Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 24, 1995 TAG: 9510240064
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JIM DUCIBELLA LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: ASHBURN LENGTH: Medium
If the Washington Redskins have taught observers anything this topsy-turvy season, it's how foolish it is to read too much into one victory or loss, or even one play.
Still, it says something that on a day everybody wants Darrell Green to hog the spotlight, he deliberately deflects the glow to the other side of the field, at fellow cornerback Tom Carter.
Sure, it was Green who turned in the deciding interception and return in Washington's 36-30 overtime win over the Detroit Lions on Sunday. But it was Carter, a former No.1 draft pick, who might have turned in the better game.
Take the sequence of plays in the second quarter. The Lions, trailing 13-3, had first-and-goal at the Washington 2.
On first down, Detroit quarterback Scott Mitchell tried to hit Herman Moore, at 6-feet-3 the Empire State Building of NFL receivers, with a high pass in the end zone. Carter knocked it away.
Second down. Mitchell tried to hit Moore with a low bullet across the middle. Diving, Carter knocked it down, nearly intercepting.
Third down. Mitchell attempted an alley-oop pass for Moore, figuring the former UVa star would use his height advantage to outjump Carter, as he did a few weeks ago when Detroit upset San Francisco. But Carter got a hand on the ball, tipped it high into the air, then flailed away at Big Herman's hands until the ball hit the ground.
``I was saying to myself, `Perhaps this guy is making the transition to be the guy," Green said. "To be the cornerback to take Darrell Green's place. At my age, I'm allowed to say that. I was very impressed. It made me think, `Boy, I remember when I was doing that.'''
Say what you want about the play selection of Lions coach Wayne Fontes - and if it doesn't include the phrase "moronic for not at least trying Barry Sanders," consider it rejected - but Green wasn't the only Redskin blown away by Carter's end-zone trifecta.
"They thought they had an advantage by going at him," Redskins linebacker Ken Harvey said. "They challenged him and he threw it back in their face."
Not surprisingly, Carter did not see it that way. He's always been the shy, modest type; a good, clean-living kid who returned to Notre Dame last spring to finish his undergraduate work because he promised his mother he would. He seems embarrassed by his enormous natural ability.
"It was just a series of plays that happened in a game," Carter said Monday, punctuating the remark with a nervous smile. "Darrell would have made those same plays had they come to his side."
Perhaps. That's not the point. The Redskins have been waiting - sometimes impatiently, as signing now-injured Muhammad Oliver showed - for Carter to blossom. Sunday may have been a huge step in the right direction.
"People just assume that because a guy played college football and was a high draft choice, he's ready to play," Redskins coach Norv Turner said. "At this level, that's not the case. Sometimes, it takes some adjusting."
A funny thing happened last offseason. Turner, thinking like everybody else that Carter had had a miserable '94 season, asked the team's film staff to compile a cassette of every play in which Carter was the opposition's point of attack. Run or pass.
"We found there was a high percentage of plays he made well," Turner said. "He had seven or eight really bad plays, mostly in the second half of really close games in which he gave up touchdowns. But the impression that every time the opponent wanted to make a play, they went his way, was wrong."
Carter has overtaken Green as team leader in passes defensed, a significant accomplishment considering he hasn't been close to 100 percent healthy since pulling his hamstring against Oakland in Week 2.
He has doggedly pushed himself onto the field every game since then, although he can't go full speed and had to pull up when the hamstring tightened in his pursuit of Brett Perriman on Detroit's 51-yard touchdown play.
But the bottom line is the Redskins wanted Carter to become tougher. He is.
They wanted him to become more aggressive. He had 10 tackles Sunday.
And, if nothing else, for three plays Sunday, he was every bit as good as Darrell Green at his best.
by CNB