It's the most optimistic time of the year.
Hope abounds throughout the American sports world about this time each summer, as National Football League training camps open and baseball's trading season ends.
Recent history fuels that outlook in NFL cities, where the memory of the Carolina Panthers going from 1-15 to within three points of a Super Bowl win in two scant seasons burns brightly.
The whirlwind of transactions leading up to baseball's Saturday deadline proved how many franchises believe, or have deluded themselves into believing, that they can be this year's Florida Marlins, coming from nowhere to win it all.
In the football world, front offices and fans don't even need blockbuster deals or huge free-agent signings to feed their faith.
Exhibit A: The Buffalo Bills.
The hometown team enjoyed one of its quietest offseasons since the salary-cap era began. Buffalo's biggest free-agent pickups involved swapping a very good cornerback for an older very good cornerback and a 30-something guard with a string of Pro Bowl appearances for a 30-something guard with none.
Whether Troy Vincent can make plays at 33 that Antoine Winfield couldn't at 27, or Chris Villarrial blocks better than Ruben Brown are debatable points, but neither represent the Bills' biggest moves.
Those came on the sidelines, where President/General Manager Tom Donahoe replaced one bunch of guys he hired with a fresh batch.
Donahoe clearly believes last year's crashing disappointment of a 6-10 season can be blamed squarely on former head coach Gregg Williams and his offensive coaching staff, all of whom were told to seek employment elsewhere.
With Mike Mularkey taking over for Williams, Tom Clements replacing the reviled Kevin Gilbride as offensive coordinator and offensive guru Sam Wyche trying to coax the past out of Drew Bledsoe, Donahoe needs this batch of hires to turn out better than the last in order to justify the biggest roster transactions of his tenure.
So far, the Draft Day 2002 deal that brought Bledsoe has yielded roughly equal portions of terrific performances, so-so outings and outright stinkers. Last year's big move, taking a flier on running back Willis McGahee, left Williams dangling without a usable first-round pick in the last year of his contract.
Then there's the myth of Buffalo's defense. The Bills were better on that side of the ball, which isn't saying a whole lot, but their status as the No. 2 overall defense in the NFL's rankings shows just how meaningless those statistics can be.
With the offense sputtering when not completely stalled for the last three months of the season, opponents rarely needed to take any chances against Buffalo's defense. Inevitably, Gilbride's unit would find a way to set the enemy up in prime field position for the decisive points.
In games where the Bills could have won with defense, like the come-from-ahead home loss against Indianapolis or the blunderfest in Tennessee, that defensive ranking meant nothing.
So Buffalo enters 2004 operating under the theory that the same basic lineup directed by the same defensive coordinator will produce better results. Even if Vincent's ballhawking and a pass rush beefed up by the signing of former Steeler Jason Gildon do produce more turnovers, though, it won't mean much without an even bigger offensive improvement.
That hope rests squarely with Bledsoe. Though Donahoe plucked his eventual replacement, J.P. Losman, with his second first-round pick, he used the first on wide receiver Lee Evans in an attempt to give Drew a second decent target after Eric Moulds. Last year, Moulds' nagging groin injury often left Bledsoe with Bobby Shaw and Josh Reed, neither of whom has proven himself anything more than a so-so third receiver, as his only downfield options.
It says a lot about Donahoe's confidence in Bledsoe, and in new offensive line coach Jim McNally, that he didn't bother picking up an insurance policy at quarterback.
Plenty of low-cost, high-experience passers have been available for months, but Buffalo enters camp with only the rookie Losman and career third-stringer Travis Brown behind Bledsoe.
Translation: If anything happens to Drew, see you in '05.
There are nearly six weeks for the Bills Nation to mull the wisdom of that decision and the rest of Donahoe's moves and non-moves before the Jacksonville Jaguars visit on Sept. 12. The turnaround time on last weekend's flurry of baseball trades is much shorter.
For some, the honeymoon ended on the day it began. The New York Mets, convinced that their under-.500 record through four months was a harbinger of great things to come in the next three, grabbed young veteran starters Kris Benson from Pittsburgh and Victor Zambrano from Tampa.
Facing perennial division rival Atlanta on Saturday, the Mets wasted no time sending Benson, who had been acquired the day before, to the mound.
He wasn't there all that long, getting pounded for seven runs in five innings as the Braves rolled to an 8-0 win.
The Mets justified their deals by saying they want to sign Benson and Zambrano to extended contracts, not just rent them for a playoff bid that already looks to be in vain.
For most of the deadline-frenzy participants, though, the future is now.
Nowhere is that more clear than in Boston, where an inability to catch the ball was negating some very good hitting and throwing. The Red Sox gave up Nomar Garciaparra in a four-way deal that netted Minnesota first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz and Montreal shortstop Orlando Cabrera, a pair of Gold Glovers who can immediately be penciled into the No. 8 and 9 spots in Boston's lineup.
Showing how useful the rumor reports that abound on various sports Web sites really are, ESPN.com assured readers on Saturday that "the Sox are unlikely to deal Nomar Garciaparra or undergo a major upheaval," a bit of insider info that remained on the site 24 hours after he was shipped to the Chicago Cubs.
Amid all the activity came this reassuring revelation: George Steinbrenner can't always get what he wants, after all.
The Boss' farm system simply didn't hold enough baubles to pry Randy Johnson away from Arizona, so the Pinstripes had to swap the inconsistent Jose Contreras for the slightly steadier Esteban Loiza.
Even if that does prove an upgrade, it leaves the Yankees relying on a rotation of the fresh-off-the-disabled-list Kevin Brown, the fresh-off-arm-surgery Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez and the eminently hittable Jon Lieber behind Loiza and nominal ace Javier Vasquez.
Given New York's 8.5-game lead on Boston at press time and tremendous lineup, another pinstriped division title looks like a lock. Unless Mike Mussina returns from the DL in prime form, the Yankees will be without a dominant starter in October, when they need several.
And that gives everybody else reason to hope.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Aug. 3 2004 |