Meet market

Breakfast with champions, and 5-11 head coaches

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Some notes from the NFL meetings, but first, a serious career move that I've been contemplating ever since I got here. I'm looking for input. I've mentioned this to a few people whose opinions I respect. I'd like to know how you, my loyal readers, feel about it.

Should I get a Mickey Mouse tattoo?

"Where?" was the question I heard most often.

"Right here in Orlando," I said. I mean, we're in Disney territory.

OK, so I'm not taking these meetings seriously enough. It's not like the old days when Al Davis was suing the league -- again -- and lobbying selected writers for support, and NFL people were monitoring the reporters he talked to, and there was intrigue in the air and many lives were at stake and, well, it just ain't the same.

Now? Well, we're supposed to get all excited about the tuck rule. Get ready now -- modification of said rule was proposed, and tabled. Which means that Tom Brady's non-fumble against the Raiders will not be reversed and Oakland won't be projected into last season's championship game and New England fans can breathe easier.

"When 50 guys in a bar, plus the bartender, all think it was a fumble," Mike Holmgren said, "then it was a fumble."

The big news was that ABC might get selected games for its late-season Monday nighters. This was not mentioned by Paul Tagliabue during his first press conference. It was a casual remark the commissioner made in the hallway after the meeting, almost as an afterthought.

And thus we draw the curtain on the hard news. Which doesn't mean that your faithful narrator didn't have some suggestions for Tampa Bay general manager Rich McKay, the chairman of the Competition Committee.

Question No. 1: Why not do away with the old practice of assembling all-star officiating crews for the playoffs and keep the teams intact, thus insuring more consistent refereeing?

"That hasn't come up in five years," he said. Which simply means that it doesn't bother other people as much as it bothers me.

Question No. 2: Why not go with the NCAA rule that awards a 15-yard penalty for pass interference, thus eliminating the cheap 40-yarder?

"The coaches rejected the idea by something like 20-10," McKay said. "The feeling was that you'd get a lot of deliberate fouls."

Well, they have that in college ball.

"Maybe it's because the athletes aren't as skilled. "

A question for the commissioner, one I've been asking -- make that begging -- for a decade or so: Why not have a four-hour spread, instead of a three-and-a-half one, between playoff games, thus cutting down the chance of overlaps, which play hell with my charts? We had an overlap on Championship Sunday last year, even with the impromptu delay, which greatly annoyed Rams coach Mike Martz, whose players had to wait it out in the locker room after warming up. We had one a few years ago. We'll have more.

"Ask Dennis Lewin," Tagliabue told me.

Lewin is the NFL's Senior Vice President of Broadcasting and Network Television (now that's a title). So I asked Lewin.

"The overlap doesn't bother us as much as the chance of an hour of dead time between games," he said.

Well, it bothers me.

"Well, you're about the only one," Lewin said. I'm not so sure. I'd like some feedback here.

Finally, and this is something I had wanted to ask at Tagliabue's big Friday press conference during Super Bowl week, except I knew I would come on too lengthy and too shrill and everyone would be grumbling and looking at their watches: With all the flag-waving the league does, how come every item sold by NFL Properties, all the little shirts and trinkets and whatever, are made in Indonesia or Korea or Guatemala or some place, anywhere except the good ol' USA?

I found the perfect person to answer that question, the lady running the big Properties display across the hall from the meeting rooms. Properties has had a colorful history at the league meetings. At one time they set up their own store, but since they didn't want to shlep all the stuff back to L.A. afterward, they'd have a kind of grab bag when they broke down the room. First come, first served, take what you want. Hoo boy, did this ever lead to some riotous scenes. Talk about battles.

I remember the last one, when there was a little mannequin of a child in a Cowboys jacket and hat, a prized item for sure. Well, two coaches' wives hit that thing at once, like linebackers, and the head flew off and was rolling on the floor, and people rushing by were kicking it like a soccer ball. A bizarre and horrifying sight and, man, did I ever wish I had a camera there. I would have had an all-timer. Enough, said the league. Basta! And Properties disappeared from the scene -- until this year, when the items were taken back home by the company.

So I asked this lady about all those overseas items and she said, "Well, it's just about impossible to get the sewing done in this country, all the intricate stitchwork."

"Does this mean that there's no longer a textile industry in the United States?" I said, and she mumbled something about not going that far. So, climbing on my soap box and becoming almost hysterical, I launched into my usual tirade about American industry making money at the expense of slave labor around the world, etc, and she knew and I knew that the conversation had functionally ended, and she said something about irrational morons and stormed off. Oh, well, another day, another enemy.

The star of the final day, at the NFC coaches' media breakfast, was Washington's new guy, Steve Spurrier. The thing started at 7:30 a.m. I got there 20 minutes early and by 7:20 all the seats at the Spurrier table were filled. By 7:40 they were two-deep around the table, with all the TV cameras and tape recorders and everything.

"Let's have two seatings," the league's p.r. director Greg Aiello joked, "One at 7:30, another at 8."

"They put the 5-11 coaches in the sun," said the Cowboys' Dave Campo, whose table was in a spray of bright Florida sunshine. "The superstars sit in the shade."

The legendary University of Florida coach seemed affable enough, offering an occasional snapper or two. I couldn't help remembering last year at this time, when Dan Snyder's previous coach, Marty Schottenheimer, commanded almost as big an audience. The thrust of Marty's shpiel was how well he got along with the owner and how confident he was in his quarterback, Jeff George. Well, both of them were axed, which won't happen to Spurrier, of course, but it'll be interesting.

Right now Spurrier seems to be regarded by his fellow coaches as a modified run 'n shoot guy. "There's a lot of imagination in his offense," Jacksonville coach Tom Coughlin said, "but some of your offensive imagination has to be stifled in the NFL because you've got to protect your quarterback."

Which provided the only edge to Spurrier's session, the pains he took to point out that he wasn't afraid to run the ball.

"I seem to remember the Citrus Bowl against Penn State when Fred Taylor carried 43 times," he said. "And do you remember when we had Errict Rhett? He set an NCAA career record for carries."

Spurrier was asked what NFL coach or former coach had a system closest to what he'll present. He said Joe Gibbs. A good call. Gibbs, one of history's most underrated offensive strategists, would load up with two or three tight ends and pound it, but then he'd come in with his trips formation, his three wideouts in a bunch, and work patterns that always seemed to get somebody open.

"He ran out of the three wides, then he'd come back with the run," Spurrier said, and one beat writer who had covered the Skins during the Gibbs era mentioned that it was the other way around. He'd set 'em up with John Riggins, then come in with the bunch. A bit of an argument ensued, and at this point I said farewell and relinquished my seat at the Spurrier table -- actually I scalped it for $20. No, just kidding, but I could have.

The day before, I asked Ravens coach Brian Billick the question I promised an e-mailer in last week's mailbag. How come his coordinator is now Mike Nolan, whom he had hired as a receivers coach the year before and who had been fired as defensive coordinator at both the Redskins and Jets?

"What happened there wasn't his fault," Billick said. "I've always liked him, and when I had a chance to get him on my staff, I jumped at it. The defensive spots were filled, so I brought him for a season on offense. I knew Marvin Lewis would be gone in a year or so -- call it a one-year sabbatical for Mike. He was penciled in as my defensive coach all along."

The Ravens are part of an interesting phenomenon in the league this season, teams that will be run by question-mark quarterbacks. Billick's guy, for instance, is, at this moment, Chris Redman, the team's third-rounder in 2000 with three career passes on his resume.

"Physically strong," Billick said. "A coach's son. Grew up talking football at the dinner table every night. Good mind for the game, very accurate, a tough kid, knows how to move around in the pocket very well."

And when, if necessary, does the coach decide that he's just not ready?

"Up to the point that it becomes dysfunctional for him and for the team," Billick said. "If it becones a situation like Jim Plunkett in New England or Troy Aikman his first year in Dallas. So what do I do then? Well, Randall Cunningham is the obvious answer, a guy who can say, 'I'm better than this guy, but if my role is to sit back, I will.' I'm also very familiar with Chris Chandler."

Spurrier's is going with his Florida QB, Danny Wuerffel, who has thrown 17 passes in his five years in the NFL.

"All I can say is that he did some spectacular things for me at Florida," Spurrier said. "He threw six TDs against Alabama when they were No. 1 in the country in pass defense. He started for me for three years. I think I might know him a little better than some of the people in the NFL do."

Quincy Carter will be the Cowboys quarterback, Mike McMahon will be the man in Detroit, which doesn't mean that the Lions wouldn't draft Oregon's Joey Harrington with the No. 3 pick in the first round, assuming Fresno State's David Carr goes to Houston at the top of the board. Carolina? Chris Weinke again. It'll be interesting.

A few of the free agency moves caught my eye. Warrick Dunn and Michael Vick in Atlanta should widen a few fields. But what about Dunn, undersized but tremendously talented? Where will he fit in? People agree that his body can take only so much of the five years of tackle-to-tackle running he got from the Bucs, so where do you run him? Outside?

"Well, he's never done it, as strange as that sounds," Dan Reeves said. "We'll have to see what he can do. We might try him and Jamal Anderson in the same backfield at times."

Sounds good on paper, but I haven't liked the concept ever since the double-threat days of Matt Snell and Emerson Booker, or Keith Lincoln and Paul Lowe.

"I'd make Dunn the featured part of a passing game," Detroit GM Matt Millen said. "Put him in the slot and stretch the defense with him, the way the Rams do with Marshall Faulk. You know we came close to signing Dunn."

I thought the Vikings made an excellent pickup in getting Miami's power DE, Kenny Mixon. The sackers get all the money, but it's hard to put a good run defense on the field without a pillar on the left side, the Howie Long side. I congratulated the Vikings' rookie coach, Mike Tice, on the acquisition, and the conversation shifted to Randy Moss, as it always does, and he gave me this statistic:

"When we threw 40 percent or more of our passes to Moss, we won 80 percent of our games." But how do you throw all those passes to a guy when he decides that's one of the games in which he won't go all out?

A familiar figure at the meetings was Jan Stenerud, the only kicker in the Hall of Fame.

"I'll give you a name," he said. "Travis Dorsch from Purdue. He has a chance to make it as both a kicker and punter. Actually, there's no reason why someone can't do that. You have plenty of time to practice both. You're just standing around at practice most of the time anyway."

Remember, you heard it here first.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Paul Zimmerman covers the NFL for the magazine and CNNSI.com. His "Inside Football" column and Mailbag appear weekly on CNNSI.com. To send a question to Dr. Z, click here.

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.

 

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