Favre welcomes added pressure
Posted: Sunday November 22, 1998 03:43 PM
Sports Illustrated senior writer spoke with CNN/SI's Bob Lorenz on
Sunday morning about Brett
Favre's frustrations, the ever-changing New York Jets and other news
around the NFL.
BL: Peter, you spoke to Brett Favre and he must feel like he is in
his own personal twilight zone week to week, he is not getting much help is
he?
PK: Well, Bob, I think the Brett Favre story has been a little bit
misunderstood this year in the NFL and I’ll tell you why -- talking to
Favre, this is not a guy down in the dumps. This is not a guy who is
unhappy with his lot in life. Yeah, he’d like to have a better running,
yeah, he’d like to have a little bit better protection but he takes full
responsibility for his 16 interceptions -- even though five of them have
been tipped -- and here’s what he told me, he said, "look, I have to go out
there and do what almost every quarterback in the NFL would want to do and
that is be the guy that all the pressure is on," he said -- "I love that
pressure."
Now two things about this game today that I think will be important to
Favre. First, the left corner for Minnesota in nickel downs, is a guy named
Ramos McDonald -- the
guy hasn’t played much in the NFL. In fact, a year ago he’s playing for New
Mexico against Tulsa and today he is going to be the key guy. Minnesota
probably goes to the nickel 40 to 50 percent of the time. I think Favre and
Robert Brooks are
really going to pick on him. Second, I just saw Cris Carter downtown, the
Viking wide receiver having a cup of coffee with his family before coming
over to the dome, and he said to tell you guys, "Hey, look, tell CNN that
I’m probably not going to be available for the playoffs this year --
they’ve been calling me wanting me to work. I want to be playing in the
Super Bowl, not working for CNN."
BL: Well, Peter, let’s get back out to you prior to the Colts game
-- the Jets had won four straight giving up about 12 points a game over
that span, so despite the loss last week, things are still looking pretty
good for them.
PK: Yeah, and I think Bob everybody in the NFL is now saying,
geez, how are the Jets so good, who do they have that makes them so good,
and I’ll tell you two guys in their organization who are doing a great job,
one is offensive coordinator Charlie Weis, and one is defensive coordinator
Bill Belichick. I was talking to Jeff Fisher in Nashville on Friday and one
of the things he told me is that the average NFL team right now might have
run maybe 30 or 35 offensive formations so far this year. He said the Jets
have run 63, so he said, "You have no idea, our defense comes into this
game having no idea what they are going to do, on the other side of the
ball." Eddie George
told me "What is Belichick going to come out with, a 4-3, a 4-4, a 3-4 he
said are they going to play 3 DBs are they going to play 7 guys up fron?"
He said it is the most changed-up defense that he sees in the league, Bob.
BL: Peter, what's the latest from the NFL notebook?
PK: Well, a couple items from the notebook about the San Francisco 49ers, Bob.
Steve Mariucci, the coach of the 49ers, has an offer in his briefcase right
now of a seven-year contract through the year 2005, Now Maruicci very much
wants to take this offer and I believe he will sometime in the next couple
of weeks. There’s a couple of sticking points however -- one of them being
authority. Mariucci on draft day next year would like to be in on the final
decisions, and that is one of the things that needs to be ironed out.
Let’s move over to 49ers vice president Dwight Clark, who imminently will
go to Cleveland to be the Browns' first general manager in their new era.
What’s holding up the deal right now, which I think will happen the first
week in December, is that the 49ers want compensation for Clark leaving
before the end of the football season and I think Paul Tagliabue, the
commissioner of the league, is going to allow them to take a mid to
low-round draft pick as compensation for losing Clark.
Let’s move over to New England, where the Patriots announced a move to
Hartford this week. One very, very important thing that the fans in New
England should know, when the stadium in Hartford early the next century is
not sold out that will mean the TV games in Boston are still blacked out.
Now in this way, the Patriots hope that their 34,000 season-ticket holders
from the state of Massachusetts stay on board, stay loyal and make the
90-something mile drive to Hartford every week.
|
