The trouble with replaying the Home Run Throwback so much is that football fans probably never will get to see it again in real life.
“We won’t be able to use it again,” Tennessee Titans coach Jeff Fisher said.
When the Titans beat the Buffalo Bills on the cross-field lateral of a kickoff from Frank Wycheck to Kevin Dyson Saturday, every special-teams coach in America filed it away for future reference. No kickoff-coverage team ever will be sent onto a football field again without the warning: “Watch for the throwback!”
Bills special-teams coach Bruce DeHaven called it “as bad a moment as I’ve ever had in my life, with the exception of deaths in the family.”
Titans special-teams coach Alan Lowry put it into the back of his mind after seeing Southern Methodist beat Texas Tech with it in the 1980s in a game that didn’t get nearly the attention as the NFL wild-card opener.
DeHaven said he had “talked at great lengths” during the week about the Titans’ penchant for gadget plays.
“We had talked during the week that they probably could run a throwback,” DeHaven said.
But when the Bills needed to remember it the most, the possibility slipped their minds. There were no specific warnings, just the usual admonition to cover the lanes.
DeHaven said he ordered kicker Steve Christie to pop up the kickoff instead of squibbing it, because he didn’t want the Titans to stop the squib short and be in good position to kick a field goal.
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The controversy of whether it was an illegal forward lateral from Wycheck is unfortunate because it detracts so much from the strategy and the spectacular play itself. Even if the lateral was slightly forward, it did not provide the Titans with any advantage. DeHaven grasped this better than most fans when he said: “Regardless of whether it’s a backward or forward pass, you just can’t allow that ever to happen in a situation like that at the end of a ballgame.”
In the age of incessant highlight reels, it is doubtful it ever will happen again.
Jerry mum: Jerry Jones said when he fired Jimmy Johnson there were 500 coaches who could coach his Dallas Cowboys. Chan Gailey is No. 2 after Barry Switzer. Soon there may be a No. 3.
Gailey and Jones met for 45 minutes Monday without resolution on the coach’s future, which appears dim after the Cowboys’ 27-10 loss Sunday to the Minnesota Vikings, their worst defeat of the season. It was Gailey’s second playoff loss in two seasons, following a wild-card defeat at home last year to Arizona.
Gailey said he resisted asking Jones about his future. “Did I want to? Probably,” Gailey said. “It’s better to let him. Instead of me commenting on anything, when he gets ready to make a statement, he’ll make a statement.”
Gailey said he senses he could be fired because of what he’s read. Jones, though, has never directly said publicly that he’s considering making a change. “No, but he gets asked the question and he doesn’t deny it,” Gailey said. “That’s what I read in the paper.”
Curses, Kearsed again: The 15 teams that passed Tennessee pass rusher Jevon Kearse in the draft are having as many sleepless nights as the 19 that passed Minnesota’s Randy Moss last year.
The Titans were among the most criticized teams when they made Dyson the first receiver picked, leaving Moss to the Vikings.
This year the Vikings get payback. Of all the teams that had opportunity and motive to select Kearse, the Vikings are the ones second-guessing the most. Actually, there were some first-guesses. People in the Minnesota hierarchy wanted coach Dennis Green to take Kearse with the 11th pick. Instead, he took quarterback Daunte Culpepper, whom he didn’t need, and used his 29th pick on alleged pass rusher Dimitrius Underwood, who lasted one practice.
Dyson, of course, looked very Mosslike as ran 75 yards for the winning touchdown Saturday.
Miss big cities: The best teams in the NFL this year are in some of its smaller markets–Jacksonville, Nashville, Indianapolis and St. Louis. There were no playoff teams from the six biggest “areas of dominant influence”–New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Boston.
So it’s not surprising that television ratings for the wild-card weekend dropped 13 percent compared with a year ago, with only CBS showing an increase. CBS’ coverage of Sunday’s late game between Miami and Seattle had a 20.7 rating and 37 share, compared with last year’s 18.7 rating and 36 share for the first game of the Sunday double-header between New England and Jacksonville.
Fox got a 20.2 rating and 42 share for Sunday’s first game with Dallas and Minnesota, compared with 24.2 and 40 for its game between Green Bay and San Francisco last year.
ABC’s Saturday double-header drew a 14.8 rating and 34 share for the close, exciting Tennessee-Buffalo game and a larger 15.7 rating, 31 share for the boring blowout Detroit-Washington game. That’s because Detroit and Washington are considerably bigger markets than Nashville and Buffalo.
Last year on ABC, the ratings for the Saturday double-header were 17.9 and 37 share for the first game between Buffalo and Miami, and 20.9 and 38 for the second game between Arizona and Dallas.
The four-game average for the weekend was a 17.8 rating, compared with 20.4 for last year’s wild-card round. Each rating point represents 1 million homes. The share represents the percentage of working TV sets tuned to the show.
Agony times three: Carolina quarterback Steve Beuerlein underwent surgery to repair a hernia last week. In February or March, he said he will have a “three-for-one deal”–arthroscopic surgery on his left knee for cartilage damage, on his right shoulder for bone spurs, and on his left ankle for bone chips.
Beuerlein played most of the season with the hernia, originally diagnosed as a strained groin. He missed no practices or games and had the best season of his 13-year career, leading the NFL with 4,437 passing yards and finishing second with 36 touchdown passes and second in passer rating points with 94.6.
Colts’ defense slipping? Tennessee running back Eddie George will be facing an Indianapolis defense that gave up 141 yards a game on the ground and 4.8 yards a carry in its last three games. The Colts’ defense, which has lost leading tackler Cornelius Bennett to injury, gave up 25.8 points and 372 yards a game in the last five outings.
Who needs this? St. Louis personnel director Charley Armey, a former director of college scouting with the New England Patriots, said Rams offensive coordinator Mike Martz is the best head-coaching prospect he’s seen since Joe Gibbs left San Diego to take over Washington in 1981.
Does Armey want to get rid of Martz?