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$.10 for Spring Break
Authored by Jeff Risdon - 7th April, 2008 - 2:17 pm
With John Herrera standing to his right dressed in black and appearing not unlike an undertaker, Lane Kiffin sat down at the podium for Sunday's postgame news conference.
Baltimore wants Flacco to be their QB of the future. But the Ravens feel they have no choice but to start him now because Boller and Smith are unavailable. Wrong!
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It’s Spring Break for a multitude of college and high school students across America. Ah, the memories… 11 people sharing a cozy room at a hotel that makes Motel 6 seem swanky, pasty white guys parading around without shirts in the 70 degree “heat”, 64 ounces of Long Island Iced Tea for $3, watching your friends make complete fools of themselves in the name of “nakedness and chaos” (you know who you are!).
It’s also a good time of year for football fans. The draft is less than 3 weeks away; the owners' meetings just wrapped; and loads of dirty laundry flaps in the warming, misty breeze.
$.01--I’m a big fan of two of the new rules adopted at the owners' meetings. First is the ability to defer to the second half when winning the coin toss. That’s been a rule in college for years and, according to Adam Schein of Sirius NFL Radio, coaches opt to defer 94% of the time. Any time the rules between what we watch on Saturday and Sunday get closer together, that’s a good thing. Second is the elimination of the judgment call regarding receivers being forced out of bounds by the defense. You get two feet in, it’s a catch; you can’t get them both down inbounds with control of the ball, too bad. It’s high time the league stopped punishing defensive players for making good plays.
$.02--The Bengals' soap opera never gets boring. Chad Johnson still hasn’t figured out that the louder he complains, the less his value is to other teams, who are loathe to bring in someone now widely perceived (right or wrong) as disruptive and needy. Chris Henry apparently never will figure out how to behave like an adult, let alone an NFL player. The Odell Thurman saga is starting to bubble up and is sure to provoke more animated conversations on the airwaves. Every week there seems to be something new, and it’s seldom positive for a franchise that two years ago had a legit shot at the Super Bowl. Right now I have a hard time seeing them not finishing in last in the AFC North--for a long time.
$.03--On the troubled player front, the Pacman Jones-to-Dallas trade talks have also proved entertaining. I have three fairly unrelated observations here:
A. Why on earth would you give anything up for a player who is still on indefinite suspension? There is still a pretty good chance he won’t be cleared to play at all next season.
B. Pacman was a divisive figure in the Titans' locker room before all the strip club shootings and police blotter activity. I talked to one Titan who told me that he and several other teammates got sick of his act the first week of Pacman’s first preseason. And that’s with Jeff Fisher as coach, and not the much softer Wade Phillips in control of the team.
C. It’s long past time for Mr. Jones to drop the “Pacman” persona and go back to being Adam. You want to convince Roger Goodell you’re no longer a menace to society and worthy of being allowed to play football again? Get away from all the old friends, stop defaming classic video games, stop getting spotted at strip clubs, and prove you’re a changed man. Saying you’ve changed to Michael Irvin, who knows prostitutes and drugs better than most, doesn’t exactly inspire credibility.
$.04--In my last article I brought up the labor issue and made a huge mistake. As Michael Duberstein and others correctly observed, I inferred that the NFLPA would want to opt out of the CBA. Without going into great detail, that is certainly not the case. It’s a complex issue that I will address again--it was the subject of literally years of studying and work on my part, both during and after college--and next time I won’t fumble the details.
$.05--On the “Bad Icness” front, I have a personal message for South Carolina RB Cory Boyd: A lot of people have your back. Most of them seem like rational, functionally literate folks who have genuine empathy for all you’ve gone through and how you have matured into a respectable young man. I sincerely hope you don’t make all those people look like morons and that all the goodwill translates into a successful career, whether in the NFL or perhaps working for one of your advocates.
$.06--I get quite a few people asking me draft-related questions this time of year, and one of the most popular is regarding later-round sleepers. I brought up this very question with an NFL Director of Collegiate Scouting in a recent interview (to be published post-draft at his behest), and here are the three names he gave me: Jamey Richards, C, Buffalo; Bryan Smith, OLB, McNeese St.; Maurice Purify, WR, Nebraska. I’ll add Pierre Garcon, WR, Mount Union as a shameless nod to the large contingent of Purple Raiders' fans I know.
$.07--I’m becoming more and more of the opinion that the QB situation isn’t as dire as many people would have you believe. The expectations of young QB's is simply too high, and the coaches don’t have enough job security or patience to properly develop them. I believe that in a lot of cases, more opportunities need to be given to QB's who have sat and learned for 2-4 seasons. Look at Derek Anderson, Sage Rosenfels, and David Garrard, among other recent success stories. Just because a QB isn’t ready to start fresh from college doesn’t necessarily mean he never will be a good starter. For rebuilding teams like the Chiefs and 49ers, it’s paramount they give the Tyler Thigpens and Shaun Hills real chances to both develop and get a shot at being the man. It’s certainly cheaper than blowing 2nd round draft picks every couple of years and repeating the cycle.
$.08--This is prime mock draft season, and far too often I see devoted fans making a very common mistake. You think a certain player is either overrated or a terrible pick for your team and aren’t afraid to say so. Yet in the next breath you hypothesize that some other team will accept your completely unrealistic trade expectations to deal up for that exact same player. I know, I know, draft boards vary by team and one man’s pyrite is another’s gold. Trust me on this: in every front office and draft room there are voices that agree with your assessments of the players, and also those who think your opinions suck. It’s been my experience that almost every draft decision maker (there are a couple of prominent exceptions) pays at least some mind to the divergent opinions and factors that into their decision-making processes. It’s one of the reasons why about 98% of all trade talks end up being just that--talk.
$.09--Very quietly the Washington Ethnic Slurs are having a pretty strong offseason. The key word there is “quiet”, something completely uncharacteristic for this team ever since Dan Snyder took over. Aside from the protracted, overly complicated coaching search immediately following the season, you haven’t heard much about the team lately. And that is progress. Normally the transaction blotter is chock full of the Skins grossly overpaying for veteran free agents and showering ridiculous extensions upon their own players or hiring yet another assistant coach to further overwhelm the players. To date they’ve signed just one free agent (WR/KR Jerome Mathis) to a low-risk deal, and they have a full complement of draft picks for the first time since Snyder bought the team. Sometimes a team can accomplish much by doing very little, and that certainly applies to this team this offseason.
$.10--I received loads of feedback regarding the hair issue. Thanks to all those who took the time to write and share their own stories of bad hairdos and bosses who demanded more “professional” styles. I do still believe that the players should be allowed to have hair as long or funky as they want, but they must be prepared to deal with the consequences without recourse. As for my hair now, I’m sporting a shorter ‘do', spiky in the front and tightly clipped on the sides and back. It’s almost warm enough out for my homemade recipe for lightening hair: mowing the lawn in the bright sunshine after pouring a Coors Light and a few ounces of lemon juice on my head. Sounds strange, but last summer I was blonder than any time since childhood, and it was all natural. And yes, Mom, I shaved off the long stubble under my lower lip.
Look for the next mock draft update later this week!
Jeff.Risdon@RealGM.com
