Power of Caring
  presented by CIGNA

A quest for answers

NFL teams kick off camps with questions aplenty

Click here for more on this story

Posted: Monday July 26, 1999 05:49 PM

It's Bubby time: Bubby Brister will take over at quarterback for the two-time defending Super Bowl champs. Brian Bahr/Allsport

By John Donovan, CNN/SI

ATLANTA -- When last we left the NFL -- before the draft, before Lawrence Phillips became Jim Brown reincarnate, before practically every quarterback in the league up and swapped uniforms -- the Denver Broncos were newly anointed champs and John Elway was King of the League.

Well, you know ... things change. And that's what training camps are for -- to straighten out all the offseason messes.

Sweating and groan

The NFL begins its annual summer sweat-and-groan period a bit later than normal this season, which means the season will wrap up a bit later, too. The regular season now won't end until the first weekend of the new millennium, thankfully eating away that extra week between the conference championships and the Super Bowl.

It all starts, though, with training camps, and the new Cleveland Browns. They started things rolling by getting into their camp in Berea, Ohio, on July 21. The other 30 teams are following quickly enough, all of them looking for the one tangible no one has: answers.

There will be the perennial holdout stories this summer -- nearly two-thirds of the 31 first-round picks were unsigned as of July 26 -- the quarterback controversies, the fat guys trying to get back into shape.

But there are also some new wrinkles -- none newer than the ones in Cleveland.

Are the Browns really back?

More than three years after the old Browns moved to Baltimore after the 1995 season and became the Ravens, the new Browns begin play in a brand new stadium on Lake Erie with a brand new organization behind them -- though that front office consists primarily of some ex-San Francisco 49ers executives. The new Browns will be following a first-time head coach, too, in Chris Palmer.

"Our main concern in this camp is to develop the chemistry, to come together as a team," Palmer said. "We don't have a team, per se, right now. We have simply a bunch of individuals."

New coaches in town

Nine teams have new coaches this season, and it's in training camp where the new guys first can start to assert their will. Six of those nine teams picked rookie head coaches, all part of one of the biggest offseason coaching purges in the history of the league.

Still, no coaches may be under more scrutiny this season than the ones in Seattle (where Mike Holmgren, who won a Super Bowl with the Green Bay Packers, assumes control of the Seahawks) and Carolina (where George Seifert, who won two Super Bowls with the 49ers, tries to whip the Panthers into shape).

"I hope it doesn't work out this way, but if I were to be a miserable failure here, you still can't take that period of time away [with the 49ers]," Seifert told The Charlotte Observer. "It was still done. And I'll still always have a certain amount of respect for myself for having accomplished what I did."

Players under the scope

Players are subject to the sky-high expectations of summer, too. Just ask a pair of quarterbacks, one a rookie and one an old-timer, both trying to prove something.

Tim Couch, the slinging Kentucky quarterback who was the Browns' No. 1 pick in the NFL Draft, may or may not be the starter come the Browns' opener, which comes against the Pittsburgh Steelers in Cleveland on the night of Sept. 12. He certainly already carries much of the team's hopes for the future.

"I just want to be ready when the season starts, whether I'm the starting quarterback or the backup," Couch said. "To help my team out, I have to be ready to go from Day 1."

The other QB under the microscope is Denver veteran Bubby Brister, who ascends to Elway's throne with a clear mandate -- to win a third straight Super Bowl, something no team ever has done.

The soon-to-be 37-year-old Brister is entering his 13th season in the league and has a fairly pedestrian 74.8 quarterback rating. He enters camp as the starter for only the fifth time in his career.

Still, with incomparable running back Terrell Davis in top form, the Broncos may well be there at the end of the season.

"It's going to be tough," Brister told The Rocky Mountain News. "But I wouldn't want anybody else to take over for John."

The questions, we've got. The answers ... well, that's what these camps will start to tell us.

 

Related information
Multimedia
Click here for the latest audio and video
Search our site	Watch CNN/SI 24 hours a day
	Sports Illustrated and CNN have combined to form a 24 hour sports news and information channel. To receive CNN/SI at your home call your cable operator or DirecTV.