I had to laugh when Saints fans were whining about Health Shuler and calling
for a change to Wuerffel as if the problem was QB and Danny was going to
magically change all of that. Despite the fact that he was sent in to play
when the game was out of hand and the dogs had been called in, his stats were
no more impressive than Shuler's with the exception of his TD passes (Big
whoopie). The problem IS as I have said, the damn offensive line. There's
been a little blame put on the running game but that's been because of the
offensive line and not the lack of ability on the part of their backs. Let's
look at the Saints' running game from 1994 to 1996 (Stats from Stats, Inc.):
      Left             Middle            Right            Total
|Att-Yard-Avg Rank|Att-Yard-Avg Rank|Att-Yard-Avg Rank|Att-Yard-Avg Rank|
|133- 566-4.3 (15)|162- 485-3.0 (23)| 77- 287-3.7 (17)|373-1336-3.6 (18)|
|166- 681-4.1 (23)|158- 454-2.9 (25)| 59- 255-4.3 (16)|383-1390-3.6 (24)|
|156- 635-4.1 (21)|165- 436-2.6 (26)| 65- 237-3.6 (25)|386-1308-3.4 (26)|
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
Who were those starters during that time?
Year     LT         LG         C          RG         RT
1994 Roaf       Dombrowski Uhlenhake  Port       Cooper
1995 Roaf       Dombrowski Uhlenhake  McCollum   Cooper
                                      Port
1996 Roaf       Dombrowski McCollum   King       Jones
                Novitsky
Like Dallas, New Orleans has become predictable and because of the changes,
teams have taken advantage of their predictability and inability. After the
offensive line for Dallas began to retire on Danny White, he got hit more
and more and by the end, was extremely gun-shy. Early in his career he would
stand up to the hit but by the end, he was laying down before he was even
hit. For those who only saw him at the end of his career, this is the image
of Danny White that sticks in their mind and not the one who took as many
big hits as Staubach did during his career (It's like those who think that
Troy Aikman can't run and are surprised when he does gain big yardage. He
CHOSE to stop running after a hamstring pull). The Saints will need to get
their offensive line put together before they can make any kind of evaluation
about their QBs but I doubt that their fans will understand that.
                                 ****
Despite the fact that they lost their kickers to free agency, the Cowboys
are still looking good AND both of their ex-kickers are looking pretty bad
for their new teams. After having NEVER had a punt blocked while in Dallas,
Jett has had a couple blocked this season and Boniol has found out that
while Philly has turf, they also have wind.
                                 ****
Congrats to Florida. I was pulling for Cleveland, NOT because the Marlins
beat the Braves but because Cleveland has waited so long. Now that the Braves
have won their first in Atlanta, I'm pulling for the ones that have had to
wait for a long time - Boston, the Chicago teams, Cleveland....
                                 ****
So far the ABL has seen some pretty good crowds and while they've got some
disappointments, I think that people are finally taking the time to see
the league that has the best women's talent (Hint to those WNBA zombies who
have never seen an ABL game -- it's NOT the WNBA).
                                 ****
Speaking of women, the NBA signed two women as refs. While there are some
macho, knuckle draggers out there among the players, coaches and GMs, many
are having no problem with this (I imagine that there's a lot of "They can't
be any worse than some of the morons that we've got already." and that has
made it easier for them to accept them). Good luck, ladies.
                                 ****
Bowl qualifying has begun. In the next couple of weeks college teams will be
getting that 6 win minimum that will *qualify* but not necessarily guarantee
them for a bowl bid.
                                 ****
Had to laugh at David Dupree and his *discovery* of Fred Hoiberg. Dupree 
seems to come up with some of the stupidiest comments about players and
teams and a lot of it comes from pure ignorance (Like his little thing
about the overlapping of the Jabbar/Johnson eras. Geez, you'd think that
Jabbar had been in LA for 10 years before Magic came along instead of the
4 years that it actually was). Fred has been a very popular player with
the Pacers and he started playing more and more as the season progressed.
The Mayor might have been an unknown commodity to Dupree, however, he's
well known in Indiana AND Big 8 country.
                                 ****
BTW, just thought I'd note O'Donnell's first year stats (12 games) and
Kordell Stewart's stats after 8 games:
             Att Com Com% Yard  YPA TD Int Rtng
O'Donnell    286 156 54.5 1963 6.86 11   7 78.8
Stewart      199 112 56.3 1466 7.37 11   9 79.3
Oh and that's not including the substantial difference as a rusher. Kordell
has thrown more interceptions, however, his whole game has been much more
than O'Donnell's and he is undoubtably better than O'Donnell was at this
stage of his career and will be much better as the years go by.
--- TrekEd 1.00
---------------