Strong starts

So far, so good for several new faces in new places

Ranking the NFL's eight new head coaches after four games, one quarter of the regular season:

1. Bill Callahan, Oakland: Old? Who said they were old? Callahan has his 3-0 Raiders producing better than anybody else in the NFL. Oakland is averaging 37.7 points per game, and hasn't been seriously challenged yet.

2. Marty Schottenheimer, San Diego: Everything that went wrong for him last September in Washington has gone right for him this year in San Diego. And he has a defense that should be able to make it to January.

3. John Fox, Carolina: How many other coaches can say they've already tripled their predecessor's 2001 win total? Fox showed moxie in going with 36-year-old Rodney Peete at quarterback, but nobody's snickering any more.

4. Jon Gruden, Tampa Bay: The Bucs have beaten Baltimore, St. Louis and Cincinnati, three teams that have combined for a 1-10 record. Still, in past years, the Bucs would have been busy digging themselves an early season hole by now.

5. Tony Dungy, Indianapolis: Nothing to get all that excited about, but with games against Cincinnati and Baltimore coming up, the Colts could be 4-1 and in control of the mediocre AFC South soon.

6. Dom Capers, Houston: Still think we were kidding when we said the Texans could beat Dallas in the season opener and consider it a successful season? It almost looks like it was Capers' first-year blueprint.

7. Steve Spurrier, Washington: The old ball coach isn't looking too confident right now. All that preseason success must seem like it was long ago. Not to mention his glory days at Florida.

8. Mike Tice, Minnesota: The Vikings' season already has train wreck written all over it. The NFL's lowest-paid head coach still has the support of his players, but so far he hasn't gotten a "W" or a break.

Things are never dull in Snyder-ville

Uh-oh, league sources say Redskins owner Daniel Snyder has grown antsy and is complaining that he's not having any "fun" these days, what with his team off to a 1-2 start and its most recent win three weeks ago.

When Snyder's fun quotient goes down, heads usually roll. The only problem is, having gone through three head coaches in 2000-01, Snyder is financially committed to Spurrier to the tune of five years at $25 million. Even Snyder can't afford to be that impatient.

"He'd rather fire people than roll up his sleeves and go to work," said one team observer. "It's quicker to do that. Half the building turns over every six months. He's amazing. He's really no better than the average fan on the street when it comes to knowing what's going on. But it's his team."

One of the Redskins' biggest problems? The team's defense features a bunch of veterans who are undisciplined when it comes to playing defensive coordinator Marvin Lewis' gap-control system. And nobody has been a bigger disappointment than third-year outside linebacker LaVar Arrington.

Arrington has killed the Redskins in pass coverage, and he's not showing any willingness to put in the work necessary to become more adept at playing the stand-up left defensive end spot on passing downs. Arrington continues to make the same mistakes, and his missed tackles and blown assignments already number in the double digits.

Arrington made the Pro Bowl last year as a playmaking force in Kurt Schottenheimer's defense, but current team officials believe that only helped create a monster, in that Arrington came to believe his game had arrived when it hadn't. Lewis is said to be trying to break Arrington's game down and rebuild it correctly from a sense of on-field discipline.

"[They] have to start over from ground zero with him," an observer said. "Everybody wants to be Ray Lewis in that defense, but nobody wants to do the work."

If Washington loses this week at Tennessee, look for the pressure to really start to build.

A return for the ages

Here's some of the back story to Chris McAlister's NFL-record 107-yard touchdown return of a missed Broncos field goal attempt Monday in Baltimore. Ravens special teams coordinator Gary Zauner said he has run the play six times in his coaching career, but it never produced a touchdown.

In the Baltimore playbook, it's called "Ravens personnel, field goal return, bench side," because part of the play's trickery is to have the Baltimore lineman start walking toward the Ravens' bench once the field goal is missed, hopefully lulling the unsuspecting opponent to sleep.

"I tell the lineman, I don't want them to run, just walk off the field toward the bench," Zauner said. "That makes the other team's linemen start walking toward their bench, and then we run the return up our sideline. On a field goal [attempt] unit, there are usually only two good cover guys, the wingbacks, and they're usually a linebacker or a tight end. Ray Lewis picked off one of those two when he got No. 55 [Broncos linebacker Keith Burns]."

Zauner also coaches the return man, in this case McAlister, to go stand right under the goal post, and "blend in with the pole." Because "a lot of times they can't see you that way," he said. "And then they forget about you being back there. You just have to make sure you don't step out of the end zone backward."

Zauner spent eight seasons as the Vikings' special teams coach (1994-2001) before joining Baltimore this year. He said Minnesota ran the field goat attempt return twice last year, including once when it almost worked in a similar fashion. Vikings return man Robert Tate (who now also is a Raven) scooped up a Giants' miss and took it back for an apparent touchdown, but the ball was ruled dead because it had hit the crossbar.

The perfect ending to a 30-year-old mystery

Former Miami kicker Garo Yepremian secured his niche in American sports history with his botched passing attempt in Super Bowl VII, almost 30 years ago. But in his new book, Still Perfect: The Untold Story of the 1972 Miami Dolphins, author and South Florida Sun-Sentinel sports columnist Dave Hyde reveals the fascinating aftermath of that play, which almost cost the Dolphins their perfect season.

Though Miami beat Washington 14-7, the lasting image of that game is of the diminutive Yepremian picking up his own blocked field-goal attempt and trying to coax a spiral from his tiny right hand. The ball went straight up into the air, where he compounded the trouble by batting it even higher. Redskins defensive back Mike Bass picked off the "pass" and returned it for a touchdown, cutting Miami's lead to seven.

Some of Yepremian's teammates were livid over the gaffe, and others just ignored him altogether. Months later, Yepremian still felt like an outcast. Then he got an encouraging letter from Dolphins head coach Don Shula, who reminded him how huge a role he played in Miami's 17-0 achievement.

Thus buoyed, Yepremian recovered from his gloom and went on to relish his moment of infamy, over the years turning it into the perfect topic for the lucrative rubber chicken circuit.

Decades later, at a celebrity golf tournament, Yepremian and Shula were playing together when a fan approached and thanked the coach for his many contributions to South Florida.

"Yes, thank God for Coach Shula," Yepremian echoed. "He wrote a letter that meant as much to me as anything a coach did."

Shula didn't remember writing his kicker any letter, no matter how much Yepremian insisted. The author, both men eventually concluded, was Shula's wife, Dorothy, who died of breast cancer in 1991. She had written the missive and signed her name, as she had done many times.

"God bless Dorothy," Yepremian said.

Bengals' Brown can't even escape online

The natives are getting more restless than ever in Cincinnati. As of Friday afternoon, the "Down with Mike Brown" online petition drive was almost 10,000 strong. The petition is asking NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue to either "remove" the Bengals' owner and president from control of the team, or to demand the sale of the team to a party not associated with Brown.

The Bengals are 53-127 in the 11-plus seasons since Brown took over complete control of the team upon the August, 1991 death of his famous father and team founder, Paul Brown. The Bengals haven't made the playoffs since 1990, which was also their last winning season.

Don't hold your breath waiting for Tagliabue to lift so much as an eyebrow over the anti-Brown movement. The league doesn't do coups.

But if there are those out there who believe in the power of the people (especially those with fast modems), you can find the "Down with Mike Brown" petition at www.PetitionOnline.com. And if you still haven't vented enough of your antipathy toward Brown, there's always MikeBrownSucks.com, which boasts of "Fightin' THE MAN since the year 2000!"

A picture can be worth 1,000 words -- or bucks

When the buildup for the Patriots at Dolphins game rolled around this week, it conjured up fresh memories of Finger-gate.

This offseason, when the Patriots received their Super Bowl rings, the four ex-Dolphins on New England's roster -- quarterback Damon Huard, linebacker Larry Izzo, cornerback Terrell Buckley, and offensive lineman Grey Ruegamer -- had a picture taken that featured them wearing their new jewelry on their extended middle fingers.

As a gag, the four Pats sent the photo to some of their ex-teammates in Miami, linebacker Zach Thomas among them. New England head coach Bill Belichick didn't think it was so funny and wound up fining his players for their lack of good taste.

The picture of the saluting Patriots showed up again in the Dolphins' team complex this week.

"It kind of upset me to see it again hanging in the hallway, but when you win it, you can do that," Dolphins defensive end Jason Taylor said. "I'm glad they got fined by their team, but I'm not big on bulletin-board stuff. If you need a bulletin board to get you going for Sunday, then you need to get a new line of business."

Said Thomas, who was sent the picture by Izzo: "I thought the picture was good. He knows that I would do the same thing to him. That's nothing that motivates you. I think more is made of it then it really is. It is really a funny thing. If I ever get a ring, he'll be getting something in the mail."

Holmes worked his way from the ground up

He's the NFL's third-leading rusher, and he's coming off a Pro Bowl breakthrough season in which he led all league rushers. But from all accounts, Kansas City running back Priest Holmes remains as humble as ever. And that's saying something.

Holmes' stepfather, Herman Morris, recently recalled he and his wife visiting Holmes in 1997, just after he received a $2,500 signing bonus to join the Baltimore Ravens as an undrafted free agent.

"We went up and visited him and slept on the floor with him," said Morris, the only dad Holmes has ever known. "He had blankets and pillows, linens, but no bed. Priest will probably kill me for telling you this, but he used boxes and stuff as tables. He had a small TV and a VCR to watch game films. It was very humbling."

Now Playing in L.A.: The Eason Family Chronicles

Los Angeles is in its eighth year of life without the NFL, but that didn't stop former NFL safety Bo Eason from playing there. Eason, who spent five years (1984-88) with the Houston Oilers, wrote and stars in the critically acclaimed play, Runt of the Litter, which is entering its second and final week in Los Angeles.

The set of the one-man show is a football locker room, where Eason's character is preparing to face off against his older brother in the Super Bowl. Trying to come to grips with the conflicting emotions produced by his no-win situation is at the heart of play's message.

Eason knows something about his topic. His older brother, Tony, 42, played quarterback for the Patriots in the 1980s, and started Super Bowl XX for New England against Chicago. The Eason brothers never faced one another in the NFL, but were scheduled to in 1987 until the players' strike wiped out the game.

"It's kind of a Cain and Abel premise; do you choose brotherhood, or do you want to win?" said Bo Eason, 41, who has had small roles in movies such as A Bright Shining Lie and Miami Rhapsody.

The Easons grew up in Walnut Grove, Calif., and never lost a game while playing on the same team, from youth league through high school. Eason's play enjoyed a successful off-Broadway run in New York, and Castle Rock has an option for the screen rights.

If the cows can't eat it, the Cowboys want to play on it

Just know this when for the first time you see what looks to be real grass on the floor of Texas Stadium: It's not. It's RealGrass.

The Cowboys are debuting the new artificial playing surface Sunday against the New York Giants. RealGrass is among the new grass-like surfaces that are springing up around the league, but in this case, some are questioning whether this particular product has enough of a track record to be trusted with owner Jerry Jones' multi-million dollar roster.

RealGrass fields have been limited to three football fields in Mexico and four indoor soccer fields, and one outdoor soccer field, at a New Jersey sports complex which is partially owned by the creator of RealGrass. In other words, RealGrass has never been used for a football game in the United States.

But the Cowboys enjoyed their experience with it in training camp at the Alamodome in San Antonio, so much so that they brought that playing surface with them back to Dallas and had it installed at their practice facility. Then Jones had another RealGrass field installed at Texas Stadium.

"We're just very comfortable," Cowboys president Stephen Jones told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "The players love it. I mean, they're crazy about it. We feel, after doing our [due] diligence, that it will hold up. And that's really the only remaining question -- how it will hold up over time -- because over a short period of time, it definitely passed the test."

Game of the Week

When New England and Miami last met in late December, first place in the AFC East was on the line, just as it is again in early October. Both the Dolphins and Patriots took one on the chin in the rough, tough AFC West last week, but neither team was exposed as a first-place imposter. One of them, however, will surrender their share of the lead Sunday.

Miami is 28-6 at home against the Patriots in the regular season, but even more impressively, the Dolphins are unbeaten in 12 games at home against New England in the season's first two months, when presumably they have the warm weather on their side. The margin of victory in those dozen encounters was 14.4 points per game. Seems fair, since Miami usually can't beat the Patriots in Foxboro in the cold of November and December.

Quote of the Week

"I was saying to myself, 'Down goes Frazier!'" -- Lions running back James Stewart, on watching Detroit return specialist Desmond Howard crumple to the turf last week against New Orleans, after starting the game with a 70-yard kickoff return. Howard's teammate, defensive end Robert Porcher, head-slapped him in celebration of his big play, resulting in the re-aggravation of a recent neck injury.

 

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