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Nice guy, bum deal Vermeil, Chiefs forcing Tagliabue to make stand
Divisional Awards | Factoid
... Click here to send a question to Peter King's NFL Mailbag. EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- I must start by saying how much I personally like Dick Vermeil. I got to know him well while working for ABC in the mid-'90s, breaking bread with him and Brent Musburger several times at the 49ers-Chargers Super Bowl. In 1997, I shadowed Vermeil in his return to coaching and wrote a very human season-long diary of his rookie campaign with St. Louis that season. After the Rams' victory in the Super Bowl last year, I was stunned when he picked me out of a media crowd underneath the Georgia Dome, hugged me so hard I struggled for air, and yelped: "Peter King! You saw it from the beginning!" "I like Dick Vermeil, too," Rams president John Shaw, hours from war with Vermeil, told me Saturday afternoon. "But what's happened here is wrong. It's just wrong." Shaw's right. Something stinks about Vermeil's tango with the Kansas City Chiefs. The background: Midway through the Rams' Super Bowl season of 1999, Vermeil told Shaw he wanted to coach two more years, and he wanted his assistant coaches' contracts extended the length of his contract, through the 2001 season. The Rams complied, extending all the aides through 2001. Then, after the Super Bowl, Vermeil told Shaw he'd had enough and was going to quit. Shaw told me he and owners Georgia Frontiere and Stan Kroenke urged Vermeil to stay, but he was firm. He didn't want to coach. Once that happened, the Rams went through with their previous plan -- whenever Vermeil retired -- offensive coordinator Mike Martz would become the head coach. All parties insist Vermeil was not forced out; I covered the Rams more than any team in 1999, and I remember Shaw saying publicly and privately that Vermeil could stay as long as he wanted.
When coaches quit, they don't get paid anymore, but they are tied to their teams for the length of the contract -- if they want to return to coaching. Vermeil had two years remaining on his contract. The Rams didn't have to pay Vermeil a cent. But as a sort of going-away gift to Vermeil, the club decided to replace his coaching contract with a consultant's deal. Vermeil, 64, would have to basically do nothing for the next four years, and the Rams would pay him a total of $2 million -- $500,000 per year. "He told us, 'You owe me nothing,'" Shaw told me. "But we told him he'd won a Super Bowl for us, and we wanted to reward him. He was very grateful." Shaw said he even heard from a close friend of Vermeil's, Chiefs president and general manager Carl Peterson, who told Shaw what a nice gesture it was for him to send Vermeil out with such a golden parachute. When this happened, Vermeil technically resigned as coach, and all parties signed an agreement that one source close to the Rams said included wording about Vermeil being "terminated" as head coach and made a consultant. With Martz as coach, two of the Vermeil loyalists who did not mesh well with Martz had to be terminated as well. Offensive aides Mike White and Lynn Stiles had their contracts settled with the Rams for, collectively, more than $600,000 -- a sum much higher than would have been paid if Vermeil hadn't had all the assistants' deals extended. Fast forward to Friday, Dec. 29. Shaw got a phone call from a source he trusted telling him Vermeil had a deal in place to coach the Chiefs. Impossible, Shaw thought; Dick's not coaching again. I heard many of the same rumors, and so on Sunday, New Year's Eve, I called Vermeil, just before our CNN NFL Preview show, on my cell phone from the PSINet Stadium field in Baltimore before the Ravens' playoff game with Denver. His wife, Carol, said to call back; Dick was out getting the paper. During a break in the show, I called back and got Vermeil. "People say you're going to coach the Chiefs," I said. "Any truth to that?" "None," he told me. "I'm not a candidate to coach the Chiefs. No way." He went on to say firmly there was nothing to any of the reports, and added that even if there was, he couldn't tell me because he wouldn't break a confidence. Odd, I thought. But he was so strong in his denials, and I trusted Vermeil because of our past association. I repeated his denials to a national TV audience. On Tuesday, Peterson and Stiles, now a Chiefs executive, flew to Pennsylvania to meet with Vermeil, apparently to consummate a deal. Vermeil says now that he discouraged Peterson from coming to Pennsylvania and said he didn't want to return to coaching. But Vermeil told me Sunday night that Peterson went anyway and told Vermeil stridently how much he was needed in Kansas City. That, plus a three-year, $10 million contract offer, convinced Vermeil to take the job. And so on Wednesday, Peterson called the Rams with the worst-kept secret in Missouri: He'd like permission to talk to Vermeil about the Chiefs' coaching job, and, according to Shaw, he was willing to talk compensation. By Thursday, Vermeil was tepidly no-commenting reports of his hiring by the Chiefs. On Friday, the Chiefs fired head coach Gunther Cunningham, and the league said there would be a hearing on Tuesday to determine whether Vermeil could coach the Chiefs, and if so, whether compensation would be owed the Rams. Shaw told me he plans to contest the Chiefs' hiring of Vermeil without the Rams' consent. "We will also file tampering charges against the Chiefs," he said. This case disturbs me plenty, like the Al Groh case disturbed me a week ago. Groh, a coaching disciple of Bill Parcells, got the break of his professional life when Bill Belichick walked away from the Jets' coaching job a year ago; Parcells, stuck for a coach, convinced new owner Woody Johnson that Groh was the man for the job. Johnson gave Groh a four-year, $3.2 million contract. After one year in the job, Groh, with three years left on a valid coaching contract, left the Jets in the lurch and jumped to Virginia. Unconscionable. Security be damned. For Groh to even consider another job one year into the Jets' head-coaching tenure is the worst kind of turncoat betrayal to a man, and an organization, that gave him his big chance. For Groh to piously say this was the job of his dreams, and he had to take it, makes me want to puke. Honor thy contract, Al. What is your word worth? Back to Vermeil. Last week, the Rams fired three more coaches whose contracts had been extended by the Rams after Vermeil's 1999 request. That increases the tab for the extended coaches, who will never earn the money, to over $1 million. And so what we have here is this: Vermeil left the Rams, said he'd never coach again, took a four-year, $2 million thank-you contract to do nothing, got his coaches extended on the Rams' dime, and, apparently, furtively negotiated a contract with the Chiefs without apprising the Rams of the deal. Ironic. Shaw's a smart lawyer. He got the sweetheart deal of all time in moving the Rams from Anaheim to St. Louis. He did something good for Vermeil, who has a reputation, much deserved, of being one of the nicest men in the football business. Generous to a fault. The crafty lawyer does something nice and then gets screwed for it. It may be that because the word "terminated" is in the consulting agreement with Vermeil the Rams will be out of luck on this one. The case before commissioner Paul Tagliabue on Tuesday will be a difficult one, and he may rule that because there is no longer a coaching contract in place and now only a consulting contract in its place, the Rams are due no compensation. But that would be the chicken way out. The very strong spirit of the law should be upheld here. Vermeil quit. He had two years left on his coaching contract. The Rams, certain he'd never coach again because of his repeated assertions, handed him $500,000 a year over four years to thank him. If Vermeil was remotely uncertain about his future, the Rams never would have erased the final two years he owed them on his contract. For the Chiefs to pay no compensation for Vermeil -- and they are bound to him now, with a three-year, $10 million agreement in place -- would be a terrible precedent for the league. I spoke to Vermeil late Sunday night, he was adamant that he hadn't lied to me about what he told me a week ago. He said he truly didn't know then that he would take this job. He said even though he knew Peterson was interested in talking to him, he had no inkling that he would eventually take this job. "Emphatically, I had no plans to get back into it," Vermeil told me. "But things changed when Carl came to my house and offered me a turn-key operation and said they really needed me." Still, the commissioner needs to draw a line in the sand on this one. The Chiefs owe the Rams significant compensation on this one. What is significant? One very high draft choice or two high- to mid-round picks strike me as fair. But if Tagliabue does nothing, any coach could quit his job, talk convincingly about how he'll never return to the sidelines, and then walk back into the game without his original team being justly compensated. Tagliabue needs to do the right thing.
Divisional Playoff Awards
DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE WEEK: Oakland cornerback Tory James. It's not just because of his 90-yard interception return for touchdown in the Raiders' 27-0 divisional playoff win over Miami. Or his aborted fumble return for touchdown wrongly overturned by the officiating crew. Did this guy always seem like he was in the middle of things Saturday or what? Classic example: On two consecutive Miami offensive plays late in the third quarter, James made the big plays -- the first stopping Leslie Shepherd after just a two-yard pass play, the next knocking a pass away that was intended for Shepherd on a third-down conversion attempt -- and typified the dominance of a Oakland defense not expected to play this well. For the day, James led the Raiders with seven tackles. SPECIAL TEAMS PLAYER OF THE WEEK: (tie) Baltimore coverage players Keith Washington and Anthony Mitchell. Washington's from Nevada-Las Vegas, Mitchell's from Tuskegee. But they were big-timers yesterday. Washington blocked two Al Del Greco field goals (I will not pounce on Al and name him Goat of the Week, because it just seems too cruel). Mitchell returned the second for a 90-yard touchdown, providing the clinching points in the Ravens' 24-10 win. COACH OF THE WEEK: New York Giants defensive coordinator John Fox. Brilliantly mixing spies on Philadelphia quarterback Donovan McNabb -- occasionally using 300-pound defensive tackle Cornelius Griffin to shadow McNabb's every movement -- Fox continued to show why he should be a top NFL head-coaching candidate. Having Michael Strahan play his best game in memory didn't hurt.
Factoid of the Week That May Interest Only MeHere are the line of cars in the Giants' executive parking spaces underneath Giants Stadium on Thursday, and I point this out for a reason that has to do with the NFL's leading traditionalist, co-CEO Wellington Mara:
The 10 Things I Think I Think1. I think you've all been waiting patiently, and so here is my AP All-Pro ballot:
WR -- Randy Moss, Minnesota.; Rod Smith, Denver. Wish I had that last one back. 2a. I think I'm still waiting for Jevon Kearse to make his first play of the playoffs. b. I think, as the clock ticked down and Baltimore nursed its 24-10 lead, I felt like yelling this through the TV to Steve McNair: "WILL YOU PLEASE THROW THE BALL DOWNFIELD? PLEASE?" What kind of offense was that, Tennessee? The kill-the-clock-needlessly offense? 3. I think the biggest negative I've seen this season -- and I saw a lot of it this weekend -- is the rise in bush-league, woofing, chippy play. Minnesota's Dwayne Rudd knocks away a pass from New Orleans tight end Andrew Glover, then gets in Glover's face to scream at him. Vikings defensive end Fernando Smith, on a tackle of Saints QB Aaron Brooks, conveniently gets off Brooks by kneeing him in the neck. On Sunday, Baltimore coach Brian Billick got into it; the CBS cameras caught him mouthing a F-bomb, apparently to someone on the Titans. What's the point, men? 4. I think Jon Gruden, by the time he's finished coaching, will go down as one of the best coaches of this, or any other, era. 5. I think even though the Miami lost in Oakland, the most grateful player in this postseason is Dolphins running back Lamar Smith. No one gave him a chance to have much impact before this season, and 30 of 31 teams did not so much as place a call to Smith's agent, Roosevelt Barnes, expressing interest. "All I needed was one team to believe in me, and the Dolphins did. But when no one else came after me, I was stunned. Shocked. I'm not that bad of a back," he told me last week. Mike Frier is grateful, too. That's Smith's former Seattle Seahawks teammate who was paralyzed when Smith, on Dec. 1, 1994, drove after drinking and smacked his SUV into a utility pole. A Washington superior court ruling in 1998 called for 35 percent of Smith's salary and 50 percent of any bonus money to be paid directly to Frier through 2005, with a cap on those earnings of reportedly $5 million. That cap has not been reached. So Frier gets $425,000 ($250,000 from Smith's $500,000 signing bonus, and $175,000 from his $500,000 salary) from Smith this year. Next season, when Smith is due to make $650,000 plus a $100,000 roster bonus, Frier's take would be $277,500. 6. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week: a. I realize I shouldn't use this column as a personal forum, but I like to walk my dogs, Bailey and Woody (a very young and very old Golden), with my wife Ann. And when it snows, it's hard to walk dogs in suburbia when people don't shovel their walks. It's common courtesy, people. Shovel, will you? b. Hey CBS: Show us that Subway fat-people-turning-skinny commercial once more, please. I missed the first 347 airings of it over the weekend. c. I don't understand the Warren Sapp Nike "Boing" commercials. d. FOX, every non- Jerry Springer fan in America agrees with me: Those "Temptation Island" commercials represent the decline of western civilization. e. Funeral of the Week: What a tremendous tribute to the late Baltimore Sun columnist, John Steadman, on Friday at St. Jude Shrine Church in Baltimore. I barely knew Steadman, who died of cancer last Monday, but respected him tremendously for his passion. And the funeral was something like a Diner reunion, with every Colts legend you could imagine -- Unitas, Moore, Matte, Donovan. Steadman was growing weaker and weaker over the past two years, since being diagnosed with an inoperable malignant tumor, and yet I'd always see him out on the road. Covering a Ravens game. Voting at the Hall of Fame meetings at Super Bowls. I spoke up for him last year at the Hall of Fame vote in Atlanta, talking about how I hope I have as much passion for my job at 73 as Steadman did. And in November, at the Ravens game in Cincinnati, I was surprised to see Steadman. I'd heard he wasn't doing well. "Peter," he said to me in the press dining room, "I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate what you said about me last year at the Hall of Fame meeting. It really meant a lot to me." f. Strangest Catholic Feeling of the Week, and of My Life: Returning from communion at the Steadman rites and passing Artie Donovan. g. Strangest story of the week: Washington's director of retail services at FedEx Field, Gunnar Jurgensen gets led away from his job by police escort. Strange, strange deal there. And Sonny, from what I'm told, is none too pleased about it. h. Coffeenerdness: There is nothing quite so tasty at dawn on an 18-degree New Jersey morning as Peet's Holiday Blend. i. Montclair Bowling Team Note of the Week: The Mounties head back into action this week with a match against local power Immaculate Heart Academy of Bergen County, at Bowler City in Hackensack, N.J. As you know, frosh King kid Mary Beth will be kegling for the JV team. Her coach, math teacher Tony Cedola, is also a statistician at Giants' home games, but he was on IR on Sunday with the flu, I'm told. Anyway, Mary Beth has taken to calling him "Mr. Cebola." Took me a minute to figure that out. Ce-bowl-a. Get it? 9. I think I had a very interesting conversation with Marshall Faulk, at home for the important part of the postseason, about the MVP award. He won it, of course, with 24 votes. McNabb had 11, Eddie George eight. The conversation started with me telling him how I'd changed my vote the last week of the season. I'd gone from George to Faulk late in Faulk's 261-yard virtuoso performance against the Saints. Faulk, obviously, thought I should have been in his court all along. Faulk: "What's Eddie's yards-per-touch average compared to mine?" Me: "I'm sure you're way ahead of him. [That's putting it mildly. I figured it after our call -- Faulk 6.55 yards per touch, George 4.33 yards.] But he's a different kind of back than you, and they put the offense on his shoulders every week." Faulk: "So he knows he's getting the ball a lot every week, no matter what happens I've got to earn my touches every week, with all our weapons." Me: "Good point. I'm not arguing with you. I voted for you." Unwinnable argument, on either side. Faulk, George and McNabb are all justifiable votes. 10. I think this is my early line on this weekend's games: In the AFC, I pick Al Davis over Art Modell, 19-9. In the NFC, I must know the weather forecast first. On a day like Sunday -- 30ish degrees, almost no wind -- I can see the Vikings being able to play their deep game and compete with the stingy Giants D. If it's crummy weather, I will most definitely like the Giants over the domers. Give me a few days. Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL and appears regularly on CNN/Sports Illustrated and CNN's NFL Preview. Click here to send a question to his NFL Mailbag.
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