Peach State Lemons

Turner seemed unable to decide whether the Braves were a baseball team or a TV show. When he fired manager Bobby Cox in 1981, Turner was a mixed-up man. "If I was looking for a new manager," he said that day, "Bobby Cox would be the first guy I'd look to."

Only now, after four straight cellar-scraping, scalp-pulling seasons, has Turner retrieved Cox, this time as general manager. In the manner of a gambler who asks his best friend to keep his money away from him, Turner told Cox, "Here, you run it." And he means it. Turner has attended only four games this season, leaving Cox to rebuild from the bottom up. Cox's last six trades have gotten him seven minor league players. The Braves are finally in it for the long haul, and nobody knows when the haul will arrive. Braves watchers believe it will be at least 1990, more likely 1992. But as manager Russ Nixon says, "God only knows how long it will be."

Some, however, exude hope. Says Grizzard, "All we need is a catcher, a power-hitting third baseman, five starting pitchers, two relievers and a base-stealing outfielder, and we're right back in this thing."

If Turner's fingerprints are all over the body of the Braves, Falcon owner Rankin Smith is still at the scene of the crime. And he has provided some of the most curious management the NFL has ever seen. He seems to want his team to win but can't get out of the way long enough to let somebody do it. Two years ago, for instance, he fired competent general manager Eddie LeBaron. That meant that the two most senior executives below Smith were his sons, Taylor and Rankin Jr., who had zip experience playing, coaching, managing or acquiring personnel. The Falcon players call the family "the Clampetts"—rich, good-hearted and inept.

The brothers fouled up the team's latest chance to hire a good coach. At the end of the 1986 season, the Smiths finally fired Dan Henning after four years of neither winning nor rebuilding. "Another Don Shula must be out there," said Papa Smith, and he dispatched his boys to find him. Dick Vermeil turned them down. UCLA's Terry Donahue was ready to take the job, but when some last-minute money talk stalled the negotiations, the brothers had to check with their father. Donahue had been told the club was run entirely by the sons and had never met the father. Whom would Donahue answer to, the boys or Jed? Donahue didn't need the aggravation.

Now it was March, and the Falcons still didn't have a coach. So whom did they hire? Why, Marion Campbell, a man they had pink-slipped in 1976 for going 6-19. This is the same Marion Campbell the Philadelphia Eagles axed in 1985 for going 17-29-1, the same one whose career NFL winning percentage of .297 is eight points lower than Hank Aaron's batting average. Shula he ain't.

Smith Sr. has never gotten this coaching thing right. One day in 1977 he interviewed both Dan Reeves and Bobby Beathard for the coaching and general manager jobs, respectively, and turned them both down. Reeves became coach of the Denver Broncos, Beathard, the general manager of the Washington Redskins. Together, their teams have been to five Super Bowls since then.

If the Falcons' history of picking coaches is dismal, consider their record on quarterbacks. Of 26 first-round choices since 1966—and when you're Atlanta, you get some blue-chip choices—the Falcons have come up with one good signal caller, Steve Bartkowski, drafted in 1975. They passed on Dan Marino in 1983 and Jim Everett in 1986, but the day their brains caught the early bus home was in 1984, when they passed not once, not twice, but three times on Boomer Esiason. Instead they took three Oklahoma defensive players, including a white cornerback, Scott Case. Hence, when Bartkowski was released midway through the following season, the Falcons were stuck with three years of Dave Archer and Scott Campbell. They have now resigned themselves to letting Chris Miller, who's in his second year, sink or swim.

"No question about it," says Taylor. "The problem the last 10 years has been our drafting. Not drafting a quarterback was a tremendous mistake."

Well, things are finally looking up a bit. Like Turner before them, the Smiths are at last realizing they need professional help. They've turned over all the major player decisions to Ken Herock, a former disciple of Al Davis. Now, if they would let him hire a coach....