NFL's defensive think tank a bit emptier in 2009
04:37 PM CDT on Tuesday, August 11, 2009
A Top 10 defense has won six of the last seven Super Bowls. But this may be the year for an offensive breakthrough because the NFL's defensive think tank took a huge hit this offseason.
Six of the Top 10 defenses in 2008 have changed coordinators for 2009, costing that side of the ball some of the league's most creative strategists.
• Rex Ryan coordinated the NFL's second-ranked defense at Baltimore last season. He's the new head coach of the New York Jets. Ryan brought in Mike Pettine to be his coordinator in New York, and the Ravens promoted Greg Mattison. Neither has coordinated an NFL defense before.
• Steve Spagnuolo coordinated the NFL's fifth-ranked defense with the New York Giants last season. He's the new head coach of the St. Louis Rams. Spagnuolo brought in Ken Flajole to be his coordinator in St. Louis, and the Giants promoted Bill Sheridan. Neither has coordinated an NFL defense before.
• Jim Schwartz coordinated the NFL's seventh-ranked defense at Tennessee last season. He's the new head coach of the Detroit Lions. Schwartz hired Gunther Cunningham to coordinate his defense in Detroit, and the Titans promoted Chuck Cecil. Cecil also has not coordinated an NFL defense before.
• Jim Johnson coordinated the NFL's third-ranked defense at Philadelphia last season, but he died last week after a year-long battle with spine cancer. The Eagles promoted Sean McDermott, who has never coordinated an NFL defense before.
• Monte Kiffin coordinated the NFL's ninth-ranked defense at Tampa Bay last season. But he left the Bucs to work for his son Lane, the new head coach at the University of Tennessee. Monte will serve as his defensive coordinator. The Bucs brought in veteran NFL defensive coordinator Jim Bates to replace Kiffin.
• Brian Stewart was the coordinator in title, anyway, of a Dallas defense that finished eighth in the NFL. But head coach Wade Phillips stripped him of those responsibilities last October then fired him after the season. Phillips himself will run the defense in 2009.
The head-coaching departures of Tony Dungy (retired from the Colts) and Romeo Crennel (fired by the Browns) also cost the NFL's defensive think tank some quality brain cells. Only two Top 10 offenses have captured Super Bowls this decade. If offense is to ever catch up with defense in today's NFL, this may be the year to do it.
Now, let's take a whirl around the NFL. This Inside the NFL newsletter will now be generated on a weekly basis through the Super Bowl. Here's a quick question to ponder – if your goal is to win a championship in 2009, who would you rather take to training camp as the 80th player on your roster – Jesse Holley or Michael Vick?
I'm on the first leg of my training camp tour this week, visiting the Buffalo Bills, Pittsburgh Steelers and Cleveland Browns before arriving in Canton for the induction of Bob Hayes to the Hall of Fame on Saturday.
The Browns are the only team of the three that doesn't leave home for training camp, preferring to spend the summer at their year-round facility in Berea. Once upon a time, all teams hit the road for the summer, using training camp as a time to get into shape and bond. Now, only 15 of the 32 teams pack up and leave the building for camp.
Latrobe, where the Steelers train, is one of my favorite August destinations. The Steelers have been spending their summers at St. Vincent College in Latrobe for 43 years now. In the 35 years I've been covering the NFL, I've been to all the camps. Here's my five favorite training-camp sites of all time:
1. Carlisle, Pa. (Washington Redskins): The Redskins spent 32 summers training at Dickinson College, a quaint campus in south central Pennsylvania where players and townsfolk mingled on a daily basis. I miss the days of having dinner with Richard Justice (then Redskins beat reporter for the Washington Post) and Charlie Dayton (then Redskins public relations director) in downtown Carlisle, then afterward watching Oriole games on bar TV screens the size of postage stamps.
2. Flagstaff, Ariz. (Arizona Cardinals): How can you top a training camp in the mountains along the old Route 66? You can't. Flagstaff is nestled on the map between Sedona and the Grand Canyon. There's more to do here than just watch football. I remember visiting Emmitt Smith one summer in Flagstaff. He certainly came a long way from his first NFL training camp in the heat of Austin, Texas. Emmitt must have felt like he was at a resort.
3. Latrobe Pa. (Pittsburgh Steelers): After four decades, the folks at St. Vincent College and fans of the Steelers have the training camp routine down pat. The Steelers have always viewed camp as the time to prepare their team for a Super Bowl run - not just another opportunity to sell merchandise. Summer always was and always will be about football for this franchise. When I checked into my Latrobe hotel Sunday there was an 80-year-old man in front of me wearing a Polamalu jersey. The team and its fans take this time of year very seriously.
4. San Diego, Calif. (San Diego Chargers): The Chargers trained at the University of California at San Diego from 1976-2002. The weather was always perfect and at lunch time you could sit in the cafeteria overlooking the Pacific Ocean and watch the parasailing. Stress? What stress?
5. Bloomfield Hills, Mich. (Detroit Lions): The Lions trained at Cranbrook School from 1957-74. This is where the movie Paper Lion was filmed. It's the all-time NFL training-camp flick. You're not a real football fan until you've seen Paper Lion. Also, the Lions haven't been as competitive on the football field since leaving Cranbrook.
The Catch, by Gary Myers. This book hitches the rise of the 1980s 49ers and the fall of the 1970s Cowboys to the 1981 NFC Championship Game when the Joe Montana-Dwight Clark connection orchestrated "The Catch."
Myers, a former Cowboys reporter for The Dallas Morning News and now an NFL columnist for The New York Daily News, does a superb job of developing the characters on both sides of the rivalry. He explains how the key players reached that point in their lives on Jan. 10, 1982 - and how their lives changed with the game's result. Joe Montana, Danny White, Bill Walsh, Tom Landry, Tony Dorsett, Dwight Clark, Everson Walls, Eddie DeBartolo are all examined.
Myers paints the Cowboys as arrogant and the 49ers as the upstarts who felt disrespected by America's Team earlier that same season. Many pages in the book will pain die-hard Cowboys fans.
Here's one of the book's best quotes from 49ers owner DeBartolo: "I don't think we had as good a team as the (1981) Dallas Cowboys. I truthfully don't. If you ask any of the top players on our team, they would probably agree."
Yet the 49ers went on to win the Super Bowl that season and become the NFL's Team of the Decade for the 1980s. Ouch.
The death of Steve McNair was tragic. But let's slow down on the rush to enshrine him in Canton. McNair just doesn't stack up as Hall of Fame material.
Ken Anderson enjoyed a similar career to McNair with the Cincinnati Bengals (1971-86). Like McNair, Anderson was an NFL MVP and played in one losing Super Bowl. It's been 23 years since Anderson retired, yet he has never been a candidate for induction to the Hall of Fame. In his 18 years of eligibility, Anderson has never been a finalist for Canton. So slow down on McNair. The latest does not always constitute the greatest. Here's a comparison of the two quarterbacks:
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• Count me among those glad to see Brett Favre stay retired. He's 39 and coming off an injury to his throwing shoulder. He was dreadful down the stretch for the New York Jets last December when the season was on the line, throwing eight interceptions against only two touchdown passes. He turns 40 in October but spending the fall playing on the artificial turf of the Metrodome would have left Favre feeling like 50 by season's end. I remember Johnny Unitas finishing up as a Charger and Joe Namath a Ram. Not a pretty sight. I'm glad I won't have a similar vision of Favre as a Viking.
• Losing Pro Bowl defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth left a gaping hole in the middle of the Tennessee defense. But the Titans took steps to fill the void even before losing Haynesworth, which is what I like about this franchise. The Titans have a plan. Tennessee drafted a couple of wide bodies in 2008 – 275-pound Jason Jones in the second round and 272-pound William Hayes in the fourth - and it'll be business as usual on the inside in 2009. When Haynesworth missed the Pittsburgh game last December, the Titans plugged in Jones and rotated Hayes through the defensive front in a 31-14 throttling of the soon-to-be Super Bowl champs. The two rookies combined for eight tackles, 4 ½ sacks, four forced fumbles and a fumble recovery that day.
• There's something just not right about the NFL's regular season dragging into January. The Super Bowl (Feb. 7 this season) keeps inching closer and closer to Valentine's Day. I'm old school - I preferred the regular season when it opened after Labor Day and was finished by Christmas. But that was in an era before byes. I have a real problem with scheduling two regular-season games after Christmas, which is the case in 2009.
• Peyton Manning has won 101 starts this decade with still a season to play. That breaks Troy Aikman's NFL record of 97 victories by a quarterback in a single decade.
I gave Oakland a D for its draft last April. The Raiders cut one of their picks, sixth-round pass rusher Stryker Sulak of Missouri, before reporting to training camp. He's the first member of the 256-player Class of 2009 to be waived. If you're not even going to look at a player in pads, why draft him?