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Tip a cap to St. Louis and Indy
Posted: Monday December 27, 1999 11:12 AM
Week 16 Awards | The Top 10 Teams | Click here to send a question to Peter King's NFL Mailbag. MONTCLAIR, N.J. -- A few weeks ago I found myself sitting with Dick Vermeil the night before a Rams game and he told me something that I find now to be extraordinarily significant. "The thing I like about our team is how we're set up for the future," Vermeil said. "We're going to be in really good cap shape next offseason. This thing's going to keep going in the right direction."
You can say that again. The Rams are 13-2. They will play in nothing but domes for as long as they last in the playoffs, with home-field advantage assured through the NFC playoffs and the Super Bowl scheduled for the Georgia Dome. They are set up to run the table about as well as a team can be. And entering the offseason, the Rams will be $15.38 million under the league's projected $62.2 million salary cap in 2000. Indianapolis is only slightly less fortunate. The Colts will probably have to go through Jacksonville to make it to the Super Bowl, but don't weep for them come February. When the free agency period starts, they'll be set up with $13.82 million to spend. As I said on CNN's NFL Preview on Sunday from the frigid Meadowlands (through chattering teeth, I might add), Cleveland will lust after Arizona defensive end Simeon Rice, who, with 14.5 sacks, will be the plum of all free agents this offseason. The Cardinals hadn't planned to break the bank for Rice because of all the money they've spent on their defense in recent years (particularly with Aeneas Williams and Eric Swann), but their feelings might have changed now. Rice is an $8-million-a-year player on the open market. Maybe $9 million. The Browns will pay that. The Packers, if the signing bonus isn't too high, will pay that, too. OFFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE WEEK: Denver RB Olandis Gary, whose 174 second-half yards single-handedly beat the Lions 17-7 Saturday. He had 185 yards for the game. How about this story? The fourth-round pick (No. 127 overall in 1999) is the second overlooked Georgia back drafted in a late round to rush for more than 1,000 yards in a season for the Broncos. (Gary's cheerleader on Saturday, 1995 sixth-rounder Terrell Davis , of course, being the first.) DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE WEEK: Minnesota defensive tackle John Randle, who had two key sacks in a 34-17 win over the Giants, a game with mega-playoff implications. Here was the game-breaker: Five minutes into the third quarter, Minnesota led 14-6. The Giants had a third-and-1 from the Minnesota 16. Kerry Collins went back to pass. Randle burst past rookie Mike Rosenthal and smothered Collins, who should have been looking for a quick three-yard pop to a wideout but was looking for something more. The sack sent New York back to the Vikings' 22. Next play: Cary Blanchard missed a 39-yard field goal. Randle may be having an off-year -- he had 15.5 sacks two years ago and 10 last year, but has only seven now -- but that was a tremendous effort on Sunday. SPECIAL TEAMS PLAYER OF THE WEEK: Minnesota cornerback and punt-returner Moe Williams. He leveled Giants returner Tiki Barber in the first quarter on a picture-perfect special-teams tackle. Then in the fourth quarter, Williams' 85-yard punt return for touchdown sealed the deal for the Vikings. COACH OF THE WEEK: Tennessee coach Jeff Fisher, who always promised that once his team stopped its meandering ways (from Houston to Memphis to Vanderbilt Stadium to to the brand-new Adelphia Stadium in Fisher's tenure) it would reach its full potential. The Titans finished 8-0 at home. They're 9-2 in the AFC in a strong year for the conference. Fisher has gotten this team off its 8-8, 8-8 and 8-8 treadmill the last three seasons to a position of dominance. Tough for the Titans, though, that they'll probably get only one home playoff game out of the deal and will have to win two on the road to get to the Super Bowl. GOAT OF THE WEEK: New England kicker Adam Vinatieri, for missing a chippy 33-yard field goal late in regulation that would have beaten Buffalo and really clogged the AFC playoff race. I could have easily picked Drew "10 of 21 Just About Every Week" Bledsoe, who continues to have the worst stretch of his career. 1. St. Louis (13-2). Marshall Faulk is rapidly moving to the fore in my MVP vote. That's what a 258-yard day against the Bears will do for you. The Rams move to No. 1, quite simply, because they're playing the best of any team right now. 2. Indianapolis (13-2). What possible motivation could the Colts have had in Cleveland? 3. Tennessee (12-3). Not to put a damper on the mania in Nashville yesterday, but what exactly was the great significance of the 41-14 win over Jacksonville? In order for it to mean anything, either in the division or home-field race, you'd have to think there was some realistic chance the Jags could lose their finale next Sunday at home against Cincinnati. Come on. So why rank the Titans here? They're 3-0 against Jacksonville and the Rams this year. 4. Jacksonville (13-2). Now, you'd probably want to see me make some wild changes in my Top 10 based on Tennessee creaming the Jags. Won't happen. That's the problem with these things. Jacksonville could be in trouble, but the Jags will get AFC home-field, a week off, time to heal and good fortune. So one Sunday at this time of year doesn't change what I think too drastically. Unless, of course, Mark Brunell has more than just a sprained knee, whic he suffered in the first half on Sunday. 5. Tampa Bay (10-5). The defense that ate the NFL. 6. Minnesota (9-6). Cris Carter is a player for the ages. 7. Baltimore (8-7). I don't know what's going on down there, but the Ravens are now a threat to win every Sunday. This week the defensive unit had seven sacks of a very mobile quarterback, Jeff Blake . 8. Seattle (9-6). Pretty sloppy against Kansas City, and that offense had better get consistent. And soon. 9. Kansas City (9-6). That Chester McGlockton, for the first time in a millennium, is a load. 10. Buffalo (10-5). If Doug Flutie was playing with the consistency he showed in '98, I'd really like this team. The 10 Things I Think I Think This Week 1. I think, sitting home for much of Sunday and watching a couple of games, I think these things: a. My question about the Giants gameplan yesterday is this: You're facing the 30th-rated pass defense in the NFL, with corners that couldn't make both rosters, and you throw more screens than long routes against them? It looked like the Giants' offense of September, not December. And a Kerry Collins quarterback sneak from the 2? Weak, weak stuff. b. I would like to know one thing about the incredible touchdown pass thrown by Randy Moss to Cris Carter: Why did Moss appear so unenthusiastic, showing no emotion whatsoever after making such an on-target throw? I don't get it. c. I liked ESPN's profiles of Michael Jordan and Babe Ruth in their Sports Century series. Really, really interesting. I'm okay with Ali being third. But I read a quote from the show's producer that Ali wasn't the best boxer of all time -- Sugar Ray Robinson was. Okay, then, why not make Robinson higher in the standings than Ali? This is the Fifty Greatest Athletes, not the Fifty Most Famous Athletes. And I'm fine with Ruth and Jordan being the top two. But I'd go with Ruth No. 1, not Jordan, as ESPN did. One other thing: Looked like the fix was in when those ads for the Jordan clothing line started playing. That wasn't a very good impression to leave for either Jordan or ABC/ESPN. 2. I think NFL announcers, in general, need to stop being so stat-reliant. Fox made a point of saying that Tampa Bay fullback Mike Alstott needed 194 yards for a 1,000-yard season entering the game against Green Bay. You know what that means? It means he's averaging 57.6 yards rushing per game. Wow! You've got to have some meaning in stats, fellas. And one other pet announcing peeve: Why do you guys have to say 14 times a game: "When we met with John Doe last night, he told us this was a really big game." Save the he-told-us-something lines for one or two good gems a game. 3. I think Doug Flutie would love to finish his football career in Canada. He told me so. Will he? Doubt it. The money's too big here, too small there. Flutie definitely likes the Canadian game better. 4. I think my choice for Defensive Player of the Year in the NFL is going to come down to two players: Jevon Kearse and Junior Seau. What a joke, by the way, that Seau's not going to the Pro Bowl. 5. I think if Paul Tagliabue had been in Cleveland Browns Stadium eight days ago, as I was, he wouldn't have been so soft on Orlando Brown. This league suspends Jim Miller for four games for taking a diet pill laced with a steroid. The same league suspends Brown, so far, for just two weeks (and only one game, which he would have missed anyway for assaulting the game's judge and jury, the referee). Tagliabue's staff is urging him to be tougher on Brown, and I think when the situation is addressed in February, Brown will get at least two more games at the start of the 2000 season tacked onto the suspension. 6. I think Pittsburgh defensive tackle Jeremy Staat is trying to make the best of a bad season. He changed his hair color from bleached blonde to a bright blue, with a bold swirl of bleached blonde. "I was bored," Staat explained. 7. I think Internet companies love the Super Bowl, and their love of it is helping ABC make some of their nut back from that gigantic TV deal with the league. Five years ago, ad spots on the Super Bowl hit the $1 million-per-30-second-spot plateau. This year, ABC is selling them for an average of at least $2.2 million, with some spots going for the astounding sum of $3 million. The upshot is staggering: ABC's in-game take from advertisers will be about $145 million, up 50 percent over Fox's $97-million gross for last year's Super Bowl. Internet companies, hoping to strike gold before the biggest American TV audience of the year, will fill 20 percent of the game's ad holes. "It's the Super Bowl," Monster.com CEO Jeff Taylor told me, "but this year it's also the Dot-Com Bowl." When the new NFL contract was signed in 1998, networks were ridiculed for pushing the TV ceiling so high. Now the dot-coms are throwing money at the game. 8. I think even the New Orleans Saints advertisers think Mike Ditka is Dead Man Walking. One local advertiser has substituted tackle William Roaf for coach Mike Ditka in a campaign: Said the advertiser: "It's obvious we're not going to be doing something with Mike. There's no sense in beating a dead horse." 9. I think I like what I see in Gunther Cunningham. 10. I think none of us is very surprised that Mike Holmgren will be coaching playoff football this year while Green Bay probably won't be playing any. Click here to send a question to Peter King's NFL Mailbag.
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