'04 NFC Final Falcon Coaches' Return To Glory?
When the Falcons assembled for a mini-camp two years ago, it was against a backdrop of uncertainty. Michael Vick had been injured. The prior season unraveled. The owner got angry. The coach got fired.
Then Rich McKay and Jim Mora turned a mess into a team that reached the NFC title game, and suddenly everybody had the answers.
When they assemble for a mini-camp this weekend in Flowery Branch, the Falcons again will report against a backdrop of uncertainty. Raise expectations in year one, only to decompose in year two — that’s what happens.
When there is little track record for success, nobody gets the benefit of the doubt. Just the doubt.
Are the right players being picked? Are the right players being coached the wrong way? Greg Knapp — was he actually recommended by Steve Young? Whose bright idea was Ed Donatell, anyway? And shouldn’t Arthur Blank be more worried about fixing one franchise (Falcons) than putting his stamp on another (Braves)?
One good season fades. One bad season leaves an odor. Welcome to the third mini-camp.
Keith Brooking has been a Falcon for eight seasons. (I’m assuming that will be taken into consideration in the afterlife.) He says what he is suppose to say — that what other people think doesn’t matter. But he admits what other people think also isn’t a secret.
“Some people come up to me, and I know they’re pulling for us, but they’ll say, ‘We’ve got to have a better year. We’re gonna do it this year, aren’t we?’” the linebacker said Wednesday. “There’s a little doubt in their comments, as opposed to last year after going to the NFC championship game and being one game from the Super Bowl. It’s a totally different vibe.”
One good year. One bad year. Arthur Blank didn’t provide generations of Blanks with financial security by going .500.
Year three will break the tie, clarify analysis and possibly determine futures. Did we say, welcome to the third mini-camp?
When he was with Tampa Bay, Rich McKay was known more for his organizational skills than he was for choosing players. It’s why he and personnel chief Tim Ruskell made such a strong pairing. But after one year in Atlanta, Ruskell went to Seattle as general manager — and the Seahawks went to the Super Bowl.
McKay has worked hard this off-season to fix the Falcons’ defense. He traded for end John Abraham, signed safety Lawyer Milloy and drafted cornerback Jimmy Williams. But little has been done to help an offensive line that got Michael Vick buried last season. Not to suggest that defensive improvement wasn’t needed — but where does protecting the franchise’s most important player rank?
Mora could be one of the bright young coaches in the game. Or he could be a one-year wonder. Blank recently gave him a “contract extension,” but logic dictates that was more for appearances than supreme confidence. In reality, all Blank did was guarantee two option years on Mora’s deal. That’s comforting when it comes to mortgage payments, but Mora also knows he can’t miss the playoffs two straight seasons.
In year one, Mora provided the fire the team needed. It was apparent in that first day of mini-camp. In year two, the problem wasn’t fire. It was backdraft. Neither Mora nor the team, whose youth was magnified by injuries, handled adversity well. This mini-camp will set the tone for training camp, which will set the tone for the season, which will define Mora’s growth as a head coach.
Blank has not been an easy man to co-exist with this off-season. He is demanding when he wins, so you can imagine what he’s like when he loses six of eight down the stretch. It would not have been surprising if significant changes were made in Mora’s staff. Instead, there was only the firing of quarterbacks coach Mike Johnson.
Much has been made of Johnson’s replacement, Bill Musgrave. But the reality is that Musgrave is only the fourth most important coach relating to the offense — after Mora, Knapp (play-calling) and line coach Alex Gibbs (blocking schemes). Knapp’s offense has been erratic, and last season he managed the unthinkable — turning Vick into a boring quarterback. He and defensive coordinator Ed Donatell — who can’t point to personnel deficiencies this season — both have a third season to prove themselves.
Brooking said he “likes the doubters. I like people not believing in us.”
Whatever works. But it’s only natural that one good year and one bad isn’t going to comfort the masses. The odor tends to linger.
Falcons High Expectations From Bulldog QB
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Falcons ended their historically silly habit of ignoring impact players from the University of Georgia by snatching D.J. Shockley at the end of this year’s NFL draft. That’s fine and everything, but here’s the deal: Let’s see if they continue to do the right thing by keeping him and grooming him and allowing him the chance to become better than the other guy.
Some guy named Vince Young. Just take it from somebody who thinks that he knows the ultimate potential of Shockley’s arm, legs, mind and guts before we get to somebody who really does.
Did you hear what former NFL scout Russ Lande had to say? Even before teams were on the clock last weekend, he mentioned on his draft site called GMjr.com that Shockley, who spent his only season as a starter for the Bulldogs doing all sort of wonderful things to win 11 of 12 games and an SEC title, will finish as a more dynamic quarterback in the pros than Young, the miracle worker for Texas last season along the way to a national championship.
Whatever Lande discovered about Shockley came through film study, the media and word of mouth. Don Shockley actually lived with the 6-foot-1, 213 pounder. That’s because Don has been D.J’s father for 23 years.
“Me, personally, it’s just like what I told you that day in the stands, right before D.J. started his first game as a starter for Georgia last season against Boise State. Remember what I told you?” said the older Shockley, referring to how he told me back then at Sanford Stadium that the younger Shockley was on the verge of doing what he eventually did, and that is evolve into one of the college game’s premier players. As for the younger Shockley rivaling or surpassing Young as a pro, the older Shockley chuckled, before adding, “As was the case last year, remember what I’m going to tell you now: I think D.J. is going to tear the league up. Vince is a great athlete, but I just believe in D.J.’s skills.”
The older Shockley is biased, of course, but he also is perceptive. (See our chat at Sanford Stadium). In other words, listen closely when he compares and contrasts two quarterbacks who spent their final collegiate seasons as accurate passers, swift runners and prolific winners.
“Everybody talks about Vince’s unorthodox throwing style, and you also have folks who talk about D.J.’s unorthodox throwing style, but they both get the job done,” said the older Shockley. “I’ll tell you the big difference. I see Vince operating now where I thought D.J. was a couple of years ago, where he would take (the ball) down in the pocket and run real quick when things aren’t there. I’ve seen D.J. advance to the point where, last year, he was going through his progressions to the point where he was almost holding the ball too long. I don’t know Vince, because I only see on TV what he’s capable of doing, but I know what my son is capable of doing.”
No question there. The older Shockley has spent the past dozen years as the head football coach at North Clayton High School. That’s where he turned his son into one of the top prep quarterback in the country before D.J. defied common sense by agreeing to put stardom on hold for four years as a backup at Georgia. “We’d rather deal with the future, not the past,” said the older Shockley, who nevertheless told me last year that the younger Shockley had chances during his Bulldog career to transfer and start at North Carolina State, Maryland and North Carolina.
Whatever the case, D.J. will enter the Falcons’ training camp this summer as their fourth quarterback behind Michael Vick, Matt Schaub and Bryan Randall. Odds are that D.J. won’t have the opportunity to rise in a hurry such as Young. After all, Young already is crucial to the Tennessee Titans’ game plan after becoming the third pick overall in the draft and with the Titans trying to ship incumbent Steve McNair to Baltimore. Odds are that, with Vick and maybe Schaub continuing as the favorite sons of the Falcons’ hierarchy for the long run, Shockley will have to do what he eventually will do in small chunks.
That is, the younger Shockley eventually will make folks see that he was better than the other guy. So says the older Shockley, and so says a former NFL scout. And, maybe, so says time.
Super Bowl-er Lawyer Milloy Chooses Falcons
Flowery Branch — At 32, Lawyer Milloy wasn’t looking for a fixer-upper. Lawyer Milloy was looking for a home that was pretty much fixed. In his free-agent rounds, he visited three teams — Seattle, which won the NFC title last season; Cincinnati, which won the AFC North, and Atlanta, which won nothing of consequence. Milloy’s presence in this minicamp tells us he believes the Falcons are primed to rectify that posthaste.
“I’m at the point in my career where I don’t have the time or the energy to wait for a team to rebuild,” he said Sunday, speaking after the morning session of minicamp. Having won one Super Bowl, he wants another. He believes the Falcons can get him there. More to the point, the Falcons believe Milloy can help get them there.
He’s a safety who hits hard and tackles expertly. The Falcons’ safeties of 2005 — Keion Carpenter and Bryan Scott — were chief culprits in this defense’s abrupt descent to being the NFL’s seventh-worst against the run. “I’ve never heard such negative talk about what they experienced last year at this position,” Milloy said. Then, pointedly: “But that’s not me.”
And the way of the new Falcons — the Blank-McKay-Mora Falcons — isn’t to wallow in self-pity but to solve problems at full gallop. The Falcons hated their safeties, so they found two new ones. (Chris Crocker is the other.) The Falcons needed a pass rusher to offset Patrick Kerney, so they traded for Pro Bowler John Abraham. This organization got so much done in one inspired offseason that the disappointment of last year has given way to hope born of the realization that this franchise no longer considers 8-8 an achievement.
“It’s a credit to their dedication to get this team more balanced,” Milloy said. “They were really aggressive. They were able to make the necessary transactions. That tells me they want to be champions now, to win now.”
Milloy is an impressive guy. Four times a Pro Bowler, he was the defensive captain on New England’s first championship team. A year later, he refused to restructure his contract and was cut, a move wildly unpopular in the Patriots’ locker room. He signed with Buffalo, where he spent the last three seasons, and the Patriots got over their disappointment and won the next two Super Bowls. So yes, Milloy knows better than most that, while players do the heavy lifting, the grand design for winning titles is set by the front office. Or not.
“If you build something special, and it’s for real, it will last for a while,” he said. “I think this organization can win now and win in the future.”
Maybe the Falcons weren’t quite as good as they seemed two seasons ago, when they played for the NFC title, but there’s growing evidence they weren’t as flimsy as they looked at the end of last season. Gifted players still dot this roster — Vick, Dunn, Crumpler, Kerney, Brooking, Coleman, Hall — and this offseason has yielded three (and perhaps four, depending on the rookie Jimmy Williams) more. Were there deficiencies? Sure. Have most of the areas of need — wide receiver is still an issue — been addressed? Absolutely.
“Some people have a knack for that,” Milloy said. “They had problems and they corrected it. In this league you don’t sugarcoat things. If you have problems as a player and you can’t correct them, you don’t last long. People want to read and hear about success.”
If the weekend’s work didn’t exactly suggest the Falcons are bound for Super Bowl XLI — “You don’t peak in minicamp,” said Milloy, who has been around long enough to know — the conspicuous personnel upgrades were impossible to ignore. The Falcons didn’t take 8-8 lying down. They roused themselves and got better.
“I’ve seen nothing since I got here to deter my attitude,” Lawyer Milloy said. “It’s all set up to win.”
