Professor

Atlanta's in-fighting controllable | ajc.com

Look at the locker-room arrangement like a marriage. Only without the lingerie drying in the shower.

You don't need Dr. Phil to know the Falcons could use a little work. Talk about a cycle of disconnection: With game-day nerves as raw as green peanuts, the team suffers a wrenching loss. Then, a prominent player lets his shields down and out pours his doubts and frustrations. By the next first full practice the breach is patched. Then, rinse and repeat.

Granted, the Falcons can't go on like this. So, how do you fix it?

"We need to win," said Bobby Petrino, the coach prescribing the universal panacea. "We need to be able to move the ball better offensively."

"We need to go and play freely and not be uptight," kicker Morten Andersen said. "Everybody from the top to bottom needs to have some damn fun."

A brief season that has suffered the Michael Vick fiasco also has witnessed plenty of unseemly grumbling. Following his meltdown against Carolina, cornerback DeAngelo Hall expounded on his curdled relationship with Petrino. After last Sunday's loss at Tennessee, tight end Alge Crumpler, most prominently, spoke on a declining trust in the coaching staff, especially among the veterans.

Just in time for the NFL's version of "Mutiny on the Bounty" to sail into Monday Night Football, where the entire country can tsk-tsk the Falcons' various dysfunctions.

An uneasy truce was called this week. Crumpler reasserted his commitment to his teammates. And even Hall had to admit he and his coach weren't going to cage-fight at halftime.

"We're obviously not buddy-buddy, but I don't feel by any means we're enemies or we're out to get each other," Hall said, which is what passes for happy news these days.

"There's nothing that says everybody has to get along," said Andersen, who seemingly has been around since there was a locker room in the basement of the Roman Colosseum. "It would be utopia if everybody got along, but usually when you have 53 guys and coaches from all different walks of lives, realistically not everybody will."

"What's important," he said, "is communication from the top in a powerful way. My old coach, Frank Gansz Sr., always said, 'Powerful, productive relationships are based on powerful, productive communication.'?"

The word you heard most often around the Falcons this week — as in any troubled relationship — was "communication." What's being called for here is a healthy dialogue — without the newspaper acting as the relay man.

There was an air-clearing meeting to begin this week, the details of which are protected under the Sanctity of the Locker Room credo.

"I will tell you this," linebacker Keith Brooking said, "the gist of this meeting was: Guys, we got to stick together in this. That's not coming from Coach Petrino — yes, he said that — but that's coming from our core players."

There are at least a couple of things Petrino has yet to display in his brief and tempest-tossed Falcons reign. One is the effectiveness of his offensive design (just five offensive touchdowns in five games). Another is the successful care and feeding of the NFL player after his having spent the bulk of his career on campus.

Just whose responsibility is it to make this workplace, if not idyllic, at least not radioactive?

"I think it's half and half," said fullback Ovie Mughelli, who had his own issues about not toting the ball at the end of the Tennessee game. "You got to meet each other halfway. You can't sit here and expect the coach to come talk to you, be jovial with you, understand where you're coming from. And the coach can't expect the player to always come to his office. You got to meet each other halfway."

"We have to have open minds, from players to coaches to front office," said running back Warrick Dunn. "We all have to realize it's a business. We're all grown men. We have to respect each other and treat each other that way. At the same time, we have to hold each other accountable."

The veterans, especially, have experience with toxic locker-room politics. They know the destructiveness of it, and they have every reason to try to put on the determined face Monday night, in just the sixth game of a long season.

Defensive end John Abraham has survived New York. It should follow that he can make it anywhere. "I've been around [locker room] cancers a lot," he said. "I don't think there's a cancer in this locker room."

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