Remembering a Titan

Yesterday was a sad day for the NFL world: former Titans quarterback Steve McNair was found dead from several gunshot wounds at age 36. A 20-year old girlfriend of his, Sahel Kazemi, was also shot dead in the head. The two bodies were lying on the sofa and floor of McNair’s condo in Nashville, where he had just opened his restaurant, “Gridiron9″. His wife, Mechelle McNair, had not heard from him in a few days. While the dramatic circumstance surrounding McNair’s death are still unclear, I leave it to the police and media to shed the light on this case. I would much rather write a few words about the player and the man he was.

Born and raised in Mississippi, McNair attended college at Alcorn State, where he quickly made a case for himself. Despite playing in a tiny Division I-AA college, his performance earned him All-American honors and the Walter Payton award as the best I-AA football player in the country, finishing third in the Heisman Trophy voting. “Air McNair” was drafted third overall by the Houston Oilers in 1995, and became their starting quarterback in 1997. Under the coaching of Jeff Fisher, McNair stood up the pressure of his 1st round Draft status and improved the Oilers/Titans’ record every year, culminating in their first ever Super Bowl appearance in 1999, a feat not even Warren Moon was able to accomplish in his illustrious career.

Steve McNair, quarterback of the Tennessee Titans, during Super Bowl XXXIV

Against Kurt Warner’s Rams, what initially began as a defensive struggle turned into a formidable offensive battle between what will end up as two of the best quarterbacks of their time, whose winner would not be determined until the very last second of the game: St. Louis had just scored a touchdown to take on a 23-16 lead and the Titans got the ball back at their 10-yard line with 1:48 left in the game. In a career-defining drive, McNair accounted for 62 yards, including a critical 1st down completion to Kevin Dyson on 3rd and 5 with 22 seconds left on the clock, while being hit by Rams DEs Kevin Carter and Jay Williams. With only :06 left, the following completion from McNair gave 9 additional yards to the Titans… but that ended up 1 yard shy of the goal line as time expired, thus giving the win to the Rams. Many – including myself – consider Super Bowl XXXIV as one of the all-time best Super Bowl games, and its last play, known as “The Tackle”, remains in every football fans’ mind.

Beyond the loss, Steve McNair’s performance during the Super Bowl confirmed him as one the decade’s rising stars and, as NBC’s Tom Curran puts it, “paved the way for teams to build around black QBs. It probably isn’t a coincidence that, once it became clear McNair was the real deal, quarterbacks like Donovan McNabb, Akili Smith, Michael Vick and Vince Young were suddenly top five selections.” McNair kept on improving his game. He made the Pro Bowl in 2000, 2003 and 2005. In 2003, fighting injuries, he concluded a 14-game season with 3,215 yards, 24 TDs, 7 interceptions (100.4 QB rating) and a remarkable 7.1 yard per play average that earned him Co-MVP honors with Colts QB Peyton Manning. As he matured through the years, he also played through several injuries that diminished some of his athletic abilities, but never hurt his mental game, competitiveness or toughness, leading him to become more of a field general in his final years with the Baltimore Ravens.

While his career stats woud rank him among the 30 best quarterbacks of all time, already a huge accomplishment in itself, he should be best remembered for the type of player he was. Certainly one of the toughest quarterbacks to ever play, he was always respected by his peers and was often referred to as a true professional with a real passion for the game. Selfless on the field, he carried his generosity off the field, acting as a role model and getting involved in charitable activities for the youth in the Nashville community. McNair’s teammate and close friend Derrick Mason used to call him Smile and the “happiest and friendliest person I have known.“

Yesterday was a sad day, and not just for the NFL world. We lost a good man, but should always remember the Titan he was.

The farce that is the Pro Bowl, today

I was reading about the news of Rodney Harrison’s retirement and found an interesting article debating his Hall of Fame worthiness. Facts are: the guy has had a monstrous career which spanned 15 years (the first 9 with the San Diego Chargers, and the next 6 with the New England Patriots). He was an integral part of two Super Bowl winning squads with the Pats, had more tackles & sacks than any other Safeties in his era bla bla bla you name it.

Well, can you believe that Rodney Harrison played a grand total of just…2 Pro Bowls in his career?!

yes, you read that right. Despite all the accolades and titles…Harrison was every year snubbed by the likes of Ed Reed, John Lynch and others (all great players OF COURSE) but who turned out to have MUC H LESS impact than Harrison in these particular seasons. Indeed, there was even a couple of years where Harrison had more than twice the number of tackles & interceptions that Lynch had, but still: he was not selected for the Pro Bowl.

The reason is quite simple to understand: the Pro Bowl is a vote of popularity: fans get to pick the players they want in and Harrison was never one to look for a TV appearance, as opposed to others. Also, arguably the dirtiest player of his era, other players hated him and were quick to check him off of their lists. In the end, Rodney Harrison made just two Pro Bowls whilst he probably should have been closer to 8 or 10.

And so this why something is very wrong with the Pro Bowl nowadays. It cannot be considered a true measuring stick of greatness anymore. It used to be, but not anymore. Guys like Joe Montana and Steve Young made, respectively, 8 and 7 Pro Bowls and this will not shock anyone as it is on par with their Hall of Fame careers. But that was back in the ’80s and ’90s. Today, the Pro Bowl is nothing more than a fashion show. Just the fact that the fans are allowed in makes no sense to me: having an 8-year old go online and vote for whom he believes are the best players in the NFL does not seem to shock anyone though! but this kid’s vote will count just the same as, say, the Vikings Defensive coordinator’s choice for best players in the league. It is thanks to this brilliant idea of a vote that a Full Back named Mike Alstott (a fine player but nothing to make you jump up your seat on any given Sunday) ended up making a total of 6 Pro Bowls in his careers, bypassing numerous other real Full Backs, simply because he had all the media/fan accolades. Outrageous? you bet this is!

Time for the NFL to stop the waste that is the Pro Bowl in this format and re-do the process of selecting the worthy players.

Random Tuesday thoughts from the NFL world

- In a move that may not seem like very important at first glance, I think it is still worth noting that NFL Network will now be available to an increased audience of 10 millions more people in the US through the deal it has just signed with communication tycoon Comcast.

- LB Julian Peterson will start next fall for the third team of his career, after beeing traded to the league’s worst team, the Detroit Lions (0-16 in 2008). Peterson was a standout linebacker for the San Francisco 49ers (who drafted him 1-16 in 2000) and played well for the Seattle Seahawks as his next stop. After refusing to take a pay cut, Seattle then shipped him to Detroit. I believe this will turn out to be a really good deal for the Lions who, in their current rebuilding process, have now added one of league’s best LB that posseses pass rushing abilities. This move has gone under the radar in the media but something tells me that a year from now, we will look back on this deal thinking the Lions’ front office made a bold move with JP!

- For the first time in his 12-year NFL career, Peyton Manning will have someone other than Tom Moore as his offensive coordinator…let’s see how things go but here too, something tells me a year from now, the Colts will regret not having Mr Moore around.

- You read it here first: Jeff Garcia will start for the Raiders no later than week 3 or 4 of the regular season. Actually, I would not be surprised at all if Garcia is the starter for the Raiders’ opener instead of disapointing former #1 overall pick JaMarcus Russell.

- My friend Peter King (well, technically he does not know I actually consider him a friend but truth is: since I have been reading his great MMQB column for ages now, I do consider him a bit of friend somehow. ok I shut up) did put a very interesting stat in this week’s MMQB: if the NFL moves on to a 17 or an 18-game regular season schedule (which it undoubtedly will, sooner rather than later), than a RB will have to average just 55,6 yards a game to reach the milestone of 1000 years for the season…Something has to be done here.

…or the money that goes away

It is hard to dispute that awarding a 21 year old, junior college quarterback with no professional experience a 6-year $78M contract with $41.7M in guaranteed money is a little disproportionate. At $13M/year, this tops all current NFL quarterbacks with the exception of Super Bowl champion Ben Roethslisberger.

But I just cannot agree with you that rebuilding teams need to draft a quarterback with their #1 pick: while starting with the QB position is always a good thing -after all, he is the centerpiece of the offense and, more often than not, the marketing face of the franchise-, quarterback is also the most unpredictable of all positions. So why should teams invest Pro Bowl-type money when they really have no idea what the kid is going to be, no matter how good their college scouting was? If 2005 #1 pick Alex Smith were to hit the free agent market today, I doubt teams would be willing to pay as much for his services. And yet, would you say he does not compare favorably to Matthew Stafford or has less potential? The truth is, if you combine the unpredictability with the astronomic salary, the deal looks like an investment not even Bernard Madoff would dare consider. The Lions have a solid veteran in Daunte Culpepper, whom coaches and teammates have praised for being in the best shape since he’s out of college himself. Guys like Grossman or Leftwich could have brought some value as a back-up (Rex Grossman is still available by the way). And this would still leave room for a late-round rookie to groom, like the Niners decided to do with Nate Davis. Such approach could have allowed Detroit to pick OT Jason Smith, DE Tyson Jackson or LB Aaron Curry instead, thus minimizing both the risk and the contract value but maximizing the immediate impact.

It has also been an easy and popular topic, lately, to ask for some form of rookie salary scale. But trend is not always the way to go. The problem here is that you, along with the NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and every NFL owners (not that bad of a group to be associated with, mind you), are blatantly ignoring the “long tail” of the 260-or-so draftees by opposing veterans vs. rookies, when the real issue affects all players regardless. The NFL Draft is the opposite of a free agency: rookies don’t get to chose, their Draft position does it for them. And even though the top picks end up making millions, most rookies come up as real bargains to all NFL teams. Think about what they could command if they were all free agents right out of college, free to secure the best deals for themselves with any team interested in their service and for shorter terms than the usual 5- or 6-year deals they have today. When journeymen manage to sign multi-million contracts, you bet young talented rookies would be able to do the same. Of course, if that were the case, Stafford’s contract would also go off-charts. And because the money that goes to one player does not go to others -neither veterans nor rookies- I do agree that a reasonable ceiling should be enforced, but only if it were to come with a higher floor, both increasing at the same rate the salary cap increases. Owners will always find creative ways to spend less. The rookie salary scale should not serve that purpose but rather aim at fair distribution, not just for veterans but for all players.

#1 pick Quarterbacks and the money that goes with…

The NFL Draft is two weeks old and one statistic comes to mind immediately: for the ninth time in the past thirteen years, a Quarterback was selected #1 overall (Georgia’s Matthew Stafford to the Detroit Lions).
Okay so we all know that QB is the “most important position on the field“, but still, how come teams are so willing to spend -every year- such crazy guaranteed money (with an increase of roughly 25% from one year to the next) to a young gun who has never attemped a single pass in the Pros.

The reason this is crazy is -and History shows it- because about 50% of these high pick QBs will end up beeing(unforgetable) busts. The list is endless and you have to look no further than Tim Couch (1999, Browns) or even closer to us, David Carr (2002, Texans), to remind yourself of what a useless selection these players turned out to be, despite the hefty contracts… Not that they were not talented (they must have been since teams’ scouting dpts spent countless hours and all came to the conclusion that these guys were the highest rated players on the board in these particular years, and scouts can’t all be wrong can they?)…it just happened that for various reasons, it did not click.

Even more recent, Alex Smith (2005, 49ers) is on a very short leash entering his fifth year and having not played in two seasons because of injuries. No one ever questionned Smith’s talent and commitment coming out of Utah..but a new offensive coordinator every year, an absolutely atrocious offensive line which could not protect anyone and zero weapons to throw to, coupled with severe elbow injuries have slowed his development and put a big question mark on his career. Five years later, and despite the fact that Alex Smith is only turning 25 next week, a lot of people already consider him a major bust. not fair, but NFL stands for “Not For Long” and if you don’t get the job done real quick, you’re out of it.

This is the price to pay when you are awarded such stupid money from the get go. In the case of Smith, he received a then record $24M in guaranteed money at the unbelievably young age of 20 years old. Five year later, the exponential increase in money guaranteed to the top pick has propelled new Lion Matthew Stafford to receive $41,7M.

For the record, this was the 17th time in the last 40 years that a QB was taken with the first pick: Stafford could be the next Troy Aikman (1989, Cowboys), or the next Jeff George (1990, Colts), or, even worse, the next Michael Vick (2001, Falcons).
In the 73 prior drafts, only three guys selected first went on to Rookie of the Year honors, none of them QBs. 12 overall number-ones earned Hall of Fame busts in Canton – Terry Bradshaw (1970), John Elway (1983), and Aikman, the three QBs to achieve the honor.

And whilst it makes perfect sense that bad teams such as the Lions start off their entire rebuilding process with a “franchise QB” as the first piece to the puzzle, the financial commitment is so disproportionated with what the player will effectively give back to the team in terms of playing time & results that something is very wrong here. Last year, Matt Ryan, the rookie phenom from Atlanta who was the #3 pick out of Boston College, was the first to recognise “my rookie money is crazy…but what can I do about it? this is how things are done”.

Now is about time that the NFL decides and settles on rookie salaries so that agents get out of the way using all the leverage power they currently have forcing teams to sign insane rookie contracts and thus taking away big chunks of salary cap money for teams to spend on the other 52 players that make a roster. Because in the end, you can have the most talented rookie QB in the world on your roster…if you have no money left to spend on a great supporting cast, than you actually have nothing, really, and your “investment/project” franchise QB will go south in a hurry. This is what happened to Carr: despite the obvious talent and all the physical tools, the other players around him were not very good and he failed at his mission whilst beeing the most sacked QB in the NFL three years in a row (and setting a league record for this…) ; This shows that one individual cannot win by himself  in this league, even if that one individual is a hotshot QB.

Selecting a QB #1 overall is, I believe, the right thing to do (unless another player at another position is the next Jerry Rice or the next Ray Lewis or the next John Hannah). If not, than they are not worthy of such lofty status (and the money that goes with it). This money is absolutely insane and makes no sense, nowadays, in this day and age where players are free to leave after their initial contract or when teams give up on them after just three years. There needs to be a regulation of some sort, propelled by the commissioner and the NFLPA’s director, to make rookie salaries the way they should be.

Then, and maybe just then, will teams allow themselves more time to groom and develop their #1 pick quarterbacks and give them the necessary time they need to become the franchise saviours everyone expects them to be. And if so, maybe the ratio (boom/bust) for #1 overall pick quarterbacks will go down from 50% to 25-30%, which would surely please the teams holding the #1 selection in next years’ drafts.

Time to unveil my favourite player…

I will make it short here, my all-time favourite player is Hall of Famer Steve Young.
And you will hear about him on this blog. My bros and I argue on lots of topics but this is one of the few where both of us agree. I think I can speak on behalf of Seb to say that he is a fan as well.

Among Steve Young’s main honors/achievement:

• 2-time NFL MVP (1992-1994)
• Super Bowl XXIX MVP
• 7 Pro Bowl selections
• Highest Passer Rating, Career – 96.9
• Most Rushing Touchdowns by a QB, Career – 43
• Most Passing Titles, Career – 6 (tied w/Sammy Baugh)
• Most Consecutive Passing Titles – 4 (1991-94)
• Most Seasons With a Passer Rating Over 100, Career – 6 (1991-94, 1997-98)
• Most Consecutive Games w/300+ Yards Passing – 6 (Young was the first QB to do this in 1998; Kurt Warner (2000) and Rich Gannon (2002) have since tied the mark)
• One of only 4 QB’s to lead the league in touchdown passes 4 times (tied w/Johnny Unitas, Brett Favre, and Len Dawson)
• Most Passes Attempted, Playoff Game – 65 vs. Green Bay, 1995
• Most TD Passes, Playoff Game – 6 (tied w/Daryle Lamonica)
• Most TD Passes in one Super Bowl – 6

A wedding waiting to happen

There are now reports that Favre and Minnesota head coach Brad Childress may meet later this week. The rumors are certainly not pleasing many people but they can hardly be considered a surprise: this is a wedding waiting to happen.

The Vikings have all the weapons in place except at the QB spot, which they still haven’t figured out. More importantly, Childress knows he is in a critical year and must win now or he may be pushed out of town. So when a 3-time MVP, 10-time Pro Bowler, and Super Bowl QB who happens to lead all major career passing stats (including interceptions) has second thoughts about his second retirement, you listen. Brett Favre still “has it”, you have to admire that as he’ll turn 40 in October, but the ex-Falcon/Packer/Jet also knows Minnesota is his best, only and last chance to win a second Super Bowl. The prospect of facing Green Bay twice only makes it sweeter.

So despite your reluctance to admit it, Brett, we still know what you did last summer, and we don’t trust you anymore. Let’s just hope your future teammates will. Because last year’s Broadway musical, and a 1-4 finish with 2 TDs and 9 interceptions, left much to be desired.

is Favre coming back..back ?

You got to be kidding right? several reports including one from Peter King’s MMQB on CNNSI this week mention that the future Hall of Famer may be thinking about returning to the league..once again. And to make Sebastien cringe a little bit, his buddy Favre has in mind to play for the Minnesota Vikings so that he could face the Packers twice a year. This is as ridiculous as it can be right? But as King says “Favre is a man of emotions, not a man of words” and you better believe he is right with this statement. We all appreciate what Favre did for the NFL, the man is a sure fire 1st ballot Hall of Famer and has been nothing short of extraordinary throughout his 15+ years in the league…coming back from retirement last year to play for the Jets was a stunner but still turned out to be quite fun for us all ultimately (at least speaking of the first 8 games of the season, then Favre clearly showed his age) but this time, this is just plainfully pathetic and, for me, would just ruin my respect for Favre -the player- for good.

The tree hiding the forest

If you think Mike Crabtree was a no-brainer at #10… think again.

Let’s face it, the talented WR was widely considered the best at his position. But it is and remains a quarterback’s league, as evidenced by the rush on two not-so-exceptional signal callers and 3 OTs before the Niners were even on the clock. Then came the annual Al Davis gamble on speed, when the Raiders opted to select WR Darrius Heyward-Bey at#7. And that was all it took for the 49ers to disregard more pressing needs and grab the best player available.

The problem is, San Francisco is loaded at the WR position (see Guillaume’s list above), but has yet to determine who will throw them the ball in September. There are major question marks on both defensive and offensive lines and the depth-chart is dangerously thin at LB, CB and RB. And how did the Niners decide to address those? By bringing in “high character” players. The kind of character that got them suspended: 4 games for RB Glenn Coffee involved in a textbook scandal at Alabama, 12 months for DT Ricky Jean-Francois after he was caught for academic cheating, two arrests for free agent OT Alex Boone who was allegedly three times over the legal blood-alcohol limit (!)

So think again, isn’t Michael Crabtree only the tree hiding the forest? Isn’t this whole Draft – and not just Crabtree – a complete crapshoot?

Crabtree a crapshoot?

In the wake of the selection of Wide Receiver Michael Crabtree with the #10 pick in the draft, the San Francisco 49ers find themselves this morning thinking “did we get the next Jerry Rice or the next Rashaun Woods?”. This is the perenial problem with wideouts: you can never tell what they’ll become. That beeing said, and after a brilliant career at Texas Tech (2-time Biletnikov award winner, given annualy to the nation’s best receiver), I tend to think that Crabtree should eventually find himself more in the Jerry half  of things than in the Rashaun half of it. Still, it is of couse way to early to tell and Crabtree won’t even be fully recovered until August training camp where he will fight with 6th round rookie gem from last year Josh Morgan for a starting spot at split end. By the way, this is silly when you consider it: why have Crabtree AND Morgan fight for the same spot while these two young men are said to be the next star Wide Receivers in San Francisco? with Crabtree, Morgan, Isaac Bruce, Jason Hill, Brandon Jones, Dominique Zeigler and Arnaz Battle…for the first time in years, the Niners receiving corp is quite something. Seems to me Zeigler & Battle will have a hard time making the roster though…