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New Orleans: Still tough to tackle Ricky
Posted: Friday August 06, 1999 11:25 PM
This is the seventh in a series of postcards Sports Illustrated's Peter King will e-mail from his annual NFL training-camp tour. Thursday-Friday, Aug. 5-6 TEAM: New Orleans Saints SITE: The Chiefs' training site, the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, a smallish campus just over the Mississippi River from the Twin Cities, where the Saints were scrimmaging against Kansas City. But this is a two-part trip. The Saints train at UW-La Crosse, a Mississippi River city halfway between Platteville -- where I saw the Bears Thursday -- and River Falls, where I went to see the Saints and Chiefs work together Friday. And so, two hours into my trip -- after winding through Rolling Ground, Wis., and having a latte in Westby (the guy had just opened his shop, and the townies don't know how to pronounce "latte'' yet) and loving the street banners in Boscobel ("Wisconsin's Turkey-Hunting Capital'') -- I stopped in at the Saints' camp as the players were preparing to bus to River Falls. I talked with GM Bill Kuharich for 45 minutes, and then it was off to Red Wing, Minn., for the night, on one of the prettiest drives in the United States. Try it sometime -- Highway 61 hugging the west bank of the Mississippi while the sun sets. That's 85 miles of majesty. PLAYER I SAW WHOM I REALLY LIKED: Cornerback Ashley Ambrose , the former Bengal and free agent signee, blanketed his assigned Chiefs receivers in the morning work between the teams. He gives the Saints a terrific third corner (along with Tyronne Drakeford and Alex Molden) who should be in the starting lineup -- because of ability, not attrition -- by October. THE FOOD : Nice dinner with Saints' salary-cap consultant Terry O'Neil . Fried chicken, green beans, dijon-glazed new potatoes -- clearly the highlight of the meal -- and Arizona Iced Tea. Nursed a quart of La Crosse Premium Water for dessert. Dear NFL Junkie: I really wanted to see Ricky Williams run, and watching him in this setting was valuable because it's the first time he's had contact with some unfriendlies. And make no mistake about it -- this was unfriendly. Four different fights broke out in a two hours of morning drills. Williams? He had no part in them. But he ran the ball seven times during team drills, finding holes three times and bursting through them. If full tackling had been allowed instead of just hard contact, he'd have broken one or two. On one play, Williams stutter-stepped hard between guard and tackle, and ripped past a grasping Chester McGlockton . Later, coach Mike Ditka , through the sweat pouring off his face on this 86-degree morning in western Wisconsin, said he liked what he saw. Who wouldn't have? "If this was a real deal out here today, with real tackling, they would have had trouble bringing Ricky down, I'll tell you that,'' Ditka said. Somebody asked Ditka what he thought of Williams so far, after nearly two weeks in camp. "He catches the ball better than people gave him credit for,'' Ditka said. "I don't know where that all started, the stuff about him not being able to catch the ball. Plus, he's got great endurance.'' He'll have to, with the load he'll bear with this offense. Check back soon for more Postcards from Camp. To send a question to Peter King's King's NFL Mailbag, click here.
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