Players of the
weak?
Paul Zimmerman has covered the
NFL for Sports Illustrated since 1979. His exclusive online
column appears each
Friday.
Posted: Fri October 24,
1997
You never know where they're going to appear. They come
creeping out like lost puppies. I'm talking about the NFL
awards: offensive, defensive and special teams players of the
week.
These should be fairly meaningful things. I mean, someday
Mike Pagel, the old Colts quarterback, can say that he was
the AFC's offensive player of the week back in 1984, on the
second week of the award's existence. But where do you find
these things?
The AP moves them, and then they might appear at the bottom of
some beat writer's notes column or in agate type somewhere
if the news desk isn't too overloaded that
night.
For me this is a sad thing because I'm kind of into honors,
and if what we're talking about is a legitimate award, it
should be recognized in a fairly regular way. But then I
look at some of the selections and I groan. Oh, they're not
as bad as some
others. Coach of the year is the worst, because it's picked
while the season is still going on. You always wind up with
some guy who brought a doggy team up to respectability, but
never with the guy who won the Super
Bowl.
MVP of the Super Bowl is bad, too. I mean Larry Brown got
it for the Cowboys-Steelers contest in '96 because two
interceptions fell right into his hands. And O.J. Anderson
got it for the '91 Bills-Giants Super Bowl, even though
Thurman Thomas's
numbers—and performance—buried O.J.'s. And when I screamed in the
press box, "Just look at the stats!" (yes, I was
a selector then), guys told me, in their ignorance,
"You're not allowed to pick a guy on a losing
team."
Oh,
brother.
But we're talking about the weekly awards now, and I always
wondered just how they're selected. So last week I called
Greg Aiello, the NFL's p.r. guy, and he laid it out for me.
It's done by a committee of half a dozen or so league
people, publicity
guys mostly. They study the weekly stats. They solicit
nominations from p.r. directors. "Some of the club
guys are fairly diligent," Aiello said. "Some of
them can't be
bothered."
So who are the good ones and who are the stiffs? Well, the
league couldn't get into that, so I called a guy, Mr.
Anonymous, who used to be part of the procedure but no
longer is and would not care to be mentioned by
name.
"Off the top of my head, I'd say San Francisco,
Dallas, Green Bay, Kansas City and the Giants were pretty
much on the ball," he said. "Oakland, of course,
was hopeless, and in all the years I worked in the league
office I never got a call from
Chicago.
"You can't believe the politicking that went on in the
weekly sessions. You tended to lean toward the good-citizen
types. Sometimes you wanted to reward certain
clubs."
Oh sure, I can believe it. In Week 1 against the 49ers,
Tampa Bay's Warren Sapp had one of the greatest games I've
ever seen a defensive tackle have. Sapp got credit for nine
unassisted tackles, two assists and 2 1/2
sacks, which should count as tackles—I mean you wrap up a
guy and he falls down, right? Did he get the award? He did
not. The NFC's defensive player that week was Detroit
middle linebacker Stephen Boyd, whose numbers read six
unassisted tackles, seven
assists (hometown scorers always hand these out liberally to
their favorites) and an
interception.
So what was the deal? Well, Sapp still had a pending
hearing on a misdemeanor marijuana possession charge. And
in the Niners game he had a hand in taking out two future
Hall of Famers, Jerry Rice and Steve
Young.
The next week Sapp dislocated a finger and sprained both
ankles, and was basically ineffective for the month of
September. But his misdemeanor charge got dismissed, and
guess what? The NFL chose him as its defensive player of
the month. Are you getting
my thinking on these
awards?
I pick my own player of the game for each game I see. Often
it's an offensive lineman. Do you know how many offensive
linemen have been chosen NFC or AFC offensive player of the
week?(In the 14 years the awards have been given, they've
honored almost
500 offensive players.) Ready? Three. Dallas's Erik Williams
in '92, Washington's Jim Lachey in '90 and the Giants' Brad
Benson in '86—all tackles, incidentally. Hey, fellas,
guards and centers occasionally play well, too. Oh yes, the
Chicago Bears'
"offensive line" won the award one week in 1990, ignoring the
fact that not every player performs at the same
level.
But these pickers don't come into the room and say,
"This is who I saw play well." It's all done with
numbers and stats and tackles and assists charts, and
that's my biggest complaint. One year, when New England's
superlative guard John Hannah was
coming up for Hall of Fame selection, a guy on the committee
said, "Well, I talked to so and so [naming two
defensive players], and they said he was good, not
great." And I said, "How do
you think he played?" And this guy, who had the power to
significantly affect a person's life, said, "How the
hell do I know what offensive linemen do out
there?"
At that point I got incoherent, as I'm on the verge of
getting now just recalling it, and, since my wife is giving
me strange looks and is reminding me, "You're talking
to yourself again," I will retreat into a more
sensible realm, i.e., the upcoming
contests.
New England beats the
Pack in the Monday-nighter. The key is how functional Green
Bay's defensive monster in the middle, Gilbert Brown, will
be, coming off a bad knee. This is a guy who is all-world
in the first quarter, comes off the field in the nickel
rush and then is sucking
wind in the fourth period. But he's still effective when
people try to run at him, and when he was out of the
lineup, the Packers were very soft against the ground
attack. The Patriots will run enough to give Drew Bledsoe a
cushion. They made a mistake
last week in getting away from their regular bump coverage
and going zone against the Jets' Glenn Foley. The kid
simply devoured them. They won't make that mistake against
the
Pack.
Atlanta to upset Carolina on the
road, if, and it's a big
if, Chris Chandler is functional. This is a team that loses
but beats people up—four 49ers offensive linemen had to
leave the game last week—and I think the O-line is the
most disappointing part of the Panthers'
operation.
The Eagles to beat
Dallas, this time in Philly. I picked them in an upset in the
last one and almost called it. You think I'm going to
abandon them now?
Tampa Bay over
Minnesota, but two things have to happen—pass rush on Brad Johnson,
keep the rush off Trent Dilfer. I like the Bucs to go for
150-plus on the
ground.
Jacksonville-Pittsburgh is an intriguing one, and I'm
tempted to go for the upset here, after the Jaguars took
Dallas down to the wire in what should have been a
look-ahead week for them, but they just don't seem to play
well in Three Rivers, and
... no, I'm going to pick the upset. Quarterback vs.
quarterback, and if it comes down to the fourth quarter,
I like Mark Brunell over Kordell
Stewart.
Seattle over the rampaging
Raiders. If I know my Oakland team, they'll be celebrating that
Denver win into December.
Arizona over
Tennessee as Chapter One is written in the Saga of Jake the Snake.
And finally,
Washington to bounce back hard against
Baltimore, which always starts off running well but somehow loses
its
momentum.
Previous
editions of Dr. Z
|
