Flustered Falcons: Down season will end Sunday against Seahawks
KIRKLAND, Wash. – During a conference call on Wednesday morning, Atlanta Falcons linebacker Keith Brooking spent 20 minutes covering only three subjects.
He expressed his regret for the team’s decision to cut ties with head coach Jim Mora after last season. Brooking admitted the shock he felt when quarterback Michael Vick was arrested, and ultimately incarcerated, for his part in a dogfighting ring. And most telling of all, Brooking called former head coach Bobby Petrino a “coward” for stepping down two weeks ago.
“I don’t know if I can really put it into words,” Brooking said when asked to describe the 2007 season. “Tough season is probably an understatement.”
While Brooking’s Falcons head into Sunday’s meaningless game with the Seattle Seahawks eager to put the 2007 season to rest, his opponents have a little problem of their own.
The Seahawks can’t decide whether to rest their star players for the following weekend’s playoff opener.
“It will be talked about – not just with us but a lot of teams – how to do this,” coach Mike Holmgren said during a Wednesday press conference. “I thought a lot about it. I’m not sure there’s a right way to do it.
“I believe in momentum going into the playoffs. I do believe in that. At the same time, everyone holds their breath that no one gets hurt. So how do you balance that?”
It’s one of those welcome conundrums this time of year. Plenty of teams are lacking obvious motivation as days wind down toward the final week of the season, and the Seahawks and Falcons – for much different reasons – are among the teams with little incentive.
“Once you have clinched everything that’s possible to clinch,” Holmgren said, “then it boils down to the most basic fundamental thing that you talk about with every player: when I’m on the field, how do I play?”
The Seahawks (10-5) would much rather be in their situation than the one that has plagued Atlanta over the past 12 months. Since Mora was fired in January – he has since taken an assistant job with the Seahawks – the Falcons (3-12) have fallen to deeper depths than most franchises could even imagine.
Vick, who may well be the biggest star in franchise history, was indicted on charges of running a dogfighting ring in June. Because backup Matt Schaub had been traded to Houston two months earlier, the Falcons scrambled to find a starting quarterback and eventually turned to journeyman Joey Harrington.
The wheels on the 2007 season started to fall off after the Falcons got off to a 1-6 start under Petrino, a first-year NFL coach from the University of Louisville. Then things hit a low on Dec. 10, when Vick’s trial ended in a 23-month sentence and the Falcons got pounded 34-14 against the New Orleans Saints on Monday Night Football.
The following day, Petrino resigned to take the vacant coaching position at Arkansas. He informed his players through a form letter, an act that rubbed many – like Brooking – the wrong way.
“To have him back out on me like that and quit, and go against everything he talked about – shoot, man, it floored me,” Brooking said. “It hurt me bad. Betrayal came to mind; coward, quitter – so many things. I cannot put into words what would make him do something like that.”
Brooking learned of Petrino’s resignation not from the coach himself but from a television report.
“I was sitting on my couch in the living room with my son (Logan), and it came across the TV,” Brooking recalled.
“… The day before, we were out there sacrificing everything for him and trying to lay it on the line for the Atlanta Falcons and (for) him, as our head coach. And 24 hours later, he was talking about how excited he was to be (at Arkansas). It made my skin crawl. I wanted to jump through the TV.”