Versatile Yanda ready for any job

By Ryan Chell

July 31, 2008

Over the past several practices, both of the Baltimore Ravens’ starting offensive tackles, Jared Gaither and Adam Terry, have been sidelined with sprained ankles.

This development makes the Ravens really thankful they have starting right offensive guard like Marshal Yanda.

The second-year offensive lineman out of Iowa has been a godsend for the Ravens offense, due to the fact that he brings versatility and security to the offensive line.

“Marshal is great,” Ravens assistant offensive line coach Andy Moeller said. “To have that kind of versatility, it’s a great asset.”

Yanda can take the place of two or three roster spots and plays every position on the line, making the personnel department’s job that much easier. However, he is most known for his prowess at tackle, a position he started a dozen games as a rookie last season.

“It helps just in case I need to play tackle, I can,” Yanda said. “I can take some snaps at center too. I can play more positions so we don’t need as many guys.”

Who knows? With injuries to Gaither and Terry over the past several days, it could mean a return to the guard position for Yanda.

“That’s a decision Cam Cameron, John Matsko, the rest of our staff, will have to see about as we go along,” Moeller said. “That’s certainly a possibility.”

Ravens offensive line coach John Matsko may already be ready to pull the switch and make the change.

“He’s really adapting well to the right guard spot, and boy, you watch the tapes and he did a really good job at right tackle last year,” Matsko said. “Everything’s possible.”

Yanda started last year after being selected in the third round of the draft, and getting that experience has definitely helped ease the learning process for him going into his sophomore campaign.

“I wouldn’t say this was easier,” Yanda said. “But I know what to expect, how the game system works, what the practice tempo needs to be like, and just what I need to get done.”

During the offseason, despite Yanda’s excellence at tackle last season and his reputation as a sound tackle at Iowa, the Ravens coaching staff saw Yanda as a better fit at the guard position.

He was asked to gain a little more weight to fit into the position, something he felt was necessary to properly make the adjustment, while still being able to keep his quickness.

Many are applauding the switch, such as starting defensive tackle Haloti Ngata, who lines up across from him in practice. Ngata praised Yanda’s performance.
Yanda has no complaints about the switch, either.

“There’s no position I prefer,” Yanda said. “I’m at guard now. I love it, and that’s where I want to be. If they want to move me back to tackle, that doesn’t matter. I’ll play anywhere.”

With the difficulty of learning several positions at once, the learning curve would appear to increase for Yanda, but so far he is handling it well.

“It can be difficult,” he acknowledged. “But as long as you keep an open mind when we’re in the meeting rooms and don’t just focus on guard, you get an idea of what everyone’s doing and it’s not as bad.”

Yanda has a calm demeanor off the field, and talked about not worrying about Cameron’s new system or who he is protecting at quarterback.

What makes him a better offensive lineman is how he can make that transformation so easily and use it to his advantage.

“For an offensive lineman, you have to be physical,” Yanda said. “You’ve got to want it, go out there, and get after somebody, and hit them in the mouth, that’s the way you got to be.”

Not only does he seem to be settling into a new position, he seems to be settling into the team.

Yanda remembers what Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz, a former Ravens offensive line coach, told him when he was drafted by Baltimore.

“He told me you’re going to a good place, that you’re going to excel there, and you’ll like the people there,” Yanda said. “It’s a good program.”

Game slows down for speedy Dolphins receiver Ginn

By CARLOS FRIAS

July 30, 2008

DAVIE — Somewhere between the Nos. 1 and 9 on wide receiver Ted Ginn Jr.'s jersey is the bull's-eye.

It comes with the first-round draft pick money. It's what you get when you essentially disappear in your first season on a 1-15 team. It's what you live with during an all-too-long off-season when the man who picked you No. 9 overall is fired for a series of bad decisions.

It's makes you the target of criticism. And it gleams fluorescent aqua and orange when the new man in charge, Bill Parcells, and coach Tony Sparano revamp the roster, tossing dead weight and adding their type of players.

The only thing that will make it go away, Ginn knows, is taking every shot squarely in the chest and responding with the productive season he feels he can have.

"You have to come in and prove to everybody - not just your head coach, the whole coaching staff - that you want to be that guy," Ginn said. "You have to show them how you learn. You have to show them how your run. You have to show them everything that you bring to the table."

Ginn started off his rookie season slow, but by the end, had caught 34 passes for 420 yards and two touchdowns. More than that, as Sparano reviewed endless hours of tape, he saw how Ginn improved throughout the season, culminating in a seven-catch, 53-yard performance, when he caught his second touchdown against Cincinnati.

"He wasn't even the same player," Sparano said.

Former Dolphins coach Cam Cameron coveted Ginn's speed and quickness. But Ginn was mostly a kick returner still learning how to be a receiver in college.

The NFL didn't make his transition any easier. He struggled to run routes and showed that burst of speed only after the catch.

If anyone questioned Ginn's ability, he certainly did not.

He has become the star pupil of receivers coach Karl Dorrell, a former receiver himself at UCLA who has seen Ginn begin to tap into his talents.

Dorrell said since the first voluntary practice of the spring, Ginn has grown tremendously, running better routes, showing more quickness during his routes and making cuts that gets defensive backs on their heels.

"And that's usually the hardest thing to improve because he's moving so fast," Dorrell said. "But he's one of those guys that has really good balance."

Even after those long practices, Ginn took home film of himself and watched for flaws in his technique that were keeping him from exploiting his speed. And so the Dolphins are starting to see, even in their own first-team defense, the problems that Ginn can create. He is starting to spread the field and forcing defensive backs to give him room.

"Teddy is starting to play really fast and he's putting pressure on the defense, and I really like that," Sparano said. "You can see it. It's jumping off the film how fast he's playing."

Former Dolphins great Nat Moore, a favorite target of a young Dan Marino and Hall of Famer Bob Griese, has watched Ginn and sees the steady improvement. When he looks at Ginn, Moore is reminded of a young Mark Duper, in velocity if not in build. And he reminds anyone who will listen that Duper was playing with "a marquee quarterback."

Given enough time, Moore said, Ginn will tap into that elusive resource: "That speed. He's a speed guy who can be a game-breaker."

Already, Miami's quarterbacks are finding him more often in practice and that, Sparano said, is a sign Ginn is inching closer to fulfilling his promise. "All of a sudden, the ball's finding him," Sparano said. "That tells me the game's slowing down a little for Ted."

Dawson Taking Nothing for Granted

Steve King

July 29, 2008

At year ago at this time, Phil Dawson was put on notice.

But by the end of the 2007, the Browns kicker had earned all sorts of notice -- in a positive way.

Such is the life of an NFL kicker, whose worth is measured every time he walks onto the field.

"I've always said that you're only as good as your last kick," Dawson said this week following a training camp practice.

For the first 7½ years of his career, Dawson was about as accurate as any kicker in the game's history, somehow finding a way to succeed against the tricky, windy, cold and sometimes icy conditions on the shores of Lake Erie.

He was cruising along midway through 2006, setting a franchise record with six field goals against the San Diego Chargers. Overall, he was at 85 percent, hitting 17-of-20.

Ho, hum, another season, another Dawson success story.

Then he experienced the first slump of his career, going just 4-of-9 the rest of the way to finish 21-of-29. His 72.4-percent success rate was the lowest since his rookie year.

How off was he? Consider that in 2005, he also had attempted 29 kicks but made 27 of them for a career-high 93.1 percentage.

"I was still hitting the ball well late in 2006, but they weren't going in," Dawson said.

Head coach Romeo Crennel knew that since his offense was struggling at the time to score touchdowns, the team needed an accurate Dawson to be able to score enough points to be competitive in games. He was right, for when Dawson was having his issues down the stretch in 2006, the Browns lost six of their last seven games. In four of those defeats, the club scored seven or fewer points.

You can't win like that. So Crennel told Dawson he needed to do better -- much better.

So the kicker spent the entire offseason busier than he had ever been, skipping the normal after-the-season respite he took to let his body -- and his leg -- recover from the long, grueling year. If he wasn't studying tape, he was working out or practicing his kicking. It was all football, all the time.

Dawson entered 2007 under the first real pressure he had faced since his rookie season of 1999, when he had no NFL resume and was trying to make an impression on head coach Chris Palmer.

His work paid off. All the things that had gone wrong in the last half of 2006 suddenly started going right.

"I was hitting the ball the same way last season as I had in 2006, but the bounces began to go my way," Dawson said.

Bounces? Yes, literally and figuratively.

His kick at the end of regulation in Baltimore hit the goal post support bar and then caromed back out on the field. Originally signaled as no good, the ruling was eventually changed to good following several minutes of discussion and after the Ravens had left the field, tying the score and forcing overtime. The game was won 33-30 by a Dawson kick that went cleanly through the uprights, sans any drama.

A month later in an 8-0 win over the Buffalo Bills, Dawson, in an effort that defied the laws of physics, somehow kicked two field goals, including a 49-yarder, during a virtual blizzard.

Browns special teams coach Ted Daisher, who has been in coaching for nearly 30 years, was impressed by both kicks but said the 49-yarder, which was aimed to the left, halfway between the left upright and the sideline, to compensate for a strong wind blowing left to right, was the greatest kick he has ever seen.

By the end of the year, Dawson had hit 26-of-30 field goals, a success rate of 86.7 percent, the third-best of his career, and scored 120 points, No. 2 in franchise history behind only Jim Brown (126 in 1965), and ahead of Lou Groza (115 in 1964).

Brown and Groza. You may have heard of those two.

"I'm almost embarrassed for my name to be used in the same sentence with Jim Brown," Dawson said. "He's the greatest football player of all-time."

And Groza?

"I have all the respect in the world for him, Don Cockroft, Matt Bahr and Matt Stover, the people who have preceded me here in Cleveland," he said. "I feel very honored to be mentioned in the lineage of great kickers this franchise has had."

Getting back on track last year, starting strong and staying strong throughout, also meant that Dawson moved back into the top five in the NFL in career field-goal percentage. He is fourth at 82.7.

So, what means more to him, his place in NFL kicking history, or in that of the Browns?

"The Browns," he said, "because I know how hard it is to kick in Cleveland."

But the best part to come out of last season for Dawson is the fact the Browns, after so many struggles since returning to the field in 1999, won a lot of games -- they went 10-6 and nearly made the playoffs following four straight losing years -- and he had a big hand in it.

"I took a great deal of satisfaction in that I was able to help this team win," he said. "At the end of the day, all that matters is if this team wins or not. I had gotten tired of all the losing over the years. I want to win. I'll trade all the personal accomplishments for a win anytime."

He didn't have to last season, and he won't have to this season if the Browns perform as well as most people predict they will.

Yes, things have certainly done an about-face for Dawson and the Browns from last year at this time.

"Did I deserve what Coach Crennel said about me last year?" he asked rhetorically. "Yes, certainly I did. Believe me, I wasn't happy with the way I kicked, either.

"But when you struggle, you can't just abandon everything you're doing. You have to fix only the things that are wrong and stay confident that the other things you're doing -- and all the stuff you've believed in over the years -- are solid. That's what I did."

And when Dawson followed that strategy, you couldn't help but notice the difference.