Scouting Report
2 - Atlanta Falcons
With hopes that the offensive line is better—it
can't get any worse—the mission is to protect
quarterback Chris Chandler long enough to win
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The talented Chandler can be effective, but not if he keeps
getting his bell rung, as has happened often in recent
years.
(John Biever)
| He plays,
they have a chance. He sits, they lose. Last season the Falcons
went 7-3 in games that quarterback Chris Chandler started
and finished, and lost the six that he missed or didn't
finish. Team brass went into the off-season with a clear
mandate:
Do everything possible to protect
Chandler. That meant upgrading a line that allowed Atlanta
quarterbacks to be sacked 54 times, fourth most in the NFL.
This was not so much a need area as a disaster area. The
club responded by signing one free-agent starter, Corey
Louchiey, late of the Bills.
As bailouts go, it fell somewhere short of the economic
rescue of
Mexico.
Louchiey is a gargantuan right tackle with the wingspan of
a pterodactyl and lots of potential. But there are reasons
the
26-year-old former third-round pick has started only 13 of his
44 NFL games. He's not particularly graceful on his feet,
and he lacks a mean streak.
If Louchiey can't do
the job, it will fall to Ephraim Salaam, a seventh-round
draft choice out of San
Diego State.
In addition, the Falcons
signed Dave Widell
from the Jaguars.
Widell was a nice pickup—he's big, versatile and scrappy.
He's also 33, playing in his 11th season and penciled in as
the backup
center.
When he took over in 1997, coach
Dan Reeves inherited hogs who had, for the most part, spent
the previous three seasons playing patty-cake in June
Jones's run-and-shoot. "We want 'em to come off the
ball and hit someone in the mouth, to claim the piece
of ground they're standing on," says offensive line
coach Art Shell, who came on board with Reeves, "and
some of them were not built, or lacked the demeanor, to do
those
things."
Jamal Anderson and Byron Hanspard, quality backs though
they may be, can't run through nonexistent holes. Atlanta's
inability to move the ball on the ground last season (the
Falcons ranked 19th in the league) resulted in frequent
third-and-longs,
which invited defenders to storm the
barricades in pursuit of Chandler. Too often, they caught him. The
32-year-old sustained two concussions, a bruised sternum and a
high sprain of the left ankle. "The problem,"
says Reeves, "is that teams feel if they can get to
him, they can knock him
out."
When Chandler has his health, and a couple of seconds, he's
terrific. "I had no idea he was this good," says
newly arrived free safety Eugene Robinson, whom we last saw
picking off John Elway in the Super Bowl. Robinson, whose
49 career interceptions
lead all active NFL players, was signed from the Packers to
lend leadership—and larceny—to the secondary.
"Chris throws such a beautiful, accurate ball and does
a lot of little things that Brett [Favre] does," says
Robinson. "Keeping him healthy will be
paramount."
Indeed, the drop-off after Chandler is so precipitous as to
require carabiners and climbing rope. The prospect of
facing
44-year-old Steve DeBerg will not cost opposing defensive
backs much sleep. Meet the men charged with keeping
Chandler healthy this season.
| Schedule |
| Sept. | 6 | at Carolina |
| 13 | PHILADELPHIA |
| 20 | OPEN DATE |
| 27 | at San Francisco |
| Oct. | 4 | CAROLINA |
| 11 | at N.Y. Giants |
| 18 | NEW ORLEANS |
| 25 | at N.Y. Jets |
| Nov. | 1 | ST. LOUIS |
| 8 | at New England |
| 15 | SAN FRANCISCO |
| 22 | CHICAGO |
| 29 | at St. Louis |
| Dec. | 6 | INDIANAPOLIS |
| 13 | at New Orleans |
| 20 | at Detroit |
| 27 | MIAMI |
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Left tackle Bob Whitfield, who came out of Stanford six
years ago, still isn't the
All-Pro that many expected him to
become, but he is a quality player, the best of this bunch.
He lines up next to guard Calvin Collins, an All-Rookie
center last season who had trouble getting the snap to the
quarterback, a slight problem at that position. Reeves
decided that Collins
should trade places with Robbie Tobeck, a fourth-year man who
was Drew Bledsoe's center at Washington State, and is a
close friend of professional wrestlers Bill
Goldberg
and Ron Reis, a
7'2", 400-pound
man-mountain. (Maybe Reeves should have borrowed Tobeck's
Rolodex in the
off-season.) Beanbag-chair-buttocked Gene Williams,
who was fined for reporting at 337 pounds, 22 over his
assigned weight, plays right guard. Finally there's
Louchiey, of
whom Falcons coaches say, "He's not a
Pro Bowler, but he's better than what we had last
year."
Atlanta's strong finish in '97—the Falcons lost seven
of their first eight games, then went 6-2 in the second
half—has given rise to guarded optimism on the part of
everyone but Robinson, who is incapable of such subtle
emotion and who proclaims, "I
look around and I see a team ready to crest that hill, a team
on the verge of good
things."
Atlanta also happens to be on the verge of a cliff, over
which a couple of injuries at the wrong positions could
push them. It sounds like a plea as much as a statement
when Anderson says of Louchiey
& Co., "They don't have to be great. They don't have to
hold their blocks for five seconds. Just don't get knocked
backwards."
If the line isn't better, backwards is the direction this
team is
going.
—Austin Murphy
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