Remember all the forecasts of gloom and doom for NFL teams after the lockout. Funny how virtually none of it happened.
Rookies weren’t clueless, injuries didn’t spike, and coaching staffs adjusted everywhere except Philadelphia and Indianapolis.
Play was sloppy for a while _ that lasted through much of the season for some of the league’s most inconsistent squads, including playoff contenders in Dallas, New York, Oakland and Tennessee. But it also was one of the more exciting seasons, with frequent big rallies, tons of scoring (until December, at least) and plenty of headline makers.
Hall of Fame defensive back Ronnie Lott believes teams who succeeded in overcoming challenges from the lockout did so from Day 1.
“My observation is a lot of people didn’t pack their lunch pail,” Lott said. “What I mean by that is the teams that packed their lunch pail the first day they blew the whistle, the first thing they learned was fundamentals, the first thing they learned was making sure they could tackle well, making sure they could hit. Jim Harbaugh instituted that right away. The Steelers instituted that right away. The Ravens instituted that right away. The Packers will tell you they instituted that right away, because they were defending something.
“The Eagles, the one thing they didn’t institute … packing their lunch pails. It’s funny, the teams that have instituted packing their lunch pail and playing the game with fundamentals and doing it the right way, are the teams that are now where they’re at.”
Lott makes a particularly valid point concerning the Eagles, who were conceded to have “won” free agency with the signings of prizes such as Nnamdi Asomugha, Jason Babin, Cullen Jenkins, Ronnie Brown, Vince Young and Steve Smith. Yet from almost the beginning, it fell apart.
Super Bowl-winning coach Tony Dungy wonders why the upheaval was damaging in Philly and not in other places.
“My original theory was that teams that stayed pat would be much better,” said Dungy, now an analyst on NBC’s “Football Night in America.” “I thought Philadelphia would have some trouble with that many new parts, but look at Carolina, and they had to add players at the most critical position and they did much better than they did last year.
“I don’t know if we can blame Philly’s woes on the lockout.”
Still, not having a full offseason to incorporate those players and their distinct talents had to set back the Eagles some. Michael Vick admitted that recently, saying, “I think we are well put together and well fit. We’re playing together and that’s what it’s all about. But it takes time to build that chemistry, build that unity, that togetherness.”
Indianapolis always seemed to have that chemistry when Peyton Manning was behind center. With Manning’s neck surgeries sidelining him early on, and eventually for the entire season, the Colts never found their way. In fact, they fell into such a funk that none of their stars or coaches or executives was able to lead them out of it, an indictment of everyone in the organization.
“Well, we’re (the front office) certainly to blame if you don’t have quality players at every position and you come up a little short,” Colts President Bill Polian said in October in a radio appearance following a 62-7 loss at New Orleans. “As (coach) Jim Caldwell said after the (Saints) game, everybody deserves blame. We could be deeper at defensive tackle and cornerback. We’ve been bothered by injuries at defensive tackle, but the bottom line is you have to be better. There are other things we are not doing fundamentally, as I just said, that we have to get cleaned up.
“So you have to find a way to play with the guys who are out there. Should we have done a better job? You bet. But we have to make sure we do a better job going forward.”
Beyond those two cases, the lockout pretty much was a big yawn when it comes to impacting the season.
Rookie quarterbacks and first-year coaches were supposed to struggle. So Carolina’s Cam Newton tears up all kinds of rookie passing records and Cincinnati’s Andy Dalton has his team on the verge of making the playoffs. Rookies played key roles throughout the league.
Jim Harbaugh took the 49ers from perennial also-ran to NFC West champion and, with a win Sunday at St. Louis, San Francisco gets a first-round bye. Ron Rivera has overseen a promising retooling in Carolina.
John Fox moved from the Panthers to the Broncos, then found through a month or so of the schedule that everything wasn’t working. Perhaps if he’d had the entire offseason, he would have found his way to turning the offense over to Tim Tebow then. That he did it in October _ and that the Broncos will win the AFC West by beating Kansas City on Sunday _ was not affected by the lockout.
`The lockout did not impact the teams with new coaching staffs as much as I thought,” Dungy said. “It probably impacted most teams the same. San Francisco is a good example.
“Rookies, they didn’t struggle, but the offensive rookies were ahead of the defensive rookies in terms of impact.”
That makes sense because offenses were far more successful for most of the season than the defenses, a function as much of rules changes and philosophy. That’s the way the NFL has been trending anyway _ though Dungy points out that quarterbacks throwing to receivers in informal workouts during the lockout could have contributed somewhat. We didn’t see nose tackles and linebackers sharing the same high school fields too often from March through mid-July while the league and players negotiated.
As for more players than ever going down with injuries, there’s no evidence the lockout caused anything close to that.
“I never worried about injuries, I thought guys would run and keep themselves in condition,” Dungy said. “They all have access to personal trainers, train all year round.”
One change in the rules in the new CBA, which limited the number of practices in pads and cut out two-a-day hitting sessions during training camp, was designed to limit wear and tear. Again, its effect has been minimal.
“Football is football,” Jets safety Brodney Pool said. “Things don’t really change from college to the NFL. For the most part, there’s only so much you can do, only so many routes you can run, only so many ways you block something up and only so many ways you can play defense. So missing that time didn’t have as much of an effect as people might think.”
Yes, as we head to the playoffs, unless the subjects are the Eagles or Colts, don’t blame or credit the lockout for much of anything in NFL 2011.
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AP Sports Writers Dennis Waszak Jr., in Florham Park, N.J., Janie McCauley in San Francisco, and Michael Marot in Indianapolis contributed to this story.
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