Krangodnzr
Captain of Team Conner
Bitter Turley comes clean on why he's no Saint
By: Michael Silver, SI.com
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/inside_game/michael_silver/news/2003/06/05/open_mike/
There is nothing subtle about Kyle Turley, the hyper-intense and heavily tattooed offensive tackle who plays football like the human embodiment of an Eddie Van Halen guitar solo. So when I called Turley Tuesday night to touch base for the first time since the March 22 trade that sent him from the Saints to the Rams, I hardly expected some wimpy comment wishing his former franchise the best of luck.
Still, even by Turley's lofty standards, the depth of his enmity for the Saints was stunning. "I love it here in St. Louis, because it's a professional atmosphere where the players come first," Turley said, his surfer-dude inflection rising. "That's not what they're about in New Orleans. They're about putting money in the owner's pocket, maybe fielding a decent team and hopefully winning some games -- not that the owner really cares about that. Here, everything is geared toward winning the Super Bowl, from the owners down to the equipment guys, and they're not going to let anything distract them from that. I see now what it's like to be in the NFL and to be part of a professional football team. Back there it's like college, maybe worse. It's such a low-class organization."
Whoa, big guy. How do you really feel?
Seventy-five minutes later, Turley was still going strong. By then the player best known for yanking the helmet off the head of New York Jets safety Damien Robinson and then hurling it across the field at the pivotal moment of a 2001 game had called his former coach, Jim Haslett, a "two-faced backstabber;" had charged that Saints general manager Mickey Loomis "knows nothing about football" and was promoted to his post over a more deserving, African-American candidate; and had bashed New Orleans owner Tom Benson for, among other things, cutting him an unfavorable deal on a Mercedes-Benz five years ago.
Other than that, Turley has nothing but love for his former bosses, who dealt him to St. Louis for a second-round pick in 2004 rather than commit to a multi-year contract extension. The Rams, in turn, signed Turley to a six-year deal valued somewhere between $26.5 and $30 million, including a $10 million signing bonus and another $2 million in guaranteed money.
St. Louis coach Mike Martz thinks Turley -- who, assuming the team can placate unhappy left tackle Orlando Pace, will give Kurt Warner a pair of bookend pass protectors -- can help propel his team back to the top of the NFL. The Saints believe their 1998 first-round draft pick, who has never made a Pro Bowl but was voted to the AP's All-Pro team in 2001, is an overrated player who was not well-liked by his teammates.
"To be honest with you, I don't really give a damn about Kyle Turley," Loomis said Wednesday. "He's the Rams' problem now." Later, in a statement e-mailed by Saints PR director Greg Bensel, Loomis continued, "Kyle believes he can coach and manage the team better than the head coach and GM, but in reality he has trouble managing himself. We determined that he was a cancer on our team and we simply got rid of him. It was a unanimous decision of our coaches, personnel department and administration."
Ouch, Mickey. How do you really feel?
More important, how did it get this bad?
Much of the tension stems from the infamous helmet-throwing incident in November of 2001. Though Turley was defending quarterback Aaron Brooks, whose helmet was being twisted violently by Robinson, his over-the-top response (which included an obscene gesture) yielded an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty that helped cement the Saints' 16-9 defeat. The next day Haslett said publicly that he had contemplated cutting Turley, and the team later ordered the 6-foot-5, 300-pounder to attend anger-management classes.
Turley says he ultimately mended fences with Haslett, who became the most powerful employee in the organization after Benson's abrupt firing of highly regarded general manager Randy Mueller last May. Soon thereafter, Haslett received a lucrative contract extension and, given Loomis' background as a salary-cap specialist, supreme power when it came to football-related decisions.
"Two guys, Randy Mueller and Jim Haslett, were coming up on the end of their contracts, and Mr. Benson wasn't going to pay both of them, because that's not how he works," Turley charged. "So he fired Randy Mueller, and he had a very, very valuable in-house candidate to replace him in Charles Bailey (then the assistant general manager of football operations), who knows football. With all the racial things going on right now, and the push to hire minorities, which I agree with, how could this guy get passed over in favor of a guy like Loomis, who knows nothing about football?"
When I asked Turley if players perceived Loomis as a yes-man for Benson, he answered, "Absolutely. The guy spent 14 years in a back room, and now all of a sudden he's a GM? He has no clue about a 40-yard dash, a pass set, a tackle or a throw."
One reason for Turley's bitterness toward Loomis is the effect the GM's ascent had on the tackle's contract negotiations. Had Mueller stayed, sources say he and Turley were close to finalizing a contract extension with terms similar to the ones to which Turley ultimately agreed with the Rams. Instead, Loomis offered a lesser signing bonus ($8 million), and talks broke off early last season.
Eventually, Turley came to distrust Haslett. "A lot of players stood up for Jim Haslett when he was negotiating his contract," Turley said. "We told management, 'We're not gonna sign here until he gets taken care of, because we want him to be the coach.' But when it came time for him to stand up for the players who had his back, he stayed out of it. His answer was, 'I don't get involved with contract negotiations.' But that's weak.
"Mickey Loomis and Jim kept telling me, 'We're gonna get Jim's deal done, then Aaron Brooks', and then we're gonna take care of you. You're our guy.' In talking to a lot of people, [I've found that] Jim's just two-faced, man. He says one thing, then says another behind your back. I'm sure that for every good conversation we had, he turned around and ripped me to someone else. I don't have too much respect for someone like that."
Haslett, in a statement e-mailed by Bensel, responded, "They tell me that 10 percent of the population is miserable and unhappy all the time and Kyle definitely falls in that 10 percent. Following last season, and after meeting with the entire team one-on-one, the vast majority of our players wanted to see him gone."
Turley bristles at such depictions, insisting he was a "team leader. I was the marquee player on the team, and they didn't care what I had to say. So many crappy little things they do make them a low-class organization, and when players would come to me to complain I would call [management] on it, which pissed them off."
In continuing his rant against the franchise, Turley reserved his greatest disdain for Benson, the impersonal car dealer who, through Bensel, declined comment Wednesday. "I got there as a rookie, and I bought a Mercedes from his dealership," Turley said. "My CPA looked at the lease -- I was a young guy trying to build up my credit, so I didn't just pay for it in cash -- and he told me that if I paid it off, I would've ended up paying twice what the car is worth. I realized that they were f------ me, and it all went downhill from there."
Turley, who served as the Saints' NFL Players Association representative (he has a similar post with the Rams who, incidentally, were cited Wednesday for having violated the league's offseason workout policy), viewed Benson as a clueless boss who cared nothing about his players. "We had our training camps at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, La., the s------- of the world," Turley said. "It's right next to the Gulf of Mexico, surrounded by sugarcane fields. On the day Korey Stringer died in Minnesota, the heat index there was 105 degrees; on the same day in Thibodaux, it was 145, and guys were locking up during practice. We had s----- dorms, and the food service was provided by the lowest bidder. There were a bunch of backyard barbecue guys cooking food in the back, and players were getting food-poisoning.
"So, instead of improving conditions for players, what does the owner do? He builds a luxury box that must have cost between $50,000 and $100,000, with 10 leather seats and a full bar, fully encapsulated and air-conditioned. So while we're out there practicing in 150-degree heat for 2 1/2 hours, he can sit in there with his buddies and watch us sweat."
Bensel said the area to which Turley referred was actually a trailer used for post-practice interviews and to entertain marketing guests. "Tom Benson watches every practice from the field, not from some air-conditioned suite," Bensel said, then added: "He is the owner, so if he did watch from there it should be no big deal."
(It should be noted that such questionable behavior is not inconsistent with Benson's image. One source familiar with the Saints' front-office dealings says Benson, after having given no raises to his football staffers this year, took them all to a nearby marina following April's draft to show off his new, $6 million yacht. The source said Benson recently began collecting payroll taxes from employees for their complimentary season tickets.)
The food-service setup at the Saints' practice facility in Metairie, La., also rankled Turley, who charged that "guys were coming up to me saying, 'Kyle, this is just poor. This is not the NFL. This is not what I signed up for. Why don't you call the health board?' So I did, and they paid a surprise visit during the middle of last season and wrote up three pages of violations. They found mold in the food and flies in the cooking area -- they were cooking on filthy grills and everything -- and fined the catering service $5,000. And you know what Mickey Loomis said when he confronted
By: Michael Silver, SI.com
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/inside_game/michael_silver/news/2003/06/05/open_mike/
There is nothing subtle about Kyle Turley, the hyper-intense and heavily tattooed offensive tackle who plays football like the human embodiment of an Eddie Van Halen guitar solo. So when I called Turley Tuesday night to touch base for the first time since the March 22 trade that sent him from the Saints to the Rams, I hardly expected some wimpy comment wishing his former franchise the best of luck.
Still, even by Turley's lofty standards, the depth of his enmity for the Saints was stunning. "I love it here in St. Louis, because it's a professional atmosphere where the players come first," Turley said, his surfer-dude inflection rising. "That's not what they're about in New Orleans. They're about putting money in the owner's pocket, maybe fielding a decent team and hopefully winning some games -- not that the owner really cares about that. Here, everything is geared toward winning the Super Bowl, from the owners down to the equipment guys, and they're not going to let anything distract them from that. I see now what it's like to be in the NFL and to be part of a professional football team. Back there it's like college, maybe worse. It's such a low-class organization."
Whoa, big guy. How do you really feel?
Seventy-five minutes later, Turley was still going strong. By then the player best known for yanking the helmet off the head of New York Jets safety Damien Robinson and then hurling it across the field at the pivotal moment of a 2001 game had called his former coach, Jim Haslett, a "two-faced backstabber;" had charged that Saints general manager Mickey Loomis "knows nothing about football" and was promoted to his post over a more deserving, African-American candidate; and had bashed New Orleans owner Tom Benson for, among other things, cutting him an unfavorable deal on a Mercedes-Benz five years ago.
Other than that, Turley has nothing but love for his former bosses, who dealt him to St. Louis for a second-round pick in 2004 rather than commit to a multi-year contract extension. The Rams, in turn, signed Turley to a six-year deal valued somewhere between $26.5 and $30 million, including a $10 million signing bonus and another $2 million in guaranteed money.
St. Louis coach Mike Martz thinks Turley -- who, assuming the team can placate unhappy left tackle Orlando Pace, will give Kurt Warner a pair of bookend pass protectors -- can help propel his team back to the top of the NFL. The Saints believe their 1998 first-round draft pick, who has never made a Pro Bowl but was voted to the AP's All-Pro team in 2001, is an overrated player who was not well-liked by his teammates.
"To be honest with you, I don't really give a damn about Kyle Turley," Loomis said Wednesday. "He's the Rams' problem now." Later, in a statement e-mailed by Saints PR director Greg Bensel, Loomis continued, "Kyle believes he can coach and manage the team better than the head coach and GM, but in reality he has trouble managing himself. We determined that he was a cancer on our team and we simply got rid of him. It was a unanimous decision of our coaches, personnel department and administration."
Ouch, Mickey. How do you really feel?
More important, how did it get this bad?
Much of the tension stems from the infamous helmet-throwing incident in November of 2001. Though Turley was defending quarterback Aaron Brooks, whose helmet was being twisted violently by Robinson, his over-the-top response (which included an obscene gesture) yielded an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty that helped cement the Saints' 16-9 defeat. The next day Haslett said publicly that he had contemplated cutting Turley, and the team later ordered the 6-foot-5, 300-pounder to attend anger-management classes.
Turley says he ultimately mended fences with Haslett, who became the most powerful employee in the organization after Benson's abrupt firing of highly regarded general manager Randy Mueller last May. Soon thereafter, Haslett received a lucrative contract extension and, given Loomis' background as a salary-cap specialist, supreme power when it came to football-related decisions.
"Two guys, Randy Mueller and Jim Haslett, were coming up on the end of their contracts, and Mr. Benson wasn't going to pay both of them, because that's not how he works," Turley charged. "So he fired Randy Mueller, and he had a very, very valuable in-house candidate to replace him in Charles Bailey (then the assistant general manager of football operations), who knows football. With all the racial things going on right now, and the push to hire minorities, which I agree with, how could this guy get passed over in favor of a guy like Loomis, who knows nothing about football?"
When I asked Turley if players perceived Loomis as a yes-man for Benson, he answered, "Absolutely. The guy spent 14 years in a back room, and now all of a sudden he's a GM? He has no clue about a 40-yard dash, a pass set, a tackle or a throw."
One reason for Turley's bitterness toward Loomis is the effect the GM's ascent had on the tackle's contract negotiations. Had Mueller stayed, sources say he and Turley were close to finalizing a contract extension with terms similar to the ones to which Turley ultimately agreed with the Rams. Instead, Loomis offered a lesser signing bonus ($8 million), and talks broke off early last season.
Eventually, Turley came to distrust Haslett. "A lot of players stood up for Jim Haslett when he was negotiating his contract," Turley said. "We told management, 'We're not gonna sign here until he gets taken care of, because we want him to be the coach.' But when it came time for him to stand up for the players who had his back, he stayed out of it. His answer was, 'I don't get involved with contract negotiations.' But that's weak.
"Mickey Loomis and Jim kept telling me, 'We're gonna get Jim's deal done, then Aaron Brooks', and then we're gonna take care of you. You're our guy.' In talking to a lot of people, [I've found that] Jim's just two-faced, man. He says one thing, then says another behind your back. I'm sure that for every good conversation we had, he turned around and ripped me to someone else. I don't have too much respect for someone like that."
Haslett, in a statement e-mailed by Bensel, responded, "They tell me that 10 percent of the population is miserable and unhappy all the time and Kyle definitely falls in that 10 percent. Following last season, and after meeting with the entire team one-on-one, the vast majority of our players wanted to see him gone."
Turley bristles at such depictions, insisting he was a "team leader. I was the marquee player on the team, and they didn't care what I had to say. So many crappy little things they do make them a low-class organization, and when players would come to me to complain I would call [management] on it, which pissed them off."
In continuing his rant against the franchise, Turley reserved his greatest disdain for Benson, the impersonal car dealer who, through Bensel, declined comment Wednesday. "I got there as a rookie, and I bought a Mercedes from his dealership," Turley said. "My CPA looked at the lease -- I was a young guy trying to build up my credit, so I didn't just pay for it in cash -- and he told me that if I paid it off, I would've ended up paying twice what the car is worth. I realized that they were f------ me, and it all went downhill from there."
Turley, who served as the Saints' NFL Players Association representative (he has a similar post with the Rams who, incidentally, were cited Wednesday for having violated the league's offseason workout policy), viewed Benson as a clueless boss who cared nothing about his players. "We had our training camps at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, La., the s------- of the world," Turley said. "It's right next to the Gulf of Mexico, surrounded by sugarcane fields. On the day Korey Stringer died in Minnesota, the heat index there was 105 degrees; on the same day in Thibodaux, it was 145, and guys were locking up during practice. We had s----- dorms, and the food service was provided by the lowest bidder. There were a bunch of backyard barbecue guys cooking food in the back, and players were getting food-poisoning.
"So, instead of improving conditions for players, what does the owner do? He builds a luxury box that must have cost between $50,000 and $100,000, with 10 leather seats and a full bar, fully encapsulated and air-conditioned. So while we're out there practicing in 150-degree heat for 2 1/2 hours, he can sit in there with his buddies and watch us sweat."
Bensel said the area to which Turley referred was actually a trailer used for post-practice interviews and to entertain marketing guests. "Tom Benson watches every practice from the field, not from some air-conditioned suite," Bensel said, then added: "He is the owner, so if he did watch from there it should be no big deal."
(It should be noted that such questionable behavior is not inconsistent with Benson's image. One source familiar with the Saints' front-office dealings says Benson, after having given no raises to his football staffers this year, took them all to a nearby marina following April's draft to show off his new, $6 million yacht. The source said Benson recently began collecting payroll taxes from employees for their complimentary season tickets.)
The food-service setup at the Saints' practice facility in Metairie, La., also rankled Turley, who charged that "guys were coming up to me saying, 'Kyle, this is just poor. This is not the NFL. This is not what I signed up for. Why don't you call the health board?' So I did, and they paid a surprise visit during the middle of last season and wrote up three pages of violations. They found mold in the food and flies in the cooking area -- they were cooking on filthy grills and everything -- and fined the catering service $5,000. And you know what Mickey Loomis said when he confronted
Jerry Fontenot? He said, 'Jerry, we don't have to give you guys food.'"
"Hey, do you get lunch provided for you everyday?" Loomis asked when we spoke Wednesday. "Nobody else in America does. I told Jerry, 'Hey, we're providing this food as a courtesy to you guys. If you don't like it, don't eat it.'"
The Saints ate it on the field at the end of 2002, closing the season with defeats to three creampuffs, the Vikings, Bengals and Panthers, to finish 9-7. A single victory during that span would have sent New Orleans to the playoffs. Instead, since their inspiring run in 2000, which included an NFC West title and a first-ever playoff victory, the Saints are a .500 team that has parted ways with a list of premier players, including halfback Ricky Williams, tackle Willie Roaf, defensive linemen La'Roi Glover and Joe Johnson and safety Sammy Knight.
"I know a lot of great players who used to play for the Saints," Turley said. "They've never been a team that has anted up and taken care of their players. I've heard a lot of horror stories about bad NFL organizations, and I'd rank [the Saints] dead last."
If Turley sounds angry, don't be alarmed. He's a charming guy off the field and a nasty mauler on it, a precarious combination that is not without inherent hypocrisy. I'll never forget the time Turley called me from his car while driving to his first anger-management class back in 2001. "I'm sure this will be really constructive," he said sarcastically. "You wouldn't want a FOOTBALL PLAYER to be ANGRY OR ANYTHING!"
When I asked him about those old wounds toward the end of our conversation Tuesday night, he laughed and said, "I think that helped me, actually. It taught me how to better channel my anger. I got there and the guy running it said, 'I know why they brought you here; because you play tough, aggressive football.'
"Contrary to common belief, I don't play dirty. I play aggressive, violent and nasty football, within the framework of the game. People don't understand the mentality it takes to go out there on Sunday to be a different person, to protect and to serve at all costs. Just like no one understands what cops have to do in the line of duty."
Put it this way: With Turley in the mix, it will be much tougher to label the Rams as a "finesse" team -- a belief Turley admittedly adopted as the St. Louis-New Orleans rivalry intensified during the 2000 season. (I know what you're thinking and no, the Saints, who now play in the NFC South, won't face the Rams in the 2003 regular season. Bummer.) Now, for all of his bitterness toward his previous bosses, Turley is ecstatic about life. In March he got married for the second time, throwing a gala reception in New Orleans, then arrived in St. Louis, where he says Martz told him, "You're my guy. We need to have you to win football games."
Turley believes that everything will fall into place -- Marshall Faulk, his friend and fellow San Diego State alum, will lead the league in rushing; Warner will shake off the injuries and inconsistencies that plagued him last year; Turley will finally earn his first Pro Bowl trip (he was selected as a late injury replacement for Pace in the January 2002 game but elected to honor a prior commitment and serve as the grand marshall of the Endymion Parade in New Orleans); and the Rams will shake off their horrific 2002 campaign and play in their third Super Bowl in five seasons.
"If we can get Orlando Pace re-signed, Marshall's going to rush for 2,000 yards, and Kurt Warner's going to be able to sit in the pocket all day," Turley predicted. "It's going to be something to see, man, with all the talent we have. New Orleans had a couple of marquee players on each side of the ball who made big money; here, you've got five marquee guys on each side of the ball. I'm telling you, bro, it's like night and day."
Before he hung up, Turley took a final jab at his former franchise, saying, "The guy who runs the cafeteria here asks me, 'What can be better? Is there anything you guys need?' It's awesome. Everyone here knows that the way to make your team good is to take care of your players."
He hung up the phone and headed to bed, probably dreaming of September, when he can channel his anger in appropriate fashion.
As for the sports that are currently in season ...
"Hey, do you get lunch provided for you everyday?" Loomis asked when we spoke Wednesday. "Nobody else in America does. I told Jerry, 'Hey, we're providing this food as a courtesy to you guys. If you don't like it, don't eat it.'"
The Saints ate it on the field at the end of 2002, closing the season with defeats to three creampuffs, the Vikings, Bengals and Panthers, to finish 9-7. A single victory during that span would have sent New Orleans to the playoffs. Instead, since their inspiring run in 2000, which included an NFC West title and a first-ever playoff victory, the Saints are a .500 team that has parted ways with a list of premier players, including halfback Ricky Williams, tackle Willie Roaf, defensive linemen La'Roi Glover and Joe Johnson and safety Sammy Knight.
"I know a lot of great players who used to play for the Saints," Turley said. "They've never been a team that has anted up and taken care of their players. I've heard a lot of horror stories about bad NFL organizations, and I'd rank [the Saints] dead last."
If Turley sounds angry, don't be alarmed. He's a charming guy off the field and a nasty mauler on it, a precarious combination that is not without inherent hypocrisy. I'll never forget the time Turley called me from his car while driving to his first anger-management class back in 2001. "I'm sure this will be really constructive," he said sarcastically. "You wouldn't want a FOOTBALL PLAYER to be ANGRY OR ANYTHING!"
When I asked him about those old wounds toward the end of our conversation Tuesday night, he laughed and said, "I think that helped me, actually. It taught me how to better channel my anger. I got there and the guy running it said, 'I know why they brought you here; because you play tough, aggressive football.'
"Contrary to common belief, I don't play dirty. I play aggressive, violent and nasty football, within the framework of the game. People don't understand the mentality it takes to go out there on Sunday to be a different person, to protect and to serve at all costs. Just like no one understands what cops have to do in the line of duty."
Put it this way: With Turley in the mix, it will be much tougher to label the Rams as a "finesse" team -- a belief Turley admittedly adopted as the St. Louis-New Orleans rivalry intensified during the 2000 season. (I know what you're thinking and no, the Saints, who now play in the NFC South, won't face the Rams in the 2003 regular season. Bummer.) Now, for all of his bitterness toward his previous bosses, Turley is ecstatic about life. In March he got married for the second time, throwing a gala reception in New Orleans, then arrived in St. Louis, where he says Martz told him, "You're my guy. We need to have you to win football games."
Turley believes that everything will fall into place -- Marshall Faulk, his friend and fellow San Diego State alum, will lead the league in rushing; Warner will shake off the injuries and inconsistencies that plagued him last year; Turley will finally earn his first Pro Bowl trip (he was selected as a late injury replacement for Pace in the January 2002 game but elected to honor a prior commitment and serve as the grand marshall of the Endymion Parade in New Orleans); and the Rams will shake off their horrific 2002 campaign and play in their third Super Bowl in five seasons.
"If we can get Orlando Pace re-signed, Marshall's going to rush for 2,000 yards, and Kurt Warner's going to be able to sit in the pocket all day," Turley predicted. "It's going to be something to see, man, with all the talent we have. New Orleans had a couple of marquee players on each side of the ball who made big money; here, you've got five marquee guys on each side of the ball. I'm telling you, bro, it's like night and day."
Before he hung up, Turley took a final jab at his former franchise, saying, "The guy who runs the cafeteria here asks me, 'What can be better? Is there anything you guys need?' It's awesome. Everyone here knows that the way to make your team good is to take care of your players."
He hung up the phone and headed to bed, probably dreaming of September, when he can channel his anger in appropriate fashion.
As for the sports that are currently in season ...
