Five Quick Hits
* The Jaguars are getting a lot of hype right now, but don't buy into it too heavily. The team could do well, but it's not going to the Super Bowl.
* I'm beginning to question Sean Taylor's desire to play professional football. The Washington first-round pick (fifth overall) left the NFL's mandatory rookie symposium -- for which the league fined him $25,000 -- and was the last first-round draft pick to choose an agent. Demitrius Underwood he probably isn't, but does it sound like Taylor is real committed to being in the NFL?
* I like the Antowain Smith signing in Tennessee. Smith reportedly signed for the minimum, which is a small risk to take on a veteran who plays his best when the stakes are highest.
* Looking for a team on the rebound? Pittsburgh has a shot at the AFC North title.
* If you scramble to SI.com, you can probably still find their excellent series on announcers in sports. It's worth your time.
The biggest news in the NFL this week (prior to Ricky Williams' retirement, after this column was written - ed) was Eddie George's release from the Tennessee Titans, with whom he had spent his whole career (including one season when the team was the Houston Oilers), and his subsequent signing with the Dallas Cowboys.
The four-time Pro Bowler has slowed noticeably since his career-best 2000 season, logging the three lowest yardage totals of his eight-year career, a miserable 3.2 average per carry, and a respectable but not overwhelming 24 total TDs (22 rushing, 2 receiving). Nonetheless, the Titans will miss his leadership, and he can probably help Dallas.
The nature of that help may be different than George expects, though. His diminishing effectiveness and advancing age mean George probably can't be an every-down back for a team that expects to be a playoff contender. At this point in his career, I see George as sort of a late-career Marcus Allen, and I suspect the Cowboys do, too.
Allen's career got a sort of second wind when he signed with the Chiefs before the 1993 season. Used primarily in short-yardage situations, Allen ran for 3,698 yards and 44 TDs in five seasons. Allen made his career in the early '80s, rivaling Eric Dickerson and Walter Payton as the most dominant running back of the era, but it probably was his renaissance in Kansas City which cemented Allen's place in the Hall of Fame.
The comparison to Allen, however, also raises questions about how useful George can be. At 31-years-old, and with 2,733 carries under his belt, the former Ohio State star probably can't take too many more years as his team's primary ball-carrier, so Cowboys coach Bill Parcells is likely to use George situationally, pulling him out on third-and-long and even occasional first- and second-downs. The problem with putting George in Allen's old role is that Allen was supremely good at the things George is worst at: scoring and receiving.
Eddie George is a workhorse. But he's football equivalent of an innings-eater, and Allen was a star. Allen always found an extra something when he was near the goal-line or, to a lesser extent, the first-down marker. George, in contrast, seems to struggle in the same situation. Of the 20 players with the most rushing yardage in NFL history, only Jerome Bettis has scored fewer touchdowns than George, and only O.J. Simpson has fewer rushing TDs. In his eight seasons in the NFL, George has ranked in the NFL's top five in rushing TDs only once; Allen did so nine times.
That's not exactly a glowing recommendation for making George a goal-line specialist, especially considering that his Titans scored a lot of touchdowns: Tennessee has ranked in the top-half of the league in scoring every year of George's career. Last season, when Tennessee scored 41 TDs on offense, George accounted for only five of them. Put Corey Dillon on a team that actually got near the endzone once in a while and he would have scored just as often as the larger (6-3, 235) George.
In 2000, when George scored 14 rushing TDs on 403 carries, with 1,509 yards and a 3.7 average, Tennessee scored nearly twice as many points (346) as Dillon's Bengals (185). Dillon scored only seven rushing TDs that season, but his 1,435 yards and 4.6 rushing average imply that he was a more effective runner than George, just in a worse situation.
Given George's size and power, people expect him to be a powerful goal-line runner; it's kind of assumed that he's a good guy for third-and-short. But touchdown-scorers come in all shapes and sizes. Allen was 6-2, but only 210 pounds. Earl Campbell, at only 5-11, was a beefy 232. Emmitt Smith weighs just over 200. Size is no guarantee of success. 260-pound Craig Heyward averaged less than three rushing TDs per year. Bettis, big enough at 252 pounds to be nicknamed "The Bus," isn't much of a scorer. The point is this: for whatever reason, Eddie George is only a decent goal-line runner.
Expecting George to become Marcus Allen clearly isn't fair, but it also puts George's new situation in context. Eddie George is not going to be an automatic six any time you have first-and-goal, and he definitely isn't Emmitt Smith in the '90s. Can Dallas make the playoffs -- or maybe even win the Super Bowl -- with George as its leading rusher? Absolutely. But only if all the other pieces are there. George is a role player now, not the driving force on offense as he was in Tennessee in 1999 and 2000.
The slow nature of this offseason, combined with his past accomplishments, has made the George signing big news right now, but we should all try to avoid blowing its significance out of proportion. A new start in Dallas could be the beginning of an Allen-like rebirth, but it's much more likely that George's new career as a Cowboy will mirror O.J. Anderson's switch from the Cardinals to the Giants ... only without the Super Bowl ring.
In fact, the best comparison might even be Emmitt Smith's signing with those same Cardinals, from the Cowboys: an aging star struggling for one last gasp of greatness.
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