Seven wild days
From replay to mega-upset, a week pursuing the NFL
Posted: Monday December 14, 1998 12:11 PM
This Week's Awards | Ten Things
I Think I Think | Top 10 Teams
Click here to send your questions and
comments to Peter King's NFL Mailbag.
I've always thought the great thing about my job is how the NFL is a blank
slate every week, and over a seven-day period, I can make something of it.
Snippets from a week covering the NFL:
Tuesday. Replay rages. The league will consider a return to
replay for the playoffs because owners like Buffalo's Ralph Wilson
are freaking out over it. "I've been the most hard-line replay
opponent there is," Wilson told me from his home in Detroit. "But
we're embarrassing our sport. Can't we see that?"
Wednesday. Indianapolis running back Marshall Faulk hates
Sports Illustrated. Seems he thinks we jobbed him out of a cover
opportunity a couple of years back. So I'm not sure I'll be able to get him
to talk to me about the great year he's having. "Tell him," I
said to Colts p.r. man Craig Kelley , "that I'm thinking of
voting for him over Terrell
Davis as my all-pro running running back. '' At 4:35, Faulk, by
cell phone, called me. (Now I wasn't being underhanded here. I'm seriously
thinking of doing this, and I would be whether he had called me or not. I
am not denigrating Davis in the least here. I just think that Faulk, on
pace to have the most combined yards (rushing and receiving) by a back in
one NFL season and to lead the NFL in receptions, deserves real
consideration as the best back in the game this year, particularly on a
2-11 team.) He's really proud of going for consecutive 1,000-yard receiving
seasons; he'd be the second 1,000-1,000 back in history, the 49ers'
Roger Craig being the first in 1985. "The only man who knows how
hard this is is Roger Craig," Faulk said. "And the thing is, our
offense isn't doing anything special to get me the ball. We're just doing
our normal stuff."
Thursday. I find out about 12:45 p.m. that Chargers coach
June Jones has told his team he's taking the coaching job at the
University of Hawaii. That's the 0-12 University of Hawaii. Jones calls me
late Thursday night. He's one of the genuinely good people in the game, and
I think he did this for all the right reasons. San Diego is likely to be
6-10ish next year, still breaking in the wild Ryan Leaf, and Jones, deep
down inside, knew he might not have lasted in that environment. The
Chargers might just have spent 1999 chasing a supercoach instead of
sticking with Jones for the long haul. I ask him about his choice of
Hawaii. "I went to Hawaii for a high school basketball tournament in
1970 with my team from Portland, Oregon," he said. "And I just
remember sitting on the curb with buddies and saying: Wouldn't this be
great to go to school? So I transferred from Portland State to Hawaii for
two years of college and just loved. Every year for two or three months my
family and I would try to go in the offseason if we could. I don't know how
to explain it. It sounds corny if you try. But there's something about the
friends we made there. I think it's the aloha spirit. It's a different
feeling than any other place I've been. After the one year I was an
assistant there, in 1983, I thought: Someday, I'd really like to be the
head coach here. And when I talked to the Chargers and to the Hawaii
people, it really came down to this: What do I want to do with the rest of
my life? And I wanted to be the coach at Hawaii and live there with my
family." Good enough for me.
Friday. Bill Walsh is on the phone from California,
sounding very much as if he'd love to get back in the fray. We talk about
the possibility of his coming back to be the franchise czar of the 49ers if
Eddie DeBartolo regains ownership of the team from his sister (and
if the NFL lets him back after his felony conviction this year in
Louisiana). Walsh doesn't want a maniacal franchise
architect/roster-cutter/do-it-all role. A lesser job directing worker bees
would probably sit just fine with the 49ers staff. If and when DeBartolo
gets control, watch for Walsh, as one Niners source told me, "to sit
at Eddie's right hand and make the 49ers what they used to be." Well,
maybe, if Steve Young
can play until he's 45. The one decision Walsh should have made for this
team came a year and a half ago, on draft day. The 49ers were getting a bit
tired of Walsh's intrusions into franchise business, and so Walsh ended up
playing golf while the team was making its first-round draft choice. Walsh
would have pushed hard for Jake Plummer and lost.
Dwight Clark pushed hard for Jim Druckenmiller and won.
Who's sorry now?
Saturday. I am in New Orleans at 7:30 in the morning, waiting
for an audience with Mike Ditka , The Fixer. While I wait, I watch
the Saints' walk-through practice with GM Bill Kuharich , who
introduces me to a family from Wisconsin befriended by the Saints during
their summer training camp in LaCrosse. The family's 10-year-old daughter
has cancer. "Last night we went out to dinner, and Mike joined
us," Kuharich said. "He was relaxed, telling stories, having a
great time. And here's this family from Wisconsin, and you can just see
they're thrilled. Mike was terrific. I don't know if he would have done
this last year. He's so happy doing this." Ditka, indeed, is placid
when we meet, and when we're done, he says: "God bless you,
Peter."
Saturday night. I make it to Tampa and go to the Bucs'
night-before-the-game hotel on Harbour Island (these guys have it so rough)
to visit with quarterback Trent Dilfer before his
nightly team meetings. He's driving into valet parking as I walk up to the
hotel. We adjourn to a sushi restaurant. He's full from Wendy's. I force
down the pan-seared tuna (I'm not a big sushi fan). "After what we've
been through, if we make the playoffs this year, it'd be better than last
year," Dilfer tells me. "It's like we got to the brink of
disaster, now we're fighting our way back. Anything's more fun when you
have work extra hard to earn it."
Sunday. Replay doesn't rage. An anonymous GM tells me at 7:40
a.m.: "Replay's dead. No way we can get it in for the playoffs."
Which is what I say on CNN's "NFL Preview'' show. I also say that some
league officials would push commissioner Paul Tagliabue for a
meeting at the Super Bowl to approve replay for 1999 and let the
Competition Committee worry about how a system would be implemented.
Tagliabue pops into the Raymond James Stadium press box around noon. For
the first time in this whole controversy, he says he wants replay. "In
this digital age, this video age, I think we should have it for the '99
season and I think we probably will have it," the commissioner says.
"The question is whether it's a coaches' challenge system or some
other type of system."
Sunday afternoon. I am snoozing through a Steelers-Bucs game
that will set offensive football back ... well, let me allow my press-box
neighbor, Len Pasquarelli of the Atlanta Constitution, to
have his say: "We're watching two teams playing in a state-of-the-art
facility with offenses drawn up on a cave wall."
Later, one of the press-box TVs shows the Giants beating Denver. Perhaps
Don King could come up with the appropriate words for this. I have
none.
Monday morning. Just after 7 a.m., Giants coach Jim Fassel
picks up the phone in his office. "The euphoria I felt walking
off the field after that game and in the locker room was
unbelievable," Fassel said. "I mean, it's the way we make our
living, but there's no greater joy." He thinks there's a moral in
Sunday's 20-16 win over Denver. "This may be a catalyst for both
teams," he said. "They can go into games now knowing that, no
matter who they're playing, they can be beat them. That's a valuable lesson
to learn for any team. After we lost Jason Sehorn in the
preseason and the players looked at our tough schedule, everyone wondered,
'Can we win?' The lesson here is, if you believe in yourself, you can win
any day." Fassel has always seemed a bit cornballish about the lessons
of life, but he's sincere. And the guys in his locker room have always
bought that sincerity. Sunday was good reinforcement.
Now for this week's awards:
Offensive Player of the Week: Giants QB Kent Graham. He might
stay in the game a few more years, knock around as a backup with four or
five more teams. But Graham will never have a drive like the one he had in
the gathering dusk of the Meadowlands late Sunday afternoon, when his guts
and guile made the entire state of Colorado cry. He took the Giants 86
yards in 61 seconds ("I was just trying to throw simple completions,''
he said later), capping it with 37-yard touchdown pass to Amani Toomer.
Defensive Player of the Week: Tampa Bay LB Derrick Brooks. If
you don't see the Bucs very often -- and I haven't this season -- you don't
see what a great sideline-to-sideline player Brooks is. His 15-tackle game
in the 16-3 win over Pittsburgh was a dominant show.
Special Teams Player of the Week: Tampa Bay CB Brian Kelly. With a
minute left in the first half of the Steelers-Bucs game, Tampa Bay punter
Tommy Barnhardt lofted
a punt that appeared to be headed into the shallow part of the end zone.
Kelly sprinted to the one-yard line, lofted himself into the air, directed
the ball like he was taking a sky-hook and made a gorgeous throw to the
one. The Steelers were forced to sit on the ball and run out the half. This
is the type of special-teams play that wins games, the type that no one
ever remembers, the type that beats out a highlight film full of returns as
the MMQB weekly honoree.
Coach of the Week: New
York Giants defensive coordinator John Fox. "John did such a
tremendous job planning for this game," said Fassel. What Fox did was
acknowledge that he couldn't stop Terrell Davis (he had 147 rushing yards)
but could throw a combination of eight-man and lesser fronts at John Elway, knowing that,
in the passing game, the combination of a strong edge pass rush and
underrated coverage would make it difficult for the Broncos to win the game
in the air if it had to. Elway was only 19 of 36, and Rod Smith and Ed McCaffrey combined for
just 75 receiving yards.
Goat of the Week: Arizona coach Vince Tobin. The story:
Cards-Eagles. Tie game, 10-10. Fourth-and-one at the Eagles' 11, third
quarter. Tobin goes for it. Cards fail. So instead of going ahead of one of
the worst offenses in recent history, 13-10, Tobin hands the Eagles a
chance to get back in a must game. And they do. Luckily for Tobin, Philly
kicker Chris Boniol
choked on a chippy field goal, sending the game into overtime and Arizona
came away with the win.
Now for the 10 Things I Think I Think this week:
1. I think losing to the Giants will always make those 53 Broncos,
their 17 coaches and their one dapper owner sick.
2. I think the Denver loss puts an exclamation point on the reason
why the NFL is so universally popular. Week-to-week, nothing is ever a
lock. A few weeks ago, in Cincinnati, when Pat Bowlen was sweating out the
last minutes of a game the Broncos almost lost, I said to him: "This
is why the NFL so popular." When fans don't know who's going to win --
when they really don't know -- the suspense makes them tune in and buy
tickets.
3. I think the south Florida visitors and convention bureau, or
whatever it's called, just lost a million bucks. The VIP attendance at next
Monday's Broncos-Dolphins matchup has now evaporated.
4. I think I'm going to step out of my league for a minute and
bemoan the Kevin Brown signing by Rupert Murdoch 's Dodgers. This
is everything that is wrong with sports today. This is a big corporation
coming in and bullying everyone and buying whatever it wants no matter what
the cost in money or competitive terms. This is the reason the NFL, wisely,
hates corporate ownership. This is the reason it is insane for baseball not
to have a salary cap. No baseball fan in Pittsburgh or Cincinnati or
Montreal should buy a ticket for anything other than passing enjoyment this
year because their teams will be playing exhibition games, not real games
with real hope that they can ever get to the World Series. Kevin Brown is
34. He has won 20 games once. He now will make $15 million a season, almost
three times what Brett
Favre and Barry
Sanders make. And for seven years! Who is the lamebrain who made this
deal for the Dodgers?! It has Wayne Garland written all over it! I
think baseball is relatively indestructible, but this contract is the most
depressing thing I've ever seen happen to the game.
5. I think Minnesota offensive coordinator Brian Billick
is one heck of a choice to replace June Jones in San Diego.
6. I think if you were voting for the NFL's Most Valuable Player
this year, and really voting for an MVP, you'd have to consider Deion Sanders. The Cowboys
look so bush league without him. Look at it this way: Would Denver plummet
as precipitously as Dallas has without Sanders if Derek Loville were playing
instead of Terrell Davis?
7. I think every time I walk by a bank of TVs in a press box with
DirecTV, I envy all you people who can sit at home and watch all the games.
It's mesmerizing.
8. I think somebody's going to inherit a terrific job in Seattle.
9. I think Barry Sanders runs for about 132 tonight by the Bay.
10 . I think this is the Super Bowl score: Vikings 41, Broncos 34.
Now for the MMQB Top 10:
1. Minnesota (13-1)
2. Denver (13-1)
3.
Atlanta (12-2)
4. N.Y. Jets (10-4)
5. Green Bay (9-5)
6. Jacksonville (10-4)
7. Buffalo (9-5)
8. San Francisco (10-3) (pending
Monday night result)
9. Tampa Bay (7-7)
10. Miami
(9-5) Click here to send your
questions and comments to Peter King's NFL Mailbag.
|
