Throughout Seattle last year the imposing figure of Mike
Holmgren loomed on billboards with a Seahawks marketing plan entitled,
"It's Now Time." A city starved from a decade of non-playoff seasons
enjoyed the 8-2 start and, despite a 1-5 finish, a playoff game.
|  | | Mike Holmgren's plan is to fill the Seahawks' roster with champions. |
The 2000 campaign is undefined. "It's ... " should be
the motto. Even Holmgren doesn't know what to call it. Despite the purge of
seven starters from a playoff team, Holmgren refuses to call it a rebuilding
season. Fans are equally confused.
They see sports' richest owner, Paul Allen, but they hear
tales of salary cap poverty. For more than a month, Holmgren even kept the
roster at 51 -- two short of the NFL maximum -- because of claims of cap
poverty.
For the first time, fans are beginning to call talk shows
with complaints about Holmgren the general manager. They expected Super
Bowls, not 2-6 starts. Proudly, Holmgren keeps reminding people that he has a
plan.
"I'm sorry that they don't see it the way I do, but someone
has to make the decisions, and that's what I was hired to do," Holmgren
said. "I felt after last season either you continue to put band aids on the
thing and be 8-8 all the time or you kind of prune the tree and really do
something. Maybe you take a step backward, but in the long run -- two, three,
four years from now -- then you really have something."
In other words, it's not now time.
Holmgren really does have a plan, and it is fundamentally sound. The
1-5 finish and a poor playoff performance against Miami in the playoffs made him feel he
didn't have enough winning players on the team. His mission: fill the roster
with his own players whom he believes will be champions.
Without remorse, Holmgren traded wide receiver Joey Galloway,
didn't re-sign defensive tackle Sam Adams and took cap hits to release
linebacker Darrin Smith, free safety Darryl Williams, offensive linemen Brian Habib and Kevin Glover and wide receiver Sean Dawkins. His one regret
was losing defensive end Phillip Daniels to the Chicago Bears. When the
receiver market was bare in June, he re-signed Dawkins.
Immediate replacements were few. Free safety Reggie Tongue, guard Robbie Tobeck and George Koonce comprised his free agency class. Koonce, a minimum salary veteran player, was his only starter.
The purge is not unlike the purge he and Ron Wolf manufactured in
their early days together in Green Bay. But the results were predictable.
Without Daniels and Adams, the defensive line lost the ability to stop the
run and rush the passer because Holmgren was left with an older line headed by Cortez Kennedy and Michael Sinclair.
"I think when you talk about the plan we're implementing, this is
our first year," Holmgren said. "Last year was a year where we got into
the playoffs and learned about each other. We understood where we were
financially and then had some decisions to make."
The cap is cleaned up now. By the time Holmgren hits next year's
free-agent market, he may have $6 million of cap room if not more to buy
quality starters. But the franchise is in trouble on two fronts. If Brock
Huard doesn't work as the team's quarterback of the future, Holmgren will
no doubt fix the quarterback position with one or maybe two of his first-round choices, one being a potential top 10 pick of the Cowboys from the Galloway trade.
That won't leave enough top draft choices or cap room to replace the
potential casualties of another wave of offseason purges. Kennedy, for
example, wants to play two more seasons, but Holmgren may decide to end his
Seahawks days after the season. The Seahawks plan to be competitive
re-signing guard Pete Kendall, but odds favor his departure. Jon Kitna's gone after the season, and if Huard isn't the future, Holmgren will bring in
a Drew Brees or someone else to do that job.
Changes are also coming at linebacker, cornerback and possibly in
the secondary.
That translates to more than half the starters changed in two years,
but are there enough acquisitions to replace them? Tongue, for
example, was brought in at a considerable cost to replace Williams at
free safety, but his inability to pick up Steve Sidwell's system put him on
the bench after six weeks.
Fortunately, Holmgren has drafted well. Lamar King, last year's No.
1 pick, has already developed into one of the team's best defensive linemen. Shaun Alexander will no doubt replace Ricky Watters at halfback next year, and Holmgren believes that fellow first-round pick Chris McIntosh, despite a training-camp long holdout, will be a nasty right tackle with an attitude.
Third-round choice Darrell Jackson looks like a young Antonio Freeman.
"We're going to have four or five plans depending on how much money
there is," Holmgren said. "I feel good about our offensive line. Floyd
Wedderburn is a good one at right guard. McIntosh, Jackson and Alexander are
going to be good starters for a lot of years."
Holmgren's biggest pitfall this offseason may be finding defensive
line replacements. It's almost as hard as getting quarterbacks, and replacing
three-fourths of a defensive line in two years may be too bold a move. Teams find ways to keep top defensive linemen, and if there is a question, they place the franchise tag on them and hold out for multiple first-rounders in
trades.
He'll be left with having to get linemen from the draft.
The other part of Holmgren's worries is that he might underestimate the fans. Football-wise, Holmgren may be wise in pruning the Seahawks' tree. What he doesn't understand is that fans have been watching that same,
leafless, lifeless tree since 1989 with last year's playoff run being the
only thrill. The fear is he leaves so many empty seats from no-shows at
Husky Stadium in November and December that it affects season ticket sales
for the new stadium in 2002.
"This is very hard having not gone through this before," Holmgren
said.
To Seahawks fans, though, it's their worst fear. At 2-6, they are
like the same old Seahawks Holmgren was supposed to fix.
Quick Hits
Ryan Leaf believes the Chargers are going to bounce him at the end
of the season. Here's the problem. They would have to take a $5.2 million
cap hit just to let him go. They can't spread that over two years by
releasing him June 1 and taking two thirds of the hit in 2002 because he's
only been in the league three years. As a third-year player, he's eligible
for waivers, and a waiver claim or a trade means the immediate cap hit. How
strange will it be for the Chargers to use another high-draft choice on a
quarterback? It's possible.
Dave McGinnis' chances of succeeding as an interim coach are about
the same as Vince Tobin's as a head coach this year. Not very good. The
lack of quality defensive linemen leaves them vulnerable to average running
or passing attacks. Problems on the offensive line cause the offense to
overcompensate for the amount of points the defense can surrender weekly.
People in the Cardinals' organization wouldn't be surprised to see
Tobin surface in some capacity in the Rams' organization. He's a popular
coach in Missouri and would be an asset to a Rams team that had to pull
69-year Bud Carson out of retirement to fix the defensive woes.
| |  | |
| Carter |
Kevin Carter's relationship has soured so much that the Rams clearly
won't offer him the seven-year, $45 million contract they dangled this
summer. Carter is an emotional player and has been in a semi-funk since
contract talks broke off. Plus he was fined for missing a day of practice to
be with his wife two days after a difficult child birth. The Rams feel he's
giving a half-hearted effort on the field and in practice. Were the season
to end today, the Rams would probably franchise Carter, considered by
general managers in a published survey the 10th best player in football, and
try to get trade value.
Halfback Jerome Bettis would love to remain a Steeler past the time
his contract expires after the season. The problem is obviously going to be
money. Going into a new stadium next year will give the Steelers revenues to
keep their top players. Bettis clearly has shown with his five 100-yard
rushing games this season that he qualifies.
The Dolphins are still fuming about blowing their 23-point lead on
Monday night to the Jets. Their biggest anger is over six pass-coverage
penalties for holding or illegal use of the hands against defensive backs
that produced six Jets first downs in the fourth quarter. The Dolphins
cornerbacks play tight to receivers, but they can't envision playing tight
enough to get six penalties in a quarter.
It may seem drastic that Ricky Williams would be fined $3,500 for
not getting a sore knee checked out, but it's not unusual in New Orleans
this year. New coach Jim Haslett fines everybody. He fines every player for
being late or not following instructions. Wide receiver Joe Horn, for
example, has hit $2,000 lateness fines several times. But the players
understand. And they are winning.
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| Dillon |
The tackling problems that allowed the Broncos to give Corey Dillon
the greatest running day in NFL history will once again haunt Greg Robinson, the imaginative defensive coordinator of the
Broncos. Robinson is always the brunt of speculation when the defense
struggles, which is a shame. He runs a scheme that requires players to not be caught out of position. That isn't happening this year.
NBA commissioner David Stern sure put NFL commissioner Paul
Tagliabue in a tough spot. Tagliabue would like to fine former 49ers
executives Carmen Policy and Dwight Clark $250,000 each for salary cap
violations and take away perhaps a second-round choice from the 49ers. By
Stern taking five first-round picks from the Minnesota Timberwolves, voiding
Joe Smith's contract and fining the team $3.5 million for what might be
considered lesser violations, NFL owners head to Tuesday's fall meeting in
Atlanta demanding harsher sanctions. On Thursday, they faxed articles around
that underlined what the Timberwolves did was a slap in the face to NBA
authority.
John Clayton is the senior NFL writer for ESPN.com.
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