Miami Dolphins: Ricky Williams and Ronnie Brown

Miami Dolphins: Dan Reeves on life after Ricky Williams and Ronnie Brown

Before the Miami Dolphins let Ronnie Brown and/or Ricky Williams leave via free agency, they might want to heed the words of former NFL head coach Dan Reeves.

When I asked Reeves what he thought of the chances new Dolphins offensive coordinator Brian Daboll might be able to re-energize the Miami version of the Wildcat — the Browns got plenty of mileage out of Josh Cribbs in that set the past two years — Reeves made it clear it’s about the players, not the scheme.

“They’ve got an exciting guy running the Wildcat,” said Reeves, coaching the East team at this week’s East-West Shrine Game. “I don’t know if there’s anyone better than Ricky [Williams] or [Ronnie] Brown. They’re both studs. I did several games with them. They’re both outstanding football players. … If you’ve got those two guys as free agents, what are you going to do with those two guys?”

Reeves, who took four teams to the Super Bowl and turned 67 on Wednesday, cautioned that Daboll as a young coordinator must be careful not to try to fit square pegs into round holes. Flexibility was one of Daboll’s buzzwords this week at his formal rollout as Dan Henning’s successor.

“It’s the coach’s ability to use the talent he has,” Reeves said. “Whether it’s the Wildcat or no huddle, whatever. You can’t force a system on players. You’ve got to have the abilty to use what the players do best. I think that’s what he did. He took what he had in Cleveland and said, ‘This is what’s best for us.’ Everybody’s situation is different. You had a young quarterback [in Colt McCoy] this year most of the time, a rookie quarterback. So you got to do things different.”

Reeves, an NFL analyst for Sirius Radio, added he has never had the chance to sit down and talk with Daboll, currently the league’s second-youngest playcaller for the second straight year. Josh McDaniels, recently hired as the Rams’ offensive coordinator, is 34 and almost exactly a year younger than Daboll, 35.

McDaniels and Daboll are tight, by the way, from their championship-winning days on the Patriots staff.

Seattle recently fired Jeremy Bates, who was the league’s youngest OC last year at 34.

“I don’t know him,” Reeves said of Daboll. “I know the name. He’ll have to really utilize what he’s got. In watching the Dolphins, they’ve got some good talent. It’s always the quarterback position that is the key. That’s going to be again the key for them.”

That, and what to do with the rest of the offensive backfield.

As for putting in a new system during an offseason of labor uncertainty, Reeves agreed that could make things even tougher on Daboll.

“The lockout possibility is really difficult,” Reeves said. “But all you’ve got to do as a coach is prepare as if there isn’t going to be one. If there isn’t one, which we’re all hoping for, then you’re ready. So it’s not going to come as a surprise if there is a lockout. Then that’s a total ‘I don’t know.’ There haven’t been many of those, and nobody has any experience with it, so hopefully it won’t happen.”

News From: blogs.sun-sentinel.com

Propel Zac Brown Band

Crazy ideas propel Zac Brown Band

NASHVILLE — The five other guys in the Grammy-nominated Zac Brown Band have achieved a Zen-like state of trust in their eponymous leader — but it’s taken some time.

The guy has some off-the-wall plans, after all.

"The first couple times that Zac had a couple of crazy ideas," fiddler Jimmy De Martini said, "we were like, uh . . . "

"It’ll never work!" drummer Chris Fryar shouted.

"But it worked out," De Martini continued. "So now we’re like, ‘I bet that’s gonna work.’ "

"The crazier the idea, the more likely it is to be highly successful with this group of guys," Fryar said. "It’s amazing."

So far his surefire plan for world domination is right on schedule. Over the last three years Brown has suggested the band:

•Feed hundreds of fan club members at every show from a gargantuan, custom-built, tractor-trailer kitchen on wheels.

•Build and staff seven separate businesses that handle everything from publishing, film and music videos, T-shirts and a machine shop for a line of custom knives.

•Start its own record label.

•Retrofit a warehouse to hold it all.

Will Ward, a partner in the band’s management company, ROAR, LLC, calls Brown "an incredible visionary."

"He’s got this whole vision of greater things," Ward said. "And some of the ideas he comes up with I’ve found myself on occasion saying, ‘Wait a minute, I should’ve come up with that. That should’ve been our idea.’ Because he really gets it, and he understands. He really puts himself in the fans’ shoes and wants to make the experience for them something above and beyond going to the concert."

The power of Brown’s gift was on full display at a late December show at the Bridgestone Arena. A sellout crowd that overflowed into the obstructed view sections sang along to every song.

"Even the songs that haven’t even been released on a CD yet, so it’s pretty crazy," Fryar said.

The experience remains a little dizzying. "It’s a surreal thing to walk out on stage now," Fryar said. "What was it — two years, two and a half years ago? — we were just starting to promote Chicken Fried and we’d go and play these bars and there’d be maybe a hundred people in there. They didn’t know who we were."

The band was in a jovial mood after taking its first extended break since the 2008 release of their debut album, The Foundation, and many jokes were cracked. They had interviews and planning meetings all day and dinner with 200 fans, and gathered friends to play four solid hours of music that included a surprise drop-in by Alan Jackson — bearing the gift of a white convertible Cadillac — who sang a duet with Brown. The tune they performed, As She’s Walking Away, was the first No. 1 hit from You Get What You Give. Like the band’s first album, which produced four No. 1 songs on Billboard’s country chart, the album is a hit.

The ultimate idea is to have 10 food trucks on site so every fan can experience Rusty Hamlin’s Southern-flavoured creations, a roster of radio hits from all points on the dial — not just country frequencies — and a live-show experience more diverse than anything currently offered.

"We want people to go to other concerts and feel like they got robbed," Brown said.

It was a night few country music acts can top and a symbolic moment for a band that was turned down flat by the Nashville labels. All of them.

So they took a very different route, eventually selling The Foundation to Atlantic Records in New York. Unexpected enthusiastic support from radio helped connect them with fans and the rest has been an uncommon success story, without compromise.

Zac Brown Band

Atlanta's Zac Brown Band to sing anthem at Falcons' game`

Thomas Dimitroff's knack for scouting and securing talent apparently does not end with football players.

It sounds as if the Falcons' general manager and music enthusiast had a hand in landing the Atlanta-based Zac Brown Band to perform the national anthem for Saturday's divisional playoff game against Green Bay.

The country group, which won a Grammy in 2010 for best new artist and was nominated last month for four more, got to know Dimitroff through a business contact. Band members sat in Dimitroff's box for the Falcons' victories over Baltimore and New Orleans.

"He was basically buttering us up the entire time to sing the national anthem," band member Clay Cook said. "He was just taking really, really good care of us. Maybe that's the way he is."

The band was glad to oblige. Band members' Falcons roots go back to the 1980s. Though they've been on tour, they've managed to watch almost all of their games this season. They plan on singing in their Falcons gear.

Said Cook, "We'll wear whatever they want us to wear, as long as it's not a Green Bay jersey."

Get there early

Falcons fans attending Saturday's game are encouraged to arrive early, and will have an incentive -- beyond, you know, making it on time -- to do so. The first 60,000 fans in the Georgia Dome will receive a Falcons Rise Up flag specially designed for the game.

Besides icy road conditions potentially causing delays, the Atlanta Boat Show is at the Georgia World Congress Center, and the Hawks have a 7 p.m. game at Philips Arena. Team and dome officials are suggesting that fans without prepaid parking passes take MARTA to the game. MARTA recommends buying a round-trip ticket before the game to avoid lines on the way home.

The team also is moving its Falcons Landing from International Plaza to the orange lot because of the weather. The orange lot is on Georgia Dome Drive.

Going with the Falcons

The Falcons' bandwagon picked up a notable endorsement this week -- former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In an interview with CNN, Rice -- a diehard football fan who once said her dream job was to be NFL commissioner -- was asked for her Super Bowl prediction.

"The good money at this point would have to say the New England Patriots, because they are so dominant, but I'm going to say Atlanta Falcons," Rice told CNN.

Other football experts are less confident. The Falcons' website has tracked writers' and commentators' weekly picks. Two of them -- ESPN's Mark Schlereth and Gregg Rosenthal of profootballtalk.com -- predicted 14 of the Falcons' 16 regular-season games accurately. They both take … the Packers.

Market watch

The average ticket price fell to $195 on Friday on the ticket re-sale website stubhub.com. It was $203 on Monday. The least expensive ticket on the site early Friday evening was $97. The cheapest tickets in the four sections closest to the 50-yard line in the lower bowl had a $345 price.

The team has warned fans buying tickets near the dome to be wary of counterfeit tickets.

In the stands

Packers fans figure to be plentiful in the stands. The team's national fan base is considerable, and tickets have been available on secondary markets.

"Most of the Packers fans I know are going," said Miles Cliatt, a Decatur resident who has a Facebook page for Green Bay fans in Atlanta.

Jerry Brown rolls the dice News Updates

Jerry Brown rolls the dice with pain-filled budget plan for California

Gov. Jerry Brown emphasizes a point to reporters at the state Capitol in Sacramento after he presented his budget plan, which includes billions in cuts. (Justin Sullivan, Getty Images / January 11, 2011)

Gov. Jerry Brown proposes deep cuts to nearly all state programs while betting that Californians would agree to extend a trio of recent tax hikes.
Reporting from Sacramento —
Gov. Jerry Brown took a major gamble in the budget plan he unveiled Monday, proposing deep cuts to nearly all state programs while betting that Californians would agree to extend a trio of recent tax hikes in a spirit of shared sacrifice.

Under what the governor characterized as an "honest" budget, taxpayers would be asked to dig deeper into their pockets — after the state's welfare program is cut in half, $1 billion is trimmed from its universities, and tens of thousands of elderly and disabled residents lose access to care at home.

Only elementary and secondary schools would be spared the knife, having already been wounded deeply, Brown reasoned. But he warned that unless the tax increases continue for five years, teachers and students might lose that protection.

"We've had 10 years of gimmicks and tricks," he said. "All of that puts us in a mess. It's not honest, and we are now going to make it transparent as possible…. It is better to take our medicine now and get the state on a balanced footing."

Brown put his plan on the table at a time when state government is hamstrung, short on cash and limited in its choices. Fellow Democrats and entrenched interests who for years have fought some of the same cuts and taxes seemed to acknowledge that if Brown fails, the consequences will be dire.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D- Sacramento), who bitterly resisted similar reductions proposed by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, exhibited a different outlook Monday.

"I hate the cuts, but I am not going to reject the cuts," he said.

Union members who fought similar cuts in recent years also seemed resigned.

"We're feeling a little better about this budget," said Barbara Blake, a registered nurse and state secretary of the United Nurses Assn. of California.

Brown still has a tough sell ahead: Republicans may not provide the votes needed to put the tax package on the ballot. Assembly minority leader Connie Conway (R-Tulare) objected that Brown's plan contains "the same tax increases that voters overwhelmingly rejected less than two years ago."

Voters declined then to renew the elevated taxes, which expire this year.

The 72-year-old governor, who first held the job 36 years ago, pitched his austerity plan as the way to halt the state's careening from one fiscal crisis to another. The linchpin of his proposal is a June special election on the tax issue.

He wants his proposed cuts enacted before then — a move that could give some comfort to voters who believe that Sacramento wastes too much of their money. Californians crushed Schwarzenegger's 2009 effort to prolong higher taxes by a vote of nearly 2 to 1.

To sweeten the deal this year, Brown pledged to decentralize power from Sacramento. But he offered no alternative plan in the event that the Legislature declines to put the five-year tax extension on the ballot or voters say "no" again.

"Some people might say I am putting a gun to their head," Brown said.

Later, he said that if the taxes are not renewed, "multiply by two" the cuts already in his plan.

Except for the sparing of schools, whose teachers union spent millions helping to elect Brown last year and is expected to campaign for the tax extensions, the $84-billion general fund plan echoes many of Schwarzenegger's recent budget proposals. It would reduce healthcare for the poor. State park hours would be reduced.

But Brown would take nearly 20% from public universities, which Schwarzenegger's last budget protected after years of deep cuts. The new governor would also reap considerable savings by eliminating some business subsidies and tax breaks that Schwarzenegger worked to protect, but those billions would not be enough to shield Californians from tough sacrifices.

If a tax extension is approved, Brown promised, he will hand money and responsibility for programs such as foster care, mental health and child welfare back to local officials, whom voters tend to trust more. Brown hopes his restructuring plan can restore some confidence in California government among voters but also the financial markets that have punished the state with the nation's worst credit rating.