Mike Burke
Quite a Labor Day sports weekend, so where do we begin? How about where the weekend ended, with unranked UCLA’s 27-24 overtime victory over No. 18 Tennessee on Monday night?
In watching this terrific college football game, it became clear that UCLA head coach Rick Neuheisel is very comfortable in his skin being back at his alma mater and being a head coach again. It also became painfully clear that while he was the so-called “offensive coordinator” for the Baltimore Ravens last season, he had nothing to do with the playcalling, or the structure of the offense.
UCLA did an outstanding job on Monday with game management against what everyone agreed was a superior opponent, and the Bruins’ two-minute drill (actually 1:27) prior to the final 27 seconds of regulation was a sight for the football purist to behold.
Fair is fair, though. While Neuheisel wasn’t calling the plays in Baltimore when he was the “offensive coordinator” (I always feel like Dr. Evil when I use quotation marks that way), he likely wasn’t calling many of them on Monday night, either, as one of the first hires he made upon returning to UCLA was Norm Chow, the offensive coordinator from USC’s great teams not so long ago. Still, any time we can poke fun at The World’s Most Brilliant Human Being, we won’t pass up the opportunity.
Speaking of Brian Billick’s former team, the Baltimore Ravens have quite a quarterback issue on their hands these days as rookie Joe Flacco will start Sunday’s season-opener against the Cincinnati Bengals, with second-year QB Troy Smith recovering from infected tonsils, and veteran Kyle Boller looking at significant time off due to a shoulder injury.
Now, I likely wouldn’t have a problem with Flacco starting Sunday (nice of me), and would probably actually be looking forward to it if I weren’t so concerned that I’m about to walk into a perfectly horrible movie that I’ve already seen. Flacco is said to be the future of the Ravens franchise, just as Boller was said to be the future of the Ravens in 2003 when Billick pouted and held his breath until general manager Ozzie Newsome pulled off a draft-day deal to take Boller on the 19th pick.
Boller, of course, was thrown to the wolves right off the bat, and the rest is history — sad history, as Boller has proven through the years that being a starting NFL quarterback is not his destiny (although the notion was certainly somebody’s density). In fairness to Boller, who seems as though he’s a very likeable chap, he never had the good fortune to have a legitimate quarterbacks coach. For by the time Neuheisel arrived in Charm City two years ago as the quarterbacks coach, the Ravens were in the midst of their season of love with veteran Steve McNair. Then last year, when Boller saw most of the reps, Neuheisel had been reassigned as the “offensive coordinator” who didn’t call plays.
It’s clear Neuheisel, a former star quarterback at UCLA, works wonders with quarterbacks, as evidenced by Monday’s second-half performance of third-team Bruins quarterback Kevin Craft. It’s just unfortunate for Boller that by the time Neuheisel got to Baltimore, it was too late. Fortunately for Flacco, though, offensive coordinator Cam Cameron has a great reputation for developing young quarterbacks. Plus, he actually runs an offense.
Still, Flacco will be severely tested on Sunday. It’s true the Bengals have a pretty horrid defense, but you can be sure head coach Marvin Lewis is going to do very little but apply serious pressure on Flacco.
Which is why you have to believe Ravens head coach John Harbaugh really would have preferred to start Smith, the Heisman Trophy winner two years ago, at least through the early stages of the season. With the Baltimore offensive line being one of the team’s biggest question marks, the Ravens likely will need a quarterback who can get out of the pocket to, as the Ravens’ former head coach would say, “make plays outside of the structure of the offense that you can’t account for.”
Which brings us to the Maryland Terrapins, fresh off their 14-7 win over Delaware.
Any win is a good win, even over Fightin’ Blue Hens formerly known as I-AA, but in taking in the reaction of the Byrd Stadium crowd on Saturday, three thoughts come to mind:
A.) Jordan Steffy pulls wings off of butterflies in his spare time, and every Maryland football fan knows it.
B.) Chris Turner should run for Student Government president, because he is absolutely the most popular man on campus.
C.) Maryland fans have nothing against Steffy, but disapprove of Ralph Friedgen’s decision to name him the starter over Turner (and maybe even Josh Portis).
C.) is likely the case, because fans don’t get to watch quarterbacks in practice every day. Fans just remember who did what in the games, and last year the Terps won more games with Turner as the quarterback than they did with Steffy under center.
Certainly, neither the play of Steffy nor Turner inspired memories of Joe Montana on Saturday, and nobody is more aware of that than Friedgen. It just seems as though Friedgen is very fond of Steffy and wants to give the fifth-year senior every opportunity to succeed, given all of the hardships he has battled through to even make it to a fifth year.
No matter how badly we’d all like to see Steffy succeed, it’s difficult to believe he will take more snaps than Turner does as this season progresses.
Contact Mike Burke at mburke@times-news.com.
