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Nothing on the Rams as usual. These are excerpts only. To read the whole article click the link below.
http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2015/08/09/andrew-luck-indianapolis-colts-nfl-frank-gifford-hard-knocks
The Other Side of Deflategate
Lost in the hot air surrounding last season’s AFC title game was the fact that the Colts were embarrassed, again, by the Patriots. What did Andrew Luck and company do to get better for 2015? Plus, what to expect when ‘Hard Knocks’ debuts, Aaron Rodgers’ future plans and remembering Frank Gifford
by Peter King
Michael Conroy/AP
ANDERSON, Ind. — Is it just me, or is there a ridiculous amount of stuff happening in the NFL right now?
We’ll start here, where the Deflategate foes (and believe me, the Indianapolis Colts would love to just let that story die) are not using the air pressure on footballs as anything—motivation, a crutch, anything. Nor should they. The Colts have been steamrolled by New England three times in their past 20 games—by scores of 45-7, 42-20 and 43-22—and they curiously haven’t buttressed their run defense, having fallen out of the bidding for Haloti Ngata and Vince Wilfork in the off-season. Tom Brady could have played with Nerf balls and the Colts wouldn’t have anything to complain about.
“No excuses,” coach Chuck Pagano said late Sunday afternoon after another camp practice at Anderson University. Particularly concerning the game under the Ted Wells microscope, the 38-point embarrassment in the AFC title game, Pagano has no desire to bring up whatever the air pressure was in the New England footballs.
“We got our asses kicked,” Pagano said. “Period. End of story. None of us here will ever forget that day, that final score. We got a damn artery gushing and no sutures to stop the bleeding. You never forget that.”
The Colts could have the greatest pass-catching corps in football this year, accompanying the best young quarterback in the game (and Andrew Luck has gone to school on Andrew Luck’s penchant for the big mistake). Will they be able to stop power teams like New England from breaking their spirit—again? That’s the big question here.
Problem solved in Indy?
The Colts scored 458 points last year, which is a lot. And they went out and signed a workhorse back (Frank Gore) and vet receiver Andre Johnson, who has 306 catches over the past three years, and then drafted another receiver, Phillip Dorsett, in the first round. (The Colts will field three wideouts this year who have recorded 40 times under 4.4 seconds.) In addition, Luck’s big project this offseason was to figure why his interception total rose from nine in 2013 to 16 last year.
“The decision-making process bit me in the butt, which in turn hurt the Colts more than a couple times last year,” Luck admitted here Sunday. “Obviously the Patriots games, and Philadelphia, second week of the season, I throw a bad pick in somewhat of a four-minute situation. I gotta learn, Just eat it, take the sack, throw it at his feet, whatever.
That’s what this off-season’s been about. Don’t give them a chance. We watched every interception ad nauseam, and we watched balls that should have been intercepted ad nauseam. We [coaches and mentor QB Matt Hasselbeck] talk about it and say, ‘Why?’ Do you have the awareness to know where the team is in the game? Is it worth trying to fit a ball in there or not? Do you go out of bounds or do you not?”
“Some bonehead plays,” said Pagano. “But all great competitors do everything they can to make great plays. The hardest thing for a great competitor is to give up on a play and throw it away. But you gotta know when to say when, when to throw it away, and Andrew’s learning that now. What I like about him is he’s got great amnesia. He’ll throw one [interception], then next series, be back out there, fine.”
Okay. Luck’s going to be fine. The offense should average 30 a game. But who’ll stop the reign?
The Patriot reign (with apologies to Michael Holley, who wrote a book of that title), I mean. New England has rushed for 657 yards against the Colts in their past three meetings, which cries out for a fix. Indy hopes 2014 free-agent 3-4 end Arthur Jones (who was hurt half of last season) and 2015 free-agent end Kendall Langford, 650 pounds of run-stopping on the edge, will be the answer. GM Ryan Grigson didn’t want to pay $6 million a year to the 33-year-old Wilfork, or deal two mid-round picks for Ngata, who might be a one-year Band-aid. “We have enough here,” said Pagano, meaning enough defensive talent. We’ll see, but perhaps not until the Patriots play in Indy in October … or until they meet again in January.
* * *
Frank Gifford (AP)
Frank Gifford: 1930-2015.
Two things I hope Frank Gifford is not remembered for:
As a football player, being KO’d by Eagles middle linebacker Chuck Bednarik in 1960 on one of the most brutal hits in NFL history. Bednarik, in an unforgettable photo, exhilarates in the hit, and Gifford missed all of 1961 with the effects of a concussion and a broken neck vertebra.
As a broadcaster, for Howard Cosell, his “Monday Night Football” partner, calling Gifford “the human mannequin.”
A few things you need to know about Gifford, an athletic, make-’em-miss all-purpose player from USC: He made the Pro Bowl as a defensive back, wide receiver and running back. And he threw 14 touchdown passes in his Giants’ career. He was the NFL’s MVP in 1956, when he led the Giants to a 47-7 rout of the Bears in the NFL Championship Game. “We were an insignificant franchise when we drafted him [in 1952],” Giants president John Mara said Sunday. “By the time he retired, in 1964, we were the toast of the town. It was mostly because of him.
He was the face of our franchise. During my youth, I wanted to be like Frank. All of my friends did. He was an icon in New York, a matinee idol.” Gifford’s total of 5,434 receiving yards was a franchise record for 38 years, until Amani Toomer broke it after the turn of the century. Gay Talese, the noted writer, tailed Gifford for a long story in 1956 and wrote he had “a quality of mind that makes him rare for football players.” He wasn’t quite Joe Namath in taking New York by storm, but very close.
Now for the TV side … Football players nimbly traverse the field-to-studio gigs today, dozens a year, seemingly. But they just didn’t do TV in the ’50s and early ’60s, until Gifford did TV. He started on the CBS station in New York while he was still playing, then transitioned to the Monday night booth in 1971. He won an Emmy for his TV work in 1977, and did Olympic TV work and guest-hosted “Good Morning America.”
“He was the guy who set the trend for players working in TV,” said Mara.
Al Michaels worked the football booth with Gifford for 256 games. “No matter how crazy it ever got,” Michaels said Sunday, “Frank was the coolest guy in the room. He was the sea of tranquility. I never saw Frank get upset; that was the amazing thing about him. Even when Howard referred to him as ‘the human mannequin,’ I never saw Frank direct any animus at him. But in football, if you lived in New York, you know how big he made the game—he was Mickey Mantle.”
Few players in any sport have ever been as close to ownership—and ownership’s family—as Gifford was with the Maras. When he retired, he used to drive to Giants games on Sunday with Ann Mara, wife of owner Wellington Mara, and sit in the family box. When Gifford was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1977, Wellington Mara introduced him. When Mara made it 20 years later, Gifford was his presenter.
“He was family,” John Mara said Sunday night. “This one hit me like a thunderbolt.”
* * *
Spoiler alert.
In Green Bay on Friday, I took some time to do a little math, trying to answer this question:
What’s the best combo platter of quarterbacks in NFL history?
Or, to give it more clarity: What two quarterbacks, back to back for the same team, are the best in NFL history?
I entered into this thinking it would probably be Joe Montana and Steve Young of the 49ers. And maybe it is. Statistics can be twisted a lot of ways, but how do you beat four Super Bowls for Montana and one for Young, and the two-decade greatness they shared under Bill Walsh and George Seifert? But now I am not so sure. I think it’s Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers. In all metrics except Super Bowl victories (Montana/Young 5, Favre/Rodgers 2), the Packers duo looks like the back-to-back champs.
A footnote, first. I said to Rodgers on Friday that if he could play four or five more years, he and Favre would be near 30 years combined, and …
“Eight,” Rodgers said.
Rodgers is 31. If he plays eight more seasons (pushing the Green Bay twosome into three decades), well, it’s likely that no two quarterbacks in history would or could ever rival Favre and Rodgers. In fact, if Rodgers never played another snap, it’d be a great argument between the 49ers and Packers pairs. The numbers:
Montana/Young: 19 seasons, 213 wins, .643 completion percentage, 465-209 TD-INT
Favre/Rodgers: 23 seasons, 248 wins, .631 completion percentage, 668-343 TD-INT
Is eight years really far-fetched? Last week, emails were produced in the ball-deflation case between the league and Tom Brady in which Brady emailed a friend: “I’ve got another seven or eight years.” Brady is 38. He probably doesn’t have that long, obviously. But who would doubt a healthy Rodgers playing until 39?
I’ve found it pretty amazing that if you’re a fan of the Packers, and if you’re, say, 27 right now, you’ve never had a hopeless season, because your Packers have always had a top quarterback. We found a big Packers’ fan who is 27: Kevin Sutter, of Blue Mounds, Wis. “We talk about it, me and my brothers,” Sutter said. “We talk about it a lot—just how incredibly crazy it is that for our entire childhood we saw how great Brett Favre was.
He was in the top two or three quarterbacks in the league for like 10 to 12 years, which was our entire childhood. And now my brothers and I sit around and watch Packers games together, and we marvel at how great Aaron Rodgers is. We remember when we were 10 years old and we saw Favre, and now you just appreciate it so much more how good Rodgers is. I can’t even imagine watching a team you love struggle to find a franchise quarterback.”
* * *
Last one out of Santa Clara, turn off the lights.
Lost by the Niners since the end of the 2014 season:
• Jim Harbaugh, the coach who won 49 games in his four San Francisco seasons.
• On offense: a starting running back (Frank Gore) and wideout (Michael Crabtree) and two-fifths of the starting offensive line.
• On defense, it’s an absolute plague: both starting defensive ends (Ray McDonald, Justin Smith), both starting cornerbacks (Perrish Cox, Chris Culliver), and three invaluable linebackers (Patrick Willis, Aldon Smith, Chris Borland).
The 49ers did the right thing, releasing Aldon Smith after his fifth arrest, and coach Jim Tomsula was deep in individual conversations with scores of players Friday and Saturday after it happened. That’s good. Kumbaya is good. But let’s be real. No team has lost so many franchise players in such a short period and continued to win. Gore, Justin Smith, Aldon Smith, Patrick Willis … franchise guys. A top head coach, gone. We’ve been over this often this off-season, but Tomsula is stepping into one of the toughest spots a rookie coach has ever been in.
Jim Tomsula (Jeff Chiu/AP)
And if I’m Aldon Smith—knowing I’m likely to get suspended for part of this season anyway—I am in no hurry to pick a next team. He’s got to fix his life, or try to, before focusing on football.
******
I think the NFL allowing a concussion-spotter to have the power to stop the game is a tremendous step in the right direction for continued concussion vigilance. This season a certified athletic trainer, independent of either team and with at least 10 years in the field, will be posted in a booth upstairs. If he sees a player appear shaky or woozy on the field but the play is not stopped, the trainer will be able to signal a timeout of unlimited length to make sure the affected player is examined.
I think Seattle safety Kam Chancellor is a heck of a player, obviously. Who doesn’t think so? Likeable guy too. But holding out for a new deal after two years of a five-year contract is simply a non-starter. GM John Schneider cannot start re-doing contracts with three years left on them, regardless of the value of the player. Seattle, as I pointed out last week, has an average of $97 million tied up in 10 players through 2017, and the easiest way to inflate that number through the salary-cap roof is to tear up a contract of any player with three years left on it.
For the record, Chancellor signed a four-year contract extension in 2013 when he had a year left on his original contract; that meant his contract went through 2017. In the first two years of the deal, he made $12.55 million, including bonuses. In the last three years, he is slated to make $16.875 million, including bonuses but not including incentives. You might say that $5.6 million a year for a top-five NFL safety is too little, and I might agree … except that the contract, in 2013 dollars, was very much a market-value deal. Chancellor signed it.
Seattle has had a practice of working on players’ contract with a year left, or when they reach free agency. Even if it means sacrificing Chancellor for the season (I don’t think that will happen, but it could), Schneider will do more damage with his roster by giving in than by holding firm. He seemed to be saying he wouldn’t budge the other day on Sirius-XM NFL Radio. “I think it's just a bummer for everybody involved in the situation,” he said. “We've had a plan in place here for several years. Kam was one of the first players that we drafted that we were able to reward with one year left on his contract.
At the end of the day you have to stick to your plan and your principle, and that's what has to guide you rather than, 'We all love this guy.' This is about the team. It's the ultimate team sport, and in order for us to be a consistent championship-caliber team that we've been preaching ever since we got here, we have to continue to conduct business the way we always have.”
http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2015/08/09/andrew-luck-indianapolis-colts-nfl-frank-gifford-hard-knocks
The Other Side of Deflategate
Lost in the hot air surrounding last season’s AFC title game was the fact that the Colts were embarrassed, again, by the Patriots. What did Andrew Luck and company do to get better for 2015? Plus, what to expect when ‘Hard Knocks’ debuts, Aaron Rodgers’ future plans and remembering Frank Gifford
by Peter King
Michael Conroy/AP
ANDERSON, Ind. — Is it just me, or is there a ridiculous amount of stuff happening in the NFL right now?
We’ll start here, where the Deflategate foes (and believe me, the Indianapolis Colts would love to just let that story die) are not using the air pressure on footballs as anything—motivation, a crutch, anything. Nor should they. The Colts have been steamrolled by New England three times in their past 20 games—by scores of 45-7, 42-20 and 43-22—and they curiously haven’t buttressed their run defense, having fallen out of the bidding for Haloti Ngata and Vince Wilfork in the off-season. Tom Brady could have played with Nerf balls and the Colts wouldn’t have anything to complain about.
“No excuses,” coach Chuck Pagano said late Sunday afternoon after another camp practice at Anderson University. Particularly concerning the game under the Ted Wells microscope, the 38-point embarrassment in the AFC title game, Pagano has no desire to bring up whatever the air pressure was in the New England footballs.
“We got our asses kicked,” Pagano said. “Period. End of story. None of us here will ever forget that day, that final score. We got a damn artery gushing and no sutures to stop the bleeding. You never forget that.”
The Colts could have the greatest pass-catching corps in football this year, accompanying the best young quarterback in the game (and Andrew Luck has gone to school on Andrew Luck’s penchant for the big mistake). Will they be able to stop power teams like New England from breaking their spirit—again? That’s the big question here.
Problem solved in Indy?
The Colts scored 458 points last year, which is a lot. And they went out and signed a workhorse back (Frank Gore) and vet receiver Andre Johnson, who has 306 catches over the past three years, and then drafted another receiver, Phillip Dorsett, in the first round. (The Colts will field three wideouts this year who have recorded 40 times under 4.4 seconds.) In addition, Luck’s big project this offseason was to figure why his interception total rose from nine in 2013 to 16 last year.
“The decision-making process bit me in the butt, which in turn hurt the Colts more than a couple times last year,” Luck admitted here Sunday. “Obviously the Patriots games, and Philadelphia, second week of the season, I throw a bad pick in somewhat of a four-minute situation. I gotta learn, Just eat it, take the sack, throw it at his feet, whatever.
That’s what this off-season’s been about. Don’t give them a chance. We watched every interception ad nauseam, and we watched balls that should have been intercepted ad nauseam. We [coaches and mentor QB Matt Hasselbeck] talk about it and say, ‘Why?’ Do you have the awareness to know where the team is in the game? Is it worth trying to fit a ball in there or not? Do you go out of bounds or do you not?”
“Some bonehead plays,” said Pagano. “But all great competitors do everything they can to make great plays. The hardest thing for a great competitor is to give up on a play and throw it away. But you gotta know when to say when, when to throw it away, and Andrew’s learning that now. What I like about him is he’s got great amnesia. He’ll throw one [interception], then next series, be back out there, fine.”
Okay. Luck’s going to be fine. The offense should average 30 a game. But who’ll stop the reign?
The Patriot reign (with apologies to Michael Holley, who wrote a book of that title), I mean. New England has rushed for 657 yards against the Colts in their past three meetings, which cries out for a fix. Indy hopes 2014 free-agent 3-4 end Arthur Jones (who was hurt half of last season) and 2015 free-agent end Kendall Langford, 650 pounds of run-stopping on the edge, will be the answer. GM Ryan Grigson didn’t want to pay $6 million a year to the 33-year-old Wilfork, or deal two mid-round picks for Ngata, who might be a one-year Band-aid. “We have enough here,” said Pagano, meaning enough defensive talent. We’ll see, but perhaps not until the Patriots play in Indy in October … or until they meet again in January.
* * *
Frank Gifford (AP)
Frank Gifford: 1930-2015.
Two things I hope Frank Gifford is not remembered for:
As a football player, being KO’d by Eagles middle linebacker Chuck Bednarik in 1960 on one of the most brutal hits in NFL history. Bednarik, in an unforgettable photo, exhilarates in the hit, and Gifford missed all of 1961 with the effects of a concussion and a broken neck vertebra.
As a broadcaster, for Howard Cosell, his “Monday Night Football” partner, calling Gifford “the human mannequin.”
A few things you need to know about Gifford, an athletic, make-’em-miss all-purpose player from USC: He made the Pro Bowl as a defensive back, wide receiver and running back. And he threw 14 touchdown passes in his Giants’ career. He was the NFL’s MVP in 1956, when he led the Giants to a 47-7 rout of the Bears in the NFL Championship Game. “We were an insignificant franchise when we drafted him [in 1952],” Giants president John Mara said Sunday. “By the time he retired, in 1964, we were the toast of the town. It was mostly because of him.
He was the face of our franchise. During my youth, I wanted to be like Frank. All of my friends did. He was an icon in New York, a matinee idol.” Gifford’s total of 5,434 receiving yards was a franchise record for 38 years, until Amani Toomer broke it after the turn of the century. Gay Talese, the noted writer, tailed Gifford for a long story in 1956 and wrote he had “a quality of mind that makes him rare for football players.” He wasn’t quite Joe Namath in taking New York by storm, but very close.
Now for the TV side … Football players nimbly traverse the field-to-studio gigs today, dozens a year, seemingly. But they just didn’t do TV in the ’50s and early ’60s, until Gifford did TV. He started on the CBS station in New York while he was still playing, then transitioned to the Monday night booth in 1971. He won an Emmy for his TV work in 1977, and did Olympic TV work and guest-hosted “Good Morning America.”
“He was the guy who set the trend for players working in TV,” said Mara.
Al Michaels worked the football booth with Gifford for 256 games. “No matter how crazy it ever got,” Michaels said Sunday, “Frank was the coolest guy in the room. He was the sea of tranquility. I never saw Frank get upset; that was the amazing thing about him. Even when Howard referred to him as ‘the human mannequin,’ I never saw Frank direct any animus at him. But in football, if you lived in New York, you know how big he made the game—he was Mickey Mantle.”
Few players in any sport have ever been as close to ownership—and ownership’s family—as Gifford was with the Maras. When he retired, he used to drive to Giants games on Sunday with Ann Mara, wife of owner Wellington Mara, and sit in the family box. When Gifford was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1977, Wellington Mara introduced him. When Mara made it 20 years later, Gifford was his presenter.
“He was family,” John Mara said Sunday night. “This one hit me like a thunderbolt.”
* * *
Spoiler alert.
In Green Bay on Friday, I took some time to do a little math, trying to answer this question:
What’s the best combo platter of quarterbacks in NFL history?
Or, to give it more clarity: What two quarterbacks, back to back for the same team, are the best in NFL history?
I entered into this thinking it would probably be Joe Montana and Steve Young of the 49ers. And maybe it is. Statistics can be twisted a lot of ways, but how do you beat four Super Bowls for Montana and one for Young, and the two-decade greatness they shared under Bill Walsh and George Seifert? But now I am not so sure. I think it’s Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers. In all metrics except Super Bowl victories (Montana/Young 5, Favre/Rodgers 2), the Packers duo looks like the back-to-back champs.
A footnote, first. I said to Rodgers on Friday that if he could play four or five more years, he and Favre would be near 30 years combined, and …
“Eight,” Rodgers said.
Rodgers is 31. If he plays eight more seasons (pushing the Green Bay twosome into three decades), well, it’s likely that no two quarterbacks in history would or could ever rival Favre and Rodgers. In fact, if Rodgers never played another snap, it’d be a great argument between the 49ers and Packers pairs. The numbers:
Montana/Young: 19 seasons, 213 wins, .643 completion percentage, 465-209 TD-INT
Favre/Rodgers: 23 seasons, 248 wins, .631 completion percentage, 668-343 TD-INT
Is eight years really far-fetched? Last week, emails were produced in the ball-deflation case between the league and Tom Brady in which Brady emailed a friend: “I’ve got another seven or eight years.” Brady is 38. He probably doesn’t have that long, obviously. But who would doubt a healthy Rodgers playing until 39?
I’ve found it pretty amazing that if you’re a fan of the Packers, and if you’re, say, 27 right now, you’ve never had a hopeless season, because your Packers have always had a top quarterback. We found a big Packers’ fan who is 27: Kevin Sutter, of Blue Mounds, Wis. “We talk about it, me and my brothers,” Sutter said. “We talk about it a lot—just how incredibly crazy it is that for our entire childhood we saw how great Brett Favre was.
He was in the top two or three quarterbacks in the league for like 10 to 12 years, which was our entire childhood. And now my brothers and I sit around and watch Packers games together, and we marvel at how great Aaron Rodgers is. We remember when we were 10 years old and we saw Favre, and now you just appreciate it so much more how good Rodgers is. I can’t even imagine watching a team you love struggle to find a franchise quarterback.”
* * *
Last one out of Santa Clara, turn off the lights.
Lost by the Niners since the end of the 2014 season:
• Jim Harbaugh, the coach who won 49 games in his four San Francisco seasons.
• On offense: a starting running back (Frank Gore) and wideout (Michael Crabtree) and two-fifths of the starting offensive line.
• On defense, it’s an absolute plague: both starting defensive ends (Ray McDonald, Justin Smith), both starting cornerbacks (Perrish Cox, Chris Culliver), and three invaluable linebackers (Patrick Willis, Aldon Smith, Chris Borland).
The 49ers did the right thing, releasing Aldon Smith after his fifth arrest, and coach Jim Tomsula was deep in individual conversations with scores of players Friday and Saturday after it happened. That’s good. Kumbaya is good. But let’s be real. No team has lost so many franchise players in such a short period and continued to win. Gore, Justin Smith, Aldon Smith, Patrick Willis … franchise guys. A top head coach, gone. We’ve been over this often this off-season, but Tomsula is stepping into one of the toughest spots a rookie coach has ever been in.
Jim Tomsula (Jeff Chiu/AP)
And if I’m Aldon Smith—knowing I’m likely to get suspended for part of this season anyway—I am in no hurry to pick a next team. He’s got to fix his life, or try to, before focusing on football.
******
I think the NFL allowing a concussion-spotter to have the power to stop the game is a tremendous step in the right direction for continued concussion vigilance. This season a certified athletic trainer, independent of either team and with at least 10 years in the field, will be posted in a booth upstairs. If he sees a player appear shaky or woozy on the field but the play is not stopped, the trainer will be able to signal a timeout of unlimited length to make sure the affected player is examined.
I think Seattle safety Kam Chancellor is a heck of a player, obviously. Who doesn’t think so? Likeable guy too. But holding out for a new deal after two years of a five-year contract is simply a non-starter. GM John Schneider cannot start re-doing contracts with three years left on them, regardless of the value of the player. Seattle, as I pointed out last week, has an average of $97 million tied up in 10 players through 2017, and the easiest way to inflate that number through the salary-cap roof is to tear up a contract of any player with three years left on it.
For the record, Chancellor signed a four-year contract extension in 2013 when he had a year left on his original contract; that meant his contract went through 2017. In the first two years of the deal, he made $12.55 million, including bonuses. In the last three years, he is slated to make $16.875 million, including bonuses but not including incentives. You might say that $5.6 million a year for a top-five NFL safety is too little, and I might agree … except that the contract, in 2013 dollars, was very much a market-value deal. Chancellor signed it.
Seattle has had a practice of working on players’ contract with a year left, or when they reach free agency. Even if it means sacrificing Chancellor for the season (I don’t think that will happen, but it could), Schneider will do more damage with his roster by giving in than by holding firm. He seemed to be saying he wouldn’t budge the other day on Sirius-XM NFL Radio. “I think it's just a bummer for everybody involved in the situation,” he said. “We've had a plan in place here for several years. Kam was one of the first players that we drafted that we were able to reward with one year left on his contract.
At the end of the day you have to stick to your plan and your principle, and that's what has to guide you rather than, 'We all love this guy.' This is about the team. It's the ultimate team sport, and in order for us to be a consistent championship-caliber team that we've been preaching ever since we got here, we have to continue to conduct business the way we always have.”
