Manning has the early
edge
Posted: Thu Sept 10,
1998
 Sports Illustrated
NFL writer Paul Zimmerman checks in each Thursday with analysis
of trends and players to
watch.
I've explained this before, but some people still don't
understand it. On kickoff weekend, when the character of
most teams is still basically a blank, I want to see as
many of them as possible. So I watched 16, which translates
into eight games in
their entirety, all neatly registered and charted in four
colors.
"No way you could see eight games on a weekend,"
said the guy in the cigar store, where they still haven't
heard about things like the VCR and the satellite dish.
This is how it's
done:
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The Dolphins defense gave Manning a rude introduction to the NFL.
(Damian Strohmeyer)
| Two local teams on the networks, which for me means Jets
and Giants. Two recorded on the upstairs VCR, via the dish,
Vikings-Bucs and Dolphins-Colts. Two downstairs, same
setup, Packers-Lions and Bills-Chargers. Raiders-Chiefs
Sunday nighter and Broncos
vs. Patriots on Monday night, and that's eight—count
'em. This is what I
saw:
I wanted to get a look at both million-dollar rookie QBs,
Peyton Manning and Ryan
Leaf. CBS went heavy with the comparisons during the Chargers
game, running an in-progress graphic of their respective
numbers. I thought Manning looked better, except, of
course, for the three picks that cost his team the game. He
was smoother in the
pocket and more athletic when he had to move out of it, although
neither one of them had the look of pure action that the
Cardinals'
Jake Plummer
showed last year.
In the thinking department both were overmatched, of
course, by the subtlety of the defenses they faced. Neither
one could do the old veteran bit, looking the DBs off the
receivers. The Miami secondary, for instance, had a better
read on the patterns
than Manning had. But that'll come. Remember, these guys are
babies.
I thought Manning showed better arm strength, too, and this
surprised me because Leaf was the guy who was supposed to
have the real gun. Yet he was looping the kind of throws
you'd normally drill, such as 10- to 15-yard out patterns.
Manning had more
zip. Oh well, it's only one
game.
My four favorite performances all came in road
losses. I'm talking about
QBs: the Jets'
Glenn
Foley against the Niners, the Bucs'
Trent
Dilfer against the Vikings, the
Redskins' Trent
Green against the Giants and the Bills'
Doug Flutie
against the Chargers (but I'm kind of prejudiced in that
last one because I pull very hard for little
Doug).
Foley just kept coming at the 49ers, never letting them
catch their breath, showing a real killer instinct. Why did
Neil O'Donnell
fall out of favor with
Bill
Parcells? Because he wouldn't go downfield. A safety-first guy.
Just check out O'Donnell's numbers for the Bengals last
Sunday: 24 completions for 200 yards, averaging 8.3 per completion,
the lowest on the board for a full day's work. No such
problems with
Foley.
Dilfer was the most courageous. He completed his first 11
passes against a very stiff rush, putting the ball in tight
spots and showing real velocity. Then he suffered a thigh
bruise and that was it; the Bucs' defense had lost it for
them
anyway.
Green lifted a hopeless attack and made it competitive. And
Norv
Turner—a practitioner of the "Real" West Coast
Offense, the
Sid Gillman-Don
Coryell attack that relies on timed routes and throwing to a
precise spot—wasted no time naming him the new
starter. That's how accurate the kid
was.
Finally there's Flutie, who at the age of 35 returns to the
NFL wars with six Canadian Football League MVP awards in
his trophy case. He came in when the starter,
Rob
Johnson, was dinged on the first play of the second half. Johnson
had run the offense for six series and the result was zero
points and a total of half a dozen plays run in Chargers
territory. Flutie also had six possessions: Two drives
ended with TD passes to
Andre
Reed, and two others ended on the San Diego four and 21,
respectively, setting up a pair of field goal attempts,
either of which could have won the game. And before the
last drive—from his own 21 to the Chargers'
21—his top weapon, Reed, had been knocked
out of
action.
Flutie scrambles, he buys time, he bleeds out first downs.
Man, is this ever an action quarterback—but he won't
start, of course, because the Bills paid Johnson $25
million and sent the Jaguars No. 1 and No. 4 draft choices
for his services. OK, let's
be realistic about this. It was a real hot day on the Coast,
and a waterbug QB like Flutie is going to give defenses
real trouble late in the game. But here's what I'd do.
Laugh if you like, but I'd bring in Flutie for spot duty
every game, maybe for a
series or two, maybe when the Bills' coaches sense that the
defense is tiring a bit and wouldn't be up to chasing him
around.
It's not as far-fetched as it sounds. Philly did it with
Randall
Cunningham in his rookie year, bringing him in on third
downs.
The most spectacular achievement on the
board belonged to the Vikings'
Brad
Johnson, who lit it up the Bucs for four TDs, but I'm probably the
only person in Mountain Lakes, N.J., and parts of Denville
and Parsippany, too, who wasn't all that thrilled by his
performance. He put a lot of balls up for grabs and simply
let his receivers
make plays. He worked against against some very loose zones
and minimal pressure (the great
Warren
Sapp took the day off). The Bucs gave rookie
Randy Moss
room and let him have his way, when the book says jam him
tightly. Sour grapes, obviously, coming from your faithful
narrator who picked the Super Bowl-bound Bucs in an upset
here.
I saw something at the end of that game that totally
weirded me
out. With the Vikes up 31-7 and 2:33 left, they should have
been running the clock out. But instead they sent
Jake
Reed downfield on a fly pattern. He hit the ground hard and was
helped off the field and looked in very bad shape on the
bench. Why? What was the point? I'll never figure out
things like this.
And at the end of the Raiders-Chiefs
game, when Oakland was down 28-8 with less than a minute left
and K.C. was trying to kill the clock, there go the
Raiders, calling a pair of timeouts so they could get their
offense and
Jeff
George, who'd just suffered his 10th sack, for a safety, back on
the field, so he could throw a couple of meaningless
passes, or maybe get sacked a couple more times. It just
doesn't make any sense, but then again, a lot of things
don't.
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