the somewhat difficult ones. He's just not steady. You have to be better than 6-of-12 between 40-49 yards, which Hall was last year. I think the Jets will have a short leash with him this season. 4. Nice touch by quarterback heir Chad Pennington on a lofted 37-yard completion along the left sideline to Matthew (The Poor Man's Keyshawn) Hatchette. Pennington looks a little stiff, still a little unnatural. But he will occasionally make the perfect throw, like this one, to give Jets fans the hope that he's the quarterback of the next decade. 5. Line of the night, from Jets radio man Howard David, on a tackle by New York defensive back Earthwind Moreland (and yes, that's his real name). "Hit on the play by Earth, Wind and Moreland," said David. Moreland made the second-string play of the night in fourth quarter, stopping Ravens fullback Alan Ricard for no gain with a crushing hit on a fourth-and-one pass. Opinion/factoid that might be interesting only to me: Or quote, in this case. Ran into Baltimore GM Ozzie Newsome at halftime, after franchise left tackle Jonathan Ogden suffered a sprained ankle and cornerback Duane Starks was helped off with a knee sprain. Newsome had a moonpie look on his face. "I'm just sitting here," he told me, "watching all my money get carted off the field." The food: I've been coming to the Meadowlands for 100 years, and the food never changes much. Pretty average mass-produced fare, with a pretty average reaction two hours later. The pregame meal: Overall, I've been spoiled by camp meals the past three weeks. This was a D-plus meal. Dear NFL Junkie ... You look for little edges in these phony games, little things to give you clues into whether a team you sort of like -- the Jets, in this case -- is going to go 6-10 or 10-6, and whether it will be playing for something or playing out the string by Thanksgiving. I found it tonight. His name is Curtis Martin. You might know him as an above average-to-very good NFL back. That's the strange thing about Martin -- he plays in the media capital of the world and no one thinks of him as one of the top five backs in the game, though that's what he is. Odd. He's the third back in NFL history to exceed 1,000 yards in each of his first six seasons. Actually, he's gained no less than 1,160 yards in any of his six seasons. He picks up the tough yards between the tackles and has enough juice to beat quick outside backers around the corner. He's 28 years old. He played three years with New England and now has played three with the Jets after Bill Parcells stole him as a restricted free agent after the 1997 season. (I remember Sports Illustrated mentor Paul Zimmerman telling me after Martin cost the Jets first- and third-round picks, plus $6 million a year for six years: "The only way he'll end up being worth it is if the Jets win a Super Bowl while he's on the team, or if he ends up one of the top five rushers of all time." Well, he's on his way to the latter now, if he stays as healthy as he's been in the last three years, having played in 47 of 48 regular-season game.) And tonight, the Jets played the Ravens (significantly, without the recently arthroscoped mountain-in-the-middle Tony Siragusa at defensive tackle) with a spread offensive line and a steady diet of Martin. "The key thing playing the Ravens," he said, "is to spread the field so they can't plug up all the gaps. Then you have a chance to find running room." Martin believes in hitting the hole, then looking for a crease -- not going east-west behind the line until he sees something -- and attacking it, because by that time the hole is usually gone. First series: gains of 4, 5, 0, 5 and 4; resulting in a Hall field goal. Then, gains of minus-2, 3 and 3; punt. Then 13, 2, 5 and, after a sack, punt. Then, 2, 9, 2 and another field goal. That was the end of his night ... 14 carries, 55 yards, 3.9 a carry. That's his career average. I told him after the game that no one thinks of him as one of the top three or four backs in the league. Maybe people shouldn't. Maybe Eddie George and Corey Dillon and Edgerrin James and Marshall Faulk are all better than he is. But Martin's numbers and his durability and his selflessness and his grit tell me he should, at the very least, be considered in the debate for the very small top group in the league. How many is that? Six, seven, eight? I don't know. All I know is I want Martin on my team, getting 26 carries in a game that mean something. "To me," he told me, "that stuff of what people think of me is beyond secondary. It really is. I care about the respect of my peers and about winning." It
shows.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
