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Welcome to Land of Milk and Chaos
Posted: Wednesday January 20, 1999 12:43 PM
This Week's Awards | Ten Things I Think I Think | Top 10 Teams
Click here to send your NFL and Super Bowl XXXIII questions to Peter King's Mailbag. DENVER--Sitting here in the press box before the AFC Championship Game across from colleague Paul Zimmerman and next to veteran Falcons scout Chuck Connor and agent Marvin Demoff , watching the Vikings-Falcons game and wondering what the heck is going on in the NFL. The overtime rules stink. That's the first thing. You tell me what shred of justice there is in pro football when you get to overtime of a championship game and the coin flip can be a huge factor in which team wins. In all overtime games since the NFL adopted the system, 26 percent of the teams which won the toss before overtime went on to win the game on the first possession. So the NFL is telling us that the coin flip is about the 94th tiebreaker in deciding which team makes the playoffs and the first tiebreaker in deciding which team wins a playoff game. Ridiculous. Now for the (impatient) state of the game. I count 16 of the 31 teams in some sort of flux between transition and chaos. The Jets and Falcons are in the final four two years after going 1-15 and 3-13, respectively. Brett Favre and Steve Young and Jerry Rice are home. Mike Holmgren 's in Seattle. Dom Capers is unemployed. Jimmy Johnson says he's as dedicated a personnel man and coach and GM as ever, but he's not going to the Senior Bowl Monday, which is curious because the Senior Bowl is where most of the top prospects for the April draft will be. Coaches got changed too fast where quarterbacks failed -- in Carolina, Chicago, Baltimore, Seattle and Philadelphia. Coaches in New England, St. Louis and Cincinnati survived, though I don't know how. There is more of a premium on getting a tough coach who can deal better with rich and powerful and uncuttable players than ever before. Kansas City president Carl Peterson told me so Saturday night. "I'd like to get a coach who, if need be, can get in a player's face," Peterson said. Why is that so necessary? Because coaches like Jimmy Johnson go to practice on Thursdays before big games and, in the midst of full-speed drills, sees offensive linemen leaning on defensive linemen, and vice versa, and he goes berserk, and the players don't respond like they used to. And there is more panic in the game among general managers and coaches than I've ever seen. Detroit is divided. Half the organization wanted to leave the coaching and personnel decisions to Bobby Ross . Half the organization wanted to give all the football authority to Matt Millen , the TV guy. The Bobby Ross half, led by owner Bill Ford Sr. , won. The Matt Millen half, led by owner-in-waiting Bill Ford Jr. , lost. I'd like to be a fly on the wall at the Ford's next family dinner. It's not ducky with the Rams. Two years ago, president John Shaw told me after hiring Dick Vermeil: "It's either going to go down in history as a brilliant move or I'll sit in the corner with a dunce cap." Well, all I know is that Shaw wants to change quarterbacks and coaching staffs and practice patterns, and Vermeil doesn't want to change a thing, and Shaw, if he didn't owe Vermeil $5.7 million, would have axed him three weeks ago. Who's happy? Anybody? Except for the teams playing Sunday -- and, I must say, for the truly happy Elway zealots who honked their horns long into the Denver night -- I can't think of many people in this game who are. At times like this, I'm thankful to be on this side of the computer, where I don't care who wins on Sunday. Offensive Player of the Week: Denver RB Terrell Davis. Football's indisputable MVP now has had two signature performances in the 1998 postseason, driving the Broncos to consecutive wins over Miami and the Jets. His 167 yards in Denver's 23-10 win were the stuff of legend. Probably on two-thirds of his carries he was stifled or struggled for a yard or three. "The Jets were so solid defensively," Davis said. "We just had to keep banging it at them." He did, wonderfully. Defensive Player of the Week: Denver LB Bill Romanowski. Eleven tackles, one forced fumble, one fumble recovery ... and one concussion. "He looked punch drunk for a while there," said Broncos safety Tyrone Braxton after Denver's 23-10 win over the Jets. Said Romocop: "To win championships, you've got to play great defense. We did. We dominated a great offensive football team." Special Teams Player of the Week: New York Jets TE Blake Spence. Inactive since Week 6 against Atlanta, Spence burst through a hole in the Denver line early in the third quarter, blocked a Tom Rouen punt and handed the Jets seven points in a game that was stunningly stingy with scoring. Coach of the Week: Jets defensive coordinator Bill Belichick. Any guy who designs a scheme to hold the Broncos scoreless for the first 34 minutes of a game in Mile High Stadium -- against one of the top 10 quarterbacks and running backs of all time -- deserves recognition. Lots of it. Goat of the Week: Minnesota K Gary Anderson. Can you imagine how the nicest man in football (in Peter King's book) is feeling this morning? After connecting on 120 straight field goals and extra points combined over two years, Anderson shocked the world -- especially those inhabitants inside the Metrodome -- by missing a 38-yard field goal that would have given the Vikings a bullet-proof 10-point lead with two minutes left in regulation. He hooked it 18 inches left, and you know the rest of the story. Talk about life being unfair. This guy is going to have one bad kick on his mind for the entire offseason, not a hundred-odd good ones. Quote of the Week: From Dallas director of public relations Rich Dalrymple , about the spate of chaotic coaching and front-office changes in the NFL these days: "We are the most turmoil-free team in the NFL today, and we're loving every minute of it." Now for the 10 Things I Think I Think This Week: 1. I think Atlanta quarterback Chris Chandler shut a lot of people up Sunday. 2. I think I'm already sick of the Dan Reeves-John Elway stories, and I haven't read one of them yet. 3. I think I'm amazed how well the Falcons handled the noise in the Metrodome. Falcons scout Chuck Connor told me the Falcons called the league -- just days after Cardinals executives were so infuriated by the volume of the noise coming out of the Metrodome speakers behind their bench in their playoff game that one front-office guy threatened to go down and rip the wires out of the back of the speakers -- and asked for noise relief. So the league moved the speakers from midfield to the 30-yard line, and pointed them toward the end zone, not at the bench. (I asked Connor, by the way, if some part of him was stunned to see the Falcons, the lowly Falcons, in the NFC Championship Game. "It's amazing," he said, "but more amazing is that we're 15-2 and we have to go on the road in the championship game.") 4. I think I got the the only chuckle out of Jerry Rice last week. I asked him if the 49ers, four years removed from winning a Super Bowl, had another championship run in them, and he told me: "We've obviously got to have more weapons and more players to get to the Super Bowl, but I'll leave that to the people in the front office." I said: "Who are they?" He chuckled. "Well, that's a whole different story," he said. 5. I think I could never quite imagine Charles Haley as a teacher, but that's what he's fixing to do. Coming out of retirement Haley played effectively as a nickel pass-rusher in two 49ers playoff games, but he has no idea if his chronic back problems would allow him to play a full season next year, at 37. "I only know one thing," Haley told me. "I'm going to work this offseason teaching the art of pass-rushing to guys coming out of college, getting them ready for the draft." 6. I think I will not get to campaign for Phil Simms' election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame since Simms is not one of the 15 finalists for the 1999 class. Sad. I'm not saying he should be a slam-dunk for the Hall, but I do think he should be strongly considered. The quarterback position should be about winning, and I've always felt Simms, among all the quarterbacking huge-numbers guys of this era, was the one who had the best idea -- and the smallest ego -- about what it takes to win games. I'll probably always consider Otto Graham the best quarterback of all time, even though I never saw him play, because he led his Cleveland Browns to the championship game of their league 10 years in a row. That's how you judge a quarterback. SPECIAL MEDIA SECTION OF 10 THINGS I THINK I THINK: 7. I think -- and this falls under my Life is Beautiful movie review last week, when I turned this column into a full-service entertainment column -- the best radio station in America is KBCO (97.3 FM) in Boulder. This place always knows my mental playlist. Dave Matthews and Bob Dylan (I'm not the biggest Dylan fan, but you've got to like Tangled up in Blue ) and Third Eye Blind on successive songs is my idea of great radio, and that's what greeted me when I got into town Thursday. 8. I think Rocky Mountain News columnist Mike Littwin probably got Vinny Testaverde fired up when his Friday column began: "If you're a Broncos fan, you're confident of at least one thing. Vinny quarterbacks for the other team." 9. I think I realized the world is changing, and not for the better, when I was flipping through the radio dial Friday morning and found a station in Denver called "96.5 The Peach'' running an ad for free Broncos tickets in which the announcer said the following words: "Parcells, you fat b------." Nice. Classy. END OF MEDIA INTERLUDE. 10. I think the way Sunday went, I'm insane for making a Super Bowl prediction. We all are. But here goes: Shanahan 26, Reeves 21. 1. Denver Broncos (16-2) 2. Atlanta Falcons (16-2) 3. Minnesota Vikings (16-2) 4. New York Jets (13-5) 5. Jacksonville Jaguars (12-6) 6. San Francisco 49ers (12-6) 7. Green Bay Packers (11-6) 8. Miami Dolphins (11-7) 9. Buffalo Bills (10-7) 10. Arizona Cardinals (10-8) Click here to send your NFL and Super Bowl XXXIII questions to Peter King's Mailbag.
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