Chemistry 101

The St. Louis experiment isn't as easy as one, two, three

EUREKA, Mo. -- "Hey, Mike," Kyle Turley said to Mike Martz Friday morning, arriving for Martz’s charity golf outing in this bucolic place 40 minutes into the woods outside St. Louis. "Didn't they film Deliverance out here?"

Martz chuckled. Turley chuckled. Over the coach's shoulder, Jason Sehorn was hustling to his golf cart. Terry Bradshaw was planted in his, holding court, which he does regularly and very well. Kurt Warner, he of the wife with very strong opinions about the way Martz handles her husband, was set to go off with his fivesome.

And, I thought, only in America. Only in St. Louis. Only in Martzville.

This will be the NFL's most interesting chemistry experiment this year. The Rams are either a team too far over the hill that’s trying to patch their holes with flawed 29ish players, or they've solved their offensive-line and free-safety and quarterback problems with new or healthier players. Not just any players, either. Turley used to rip Martz and his touch-football offense when he played for the manly Saints, and Martz -- privately, mostly -- would rip Turley back. Sehorn, the former Giants corner, and Martz got into a spitting contest a couple of years ago, with Sehorn saying the Rams scored too quick (whatever that means) and Martz saying, "I wish we could play Jason Sehorn every week. We'd run by his ass all the time." As for Bradshaw, Terry went into St. Louis last season expecting to interview Martz one-on-one, though Martz wasn't doing individual TV interviews at the time. Martz told him to fry ice. Bradshaw belittled Martz on TV. Martz was furious. And Warner's wife, Brenda, said it was she, not Martz, who insisted that her husband get an X-ray of his hand after a shoddy performance late in the season at Philadelphia. She even went on a local radio show to announce this to the world. Martz fumed. He said Warner would have to make this right with him and his team.

And so here they all were, one big happy family, teeing off in the rain at the Fox Run Country Club.

Martz and Bradshaw were playing in the same grouping. "We're fine," Martz said.

"This is great," Bradshaw said.

"I really like it here," Turley told me before the tournament got going. "Mike's got a way of getting everyone together. When I really knew I was a Ram was about the third day of minicamp, when Mike told me to break down the huddle after practice."

(Some coaches do this. They'll have a player, or a coach, or a guest, come into the post-practice huddle, and everyone will stick their hands in the middle and the break-down person will say, "One, two, three! Win Sunday!" or some such pearl of inspiration.)

"That's when it hit me," Turley said. "Man, I'm a Ram. Wow. I didn't know what to say. I just said, 'Rams on three. One, two, three, RAMS!"

I wonder if it'll be that easy. It won't be, of course. The Rams still need to get Orlando Pace, the holdout who’s unhappy about the money the Rams are offering him as a franchise left tackle, in the fold. They need to make sure Martz has everyone on the same page. Last week, either a player or agent (the Rams believe it was an agent of a player) turned the Rams in to the league and the players association for having an unauthorized, padless seven-on-seven drill at the end of a spring mini-camp practice. It’s a ticky-tack violation of the league's offseason regulation that tries to limit how much teams can do in voluntary work periods, and the league took one week of the Rams' offseason workout period away, though Martz told me he had planned to give the Rams two weeks fewer than the normal allowable time. Now he'll just take one of those off-weeks back and make it a work week. The point is this: It's not a very good sign of team unity when a player lets his agent report the team (if this is what happened, which is what I suspect) to the league cops.

Personally, I like most of what the Rams did this offseason. I love the Turley signing. He's one of the best and toughest warriors playing today on the offensive line. You don't find that type of guy in free agency anymore, a borderline Pro Bowl guy (Turley's being kept out, in my opinion, because so many guys around the league who compete against him think he's a jerk, but do you want your right tackle to be a Welcome Wagon hostess?) with five prime seasons left. I hear good things about Warner throwing the ball. He was superb in practice last week. I think his arthritic throwing thumb will flare up at some point, because it usually does. But the Warner/Marc Bulger combination at quarterback should be good enough to make the Rams contenders. I am skeptical of Sehorn's ability to play safety. Usually, good corners who switch to safety have to be hitting machines. Sehorn never made his name by being physical. Next to a kamikaze like Adam Archuleta, Sehorn will look pretty wimpy if he's not flying around whacking people. I've never seen it in him. I like the fact that [Marshall] Faulk is working hard in the offseason program, trying to stave off running-back dementia. I asked him the other day what the most fun thing was that he did this offseason. "I haven't had any fun," he said. "I've been too busy kicking my own ass." (Shameless Plug Dept.: I have a column lead on Faulk in Sports Illustrated this coming week.) I like the Smurfy wideout they took in the fourth round, 5-foot-9 Shaun McDonald, who will play early and often if he's still in one piece on opening day.

We'll see about the Rams. Martz knows he'll be walking a fine line this summer. He thinks he didn't work the team hard enough in training camp last year, and so he'll change that this year. But he knows, especially with guys like Faulk and his chronic knee problems, that he can't work them too hard in camp. It's a balancing act. I think I like this team, and maybe a lot. I took away a good feeling about them from this feel-good golf outing. But I probably would have gotten a good feel about the Texans and the Bengals last week, too. The Rams are the toughest team in the league to read tea leaves about right now. I'll wait to see their health, physical and mental, in late August, before deciding if they're headed to another Super Bowl or another meaningless December. Or somewhere in between.

"Times executive editor Howell Raines said, 'We are not set up if someone wants to willfully manipulate and mislead us.' You're not set up? Your entire organization is investigative reporters! This guy never turned in expense reports! So he travels to places, but it costs him nothing. Is he a hobo? How do they not get that?"
—Jon Stewart, interviewed by Rolling Stone, on the case of lying New York Times reporter Jayson Blair. Raines resigned Thursday.

Heat magazine reports that Justin Timberlake changes his Calvin Klein boxers six times a day and wears each pair only once. I smell a new Howard Hughes.

"Smell" might not be the best word there.

You know, the mail has really been good lately. I get a kick out of reading it every Friday. I could answer 50 letters a week, and sometimes I wish I could. In fact, I may have a mail column one of these Mondays before going on vacation. Anyway, this week's offerings:

AN UMPIRE CHECKS IN FROM MONTANA. From Rick Deady, of Helena, Mont.: "Thank you for the link to Dan Shaughnessy's column, a great tribute to kids and their final high school games. It really touched home for me, because I work as an umpire for the Montana High School Association. This past May, I had the opportunity to work the State AA High School Girls Fastpitch Tournament. I was working a game between Billings West and Billings Skyview. I had a chance to sit and observe the girls from the Skyview team interact with other players and some of the umpires. These girls were very pleasant, funny and committed to playing the game. I was working the dish in the game and it was the bottom of the seventh inning and Skyview was trailing 4-1 and the last batter was up with two strikes. The pitch came in thigh-high on the outside corner, and I rung up a called third strike. When I turned to leave the field, I noticed that the batter had sat down in the batter's box, laid on her back and was crying! Reading Mr. Shaughnessy's column, it struck home how for that girl this moment would be one of her last memories of playing high school softball. Although it doesn't have anything to do with the NFL, it does have to do with life. Thanks for letting me share it with you."

I hope I am not the only one out here in cyberville who reads that letter and wishes he/she could one day see a good high school softball game in Montana. What fun. What vistas.

PATRIOT NATION CHECKS IN, WORRIED. From Ian Prior, of Boston: "Just wondering if you think that the Pats have improved their team solely on their defensive signings alone. It seems to me that they may still be at the 9-7 level due to the dearth of offensive improvements made during the offseason."

Agreed. There's no question this team wanted to upgrade at running back. But you can't get everything you want in one draft, and you can't force a Thomas Jones to be the answer to your need there if he's not much better -- or any better -- than the guy you have. Two other little Patriot notes: Your second-round receiver, Bethel Johnson, has shown rare speed in offseason drills, and the Patriots love him so far. And they have to find a way to get Dan Klecko, all 283 pounds of him, on the field for 12 to 15 plays a game in the regular defense. I think Klecko will spell Jarvis Green or Ty Warren (he looks like the nose man on opening day right now) occasionally. They love Klecko's motor and think his strength will surprise some guards and centers.

UH OH. I'VE BEEN CAUGHT BY A HARVARD GUY. From Ian, of Belmont, Mass.: "You've started cheating in your '10 Things I Think I Think' section. This week, outside of your ‘non-football’ thoughts, you had one about the weather, one about the NBA, and one about the NHL. So, one-third of your football thoughts were actually non-football thoughts. I guess it's just hard to come up with nine new thoughts every week. By the way, Carlos Delgado and Vernon Wells are each averaging about one RBI per game, not two. They're not on pace to knock in over 300 runs."

Since you have a Harvard e-mail address, Ian, I assume you have something to do with that august institution. I am impressed that someone in the Ivy League would take the time to check my work. I am going to let you in on a little secret. Sometimes, when it's 6:50 a.m. on an early June morning, and I'm grasping for the last few of my 10 Things, I cheat. I make a non-football thing a football thing. I hope you and other MMQB loyalists will forgive me. Maybe you can average out the 10 Things over the 48 weeks that I write the column; sometimes, in October, I'll have 23 football thoughts, with some of them disguised as “quickie” football thoughts of the week. Re: Wells and Delgado, I didn't mean that EVERY DAY they got two RBIs. I mean that, gee whiz and gosh, aren't they picking up a lot of RBIs? In the week that just ended, Delgado had 12 and Wells six. It just seems like they get two every day.

THIS IS A VERY INTERESTING QUESTION, AND A GOOD POINT. From Damon E. Larrier, of Dayton, Ohio: "I understand your comments that African-American candidates should always accept interviews for NFL head coaching jobs. What about the concern, however, that a candidate interviewed so many times without landing a job will arouse suspicion? My examples are Ted Cottrell, defensive coordinator of my beloved J-E-T-S and Willie Randolph, who has been interviewed a number of times in recent years for managerial jobs in baseball. These men have paid their dues and are accepting multiple interviews. What more can they do to land a job?"

Excellent point. I can't tell you much about Randolph, because I don't cover baseball. He actually had the chance to manage Cincinnati a couple of years ago, but justifiably turned it down because they were trying to rob him with a lousy salary. Is it hurting him now because everyone looks at him as America's Candidate? I don't know. Maybe it is. But as far as Cottrell goes, I think his 49ers interview last year (he almost got the job, losing out to Dennis Erickson) will help him get a head-coaching spot soon. Maybe that's naive on my part, but I think he's going to now have an ally in Bill Walsh that he never would have had before interviewing with the 49ers.

LET'S NOT FIT HASSELBECK FOR A BUST IN CANTON QUITE YET. From Andy, of Kansas City: "Peter, your argument that Matt Hasselbeck is going to have a breakout game this year, based on how he finished last season, is flawed. You bring up games against San Diego, San Francisco and Kansas City as breakout games that could be a preview for this season, yet if you look at the statistical rankings of all three of those pass defenses, it’s easy to see why Hasselbeck had such big performances. The Chargers were 32nd, Kansas City 31st and San Francisco 21st in pass defense. When Hasselbeck played the Eagles, 13th in pass defense, he was less than impressive: 24-of-45, 223 yards, two touchdowns, three interceptions."

Obviously, he wasn't putting up those numbers against the 2000 Ravens, and you're right -- stats can be misleading. It's why I'm not sure about Hasselbeck, and no one really is. But you look for indicators of a player's ability to start shining through, I think Hasselbeck's finish, along with his impressive receiving corps and Mike Holmgren's offensive philosophy and his faith in Hasselbeck, will combine to make him a pretty good quarterback this year. As Bill Parcells is fond of saying, though, they don't sell insurance for this kind of stuff.

WHITHER AKILI? From Chris Shepherd, of Bloomington, Ind: "Love your column. A question about the recently released Akili Smith, considering he says he wants to go somewhere where he has a chance to start: Where might that be?"

Thanks. Nowhere. Smith will visit the Jets, Packers and Saints this week, but no one in this league is bringing him in with the idea that he'd start this year, or even compete for a starting job. He wants to go somewhere to be coached better than he was in Cincinnati. He and those close to him feel this stop in his career, which could very well be but a way station, is the place where he will improve his game with a good offensive mind before actually having a shot to play somewhere in 2004 or beyond. I think New Orleans, and bright offensive mind Mike McCarthy, would be perfect for him.

I, as well as most of my flying companions on an American flight from Newark to St. Louis last Thursday, would like to thank the graying 307-pound gentleman in 5B for drinking two red wines while waiting for takeoff, then sucking down a double rum right after takeoff, then inhaling the turkey-on-croissant, then snoring for the final 60 minutes of the trip, emitting a guttural sound and the foulest drunk's breath on earth. We're hoping you had quite a nice headache when you got to work, or home, that afternoon. One question: What kind of life, or job, do you have, to be drinking heavily at noon on a weekday?

1. I think I let Michael Pittman snow me on Super Bowl night. He kept giving me excuses about how he wasn't a violent person, even though the NFL suspended him for a game in 2001 after he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor counts of criminal trespassing and criminal damage after two incidents in which he angrily confronted his estranged wife. Something about how they really hadn't gotten to know each other that well before getting married. (What?!!) Anyway, he's now been charged with two felony counts of aggravated assault against his wife and a babysitter, after police said he rammed his Hummer into a Mercedes-Benz carrying the two women and his 2-year-old son. If Pittman, who denies any wrongdoing, is found to have violated his probation, he might have to go to jail. Which is sad, obviously. And now the Bucs are left with an idiot running back who can't control his anger. It would serve him right if Jon Gruden cut him tomorrow and traded a conditional pick to Arizona for Thomas Jones, then let Jones and Aaron Stecker battle it out for the job in camp this summer.

2. I think I'm still wondering why the Bears signed Kordell Stewart in the first place, since they drafted Rex Grossman in April and flirted with Brian Griese last week.

3a. I think I wondered last week while in Missouri why Marshall Faulk ever went to trial in May with the mother of his three children, Helen Dunne, who sought $3 million for domestic abuse. Simple, he said. He didn't do it, and he wasn't going to pay hush money. A jury found him innocent. "I stood up for myself," Faulk said. "I won't talk bad on her, but the result in court speaks for itself. It was a situation that, 10 years from now, if I don't fight it, it could happen again. You pay her off once, and when does it surface again?”

b. Faulk on Sammy Sosa: "Why are people really so upset about it? Is it the corked bat? Or is it everyone's suspicions about steroids?"

c. Reminds me of something Whitey Herzog said at the golf tournament: "They ought to divide baseball records into B.S. and A.S.: before steroids and after steroids."

4. I think the Broncos would take Terrell Davis back if he had a good chance of playing again. But I also think head coach Mike Shanahan will decide a month from now that Davis can't play at a high level, and will then probably release the former Super Bowl MVP. But I do think someone -- Oakland, Tampa Bay -- will have Davis in camp come late July.

5. I think these are my personal thoughts of the week:

a. I am baffled at all these baseball purists who rip interleague play. I think it's absolutely great. A good baseball city like Cincinnati gets to see Derek Jeter for the first time. A needy baseball city like Pittsburgh gets a Nomar-and-Manny shot in the arm. Roger Clemens steps on the mound at storied Wrigley Field for the first time. A-Rod and Vladimir Guerrero square off. The A's go back to Philadelphia. This week, a Connecticut kid, Jeff Bagwell, plays in Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park for the first time in the regular season. The Cardinals, at one time known as America's Team, invade the same two places. It's cool. I heard someone this week, and I forget where, complain that who wants to see Tampa Bay-Houston. Who wants to see Tampa Bay-Anybody? I love baseball tradition as much as the next summer-game lover, but there is no doubt in my mind: Interleague play is the best thing to happen to baseball in years.

b. By the way, I hate the DH.

c. Interesting excuse, Roger Clemens, to not face the music for two days because of a chest cold.

d. This may qualify as a you-heard-it-here first, or it may qualify as the ramblings of a man who does not cover baseball. But don't be surprised if Whitey Herzog is the next manager of the Yankees. I can tell you Herzog would take the job in a heartbeat. I can also tell you he sent George Steinbrenner a wire last week congratulating him for the Yankees taking his grandson, Oklahoma State first baseman John Urick (.348, 13 homers, 53 RBI), in the 22nd round of the amateur draft. Urick signed, by the way.

e. Coffeenerdness: When in St. Louis, I strongly recommend Coffee Cartel in the Central West End. Terrific latte, great atmosphere. If it ever stops raining, I think it would be nice to sit outside and watch the St. Louis part of the world go by there.

f. All right, God. I'm begging. Begging! Stop the rain and I will never sin again!

g. I'll be in section 106 at Game 7 of Ducks-Devils Monday night if you'd like to stop by, or buy me a Labatt's. Martin Brodeur's got to come up very, very big or I think Devilville goes home crying. How nice was it of Paul Fichtenbaum, the SI hockey editor, to find me two in the lower bowl for this game?

h. It was a pleasure Sunday being back home (or near home, In Agawam, Mass.) at the Enfield (Conn.) High School athletic banquet. Good food, good people, fun time. My old baseball coach, Bob Bromage, has the Raiders going pretty far in the state tournament. How times have changed. Our big spring trip was to play a late-March series way down south in Hackensack, N.J. Now the EHS baseball team goes to Florida every year.

i. Larry King Dot-Dot-Dot Note of the Week: Is there a better movie in recent American history than Best in Show?

6. I think the funniest possession I've acquired in recent years is the Mike Martz bobblehead doll each participant in the golf tournament got the other day. Superbly made bobblehead. Mike, it's right next to Roberto Clemente and Ichiro on the TV set in the family room in the bobblehead Hall of Fame. (Well, actually ANY bobblehead we get goes into the bobblehead HOF atop the TV.)

7. I think more than a couple NFL executives think the most logical team for Los Angeles is the Colts, not some expansion entry. Peyton Manning's last five prime seasons starting, say, in 2006, would give the area the star power it probably needs to make the best possible go of the NFL back in L.A.

8. I think one of the nicest guys in the NFL, wideout Ricky Proehl, just got his role expanded in Carolina with the loss of Kevin Dyson to season-ending Achilles surgery. Proehl thinks his Panthers might look at Antonio Freeman now (they should), but either way he should be on his way to catching more balls than he, or John Fox, previously though he would. Proehl, by the way, really thinks Chris Weinke is good.

9. I think, for all the energy San Francisco expended in trading up with Cleveland in 1995 for J.J. Stokes, the Niners must be pretty disappointed that he never had an 800-yard receiving season, while averaging three catches a game over eight seasons, and he scored just 30 touchdowns as a Niner. There's something missing in that guy. I always heard it was competitiveness.

10. I think I would like to take a moment to congratulate Jeff Lurie and the Philadelphia Eagles for something very, very good that they did on Thursday. Lurie bused every member of his organization -- players, coaches, bosses, the grounds crew, secretaries -- to north Philly to build a playground in a blighted neighborhood. Lurie doesn't do this because he wants people like me to blow his horn publicly. Lurie does this because he thinks organizations such as the Eagles should have an obligation to help less fortunate people. From the ground up, quite literally, the Eagles and construction partners got the playsground and a 40-foot-long tile bench 95 percent built in one day. "I told Mr. Lurie, 'that's what separates the Eagles from other organizations,” cornerback Troy Vincent told me. "We sowed seeds in kids' lives today.”

And a special 11th Thing I Think I Think, because I don't want the Harvard guy to feel cheated this week:

11. I think I'd like to finish with an excellent take on Sosagate from Michael Holley of The Boston Globe Sunday on ESPN radio: "Cork explodes in a guy's bat, and it turns into a racial issue. I'm so disappointed in America." Holley made these points: 1) Yes, the event was covered massively, but with 900 sports channels and reporters around every turn, EVERY controversial event is going to be covered massively. Remember how massively the Mark McGwire andro controversy was covered? It never ended. 2) Sosa did not get treated differently because he's Latin. A white corker with 505 home runs would have been raked over the coals, too. As for Gary Sheffield's and Pedro Martinez's feelings that programming around the story was racist in tone, well, I didn't see it that way. And Sosa got eight games, the same as the recent corking suspensions, basically. He'll probably be able to trim a game off with his appeal. What's the problem? As for the coverage, if you don't think it's a legitimate question to wonder if the American public will now question the validity of Sosa's first 505 homers -- whether he ever used a corked bat before in his life or not -- you're nuts.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL beat for the magazine and is a regular contributor to SI.com. Monday Morning Quarterback appears in this space every week. Click here to send him a comment.

 

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