Inside the NFL
By Peter King
Posted: Wed October 13, 1998
Best of the Rest | Lost Cause In San Diego | Home Crowd For New Browns
The Mind Games Never End | The Groin's The Thing | Have Flag, Will Throw It
The Buzz | The Inner Game | Dr. Z's Forecast
Best of the Rest
If not for the Broncos, the Patriots might be the team to beat in
the AFC
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The 18th pick in last April's draft, Edwards has shown the Pats
he can grind out the tough yards.
(Al Tielemans)
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In a pivotal matchup in the AFC Second Fiddle Tournament on
Sunday, the Patriots destroyed the Chiefs with a show of brawn
and finesse that suggested New England is as good a candidate as
any to take on the top-dog Broncos in the conference title game.
In fact, this Patriots team may turn out to be better than any of
the four that Bill Parcells coached, including the one that went
to the Super Bowl two years ago.
"Kansas City and Denver were supposed to be the lead dogs in the
AFC," said New England cornerback Ty Law, whose club lost its
season opener to the Broncos 27-21 but manhandled the Chiefs
40-10. "We showed we're a big dog when it counts."
The game turned in the first quarter on two plays that revealed
which team had the most guts. Trailing 7-0 and facing
third-and-one at its 47, Kansas City sent its 232-pound bowling
ball of a back, Donnell Bennett, behind center Tim Grunhard.
Bennett ran into a wall of bodies and didn't gain an inch. With
the home crowd at Foxboro Stadium roaring, Chiefs coach Marty
Schottenheimer made an emphatic first-down motion with his right
arm, signaling his offense to play on. This time 232-pound
fullback Tony Richardson made a charge behind Grunhard. But
defensive tackle Chad Eaton submarined Grunhard and slowed
Richardson enough to allow an avalanche of Patriots to come down
on him. "That was the game," Eaton said.
"After that," said New England linebacker Chris Slade, "they
quit."
The next six Patriots possessions ended with a field goal, a
touchdown, a touchdown, a field goal, a touchdown and a field
goal, giving New England a 37-0 lead after 41 minutes. Here are
three reasons to like this 4-1 club:
1) Rookie running back Robert Edwards is shaping up as a solid
replacement for the departed Curtis Martin. In his last three
games Edwards, the first-round draft pick from Georgia, rushed
for 92, 97 and 104 yards. On Sunday he ran for one score and
caught a pass for another. Judging by his punishing style,
Edwards looks as though he will be a more effective back in cold
weather—a key to New England's late-season and playoff
success—than Martin was. Against the Chiefs the 218-pound Edwards
ran hard between the tackles, and although he has few of Martin's
outside moves, he might be better suited to getting the tough
yards. Edwards is averaging 4.3 yards per carry, while Martin, a
restricted free agent who signed with the Jets in the off-season,
has a 3.5-yard mark and missed Sunday's game against the Rams
with a bruised thigh.
2) Drew Bledsoe is a better passer than he was a year ago. New
offensive coordinator Ernie Zampese has helped Bledsoe develop a
quicker release, make more precise drops and eliminate careless
throws. Bledsoe has completed 60% of his attempts with eight
touchdown passes and only three interceptions. "Ernie demands
precision from the receivers too," Bledsoe says. "They're almost
always exactly where I think they'll be." It's more than that. At
26 Bledsoe is more mature and better able to make good things
happen amid the chaos.
3) Law is a corner who can shut down top receivers. In the
off-season Law talked coach Pete Carroll into letting him cover
the opponent's best receiver each week. On Sunday, when the
Chiefs' Elvis Grbac dropped back to throw 33 times, wideout Andre
Rison didn't get a sniff against Law, predominantly in man
coverage. Rison's one reception went for five yards and came when
Law was on the opposite side of the field. For the season Law has
held the opponents' top wideouts to a total of 13 catches and has
not given up a touchdown pass.
He attributes much of his success to the six-week off-season
training session he had with track coach Bob Kersee. "Deion
Sanders and Dale Carter always take the best guy, and I want to
be in their league," says Law, a 1995 first-round draft pick who
leads the AFC in interceptions, with four. "Training with Bob
helped because I believe it gave me the deep-ball speed I lacked.
I already thought I could play with anybody, and now I'm sure of
it."
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Lost Cause In San Diego
When they hired Kevin Gilbride to be their coach 21 months ago,
the Chargers thought they were getting an imaginative offensive
mind who could build confidence in his players. That's the kind
of coordinator Gilbride had been in Jacksonville and earlier in
Houston, where quarterback Warren Moon and a group of
free-spirited receivers led by Haywood Jeffires were inspired by
Gilbride's positive thinking.
In San Diego, however, Gilbride has been a dour,
glass-is-half-empty guy, and he almost certainly won't make it
out of a tailspin that has seen his team lose 12 of its last 14,
including a horrendous 7-6 decision to the undermanned Raiders on
Sunday. Chargers quarterbacks Ryan Leaf and Craig Whelihan
combined to complete 10 of 24 passes for 97 yards with three
interceptions. San Diego lost to a team that, playing without
quarterback Jeff George, connected on 31% of its passes and
rushed for 18 yards.
Afterward Chargers strong safety Rodney Harrison was asked if the
players still had confidence in Gilbride. After a 20-second pause
Harrison said, "Put it like this: We still have confidence."
In Gilbride?
"We still have confidence," Harrison said.
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Home Crowd For New Browns
The expansion draft to help stock the Cleveland franchise will be
held on Feb. 9 at the Civic Center in Canton, Ohio, down the
street from the Pro Football Hall of Fame, instead of in a
sterile hotel ballroom near league offices in New York City. That
means Browns followers will be able to fill the place. "Cleveland
fans are as loyal as any team's, and they'll show it that day,"
says Otto Graham, one of the original Browns.
Each of the league's 30 established clubs must leave five signed
veterans unprotected, and the Browns must take from 30 to 42
players (no more than two from any club). This process did not
exactly yield a treasure trove of talent for the Jaguars and
Panthers in '95. Only Carolina's wideout Mark Carrier and nickel
back Rod Smith are still making significant contributions.
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The Mind Games Never End
After the Jets beat the Patriots at the Meadowlands last October,
New York coach Bill Parcells walked up the tunnel with struggling
New England wideout Terry Glenn and asked him, "What the hell is
wrong with you?" A stoked-up Glenn caught seven passes for a
career-high 163 yards the following week against the Packers,
then stunned Parcells by writing his former coach a thank-you
note. "He's really a good kid," Parcells says of his former
whipping boy.... Rams running back Amp Lee, the team's MVP in
'97, is having another outstanding season. On Sunday, during a
30-10 win over the Jets, Lee carried nine times for 53 yards and
two touchdowns and caught six passes for 62 yards. Among running
backs, only Arizona's Larry Centers (362 receptions) has more
catches than Lee's 260 since the start of the '94 season.
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The Groin's The Thing
Raiders running back Napoleon Kaufman,quarterback Jeff George,
strong safety Anthony Newman, defensive end James Harris,
defensive tackle Grady Jackson and kicker Greg Davis have missed
up to three games in '98 with strains or tears of the groin.
"It's the year of the groin," says Newman.
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Have Flag, Will Throw It
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Two teams have requested not to be officiated by Hantak's crew.
(Peter Read Miller)
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SI has learned that at least two teams have taken the unusual
step of asking the NFL office not to schedule the officiating
crew headed by referee Dick Hantak (right) for their games. Why
the concern? The Hantak crew has presided over three of the five
games in which the most penalties were walked off this season:
the 49ers-Bills (34 flags), the Giants-Raiders (31) and the
Chargers-Chiefs (24, which ties for fourth). Excluding Hantak's
crew, the average number of penalties per game this season is
13.7. The league doesn't allow its officials to talk to the
media, but NFL director of officiating Jerry Seeman says the work
of the flag-happy seven-man crew hasn't been as bad as it seems.
Before Hantak's group assessed 18 penalties in the
Panthers-Cowboys game on Sunday, Seeman said, "Their overall
accuracy and performance have been good." Through Monday's play,
here are the referees whose crews have the highest
penalties-per-game averages this season.
| REFEREE | GAMES | PENALTIES |
| Dick Hantak | 6 | 23.0 |
| Ron Winter | 5 | 17.0 |
| Bill Carollo | 5 | 15.4 |
| Phil Luckett | 5 | 15.4 |
| Ed Hochuli | 5 | 15.4 |
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The Buzz
1. O'Donnell's Revenge In the last three years, the Steelers have
chosen Kordell Stewart and the Jets have chosen Glenn Foley and
Vinny Testaverde to play quarterback over Neil O'Donnell. On
Sunday, O'Donnell took the Bengals 93 yards in 1:36, ending the
drive by outfoxing the Steelers with a fake spike before throwing
the winning last-minute touchdown pass. O'Donnell completed 20 of
26 passes for 298 yards and three scores, with no interceptions.
Sunday's numbers for the three who ran O'Donnell out of town: 49%
passing, one touchdown pass, two interceptions and a pair of
fumbles.
2. Rare Birds What two teams have the best record in the NFL over
the last 11 regular-season games? A clue: Both have employed
Brett Favre. The Falcons and the Packers are 9-2. Atlanta, which
faces the Saints, the Jets and the Rams in the next three weeks,
is a heavy favorite to grab a wild card.
3. Parcells-Patriots III On Sunday, eight days before this
season's first Jets-Patriots showdown, vendors were selling can
the tuna T-shirts outside Foxboro Stadium. Jets coach Bill
Parcells returns to his old stomping ground, and this time he
brings former New England running back Curtis Martin with him.
"Bill coming back, Curtis coming back, Monday night, division
game," New England quarterback Drew Bledsoe said. "This is
turning into Red Sox-Yankees."
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The Inner Game: Beating Double Teams
Like it or not, the Giants' Michael Strahan is getting the star
treatment
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Despite the extra attention, Strahan is on pace to exceed his
sack total of '97.
(Lenny Ignelzi/AP)
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The shortest distance to the quarterback keeps getting longer for
Giants defensive end Michael Strahan, who, after a breakthrough
14-sack season last year, rarely finds only a single blocker
trying to prevent him from getting into the backfield.
"I've seen tackle-guard, tackle-tight end, tackle-back, tight
end-back and, worst of all, tackle-tight end-back," Strahan said
last Friday as he prepared to dig into a plate of barbecue. But
talk of double- and triple-team blocking curbed his appetite, so
Strahan handed the still full dish to a teammate before
continuing. "This year against the Redskins, Raiders and
Chargers, I'd go outside of the tackle and find a tight end
waiting. So I'd go inside of the tackle, only to find a back
waiting."
The tactic that gives Strahan the most trouble is when a team
assigns a sort of hidden assassin to lie in wait. Instead of
stepping up to assist the tackle just after the snap, this player
moves in only if Strahan starts to gain an advantage over his
primary blocker.
For Strahan the key going into Sunday night's game against the
Falcons was to identify that extra blocker. "They'll be starting
a rookie tackle [Ephraim Salaam] against me, so [right guard]
Gene Williams will probably be keeping an eye on me," said
Strahan. "This week I've studied how the tackle will try to block
me so that I can find a way to deal with him while still keeping
an eye out for the other guy. The hardest thing is to rush
against a player and turn your body so that the other guy can't
hit you."
Sure enough, the Falcons slid Williams over to help Salaam
throughout their 34-20 dumping of the Giants. Strahan was double-
or triple-teamed on 20 of Atlanta's 29 pass plays, though he did
pick up a first-quarter sack by lining up at left defensive
tackle and blowing past a surprised Williams. "Someone was always
watching to make sure that Salaam wasn't alone," Falcons
offensive line coach Art Shell said. "It's a part of the game for
me," said Strahan, who is tied for third in the league with seven
sacks. "A bad part."
—Richard Deutsch
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Issue date: October 19, 1998
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