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 Saints go marching down, down
Posted: Thursday April 15, 1999 07:53 PM
The New Orleans Saints are preparing to make one of the dumbest moves in the history of the National Football League. Don't you think? They're offering all of their 1999 draft choices, plus their No. 1 pick next year, plus... I don't know... all the beer and beignets on Bourbon Street to any team that will trade away the strategic position to pick the Heisman Trophy winner, running back Ricky Williams of the University of Texas. What's wrong with this deal? Where do I start? First of all, no running back is worth all this. None. Not Jim Brown. Not Gale Sayers. Not Walter Payton. Not O.J. Simpson. None. Pay all the homage you want to "establishing the running game," but it is the passing game that ultimately takes you to a championships. As exciting as Barry Sanders is, once the Detroit Lions fall behind by 14 points, he's about as useful as Shaquille O'Neal on the foul line in the closing seconds. A running back can help you win the close ones, but he can't help you come back. Second, is Ricky Williams this good? He put together some record numbers, to be sure, but hasn't he shown tendencies toward being both fat and fatheaded? Wouldn't this kind of attention increase those tendencies? Third, remember that Minnesota Vikings' deal for Herschel Walker, sending all of those draft picks to the Dallas Cowboys? It took the Vikings forever to recover from that one.
And finally, don't the Saints need a quarterback? Isn't this supposed to be the year of the quarterback? It's almost as if the Saints think they know something that nobody else knows. Maybe they do. Maybe they know that Ricky Williams can play quarterback. Sports Illustrated senior writer Leigh Montville appears regularly on CNN/Sports Illustrated.
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