Up-and-comers - football players

TSN correspondents John Mullin, Ira Miller and Kevin Mannix bring you the stories of three of the NFL's surprises this season -- players who weren't taken in the first round of their drafts, who didn't have hulking frames or eye-popping times in the 40 coming out of college. What they did have was strong fundamentals, a desire to work hard and an ability to compensate for their weaknesses.

The triple threat

Jim Flanigan can take a hint.

In his sophomore year at Notre Dame, two of the Irish's defensive tackles, Bryant Young and Eric Jones, suffered broken ankles in a game at Air Force. Flanigan was a linebacker at the time, not playing particularly well, and Coach Lou Holtz, suddenly in dire need of down linemen, approached Flanigan with an idea.

"Holtz told me I'd better learn to play with my hand on the ground or find a different flight home," Flanigan recalls.

Flanigan learned, and now it is his NFL career that is taking flight.

As he converted from finebacker to tackle, he went from 235 pounds to 270 at Notre Dame and is now at about 285. "I lifted like a madman, and I ate like a madman, too," he says, laughing. After a 1994 rookie season with virtually no plays from scrimmage, Flanigan hasn't merely opened the door to the Bears' starting lineup; he has blown it off its hinges.

He has become the Bears' most dominant defensive lineman and will make his first start this Sunday against the Panthers. His 4 1/2 sacks after four games rank among the league leaders, and his 20 tackles are tied for the team lead among linemen.

That production has forced Opening Day starters Carl Simpson and Chris Zorich to spend practices this week fighting for a job alongside him.

Flanigan's father, Jim, was a linebacker with the Packers from 1967 through '70. Now Flanigan is on the other side of the storied Bears-Packers rivalry and in a position other than what his father played, which was a disappointment at first.

After Holtz told him he was a tackle or else, "I tried it a couple of weeks, but I really resisted it," Flanigan says. "I didn't want to move at all. I wanted to stay at linebacker.

"My Dad was a 'backer and that's how I was raised, and I thought I was doing an OK job. But then after spring ball I realized I'd probably have a better shot at defensive tackle."

Flanigan has a particularly good shot in Chicago, where he is the prototype lineman for Coach Dave Wannstedt's defensive schemes. His added bulk has not cost him the speed that Wannstedt demands from his one-gap, penetration fronts. Instead of having responsibility for two holes, or gaps, on either side of an offensive lineman, Flanigan shoots a single gap.

"He is our quickest defensive tackle, with his hands and feet," player personnel chief Rod Graves says. "He uses his hands about as well as anyone we have, to get separation and disengage from blockers quicker than any defensive lineman we have."

To Wannstedt, the reason for Flanigan's success is more simple. "The difference in him really is the desire," Wannstedt says. "He just wants to get there."

Flanigan played a one-gap system at Notre Dame that had some similarities to Wannstedt's schemes, "but it was more read-and-react," he says. "Here we're just taught to get up the field right away and react to what we see. We're taught to get a lot more penetration here than we were at Notre Dame. We're freer now. And if s a lot more fun."

Flanigan's fun doesn't just come on the defensive line. He has become one of the rare three-way players in the league.

Last season, his offensive work included a touchdown reception in the Bears' playoff loss to the 49ers. He also returned two regular-season kickoffs for 26 yards. This season against the Packers he played fullback, catching another touchdown pass and serving as lead blocker on a Rashaan Salaain scoring run.

Not that Flanigan's particularly a stranger to end zones. He rushed for 2,075 yards and scored 30 touchdowns as a senior fullback (4,464 yards, 59 TDs for his prep career) at Southern Door High in Brussels, Wis.

He has not returned any kickoffs this season, but he has recovered a fumble on special teams. His insertion into the starting lineup will take him out of some special-teams duty, but not all, Wannstedt says.

The weight he put on since his conversion to tackle at Notre Dame has been critical and was even so before the Bears drafted him. Avannstedt and Graves had long talks before the 1994 draft and saw a bit of Steve McMichael in Flanigan and figured, correctly, that the size problem could be overcome. The Bears grabbed Flanigan in the third round.

"People were questioning his size," Graves remembers, "but we kept saying, `Hey, he's as tall as McMichael and at least 10 pounds heavier. Steve played his last year at 270 and Flannie's 285.'

"So that was the one thing that a lot of people might have been hung up on, his not being 300 pounds."

Wannstedt, in fact, has no 300-pound defensive linemen. What he wants are Flanigans.

"He's a winner, number one," Wannstedt says. "Number two, he's a playmaker. He has enough athleticism to make plays. He's not a big, stiff guy who gets locked on blocks. And three, he's a very intelligent person and you generally don't get him on things twice. You may trap him once, but the second time he understands what you're trying to do."

The key in Wannstedt's scheme is not only understanding, but also understanding and doing something about it in a hurry. That Flanigan has always done.

"We're seeing the same things from Jim now that we saw in college," Packers pro personnel director Ted Thompson says. "He's a very high-energy player and is extremely quick off the ball and getting to the ball.

"He plays well against the bigger guys and just keeps coming, and that is something you don't always find in people."

Flanigan is still able to play like a linebacker in the ways Wannstedt wants all his players to.

"Playing linebacker, we understand the game a little better, and you develop those instincts to fly to the ball wherever it is," Flanigan says. We're a little more restricted at defensive tackle because we have to protect our gap first before we can fly to the bad. When you start out at linebacker, you get the sense of flying to the ball wherever it is, so I think that definitely helped."

Because he played so seldom last year, Flanigan is still playing too straightforward for his own tastes.

"During games I need to make more moves," he says. "In practice I do moves to get by people, but in games I'm still maybe a little cautious. I've just got to learn to play more free and it'll keep coming."

The heavyweight

When Lee Woodall joined the 49ers last year, there was little reason to believe the team's enthusiasm over its sixth-round draft choice was any different than a sixth-round pick any other year.

Teams always rave over their late-round "finds" from small colleges, most of whom soon get a ticket home. Woodall turned out to be different.

A starter at outside linebacker since his first day with the team, he is the 49ers' surest tackler. This season, because he is also playing in the nickel, he's on the field virtually every down and is plaving an important role in the team's blitz packages.

"This guy has come along pretty good and he's a good, tough football player," says Jim Skipper, the Saints' running backs coach. "And he can run, too. ... Either you got it or you don't got it And Woodall has got it."

Try telling that to the Eagles, who used to have Woodall in their backyard when he played at Division II West Chester (Pa.). For a couple of years, Woodall even served the Eagles as a security guard at their summer training camp on his campus and got to know many of the players. Nevertheless, when draft time came, the Eagles didn't give him a sniff. They didn't even bother to work him out.

The oft-told story is that Vinny Cerrato, the 49ers' chief scout learned of Woodall from a passenger on an airline flight Cerrato checked out Woodall and sent tapes to John Marshall, the 49ers' linebackers coach. Marshall sat through the draft with fingers crossed, hoping Woodall still would be available when the 49ers were ready to choose him.

"He's kind of a unique guy because of the way God built him," Marshall says. "He's real, real strong, and he's got real good cove skills and real fine speed."

What Woodall does best of all, though, is tackle. That might not sound like much, but in an era when fundamentals are declining, his skills and form would make a coaching clinic's instructional video.

"When he hits you, he hits you with a load, and he gets you down," Marshall says. "He would like to put you down where you're not going to get up. He's got a great linebacker's mentality. He's a smart guy, but he's a quietly mean kind of guy -- mean from the standpoint that when he hits you, you're not getting up."

"That's true," Woodall says, his eyes lighting up. "I love to hit and I love to punish people. If I can hurt a guy on a tackle, I can punish him and I can make him cringe, or I can make him think about running toward me, I love it"

Woodall's speed and pursuit to the ball have impressed opponents. "He can do all three things -- play on the tightend, blitz and he's decent in coverage," says Kevin Colbert, director of pro scouting for the Lions. But Colbert says what makes Woodall special is his range. "He can run plays down line to sideline."

Although Woodall hits like a heavyweight, he is only 6 feet 1 and 225 pounds, small for an NFL linebacker. In fact, Woodall split his college career between safety, where he developed his coverage skills, and linebacker. The team initially planned for him to help out in the secondary.

But the 49ers put him at safety only for minicamps. By the time he returned for his first training camp, he was a linebacker. And it looks like he'll be there for a long time.

"He's obviously better than we thought he was, or we'd have taken him sooner," says John McVay, assistant to President Cannen Policy. "What was he doing there that late in the draft? You wonder how many kids drafted ahead of him are out on the street -- a lot."

Although Woodall is a quick study and has great work habits, the 49ers tried to keep it simple for him as a rookie. This season, they have him doing more things. Against the Patriots in Week 3, he sacked Drew Bledsoe and forced a fumble that the 49ers recovered and intercepted a pass. Both turnovers set up touchdowns.

The blitz package installed by new defensive coordinator Pete Carroll suits Woodall just fine. He hardly blitzed last season and recorded only one sack. He has two sacks already this season.

When I'm in the huddle and I hear blitz called for me, I just get so hyped, sometimes I have to calm myself down," Woodall says. Being so hyped, I don't want to show the blitz right away. I love that part of the game.

Last year, I didn't get to showcase it as much, but this year they showcase it a little bit more, and I love to punish people on that, too, no matter if it's a running back or a quarterback."

There's one area the 49ers still believe Woodall needs work: getting away from blocks by the big tight ends he'll face, such as the Dolphins' Eric Green, whom Woodall will face later in the season. Woodall has the strength for the task, but it's still new to him because in college he never lined up opposite a tight end on the line.

Based on the way he has adapted to everything else asked of him, however, this shouldn't be a problem.

"He's very smart and very diligent about his work habits," Marshall says. "He takes everything very serious. His comment to me all the time is, `Tell me how you want me to play it and I'll get it done.

He has.

The speedy recovery

At Texas Southern Will Moore caught 129 passes for 1,924 yards and 24 touchdowns, numbers that should have gotten him attention from the NFL But when he came out in 1991, teams passed on him through the entire draft. And he was left out even when teams signed rookies as free agents -- all because of another statistic.

"I didn't get any feelers from the NFL," Moore says. "People told me that, with my 40 times, I didn't qualify. They told me I just wasn't fast enough. So I went for a tryout in Canada."

That tryout turned into a three-year stint for the Calgary Stampeders in which be became the receiver of choice for Doug Flutie. Today, he is a dependable weapon for Drew Bledsoe and the Patriots.

At a time when most of the Patriots around him are struggling, Moore has emerged as the team's most pleasant surprise. Ben Coates has been buried in double and triple coverage all season and hasn't helped himself with some uncustomary drops. Until Vincent Brisby's game in last Sunday's loss to the Falcons, je had almost as many drops as catches this season. And Dave Meggett hasn't become the prime-time player the Patriots were looking for when they signed him for $9 million.

But Moore has been steadily efficient. Through four games, Moore, 6-2 and 180 pounds, was third on the team in receptions with 18 for 230 yards. He has caught everything thrown his way this season, except for one pass -- and on that play the ball was tipped just before it came to him.

"He has excellent hands," Dolphins vice president of player personnel Tom Heckert says. "He will definitely catch the ball in traffic."

That part of his game comes as no surprise. When he arrived in New England from the CFL last spring with no fanfare, the book on Moore was that he could catch the ball with anybody in any league.

It was the lack of speed that raised doubts in scouts' minds. They wondered about his ability to get free from the tighter coverage he was sure to see in the NFL.

Getting open in the CFL is fairly easy with so much motion before the snap. And the wider field gives receivers more room to maneuver in the secondary. Moore had no trouble adjusting to that wide-open game. After spending most of his rookie year on the Stampeders' practice squad (catching three passes for 38 yards), he developed into the go-to receiver for Flutie in 1993 and '94, catching 117 passes for 1,875 yards and 23 touchdowns.

"In my three years with Will I can only recall him dropping two passes," Flutie says. "On the other hand, he probably made 30 to 40 he never should have. He and my brother Darren have the best hands of any receiver I've ever thrown to, and that includes the Patriots (where Irving Fryar and Cedric Jones started at receiver while Flutie was there)."

Coming out of college, Moore was timed at 4.6 seconds in the 40, but he never put much stock in that. "Personally, I never questioned my ability, to play in the NFL," he says. "To tell you the truth, I thought I was fast I just never timed fast. Maybe it's my technique.

"But whatever, I've always been able to beat guys who had faster 40 times than I did, so I was confident if I got my chance I could make it in the NFL."

The Pattiots gave him that chance last winter.

"I got my chance when one of my coaches in Calgary sent one of our game films to (Patriots receivers coach) Chris Palmer," Moore says. "After they saw it, they worked me out and signed me."

Moore made his mark right away, showing the ability to shake free of coverage during the team's minicamps. By the time training camp was only a week old, he had replaced veteran Ray Crittenden as the starter across the field from Brisby.

"He doesn't have great speed," Bledsoe says. "But he has great hands and he's very smooth. If the ball is off the mark, he has the ability to reach back over his head and make the catch without breaking stride.

"What has also been impressive is the fact that he comes out of his breaks so quickly, quicker than anybody else we've got."

Growing up in Washington, Bledsoe was familiar with another receiver who had to overcome a similar "good hands, no speed" label.

"People said that ability to come out of the break was what made Steve Largent so good," Bledsoe says. "He didn't have great speed either, but he alwalys came out of his break with a step on whoever was covering him. That's what Will does, too."

Coach Bill Parcells took plenty of heat when he decided to depend on the untested Moore instead of proven receivers such as Alvin Harper, Ricky Proehl and Mark Ingram to replace Michael Timpson, who left to sign with the Bears. But after seeing Moore perform, people are waiting for the next CFL player to make his way south. And maybe next time, because of Moore, they won't be so quick to judge him by what he does at a combine.

"(Moore) has maximized his physical skills," Heckert says. "He's a heck of a football player because he works at it. His work ethic and courage are going to make him a productive wide receiver in the NFL for the next seven or eight years."

COPYRIGHT 1995 Sporting News Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group