Hit Made a Hometown Impact

It seems everyone is talking about the way Tampa Bay’s Warren Sapp blindsided Green Bay’s Chad Clifton, a hit that ended Clifton’s season. I wanted to speak to the parents of the Packer tackle to get their perspective. So I looked up the Cliftons, who live in Martin, Tenn., and gave them a call.

Mrs. Clifton answered, and I quickly introduced myself and explained the nature of my call. I told her I understood it was a sensitive subject and I promised not to take up too much of her time. She thanked me for that and in a motherly tone agreed to talk for a few minutes. Our conversation went something like this:

“When the hit comes on TV, can you watch?” I asked.

“I couldn’t at first,” she said. “But I can now.”

“Have you forgiven Warren Sapp?”

“That was hard,” she said. “I was very angry about it. But I’ve found it in my heart to forgive him.”

“Mrs. Clifton, according to the Green Bay media guide, Chad played in a charity softball game for a paralyzed boy. Do you remember that?”

“I don’t remember that game. He’s done a lot for charities in this area, but I don’t know if that’s accurate.”

I didn’t want to bother her any longer. I thanked her for her time, told her I’d keep Chad in my thoughts, and told her how much I appreciated her discussing her son with me.

“Oh, I’m not Chad’s mother,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” I said, embarrassed. “You’re his grandmother?”

“No. I don’t know Chad. We have the same last name, and we both live in Martin, but there’s no relation.”

Just goes to show you, everyone has an opinion on that hit.

*

I finally got ahold of Clifton’s father, Harold -- his real father -- and he told me the whole family has been distraught about the situation.

“It’s terrible, just terrible,” Harold said.

Chad is still using a walker to get around, and doctors are considering implanting a metal plate to stabilize his pelvis. Although he experienced some numbness in his extremities immediately after the collision, he has regained feeling in those areas. Doctors told Clifton his spine moved fractionally to the left, but nothing was cracked and everything should work itself back into alignment. He plans to keep playing football, too, even though the Packers put him on injured reserve this week, meaning his season’s over.

As for lingering bitterness, his dad said Chad doesn’t have any.

“Chad’s such a good kid, he wouldn’t say anything bad about Sapp,” said Harold, who confirmed his son did, indeed, play in that charity softball game.

Harold and his son, Greg, are still angry at Sapp -- who hasn’t tried to contact Chad or his family -- and the league, which did not penalize or fine the Tampa Bay star.

“I’m not going to call him, [but] I’ve thought about it several times,” Harold said of Sapp, who maintains a Web site, www.qbkilla.com. “I started to get on the Internet to speak my mind about it. Chad’s so low-key, he probably wouldn’t want me to say anything to him.”

Hey, if that other Clifton lady can forgive him ...

*

Players talk about keeping their head on a swivel when they’re around Sapp. They must be talking about his locker-room routine. After every game, he packs his lower lip with Copenhagen, lays a white towel at his feet, and uses it as a makeshift spittoon.

Sort of the red-carpet treatment in reverse.

Around the League

AFC EAST -- Buffalo quarterback Drew Bledsoe has lots of good memories of his years playing for New England. Old Foxboro Stadium isn’t one of them. “I wanted to be the one to push the button to blow that place up,” Bledsoe said this week as he prepared for his first game at New England as a Bill. “That place was horrible. It rained in the training room. If I came out after the game and spent too much time with the media, then I had to take a cold shower. The rooms were small. The weight room was terrible. The locker room was horrible. The whole place was bad. The only thing that was good about the old Foxboro Stadium was that on Sunday, when you were on the field, the fans were really close to you. That was cool. The rest of it absolutely [stunk].”

AFC NORTH -- The Browns are 2-4 at home this season, and those victories came against Cincinnati and Houston. Quarterback Tim Couch hasn’t been the same since an Oct. 6 loss to Baltimore, when the home crowd booed him and “cheered” when he went out with a concussion and was replaced by Kelly Holcomb. In his four years as a pro, Couch is 6-15 when playing at Cleveland. This season he’s 1-3 at home and is coming off a loss to Carolina in which he lost a fumble and three of his passes were intercepted. Before that game, Fox analyst Jimmy Johnson said Couch was too inconsistent to be the Browns’ quarterback of the future. That didn’t sit well with Cleveland Coach Butch Davis, even though he and Johnson are friends from their days coaching the Miami Hurricanes. “I really don’t care what Jimmy Johnson thinks,” Davis said after being apprised of the Couch comments. “He’s an announcer. Unless he’s the head coach of the Cleveland Browns, I don’t care.”

AFC SOUTH -- Tony Dungy has done a remarkable job turning around a once-dismal defense in Indianapolis. The Colts, who were 29th in total defense and last in points allowed in 2001, are now second in yards allowed per game and third in scoring defense. They get stronger as the game goes on and have outscored opponents, 105-42, in the final quarter. The defense Dungy built in Tampa Bay is the league’s best. Dungy is a perfectionist, so he’s not satisfied with the current ranking. “I was a little bit surprised that we were ranked No. 2 because on my notepad I have a lot of scratches in there,” he said this week. “We’re still, I think, a work in progress. But we’re playing better.”

In Tennessee’s last two games, Eddie George has been on the sideline for the offense’s final drive. What gives? It seems the Titans think Robert Holcombe hits the holes quicker as the game wears on. “As a competitor, you want to be out there battling,” George said. “You make mistakes and I wanted to fight through it. [Coach Jeff Fisher] says I’m his running back. We’ll see. We’ll see if I get the carries. That’s all I can say.”

AFC WEST -- Oakland quarterback Rich Gannon really rattled the Denver defense last month when he repeatedly audibled at the line of scrimmage and seemed to be reading the Broncos’ minds. “I see a lot of teams doing what Gannon did, checking off at the line, having quarterback audibles,” linebacker John Mobley told the Denver Post. “Usually, teams just line up and call the play that they had called.”

The Broncos have been penalized 32 times during their current 1-3 slide. “Somewhere along the way I really feel we’ve lost discipline,” receiver Rod Smith told the Rocky Mountain News. “I don’t know where or when it started ... but it’s got to leave if we want to get where we want to go.”

The Chargers play host to the Raiders on Sunday, and the San Diego players have to like their odds. Coach Marty Schottenheimer’s teams are 20-5 against the Raiders, and when he was with Kansas City there was a stretch when he absolutely owned them. Schottenheimer preached to his players to hang with the Raiders for a while, then watch them crumble under the weight of their own mistakes -- usually turnovers. Gannon does a good job of protecting the ball, though, and is great at keeping his teammates focused.

NFC EAST -- The Giants surrendered 476 yards to Tennessee last Sunday, the highest yardage total given up by New York since 1988. Things are heading in the opposite direction for the Eagles, whose defense has improved dramatically since it was unable to protect a big lead against the Titans in the opener. The 9-3 Eagles, off to their best 12-game start since 1981, have made up for all their quarterback injuries with outstanding defense. In their last three games -- victories over the Cardinals, 49ers and Rams -- the Eagles have yielded only four offensive touchdowns.

NFC NORTH -- It’s hard to overstate Brett Favre’s value to the Packers. Begin with this: Favre has 112 victories, by far the most among active quarterbacks. Vinny Testaverde is second with 80; Gannon and Bledsoe are way back in third with 69 each. Favre also has a 66.3 winning percentage, best in the league among regular starters who have had their job longer than a season. The mercury is dropping in Green Bay, and that’s not good news for the visiting Vikings. Favre is 33-0 at Lambeau Field when the temperature at kickoff is 34 degrees or colder.

Looks like Mike Alstott can have his A-Train nickname back. The erstwhile A-Train, Chicago’s Anthony Thomas, had an all-too-human second season after a marvelous rookie year. A season after he was chosen NFL offensive rookie of the year, Thomas rushed for 721 yards at a meager 3.4 yards a pop, which ties him for the league’s worst per-carry average among backs with 600 yards or more. Thomas, whose season is over because of a broken finger, started 12 games this fall but was losing playing time to veteran Leon Johnson.

NFC SOUTH -- Tampa Bay has Coach Chucky but Atlanta has Freddy Krueger. That’s what Buccaneer Coach Jon Gruden calls Falcon quarterback Michael Vick, who strikes fear in the heart of any opposing defensive coordinator. “This guy is a revolutionary man,” said Gruden, whose team will face Vick on Sunday. “I used to think Steve Young revolutionized the system of football that I always study with his unique scrambling ability. I hate to tell Steve Young this, but this guy is ... a lot faster. There’s not a guy like him that I’ve seen.”

Atlanta has 14 sacks in the past two games, as many as the Falcons had in their first seven games. They have 25 in their last five games, more than half of those by defensive linemen. Then again, these guys watch Vick in practice every day, so it must make it look as if every other quarterback is trudging along in slow motion.

Besides the Dolphins, the team pulling hardest for Ricky Williams is the Saints. Williams needs 216 yards to reach 1,500, which, by terms of the trade between the teams, would give New Orleans another first-round pick in the 2003 draft.

NFC WEST -- Two years have passed since San Francisco receiver Terrell Owens scored a touchdown against the Cowboys, dashed to midfield and did a dance on the Texas Stadium star. To some Dallas players, the indignity feels like it happened yesterday. “It was uncalled for,” said Cowboy defensive end Greg Ellis, whose team will play host to the 49ers on Sunday. “I don’t care what the situation is. You should not go out and do that to anyone. We want to make sure it doesn’t happen again, point blank.”

Or, in the case of the signature-happy Owens, ballpoint blank.