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Inside the NFL
Posted: Tuesday October 26, 1999 04:33 PM Ryan's Hope | Iron Mike's Plight Dispatches | The End Zone The Buzz | Dr. Z's Forecast To assess Mike Holmgren's sudden impact on the Seahawks, just look at the standings By Peter King
This summer at their training site in Cheney, Wash., the Seahawks hung a huge banner that was filled mostly by Mike Holmgren's mug and announced the team's marketing slogan for the 1999 season: IT'S NOW TIME! Towering over the practice fields and covering the side of a five-story parking garage, the sign inspired a nickname for Seattle's new coach and general manager. "The Big Show," says Seattle defensive end Michael Sinclair. "That's what we called him. We looked over at the side of this building and saw this gigantic Mike, and it was like, Are we in Cuba? Is that Castro? It was like we had Fidel staring down at us."
"I'm loving this job," Holmgren said last Saturday in his suburban Seattle office. "I love the [general manager's] decision-making process, even when it's frustrating. I love working with new players. But we still have so many things to do. Now I'm going into a meeting with all the scouts we've called in off the road because I need to stress to them the kind of player I want here. We need to get bigger. We need to get faster. Before the season, when we met, the scouts told me why each player was on the roster, and I listened. Now I've got to tell them why, in many cases, they're wrong." After coaching for seven years under Green Bay general manager Ron Wolf, Holmgren wanted to run his own show. He got that opportunity last January when Seahawks owner and Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen gave him an eight-year, $32 million contract, and Holmgren has taken charge of all things big and small. Big: With the backing of Allen and club president Bob Whitsitt, he drew a line in the sand on negotiations with the team's best receiver, Joey Galloway, who in the last year of his contract wants a lucrative extension and was still holding out as of Monday. Small: After Sunday's win Holmgren announced he was ending the team mascot's practice of firing T-shirts into the crowd. "I'm dead serious," he said to giggles from some members of the media. "That guy shooting the T-shirts? He's done. I want our fans focused on the game." Holmgren also works quietly behind the scenes, as when he recently sat in the office of defensive coordinator Jim Lind -- who was promoted after Fritz Shurmur died of cancer on Aug. 30 -- and calmly but firmly advised him on how to deal with the disciplinary aspects of the job. Unbeknownst to the Seattle media, Holmgren called Galloway two weeks ago and tried to coax him back into the fold, suggesting to the wideout that he could be certain he'd get the guaranteed money he was holding out for by obtaining an injury-protection insurance policy. "That's what Sterling Sharpe did in Green Bay," Holmgren recalls telling Galloway. "Joey, I'm telling you, you'll get your money [if you get hurt]." On the sideline Holmgren is the same alternately scathing and soothing coach. He chewed out his offensive linemen on Sunday ("That's bulls -- -," he screamed at them after they failed to convert a third-and-short in the first half), then worked on the psyche of Jon Kitna when he heard the young quarterback coming off the field spewing invective. "Hey," Holmgren said, calling Kitna over. "Ever hear the expression, 'Never let 'em see you sweat?' You have to be ice." In the closing minutes of the game halfback Ricky Watters inexplicably ran out of bounds, stopping the clock and prompting a cascade of criticism from his teammates. Watters, ever the diplomat, starting telling everyone where to go. "Ricky, calm down," Holmgren said, his left arm gathering Watters close. "Stand next to me. We're on national TV. Now, you're wrong, and you know you're wrong. Relax." "Mike is still feeling his way," says Sinclair, "but the big thing around here now is accountability. The players who stay here are the ones he will trust. He's still finding out who's going to be in there through thick and thin. But don't worry. He'll find out." One of Holmgren's most important tasks this year is determining whether the wet-behind-the-ears Kitna, 27, is his quarterback of the future. "Kit is the way Brett Favre was in '95, '96 -- going through some growing pains," says wideout Derrick Mayes, whom Holmgren acquired during training camp in a trade with the Packers. "But he's a damn good quarterback and getting better." On Sunday, Kitna completed 17 of 30 passes for 276 yards and a pair of touchdowns to Mayes, the second on a picture-perfect 43-yard strike. From a coaching standpoint, Holmgren has followed much the same schedule as he did in Green Bay. Each week he installs the West Coast passing game plan -- the majority of the pass plays on Wednesday, red-zone passes on Thursday and goal-line and short-yardage plays on Friday -- and he's missed only two of the first 18 sessions because of front-office business. "I need him," says Kitna. "If you want to learn how to build a building, you don't talk to the landlord. You go to the architect." In the solitude of his hotel room on Saturday afternoons, Holmgren still scripts the first 15 plays and then reviews them that night at the team meetings. During the game he calls all the plays. "Maybe I'll let go of a few things as time goes on," he says. "I could use the time on other things. But not now." Each day he squeezes in about two hours of meetings related to the G.M. job: personnel, the waiver wire, the salary cap, etc. The schedule, of course, is taxing. Last Thursday Holmgren took his wife, Kathy, out for her birthday, only to nod off while reading the menu. "Aren't you romantic," she told him. Not at this time of year -- and not with the trip to Green Bay looming. "It'll be emotional, exciting," Holmgren says. "I don't think anyone's capable of cutting the cord this quickly. I begged [NFL schedule makers] not to send us in there this year, especially on a Monday night. All the time I was there, Ron and I always wanted Monday night games later in the season, but they never scheduled us late. Now they put us in there -- in November. I can't believe it."
Rams' Staying Power: St. Louis defensive end Grant Wistrom's 91-yard interception return for a touchdown against the Falcons on Oct. 17 was emblematic of the rejuvenated Rams' 6-0 start. The 270-pound Wistrom looked so fresh at the end of that run that it seemed he could have raced another 100 yards if he had to. The players who were worn down by Dick Vermeil's throwback practices in his first two seasons as coach are now playing their best, week in and week out, because they're no longer forced to use themselves up in a Thursday goal line drill. "Coming out of camp last year," Wistrom said a few days after his big play in Atlanta, "I felt like I'd already played a season. Now it's Week 7, and I still feel terrific. We're not beating each other up the way we did last year." Vermeil returned in 1997, after a 15-year absence from the game, and conducted an arduous training camp, mostly in full pads; then, during the season, he had more hitting in practice on Wednesday through Friday than most teams. Vermeil felt the hard labor readied his players for the long grind of the season, but that philosophy didn't bear fruit on the field. St. Louis finished 5-11 in '97 and 4-12 last season. This year, with a mature team that had by far its best attendance record in the off-season training program since his return, Vermeil scaled back camp drills in length and intensity, and eliminated most in-season hitting. "Now on Fridays, after the practice week, we're fresh," Wistrom says. "It's helped us." So has Wistrom's play. After the Rams made him the sixth pick in the 1998 draft, Wistrom, an undersized defensive end from Nebraska, had a disappointing rookie year, failing to beat out Mike D. Jones for the starting job opposite Kevin Carter. "Last year gave me tons of motivation," Wistrom says. "You realize you're not on scholarship anymore. You've got to grow up." Wistrom earned the first-string job in camp this summer and cemented his role with solid play against the run and 2 1/2 sacks this season. If Vermeil should revert to his old ways, Wistrom doesn't have far to go to complain. He lives four doors down from the coach in suburban St. Louis.
Ryan's Hope: Chargers coach Mike Riley, who coached for two years in what is now NFL Europe, says he will strongly consider assigning quarterback Ryan Leaf to the developmental league next spring. In light of what the league did for Brad Johnson, Kurt Warner, Jon Kitna and Damon Huard, that's a great idea -- assuming Leaf agrees to go and leaves his know-it-all attitude behind. "If Ryan goes there with a good attitude, this would really help him," says Kitna, who played for the Barcelona Dragons in the spring of 1997. "If he goes there just thinking 'When's the next plane home?' there's no use going. It's up to him. It's not always easy over there." What does Leaf think of the idea? "It's not an option," he said last week. "It's just not going to happen. Period." With his reaction, Leaf, who has been sidelined since undergoing shoulder surgery during the preseason, showed his true colors. It's further proof that he's not willing to do what it takes to be successful in the NFL.
Iron Mike's Plight: What's it like telling Mike Ditka you're taking $20,000 from him? "You mean what is it like for a young G.M. to walk into the office of a coach in the Hall of Fame, with three Super Bowl rings, and say, 'I can't accept your actions and I'm going to fine you?' It's not easy," New Orleans general manager Bill Kuharich said last week, after fining Ditka for making obscene gestures to the home crowd during and after a 24-21 loss to the Titans on Oct. 17. "Mike was a man about it. He said, 'You're right. It's unacceptable.'" Ditka, whose contract runs through 2002, was 6-10 in each of his first two seasons with the Saints, and at 1-5 after a 31-3 loss to the Giants on Sunday, is well on his way toward a worse mark this season. Nevertheless, Kuharich says he wants Ditka back in 2000.
Dispatches: Patriots cornerback Ty Law, who in the off-season signed a seven-year, $50 million contract, ought to be enjoying himself. Instead, he is laboring under the expectations that came with the new deal and struggling with the increasing use of zone coverage by New England. Playing mostly man-to-man last season, Law led the league with nine interceptions. This year he has one. "My name's not Ty Law anymore," he says. "It's The $50 Million Cornerback." ... Dolphins kicker Olindo Mare, who has converted 22 of 23 field goal attempts, is on pace to kick 59. The NFL record is 37.... Mike Alstott has supplanted Warrick Dunn as the Bucs' featured back. Dunn's not happy, but the numbers speak volumes: Alstott is averaging 4.8 yards a carry, Dunn 2.9. "If we're going to make it to the playoffs," says offensive coordinator Mike Shula, "those two guys have to take us there. It might be Mike running and Warrick catching." ... Before one practice last week Rams offensive linemen had molds taken of their ears. They're planning to wear electronic earplugs for this Sunday's game against the Titans at noisy Adelphia Coliseum. "We find the exact pitch of Kurt Warner's voice when he yells the cadence, program it digitally into each unit, and then any noise of a higher or lower frequency is automatically muffled out," says equipment manager Todd Hewitt. "We're not sure it'll work, but nothing ventured, nothing gained." What if St. Louis has to use backup quarterback Paul Justin? "It takes about four minutes to reprogram the units to a new voice," Hewitt says.... Colts president Bill Polian, whose team had some questionable replay decisions go against it in games against the Dolphins and the Jets, is right when he says, "I think you have to look at the overall picture of replay, which I hear has been pretty good. It seems our situation has been an anomaly. Either way, you can't make a judgment based on six weeks. We have to give this a full season." ... The Bucs shipped defensive end Regan Upshaw to the Jaguars just before the Oct. 19 trading deadline because they believe Upshaw, the 12th choice in the 1996 draft, lacks the instinct to be an effective every-down pass rusher. In return Tampa Bay got only a conditional seventh-round draft pick in 2000. ... Saints running back Ricky Williams on one of the differences between college football and the NFL: "In college, you could be 80 percent and still be the best player on the field. In the NFL defensive players are ruthless, especially when they know you're hurt. I can hear them saying, 'Keep hitting him!'"
The End Zone: Steelers offensive tackle Shar Pourdanesh, born in Tehran, gets a kick out of all the talk in the U.S. about sports rivalries. Asked which rivalry he thought was the biggest, Pourdanesh said, "Iraq versus Iran." 1. Enough is Enough After 72 regular-season starts, a minus-13 touchdown-to-interception margin and a 34-38 record guiding a team that has the talent to be markedly better than that, sixth-year quarterback Trent Dilfer finally took his rightful seat on the Buccaneers' bench on Monday. If Tampa Bay coach Tony Dungy hadn't handed Eric Zeier the job, sooner or later Dilfer would have cost the Bucs a shot at the NFC Championship -- in a season when the title is well within their reach. 2. Deion 1, Redskins 0 "I'm not old yet," Deion Sanders said on Sunday after the Cowboys' 38-20 rout of the mouthy Redskins. Sanders, 32, upended running back Stephen Davis for a four-yard loss on Washington's first play from scrimmage and, playing with a mild concussion, returned a punt 70 yards for the clinching touchdown in the fourth quarter. Memo to Albert Connell, who along with fellow Washington wideout Michael Westbrook had said before the game that Sanders couldn't keep up with them in coverage anymore. Trash Deion after you've beaten him, not before. 3. Earth to Young Niners quarterback Steve Young has talked with three Utah doctors about the effect that his recent series of concussions will have on his long-term well-being, and none of them cleared him to play football. Is it sinking in yet, Steve?
Issue date: November 1, 1999
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