Getting Handsy
No real surprise there. Aside from being a really great place to live, Detroit has an up-'n'-coming football squad led by an ex-Marine. Those guys never make mistakes. The GM has a panty-wetter of a moustache and rides a Harley. The offensive coordinator wears glasses, hates running the football and, as a bonus, is a total douchebag. So naturally a frustrated young man like Tatum would feel as if he'd found new purchase on life's glassy slope.
"I want to run the ball, but I think it's a better opportunity for me now, with Martz's scheme," Bell said during the club's most recent minicamp. "I can catch the ball pretty well. I wasn't exposed to that in Denver like I am here." (Courtesy of the Detroit News via cbs.sportsline.com)
Here's where it gets greasy. Anyone who has watched a Mike Shanahan-coached team over the last decade has seen plenty of passes to the running back. And, while not as big on screens as some coaches, ol' King Woodchuck still calls his fair share. Terrell caught a fair amount of balls, and in 1995--KW's first year at the rudder--he and Aaron Craver combined for 82 catches. That number dropped over the intervening years as different backs with different skill-sets moved in and out, but you all get the point.
Tatum, in particular, was the target of more frustrating goddamn passes than any back in my memory. Plummer would float one out there, seemingly no one in the same postal code, and it would bounce off Tatum's face mask. Or hands. Or knee. Or face mask, hands, then knee. Every once in a while he'd mix it up and knee one right into his face mask.
Tatum doesn't just have bad hands, he doesn't even have hands--just hand-shaped bricks of adobe and suck. But, by all means, allow him to prove me wrong.
After all, now he's got a real quarterback laying it out there for him.
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