Camp controversy

Emmitt does a double-take after ripping Cowboys

The first leg of my training camp travelog has come to end. Here are the greatest hits of camp after another week on the road:

Football Highlight: Carson Palmer running the hurry-up offense for the Bengals Thursday, calling plays out like a veteran, throwing the ball with accurate authority, and carrying himself without panic. I don't want to get you Bengaloids too excited, but I think the guy might actually be good.

Interview highlight: What else? Emmitt Smith telling me that last year was the worst year he'd ever had in football. Stunner. More about that, plus his reaction, in a few paragraphs.

Weirdest Highlight: A fan stepping on the practice field in Flagstaff and introducing himself to Emmitt. Not after practice -- during practice!

Player highlight: Never heard of Denver fifth-round wideout Adrian Madise? You will. The hands, the burst, the power -- and especially those sure hands -- will carry him a long way in his NFL career. Like into a starting job when Rod Smith and Ed McCaffery walk away.

On with a week's worth of observations:

Monday

SAN ANTONIO -- The players leave the Marriott Riverwalk hotel for the day and walk or ride the quarter-mile to the Alamodome, dress for the morning practice, bus to the high school field in south San Antonio for the morning practice, practice, bus back, change and eat at the dome, adjourn to the luxury suites surrounding the dome on the mezzanine level for a nap or a couple of hours of watching TV or studying the playbook, come back to dress for the afternoon practice, practice, eat dinner, go to evening meetings until 9:30, return to the hotel, and then have maybe an hour to do whatever until 11 p.m., when they must be in their rooms.

This is the organization that Bill Parcells is building, people. Not much time for ice-cream socials.

Tuesday

ATLANTA AIRPORT -- How did business travelers ever get by before Laptop Lane was invented? Laptop Lane, for the uninitiated, is an airport franchise that provides use of an office cubicle, with complete Internet, desktop computer and phone access. I land at Atlanta's city of an airport at 1:13 p.m. My flight to Pittsburgh leaves, luckily in the same concourse, at 2:10. I get the grande hazelnut latte, of course, at Starbucks, then head for Laptop Lane. I am in the Lane by 1:27. I spend 14 minutes online (this was my last chance to be online for the next 24 hours) and send the Dallas postcard to SI.com and and answer my mail, and check cell and home messages, and 24 minutes later I'm out of there, for the grand total of $13.35. By 1:58 I'm in line for the plane, and I'm in my seat at 2:01.

What a country.

Wednesday

LATROBE, Pa. -- I visit the Pittsburgh Steelers here. It's my favorite training camp setting. Even better than the old Chargers' place along the Pacific Coast, and better than the Cardinals' picture-perfect spot in the mountains of northern Arizona. Latrobe is precisely what the setting for a training camp should be. It's in the middle of the rolling Laurel Highlands, with beautiful vistas in two directions, on the campus of St. Vincent's College, an old seminary school where monks still come out to watch practice. No fans are allowed to watch the morning practice; it's on a new upper field, in the middle of cornstalks. The audience is comprised of just a few media folk, players, coaches, trainers, equipment guys and ballboys. And I think: This is what it must have been like covering football in the '50s.

"Sort of like Field of Dreams," Bill Cowher tells me later.

I strongly urge any football fan to take a trip to see this camp. It's about as pure as anything in this mega-jillion game can be. Just fly to Pittsburgh, rent a car, drive through the monstrosity of a traffic pattern that is downtown Pittsburgh, and go 50 minutes east on Route 30 into the heart of Latrobe.

Thursday

GEORGETOWN, Ky. -- I'll tell you what I love about training camp: Getting to see pretty good players I don't know at all in action. Today, it was Chad Johnson. Last year, the sophomore receiver from Oregon caught 69 balls for 1,166 yards, but because the Bengals are what they are, he failed to register much on my radar screen. I heard stories about him being chippy, overconfident. So this afternoon, I watched the wideout in one-on-one drills against the Bengals' corners.

What I saw, and heard, told me we're going to hearing a lot about Chad Johnson in the next few years.

The Bengals had Jon Kitna, Palmer and Shane Matthews -- in that order -- throwing to the receivers, who lined up wide or in the slot, right or left, depending on the call.

Johnson is a rock-solid 6-foot-1 and 192 pounds, with slim legs and a mouth that roars. I watched Johnson run six routes. He caught every pass except the last one, as corners clung to him on all six attempts. The route I liked best matched him up against the Bengals' big-money corner acquisition this offseason, Tory James, at the defense's 20-yard line. James lined up two feet across from Johnson, wide left. Johnson stutter-stepped, shaked/baked, and broke from the leg, putting James immediately on the defensive. The confidence, the bravado. It just oozed from Johnson. He grunted loudly -- "UHHHH!" or "OOONNNHHHH!" -- as he made every move. At the eight-yard line, he darted left, and Palmer's perfect strike hit him in the breadbasket just before he stepped out of bounds. Johnson stared at James. "Y'all gotta get outta your break better!" he taunted. Silence from James. Johnson kept looking. "You ain't talkin' to me, are you, 26?" Johnson said. James is No. 26.

James shook his head, saying nothing. Johnson shrugged and went back to the line.

A few plays later, Johnson did a fade, into the left corner of the end zone. On James, again. As the ball rainbowed in, everyone on defense hollered, "BALLBALLBALLBALL!!!" James leaped and got a fingernail on it. But no. Johnson gathered in the pass, which had changed direction infinitesimallly. He stutter-stepped to stay in bounds in the corner, then turned to stare at the back judge. "Gimme the sign!" Johnson barked. The back judge, an NFL moonlighter, moved his gaze up from the feet and the end line, saw that Johnson made the catch, nodded, and shot his hands up. Touchdown!

I hope the Bengals do a little something this year, because this Chad Johnson is a fun fellow to watch.

Friday

CLEVELAND -- I can see the confidence on the face of second-year running back William Green, as I visit the Browns. Last year when the rookie struggled through a lousy first half of the season, no one saw it.

"Why do you need confidence to be able to run the ball?" I asked Green. "Isn't running just running?"

"It's really hard to explain," he told me, one leg up on the chair in front of his locker. "You've got to believe in yourself. You've got to believe, 'I'm gonna run the ball and they're not going to stop me.' And you've got to be comfortable enough with the system that you'll be patient and wait a split second for the hole to develop if you have to."

The Education of a Running Back. I like that.

Saturday

LOWER MERION, Pa. -- Something called MusicFest in Bethlehem, an hour north of Philadelphia where the Eagles train, has taken up all the hotels in the area, so I'm consigned Friday night to a hotel a few bounce-passes away from the land near the Villanova campus, where Kobe Bryant spent much of his youth. Nice place, except the wakeup machine isn't working, and my 5:40 a.m. callnever comes, and I bolt upright at 6:30, and camp is 55 minutes away, and now I'll miss my 7 a.m. date with Andy Reid, and all the front-desk clerk says is: "Well, I put it in. I can't figure out why it didn't go through," whatever that means. And then the front-desk computer is down, so I have no receipt for my six-hours-for-$139 luxury stay, and there's no coffee made, either. I suppose it's dangerous to sleep in one's car on the side of I-476 in the northwest Philly suburbs, but but I would've taken a little danger over stiffing a coach who's been in the NFC Championship Game any day.

BETHLEHEM, Pa. -- Reid sees me at 7:50 a.m., and we'll have half an hour together. The Eagles coach doesn't seem to mind. It gave him a chance to watch Breakfast in Tokyo, the first preseason game of the year between the Jets and Bucs. And this is his observation: "Chris Simms did some real good things, now. He looked good. He threw a nice touchdown pass and looked like he was in control."

Here's the thing about Reid that his players like. He doesn't put obstacles in the way of his team. The stuff fans and the public worry about, he doesn't. Like the pressure on this team to get to the Super Bowl after two disappointing NFC Championship Game losses. What he says is boring, and you can tell he's turned on the tape recorder in his head when he says it. But the difference between Reid and others who might mouth these cliches is this: He truly believes them.

"You have to control the things you can control," he said. "Why worry about things like that? The only way I believe you can be successful is to worry about one play, then the next one, then the one after that. All this other stuff, I don't want my team to worry about, and I don't think they do."

After the morning practice, I asked Corey Simon, the young and talented defensive tackle: "What about the pressure you've got to feel after losing two straight NFL title games? How much does that affect you as you go about getting ready for the years?"

"Not at all," said Simon. "I don't think about it that way. I just think about the next practice, making the next play."

They're buying what you're selling, Andy. Most of 'em, anyway.

Sunday

MONTCLAIR, N.J. -- Terra firma! I get home, scan the Web, and read Emmitt Smith's explanation of his comments to me in the Aug. 4 issue of Sports Illustrated about what it felt like playing for the Cowboys last season. "It felt like being a diamond surrounded by trash," Smith told me at Cardinals camp eight days ago. And now he's backpedaling, which I suppose is understandable because he wants to have a long-term relationship with the Cowboys (a paying one), which he'll have once his playing days are over, whenever that will be.

The Associated Press dispatch out of Flagstaff quoted Smith as saying: "I've got a tremendous amount of respect for some of the players down there, especially Mr. [Jerry] Jones and his family, so it's not anything like that. He [King] had to write whatever he had to write just to create controversy."

First of all, did Smith say he was misquoted? Anywhere? No. And so let me ask all of you practicing and non-practicing journalists a question: If you were doing an interview with a man who was throwing daggers at his former team, with an annoyed edge in his voice, and he said the "diamond surrounded by trash" line, would you write it? I think you would. Would it create controversy? Yes, it would. But it wouldn't be you who created the controversy. It would be the player, with his own words.

Monday morning, Cardinals PR man Paul Jensen told me Smith didn't mean me when he was saying a writer was trying to stir up controversy. He was referring to a Dallas columnist who was commenting on this story. Whatever. I like Emmitt. He's always been good and fair with me. But I remember him telling me something I didn't write, about how Troy Hambrick got used and abused by the press last year for saying he thought it was his time to play. Smith blames the press for driving a wedge between him and Hambrick. That isn't the way it works, Emmitt. When you say something, and it's hurtful to some people, it's not our job to soft-pedal it. It's our job to report it. Which is what I did this week.

... Buffalo quarterback Drew Bledsoe, who stopped to chat after the morning practice against the Browns in Berea, Ohio, Friday:

MMQB: You've heard your coaches talking about needing more balance in the offense this year than last year, when the Bills had a 63 percent to 37 percent pass-run ratio. Are you OK with that?

Bledsoe: I'm great with that. We need to do it. It's music to my ears. When you come down to it, you're not going to succeed bigtime on offense unless you do everything well. You look at what the Rams have done in making Marshall Faulk a weapon in both the passing game and the running game. You respect his ability to hurt you both ways. That's how I hope our offense works, with that kind of versatility.

MMQB: So you think Travis Henry's going to be a big force, even with Willis McGahee looking over his shoulder?

Bledsoe: I told Travis after the draft, 'You're going to win the rushing title this year.' And I really think he can. He's going to get a lot of touches.

MMQB: How's Josh Reed doing as he tries to replace Peerless Price?

Bledsoe: Well, that was a big loss. Josh doesn't have Peerless' speed, but he's a great receiver too. You're still going to have to cover us deep. I don't think our ability to hurt people deep in the passing game will change very much.

"If someone needs to be fined, it should be Delta."
--Bengals running back Corey Dillon, explaining how he arrived too late at the Seattle airport for his baggage to be checked for a flight to Cincinnati that would have allowed him to make it to training camp on time. Dillon was forced to take a later flight and arrived at camp six hours late/

I can hear it now. Marvin Lewis calls the toll-free Delta number, and listens to the automated menu for six minutes, then finally gets an agent on the phone, and informs her that the Bengals are going to fine the mammoth airline $5,000 for refusing to break their rules so Corey Dillon would be on time for camp, and ... well, I guess you can figure out by now that Dillon will be paying the tab. Which leads us to ...

Son of Quote of the Week:

"It's not like I'm going to miss $5,000. I mean, $5,000. Oooooh."
--Dillon.

"Did you know," Eagles beat writer Reuben Frank asked me Saturday, "that the Eagles have the only player in NFL history to both win and lose a presidential election? Clinton Hart."

Chimed in fellow beat man Mark Eckel: "I hear he was also involved in some sex scandals."

"And you know who his running mate was, right?" Frank said.

"No,"' I said. "Who?"

"Lincoln Kennedy."

Hart is actually a free-agent safety from Central Florida Community College.

When I go to camps, and pick hotels, I usually take the easiest way out. In other words, I stay at the hotel that's closest or most convenient without worrying a lot about Marriott or Hyatt points. Well, in Cleveland, for the past four years, I've pretty much just blindly said "Airport Marriott" when making travel plans to cover the Browns in suburban Berea, because it's the nearest OK hotel. I won't do that anymore. My traveling media brethren agree. "A dump," one called it. "A Hampton Inn with a nice sign," another said. Put it this way: This hotel is the old Cleveland Stadium. The downtown Marriott is Jacobs Field. A short list of grievances: A 16-mile walk from the parking lot to my room, weird room numbers (1-255; I mean, what is "1-255?"), a broken soda machine on my floor, a broken ice machine on the floor, a scent in the room that is bordello-ish, hallways with a musty smell like my basement after a hard New Jersey rain. Other than that, enjoy your stay, and have a pleasant day here in northeast Ohio!

Lots of different stuff for the first 'bag since June. On with the show:

THE BRONCOS SMELLED THE COFFEE. From Mark of Tucson: "The Broncos organization must have read your camp comments about the lack of fans allowed into see practice. The Broncos have rescinded their 500-fan headcount for watching camp practices."

Good for them. It's shameful when a team restricts the ability of a rabid fan base to watch practices in the summer. Shameful, and bad for business.

ANOTHER POINT TO THE MILLEN FINE. From Michael Boyd of Clarkston, Mich.: "Has anyone considered the opposite effect of Matt Millen's fine? Now a black coach will have to think that an interview will only be a token one and they will be paraded out like the 49ers did with Ted Cottrell and then a white coach will be given the job. A black coach might start asking for some type of guarantee before the interview process begins so that he is not just going through the motions so a team can avoid being fined."

Maybe. But that's just one of the growing pains for a policy that I think is still the best policy the league can put forth to allow more black coaches the chance to introduce themselves to owners who don't know them.

IN DEFENSE OF JIM TRESSEL. From Sean of West Chester, Pa.: "You should stick to what you think you know. If you read the New York Times article about Ohio State and Maurice Clarett, then you know it was not well researched. If fact, it quoted an ex-TA who had an ax to grind. There is no probation coming and had you any organzitional dynamics skills you would understand that of course Jim Tressel read it, but was able to appear 'above' the article knowing that the professor was already cleared by OSU."

Sean, Tressel, from all appearances, seems like a swell fellow. But what happened here, and why I criticized him, is because he either lied or buried his head in the sand about a very important team issue. You happen to think he lied, and it sounds like you're OK that he lied. In my book, there is no defense for lying, period.

SOMEONE AGREES THAT CHRIS SIMMS WILL PROBABLY BE EVERY BIT THE NFL PLAYER AS CARSON PALMER, OR MORE. From J.D. Bolick of Denver, N.C.: "Most people would throw things at you for your Simms/Palmer comment, but I happen to think you're right for more reasons than just their environment. After all, what's the difference between Simms and the pre-'02 Palmer? If Jon Gruden can 'turn the light on' for Simms the way that someone did for Palmer, he's going to have one heck of a quarterback on his hands."

I just know this: Success at quarterback has as much to do with who picks you as it does ability, because anyone being discussed as a high pick is going to have to have the ability to play in the NFL anyway.

TRAVEL IN THE NFL IS INHERENTLY UNFAIR. From Mark DeGon of Spokane, Wash.: "Your comment on the bizarre travel schedule of the Giants [they won't get on an airplane until late October because so many road games are close to New York and they're busing or training to them] brings to mind an issue I have had with strength of schedule. Travel should be figured into how difficult a schedule can be. You travel a great deal, so you understand that even when everything goes right, you end up tired at the end of the trip. If the Giants can carpool to 85 percent of the games they play, don't you think it is much less draining than flying across the country and back four times in eight weeks? I don't think this is any kind of plot to stick it to the Seahawks, but I think it should be factored in the strength of schedule."

What a can of worms, Mark. Really. The only hope for the Seahawks, I think, to ease the travel problems is to get St. Louis, San Francisco and Arizona to move to Everett, Bellingham and Tacoma, respectively.

BE NICE TO LISA GUERRERO. From Brian Malik of Gaithersburg, Md.: "Why the rip on Lisa Guerrero? You implied (at least to me) that she only received the MNF job because of her sex appeal. It is my understanding that she is a credible and/or serious sports broadcaster; she just happens to be attractive."

No, Brian. My rip was on the silly quote from Fred Gaudelli, the ABC executive who implied that the network wanted to hire a woman to appeal to the 40 percent of the Monday Night Football audience whom ABC says are women. My point was that ABC is insulting us by saying it hired Guerrero to make women happy. The network hired her to appeal to men. Period.

1. I think some of you might wonder what in the world Emmitt Smith was thinking when he quasi-ripped the Dallas Cowboys in an interview with me last Saturday for a story that ran in the issue of SI with Lance Armstrong on the cover. "It felt like being a diamond among trash," he told me of being in the Dallas locker room last year. Uh-oh. I think Emmitt is ticked off he never got an audience with Parcells and got whacked by Jerry Jones. I think Emmitt feels like he was left on an island by a team that hit rock bottom last year. But I also think he has drawn a bullseye on his chest for the October Emmitt-at-Dallas game. "If we're trash, he's trash too," Flozell Adams told reporters at Cowboys camp. "We'll see what he says when we play them."

2. I think Dick Vermeil probably has spent a little too much time in the sun. Wow. After Minnesota cornerback Rushen Jones cheap-shotted a Chiefs receiver, Vermeil yelled to a Minnesota trainer that the Vikings should get a shotgun "and shoot [Jones] in the head." This is called a short fuse, and I'm expecting Vermeil, who is a class guy but who also has a quick trigger sometimes, to issue them an apology.

3. I think I learned some officials' scoop on this trip. I ran into a couple of NFL referees who let a few interesting details spill. One told me the league had made several things strictly verboten, including talking to the press in-season, drinking alcohol from the time they leave home on Saturday to the time they return home Sunday night or Monday, gambling of any kind, and visiting a casino. I have seen officials in airport cafes Sunday night, waiting for the same flight as me, and I can confirm most will talk pleasantly but not beyond that, and I've never seen one have a sip of alcohol, even on long flight delays. The casino thing is interesting, isn't it? I mean, why can't a ref go play a few hands of blackjack in Vegas in March? My boss would have to pay me a lot of money in order to stop me from betting at a Vegas sports book once in a while (which I have done), or losing $100 at a $5 minimum blackjack table.

4. I think the most significant thing about the first preseason game was not that Chris Simms looked like a gem for the Bucs. It was that running back Thomas Jones juked and cut and bulled like the seventh pick of the 2000 draft should when he got the chance against the Jets in the second and third quarters Saturday. He even made a fourth-and-one conversion run for a first down. I can tell you for a fact that Gruden worries about nothing more than he frets about who's going to carry the mail for him if Michael Pittman is detained in his spousal abuse case in Arizona this season, and Jones' performance certainly made Gruden happy.

5. I think I don't understand why USA Today devoted most of its Friday front sports page to a preseason college football poll that is based on zero games played. Oh my God! Miami and Oklahoma and Ohio State are going to be really good again! Stop the presses!

6. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week:

a. I agree with Peter Gammons. As a former resident of the Queen City (I lived there for five years), the Reds should feel nothing but self-loathing for dealing/selling four of their six or seven best players at the trade deadline, just four months after opening a new stadium they swore they need to be competitive. The Aaron Boone trade is particularly galling. The fans love this kid, and he is nothing but a hard-trying, pure-bred long-term cornerstone player, and the Reds apparently thought they couldn't afford him. A joke, and a sham.

b. You should worry about the Cardinals if for no other reason than Jason Isringhausen threw three wild pitches to nearly blow a six-run ninth-inning lead at the Mets' Class AAA team Saturday, and had to be rescued by an import from the Atlantic League's Long Island Ducks (Pedro Bordon) and then the immortal Esteban Yan to get the game finished. The Cards survived, only because Vance Wilson, one for his last 46, made the final out.

c. You should give up on the Dodgers.

d. Montclair (N.J.) High Preseason Field Hockey Note of the Week: The girls are working hard. Sunday, they began their third camp of the summer in southeastern Pennsylvania. Senior co-captain (I can't believe I am writing either of those things -- senior, or co-captain) Mary Beth King is pretty fired up about the season and reports the girls have been going all out.

e. Headline of the Week: "Revenge of the Nerd," on the back page of the New York Post after Red Sox GM Theo Epstein made his seemingly shrewd moves last week.

f. Coffeenerdness: Shane Harper of Bakersfield, Calif., wonders, "Have you tried the new shaken drinks at Starbucks? Don't." I disagree. I not only have tried them, I like them -- at least the passion tea. In fact, I highly recommend it. Very thirst-quenching.

g. I forgot to mention this last week: Mary Beth got me semi-hooked on a home-design show called Trading Spaces while on vacation. Ever seen it? Two neighbors change homes and have 48 hours, with help from designers and carpenters, to overhaul a living area in their friends' home. Sounds bizarre, but there's something about the cleverness of the show that I really like.

h. I'm afraid I don't know what it means that Carlos Beltran, according to ESPN anchor Scott Van Pelt, was "keeping his pimp hand strong" during one at-bat Saturday night. You?

7. I think if I were Jim Brown or O.J. Simpson or Barry Sanders or Emmitt Smith, and I heard Marcus Allen (average NFL rushing season: 765 yards) tell ESPN's Andrea Kremer, "I would put myself right alongside Walter Payton; I think I did it better than anyone else," I would be supremely ticked off. I like Allen. I voted for him last winter for the Hall of Fame. But there's no way on God's green earth he was as good an NFL player as Barry Sanders or Jim Brown or O.J. Simpson. I just don't figure that.

8. I think unless Andre Rison has a third of the ego he once had, and would play for the NFL minimum, I wouldn't touch him with a 10-foot negotiating pole now that he's been reinstated by the NFL.

9. I think these are my merchandising notes of the week:

a. I hear pretty reliably that Reebok stole Donovan McNabb from Nike for $4 million a year for four years -- plus all the product he wants. McNabb tells me he had some input with Nike's Jordan line on formalwear, and he hopes to have the same when Reebok gets into premium clothing. (What, am I a fashion reporter?)

b. Those throwback mesh caps the players are wearing on the sidelines are the ugliest things I've seen in a long time.

10. I think I hope the Hall of Fame voters remember Harry Carson next January.

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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