No Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect

After the boys from Georgia beat Georgia’s boys, 8-5, in a football game that went 56 minutes 46 seconds before anybody figured out how to score a touchdown, quarterback Tommy Maddox of the Rams laid all the blame on one person--himself. For what? For not scoring a touchdown.

“I didn’t play well. . . . I didn’t make the plays when I had to. . . . It’s a tough situation, but one I should have handled. . . . I’ve been looking forward to this opportunity for so long, and then I don’t get the job done. . . . I expect more of myself. . . . We shot ourselves in the foot. No, I shot ourselves in the foot,” Maddox said, masochistically.

He blamed himself for an interception with 1:37 remaining that gave Atlanta the game. He blamed himself for messing up a snap count. Maddox blamed himself, even though he had scarcely taken a snap in practice. He blamed himself, even though the regular Ram snapper, center Bern Brostek, was out of commission with sprains of both ankles.

And did his coach, Chuck Knox, absolve Maddox of any blame?

He did not.

He didn’t say one kind word about him.

He didn’t compliment Maddox for going out there on a moment’s notice, as a replacement for the racked-up Chris Chandler, and for doing the best he could under the circumstances.

No, instead what Knox said was, in language worthy of Casey Stengel, “He played about like you would think somebody would play who hasn’t played.”

Well. Thanks for nothing.

Perhaps if the coach had better prepared his second-string quarterback for Sunday’s game, that player would have played better than you would think somebody would play who hadn’t played. You know?

Falcons 8, Rams 5 was somebody’s fault, but not Tommy Maddox’s. He was ill with flu Wednesday and didn’t practice. He stood around Thursday and Friday and watched Chandler take every snap. He stood around watching Chris Miller take snaps for the scout team, the offense that masqueraded as Atlanta’s. He twiddled his thumbs at Saturday’s walk-through practice, even though coaches had finally gotten around to telling him that Miller wouldn’t be fit to play.

Excuse me, but don’t coaches prepare a No. 2 quarterback for NFL games anymore?

“One-dimensional,” Knox knocked the Ram offense after Sunday’s loss, because the backup quarterback “hadn’t played with this offense this year.”

Yeah.

Not even in practice.

Maddox has been with the Rams since Aug. 27. He has played in 29 NFL games since leaving UCLA, 25 of them in relief of John Elway, so he knows how to prepare himself to enter a football game. But, see, the Denver Broncos had this funny habit of letting their backup quarterback work with the offense during practice. Pretty radical.

So here was Maddox, laboring without benefit of adequate preparation or warning, running out onto the field fixing to hand off to Jerome Bettis as often as possible, only to discover Bettis in pain from a bruised hip. And at center he found Blair Bush, who ordinarily snapped only on kicks.

“It’s tough coming off the bench at any time, but still we moved the ball,” Maddox said. “We got down in position once and had a chance to score and ended up with a field goal. Then we got in position to get another field goal, but we killed ourselves with penalties. And then I threw the interception.

“Every play told something new. I never got in a rhythm. I hit a couple passes in a row and kind of started moving the ball a little. But, like I said, we didn’t put any points on the board when we had a chance to. And I’m to blame.”

Like heck.

As Bettis said of the Falcons: “They came downfield more to stop the run because they knew Tommy was in there and hadn’t had a lot of practice experience.” Or as teammate Troy Drayton said: “Tommy just didn’t have enough reps (repetitions; i.e., practice snaps) to come in and be as effective as we wanted him to be. He played well under the circumstances.”

There. Was that so hard to say?

Somebody has to quarterback this team next year, next month, next season. The Rams don’t act as though that person will be Maddox, already having granted him a contract loophole that will make him available to the highest bidder after this season.

It was awfully thoughtful of the Rams to make a trade that brought Maddox to their team. One of these weeks, they might even let him practice with them.