Ickybaluky
08-19-2004, 03:38 AM
Dr. Z has his AFC East Camp visits (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/writers/dr_z/08/18/drz.column/index.html). There are some interesting notes about Mularky and Henry for Buffalo fans.
On Henry:
I was intrigued at the tone of the various interviews to which Travis Henry was subjected. The 5-9, 215-pound Henry is not a good back, he's a great one. Also heroic. Gained 1,356 yards, playing on a cracked ankle with torn rib cartilage. "No back in the league gives me as much trouble," says the Dolphins' MLB Zach Thomas. "I'm short, and I can get leverage on the backs, but not Henry. I can't get under him. And he runs so hard. I hate trying to tackle him." So Henry's reward is that every day he has to listen to the same set of questions two, three four times, that invariably begin, "So how do you feel about McGahee ...?" (fill in the blanks) or "You think they'll trade you after the season." And his jaw sets and he usually answers the same way. "All I can say is that I'm very proud of what I've accomplished in Buffalo." Finally I couldn't stand it anymore, and I got him alone, and in my most fatherly tone, told him, "Look, just keep answering these questions the way you have, and don't lose your temper, and then play out the rest of your contract here and sign somewhere else for three times what you're making. There are teams that would kill to get a back like you." "That's what I plan to do," he said.
On Mularky:
I'd never had a real talk with Mularkey, the new head coach, before. He'd been a back-up tight end most of his career, a meat-and-potatoes guy, but when he became the Steelers' offensive coordinator, the imps of zaniness suddenly burst loose, and wow, the stuff he pulled. That's what I wanted to talk to him about. Goal-line play against the Vikings. Kordell Stewart walks away from the center and yells over to Hines Ward. Then the ball is directly snapped to Jerome Bettis on the weak side, and off he goes, through a confused defense. How? Why? Who? "Actually, Dick Hoak, our running backs coach, thought it up," Mularkey said, "but it was me that called it in the game. When Kordell yelled, 'Hines!' that was the snap count. You always see it, when a quarterback walks away from center, usually the defense takes a knee. And the corners start adjusting their wrist bands. See, you get 'em to pause for a count, then you hit 'em in the teeth." Sneak-attack football, unmanly, downright nasty. "Aw c'mon." Mularkey said. "What's the defense always specialize in? Deception, right? So what's wrong if the offense does it, too? Hey, listen to this one. The very next week we ran the same play again, only this time we had a reverse off it. We figured they'd all be flying to Jerome. Guess what? The defense took a knee again ... and they got pounded again. "We had three plays off of that thing, a trap, a sweep and a bootleg." And Mularkey had an old Pop Warner double-wing that he put in after studying the playbook of a high school coach in Florida who ran it. And he says he has the first book ever written on the "true single-wing," and someday you just might see the Bills lining up in it ... "only if you have the right personnel for it on the field," he says. "When we ran it in camp it was amazing, the confusion all the misdirection caused. You could have defensive guys flowing in different directions. They were running all over the place." During a vacation in Alaska last summer, he talked to the winningest high school coach in the state, whose team ran out of multiple-wing formations. "He told me the biggest key was to tell a defense that had to face it -- 'Don't move.'" He says he couldn't take it farther in Pittsburgh because he didn't have a real say in personnel, and to make it work you had to have the right kind of players. But in Buffalo? Who knows what could be on the horizon? "I was watching our wideout, Bobby Shaw, throwing the ball in practice the other day, just goofing around," Mularkey says. "I asked him, 'You ever play quarterback?' He said, 'Why?' I told him, 'Just curious.' We drafted a wideout in the seventh round who's an ex-quarterback. Jonathan Smith. Who knows. Whether or not he makes the team may depend on how well he throws the ball."
On Henry:
I was intrigued at the tone of the various interviews to which Travis Henry was subjected. The 5-9, 215-pound Henry is not a good back, he's a great one. Also heroic. Gained 1,356 yards, playing on a cracked ankle with torn rib cartilage. "No back in the league gives me as much trouble," says the Dolphins' MLB Zach Thomas. "I'm short, and I can get leverage on the backs, but not Henry. I can't get under him. And he runs so hard. I hate trying to tackle him." So Henry's reward is that every day he has to listen to the same set of questions two, three four times, that invariably begin, "So how do you feel about McGahee ...?" (fill in the blanks) or "You think they'll trade you after the season." And his jaw sets and he usually answers the same way. "All I can say is that I'm very proud of what I've accomplished in Buffalo." Finally I couldn't stand it anymore, and I got him alone, and in my most fatherly tone, told him, "Look, just keep answering these questions the way you have, and don't lose your temper, and then play out the rest of your contract here and sign somewhere else for three times what you're making. There are teams that would kill to get a back like you." "That's what I plan to do," he said.
On Mularky:
I'd never had a real talk with Mularkey, the new head coach, before. He'd been a back-up tight end most of his career, a meat-and-potatoes guy, but when he became the Steelers' offensive coordinator, the imps of zaniness suddenly burst loose, and wow, the stuff he pulled. That's what I wanted to talk to him about. Goal-line play against the Vikings. Kordell Stewart walks away from the center and yells over to Hines Ward. Then the ball is directly snapped to Jerome Bettis on the weak side, and off he goes, through a confused defense. How? Why? Who? "Actually, Dick Hoak, our running backs coach, thought it up," Mularkey said, "but it was me that called it in the game. When Kordell yelled, 'Hines!' that was the snap count. You always see it, when a quarterback walks away from center, usually the defense takes a knee. And the corners start adjusting their wrist bands. See, you get 'em to pause for a count, then you hit 'em in the teeth." Sneak-attack football, unmanly, downright nasty. "Aw c'mon." Mularkey said. "What's the defense always specialize in? Deception, right? So what's wrong if the offense does it, too? Hey, listen to this one. The very next week we ran the same play again, only this time we had a reverse off it. We figured they'd all be flying to Jerome. Guess what? The defense took a knee again ... and they got pounded again. "We had three plays off of that thing, a trap, a sweep and a bootleg." And Mularkey had an old Pop Warner double-wing that he put in after studying the playbook of a high school coach in Florida who ran it. And he says he has the first book ever written on the "true single-wing," and someday you just might see the Bills lining up in it ... "only if you have the right personnel for it on the field," he says. "When we ran it in camp it was amazing, the confusion all the misdirection caused. You could have defensive guys flowing in different directions. They were running all over the place." During a vacation in Alaska last summer, he talked to the winningest high school coach in the state, whose team ran out of multiple-wing formations. "He told me the biggest key was to tell a defense that had to face it -- 'Don't move.'" He says he couldn't take it farther in Pittsburgh because he didn't have a real say in personnel, and to make it work you had to have the right kind of players. But in Buffalo? Who knows what could be on the horizon? "I was watching our wideout, Bobby Shaw, throwing the ball in practice the other day, just goofing around," Mularkey says. "I asked him, 'You ever play quarterback?' He said, 'Why?' I told him, 'Just curious.' We drafted a wideout in the seventh round who's an ex-quarterback. Jonathan Smith. Who knows. Whether or not he makes the team may depend on how well he throws the ball."