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One of the most accurate field-goal kickers in league history entering 2002, Todd Peterson started the season wide left for the Pittsburgh Steelers. The eight-year veteran will end the season on injured reserve.
Doug Brien was so shaky in Minnesota that the Vikings dragged all-time scoring leader Gary Anderson out of mothballs.
|  | | Martin Gramatica has not been automatic, making just 19 of 25 FGs this season. |
In Jacksonville, despite the entreaties of his personnel department, Jaguars coach Tom Coughlin finally gave up on seventh-round pick Hayden Epstein.
Jose Cortez became so frustratingly unreliable in recent weeks, San Francisco will turn to rookie Jeff Chandler on Monday night, although the team's fourth-round draft pick has been just a cut above average in practice.
No, the kicker carousel isn't spinning as wildly out of control in '02 as, say, the merry-go-round on which league quarterbacks have been riding. But as kickers continue to struggle and coaches watch critical field-goal attempts sail errantly outside the uprights, teams keep looking for solutions.
And the body count is beginning to mount.
Entering this weekend's games, kickers have converted 71.7 percent of field-goal attempts, the worst success rate at this juncture of a season since 1992. The result: Six teams have changed kickers this season, and more moves are likely. An unofficial ESPN.com survey of special teams coaches indicated at least three more incumbent kickers are on thin ice.
Suddenly league kickers have been reduced to the disrespect level afforded them years ago by Alex Karras. "Keek touchdown, make good," Karras used to joke, denigrating kickers, particularly those imported from foreign lands. Now if placement specialists don't "make good," coaches are more inclined to "keek" them out the door. And this year it's a revolving door.
"It just seems like coaches don't have as much patience," said former NFL kicker Al Del Greco, who doesn't wait anxiously for the phone to ring like he did a year ago, but who would consider putting away the golf clubs if a team did call. "The coaches are under the gun, and so there is a kind of trickle-down effect, you know? And for whatever reason, it seems there have been a lot more big kicks missed this year, misses that really hurt a team. Guys have been more under the microscope."
The fact so many kicking situations are in flux has created a kind of cottage industry for travel agents. Every week, it seems, the same contingent of free-agent kickers makes the rounds, auditioning for teams attempting to better themselves at the position. Jon Hilbert, Michael Husted, Richie Cunningham and others should be able to soon book a Hawaiian vacation just on the frequent-flier miles they've logged the past couple of months.
According to NFL transaction wires, on which teams must document all the tryouts they have, at least one team has auditioned a kicker for each of the past six weeks. Hilbert has been all over the place and constantly keeps a bag packed so he doesn't need to waste time.
"You feel like you ought to have business cards: 'Have foot, will travel.' That's how it is," said Washington Redskins specialist James Tuthill, the seventh kicker the team has had in two years.
No kicker has better represented the season's inconsistency than Cortez, who has been on a wacky roller coaster and whose 41-yard miss in overtime at San Diego last Sunday at least temporarily cost him his job.
Cortez was rocky from the outset, having his first attempt of the year blocked by the Giants in the league's prime-time season opener, then coming back to convert the game-winner. At one point in the season, he nailed 13 straight field goals and seemed as automatic as anyone in the league. Then he missed a chip shot at Oakland in regulation on Nov. 3, gained a reprieve when he made the game-winner in overtime, but botched the kick at San Diego last Sunday to complete a stretch in which he converted just four of eight attempts.
Not even a public endorsement from quarterback Jeff Garcia, not exactly appreciated by 49ers general manager Terry Donahue, could save Cortez from being benched this week.
A second-year veteran and former XFL kicker, Cortez received telephone calls of encouragement from other placement guys around the league. It is, after all, a misery-loves-company fraternity. And there has been plenty of misery to go around recently as brothers keep getting bounced from the fraternity.
"Sometimes you think, like, 'There but for the grace of God ...' " said Philadelphia kicker David Akers, one of the NFL's premier specialists who has made 22 of 23 field-goal tries this season. "It's a tentative existence, and this year has hammered home that point even more."
Actually, the itinerant nature of the kicker position emerged long before the shuttle system of 2002 began, and 16 franchises have changed kickers over the past year and a half. Fact: the average tenure of the 32 placement guys who will kick this weekend, with their current franchise, is just 2.87 seasons. In terms of uninterrupted service with the same franchise, only Matt Stover (Baltimore) and Jason Hanson (Detroit) have 10 full seasons or more.
Much of the across-the-board inconsistency can be traced to the salary cap. Particularly over the past three seasons, teams have attempted to save cap room by going with younger (read: cheaper) kickers, and that has accounted for much of the turnover. In a league that loves to flaunt the fact so many contests are decided by three points or less, one would think that teams would be smarter in their decisions on place kickers. Saving money too often has led to losing games, but the transition rolls on.
In the past three years, more than two-thirds of NFL teams have reduced the cap number of their kicker, a trend that figures to continue even with the uneven results. Sometimes a team can't help itself. Case in point: The New York Giants wanted to keep Morten Andersen, the league career leader in field-goal conversions, this summer. But they couldn't afford to re-sign him as a free agent because Michael Strahan's stubbornness in contract negotiations precluded New York from clearing sufficient cap room.
Andersen was one of the first cap casualties at the kicker position. He spent the first 13 seasons of his career in New Orleans, was released in 1995 after refusing to take a pay cut, and has been with three different teams in seven years since departing The Big Easy.
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Side Lines
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On-Line
During a career that will eventually land him in the Hall of Fame, defensive end Bruce Smith has sacked 70 different quarterbacks, and his 189 sacks are just nine shy of Reggie White's league record. But the Washington Redskins right end has never sacked St. Louis quarterback Kurt Warner. While he will get the opportunity on Sunday, it won't be easy for him to add the Rams star to his list of victims. On most passing plays, Smith, who has just three sacks this season and seems to lack the explosive first step upfield that once was a hallmark, will go against St. Louis left tackle Orlando Pace. While it's true that Pace hasn't dominated opponents in 2002 as he has in the past, he remains a formidable foe and still one of the best left tackles in the game. Pace draws more than his share of false start penalties, but he typically doesn't make many mistakes in technique and he'll be a tough draw for the aging Smith.
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The List
The Tennessee Titans are red hot, having won five straight games, and a big part of it is the resurgence of tailback Eddie George. After rushing for a career-low 939 yards in 2001, a season in which he was slowed by the aftereffects of foot surgery, George is on pace to record his sixth 1,000-yard season in seven NFL campaigns. He could hit a roadblock Sunday, though, against a Baltimore Ravens defense that typically plays him tough. In his 12 career games against the Ravens, he has averaged only 60.7 yards and just 3.5 yards per carry. Counting playoff appearances, George has eight straight games against the Ravens without a 100-yard performance. A list of his output in those contests:
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Date
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Att-yards
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TDs
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11/12/01
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22-71
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0
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10/7/01
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13-26
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0
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1/7/01*
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27-91
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1
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11/12/00
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12-28
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0
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10/22/00
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1-4
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0
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12/5/99
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8-32
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1
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10/10/99
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20-55
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0
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12/6/98
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27-63
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1
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*playoff game.
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Stat of the Week
Only one player in NFL history, Hall of Fame tailback Eric Dickerson, rushed for 5,000 or more yards with two different teams. Dickerson had 7,245 yards with the Rams (1983-87) and 5,194 with the Colts (1987-1991). Marshall Faulk needs 62 more yards to become the second to achieve the feat, and remarkably it will be for the same two franchises. Faulk rushed for 5,320 yards with the Colts (1994-98) and has 4,939 rushing yards while with the Rams (1999-present).
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Stat of the Weak
The Green Bay Packers have lost four straight games at Tampa Bay, where they play in Sunday's marquee contest of the weekend. A major factor in these failures has been the lack of a rushing attack. Green Bay averaged an anemic 71 rushing yards in the four defeats and scored no touchdowns on the ground. That's interesting, because the conventional wisdom is that the Packers need a big game from tailback Ahman Green to win Sunday.
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The Last Word
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| LeBeau |
Cincinnati Bengals coach Dick LeBeau, whose team plays at Pittsburgh on Sunday, discussing all the various gimmick plays used by Steelers offensive coordinator Mike Mularkey this year: "Remember the Pink Panther? He said, 'I suspect no one, but I suspect everyone. I accuse no one, but I accuse everyone.' You better watch everybody out there who has an 80 or a 40 or any eligible (uniform) number on them. You can get anything from these guys. We've held up reasonably well against the tricks except for some of the reverses. They have been productive with the trick plays because of the special talent they have."
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But the salary-cap element still can't explain why so many heretofore solid kickers have struggled so mightily in 2002. Mike Vanderjagt of Indianapolis, who entered the season as the most accurate field-goal kicker in league history, has missed seven of 20 attempts, in part because of a groin injury. Peterson had nine misses before a cracked rib and injured reserve saved him being released outright.
The usually redoubtable Jason Elam of Denver has seven misses. The Flying Gramatica Brothers no longer leap after every one of their conversions, not just because Billy blew out his knee with a celebration last year, but because they've got 11 misses between them.
"This year just seems to be one of those anomaly seasons," said Andersen, who has converted 20 of 22 attempts for Kansas City. "The kicks that are being missed all seem to have some significance and so they're magnified. You just hope every week that you're not the guy on SportsCenter holding his head after a big miss."
Around the league
If you don't believe bad things happen to good people, consider the woes of Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson, whose franchise continues to suffer through a mind-numbing streak of off-field problems. Having been through the Rae Carruth murder-conspiracy trial, the alleged murder of tailback Fred Lane by his wife, the incident in which linebacker Kevin Greene choked assistant coach Kevin Steele, the walkout by Kerry Collins and other problems, Richardson has tried hard in recent years to ensure the Panthers are a good-character team. But in the past month alone, the Panthers have had starting defensive linemen Brentson Buckner and Julius Peppers suspended for violating the NFL's substance-abuse policy, been forced to release recalcitrant offensive tackle Chris Terry and had to suspend wide receiver Steve Smith for this week's game. None of this helps the Panthers with a fan base that was spoiled when Carolina reached the NFC title game in only its second season of existence. And, remember, the Panthers are located in the heart of the Bible Belt, where the constituents want more wins and fewer arrests. From what team sources say, the loss of Terry was a tough one, but the team had little choice. Once viewed as a "good kid," Terry apparently became less reliable over the past season. That lack of discipline culminated when he missed a Tuesday court date related to a July incident of spousal abuse. The crazy part was that Terry, arguably one of the Panthers' top 10 veterans, merely had to show up and sign some papers and would have been entered into a diversionary program that would have eventually expunged the incident if he had no further incidents. There was a time this summer when the Panthers were prepared to sign Terry, a former second-round pick who started 57 games, to a contract extension to keep him off the unrestricted free agent market next spring. But when the domestic incident occurred, the team backed off, and now is happy it did. Still, there is some split among team officials and coaches over the loss of Terry, who signed with Seattle the day after being released. Some feel he was a distraction who had to go, and who they claim would have departed in free agency anyway. Others believe that the former University of Georgia standout is a talent, among the top dozen or so right tackles in the league, a player the team could have handled better. But just a month removed from quadruple bypass surgery, Richardson, a man of notable integrity, wasn't about to have Terry around anymore.
We're not among those who are criticizing the Panthers for suspending Smith just one game after he sucker-punched practice squad wide receiver Anthony Bright during a Monday film-review session. According to the collective bargaining agreement, the Panthers could have suspended Smith without pay for up to four games, citing the nebulous "conduct detrimental to the team" catch-all. But as general manager Marty Hurney noted, such a suspension would have been appealed, and Smith would have been able to play this weekend. Plus, given past precedent, there's a good chance that a four-game suspension would have been reduced by an arbitrator. So maybe the one-game sanction, because of its immediacy, was the preferred route. Where the Panthers failed, though, was in not identifying the problem with anger management that Smith apparently possesses. He went off on Bright, who will likely press assault charges against Smith, because the youngster simply asked to see a play re-run in the film review. Responded Smith, who apparently botched the play in question: "We don't run the tape back for practice squad players." Smith then pummeled the receiver to the point where Bright required plastic surgery to repair his nose and face. This summer, in training camp, we interviewed Smith. For a story that was going to tout his importance to the team, he was surly, combative and curt. He concluded the interview by asking if we knew Lee Corso, then launched into a lengthy and incentive-laced verbal tirade against the ESPN college football maven, whom he said had once criticized him while he was playing at Utah. It was nasty language, some ugly threats, and left us convinced that teammates who claim Smith has a hair-trigger temper are right.
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| Jauron |
Even with a collapse that could rank as one of the most notorious one-year retrenchments in modern NFL history, Chicago Bears coach Dick Jauron will not be fired at the end of the season, team sources confirmed. In essence, Jauron is getting a "grace year" largely because of four elements: The 13-3 record he posted in 2001. The fact the Bears have had to play this season in Champaign, Ill., because of the renovation of Soldier Field. The spate of injuries that have decimated the defense. The unsettled situation at the quarterback position. There are still some Chicago officials, and some players as well, who would like to see Jauron dump offensive coordinator John Shoop. But even that potential offseason excising isn't a sure thing. What is all but certain is that the Bears will use a high-round draft pick, possibly their first-rounder, on a top-shelf quarterback prospect. General manager Jerry Angelo doesn't believe you win the Super Bowl with one of the "complementary-type" quarterbacks so many teams play now. The position cried for an upgrade and it will be addressed.
This hasn't been a memorable season in Minnesota, but there is some solace in the fact tailback Michael Bennett is quickly developing into one of the NFL's most dangerous runners, certainly one of the few backs in the league with great "long speed." Bennett has established an NFL record by posting runs of 60 yards or more in three straight games. But far more important is that he has four straight 100-yard outings, looks much tougher than he did a year ago and has picked up the nuances of the position. While he was a first-round choice in the 2001 draft, people seem to overlook that Bennett entered the league with relatively little football exposure. During his career at Wisconsin, he was a track sprinter, backed up Ron Dayne for much of his tenure, started only one season, then departed as an underclassman. "I found out in the NFL (last year) that speed alone wasn't enough," Bennett said this week. "You won't outrun defenses at this level." The biggest improvement in Bennett's game this year is that he is setting up blocks a lot better, reading the defenses, being a patient runner. "That's the irony, that you actually have to slow yourself down in a sense, if you're going to be a top back in the NFL," Bennett said. As a result of Bennett's efforts, the Vikings now lead the league in rushing, at least something upon which the team can hang its hat.
The Pittsburgh Steelers suffered a blow this week when starting center Jeff Hartings required arthroscopic knee surgery, an operation that will keep him on the sideline for a month. But coaches are confident that second-year pro Chukky Okobi, who replaced Hartings earlier in the season, can hold down the fort. Okobi graded out well in his previous stint in the lineup, and a few pro scouts we talked to from other teams have taken notice of him. Okobi will be a restricted free agent after the 2003 season, about the time that Hartings' contract begins to escalate, and the Steelers might not be able to keep him around. The former Purdue standout, a fifth-round pick in 2001, doesn't have the prototype build (a little on the short side), but he possesses long arms and can lock out nicely on pass rushers. Plus he showed in his earlier outings that he is capable of knocking defenders off the line.
Despite a judgement approaching $45 million, agent Leigh Steinberg is still going to have to work hard to rehabilitate his image, especially after some of the testimony in his recent trial with former partner David Dunn. The fact remains that Steinberg was portrayed as primarily a public relations shill, a guy out of touch with the business, one who stopped negotiating contracts and merely showed up for news conferences to announce the deals consummated by Dunn. Of course, Dunn is hardly a winner in the case and will suffer blows beyond the obvious financial ones. The consensus among attorneys familiar with such cases is that Dunn might survive only if he puts his agency, Athletes First, into bankruptcy and opens another firm. So far, the clients Dunn took from Steinberg's firm have, for the most part, stuck with him. But that could change. The NFL Players Association regulates agents and, since there is a torturous interference element essentially involved in the verdict against Dunn, the union might bring disciplinary action against him. As for Steinberg, it was interesting to read his admissions that his agency had perhaps become too big. Most notable was his contention that it's "hard to stop recruiting" when players want you to represent them. Notable because for years, Steinberg claimed he didn't recruit players and that they simply came to him because of his track record. The bottom line in a trial that, for whatever reason, didn't get as much national coverage as it merited: Both agents were losers.
Last week in this space we suggested Kirk Ferentz of Iowa will be among college sideline bosses courted this offseason by those NFL owners seeking new head coaches, and we got plenty of unsolicited feedback from scouts who have checked out the Hawkeyes this fall. To a man, the scouts lauded the turnaround Ferentz has promulgated while working with a team that does not have great talent. But the more important thing the scouts pointed out was what a class act Ferentz is with NFL people. Two scouts said that after recently visiting the Iowa campus, they returned to their offices to find thank you notes from Ferentz. "Here was a guy who was basically writing to thank me for doing my job," said one NFC scout. "He just wanted to let me know that he appreciated the fact I came by to look at his (draft) prospects. Hell, that's what I'm paid to do, right? OK, so it was a little thing, I know. But not many coaches take the time to do it. And it's the little things that set guys apart. If my owner is looking for a coach and he asks my opinion, you better believe I'll mention (Ferentz) to him. And I'll tell him about that note, too, because I think that stuff matters."
The ever-candid coaching staff at the University of Miami is telling scouts who stop by Coral Gables that Hurricanes tailback Willis McGahee will definitely be in the 2003 draft. McGahee doesn't appear to have great linear speed, but he does possess quick feet, solid size, and the toughness to be a workhorse-type back at the next level. Most talent evaluators regard him as a prospect who should be taken in the top half of the first round.
Pretty nice trifecta for IMG football, the agency of Tom Condon and Ken Kremer: They represent the NFL leaders in passing yards (Rich Gannon), rush yards (LaDainian Tomlinson) and receiving yards (Marvin Harrison).
Beating a Holmgren-coached team must have made Washington's Steve Spurrier a little lightheaded last week. After dispatching the hapless Seahawks, the Ol' Ball Coach announced to Redskins players that the rest of the league better look out, because Washington is a playoff team. Even some veterans claim to have chuckled at the suggestion. On the plus side, kudos to the Redskins for having resurrected the career of guard Tré Johnson. The team turned to the often-injured veteran out of desperation, essentially because the Redskins seemed to have tried every other retread guard in the league, and Johnson has played well in two games.
Here's one of those free agent signings this spring that never made any sense for either side: The Indianapolis Colts signed former Tennessee starting linebacker Greg Favors to a two-year contract, knowing full well they had nowhere to play the four-year veteran. No, it didn't cost the Colts much, just a $400,000 signing bonus, and base salaries of $525,000 (2002) and $800,000 (2003). But the team already had three linebackers it liked -- although no one can yet figure why the organization is still hot for underachieving middle 'backer Rob Morris, a short-armed defender who rarely makes a big play -- and it wasn't as if Favors was going to be thrilled about being a backup and playing on special teams. The upshot is that the Colts never found a way to activate Favors, a pretty decent player in his own regard, and he didn't get on the field for a single snap. Indianapolis this week ate its investment in Favors and released him. The Colts would have been better off never having signed him, and Favors would be way ahead had he just remained with the Titans for another season.
Punts: So the Washington Redskins released wide receiver Jacquez Green last week, moved up Justin Skaggs from the practice squad, then made him inactive anyway for the game against the New York Giants. Makes perfect sense, huh? … The New Orleans Saints have quietly extended the contract of offensive tackle Victor Riley by one year, through the 2004 season. … There are a lot of people in the league who feel Tom Coughlin is turning in the best coaching job of his NFL career. They noted that Jacksonville does not have the personnel it possessed in past seasons but is still poised to make a run at the playoffs. … Miami quarterback Jay Fiedler still looks to be about two weeks away from returning to the lineup. … Although he still hasn't cracked the starting lineup after a long camp holdout, San Diego coaches are thrilled with the play of first-round corner Quentin Jammer.
Len Pasquarelli is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com.
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