Accorsi

Twenty-one years after he lost John Elway, Ernie Accorsi found Eli Manning. The New York Giants can only hope the two quarterbacks deserve to be linked in the same sentence one day. Accorsi, the Giants' general manager, acquired Manning yesterday after a calculated gamble and some nifty maneuvering in the first round of the NFL draft. Unable to agree on terms of a trade with San Diego before the draft, Accorsi had to watch the Chargers take the Mississippi quarterback with the first pick.

Ernie Accorsi remembers the ill will created in 1977 when Baltimore Colts wide receiver Roger Carr stayed out of camp until the week before the season started. "Players were anonymously sniping at him," said Accorsi, the New York Giants general manager who worked for the Colts back then. "We had a chance to win. We had won two straight division titles. We put him in the game [at Seattle] and his touchdown put the game away. "He caught a bomb from Bert Jones. I think there were 45 guys hugging him on the field.

The other football players refer to him as "The Guy," and you can hear the capital "T" and the capital "G" when they speak.As in, "The Guy who is going to get it done for us. The Guy we can count on to get us into the end zone. The Guy who is going to get us to the Super Bowl."Montana, Marino, Majik, Everett, Elway. These are The Guys.But behind these great quarterbacks are "The Other Guys."The backups.They may be wizened veterans or marginal talents or heirs apparent. You might catch a glimpse of them during a timeout, eavesdropping on a sideline conversation between The Guy and The Coach.

Maybe they can, if you're filled with compassion, be charged off as rookie mistakes, errors made by a man who has never headed a football franchise and still is feeling his way. Fortunately, the playing dimensions in the Canadian Football League are longer and wider because Jim Speros has certainly needed the extra space to ramble about while explaining what is quickly evolving into a convoluted plan of operation.He has, to complete the analogy, been all over the field. Enthusiasm, unfortunately, could change to disenchantment.

TAMPA, Fla. - While the Ravens have done their share of talking this week, the New York Giants have quietly gone about their business. That's how coach Jim Fassel likes it. "A long time ago, I told the guys what I wanted our team to be. I just said, 'Hey, listen, shut up and play the game,'" he said. "We don't need to get into the evaluation of what we're doing, how they're doing or anything else. We need to just go out and play and prove ourselves on the field. The less said, the more done, the better I like it. And this team has followed that to a T."

If the Ravens should stumble in the playoffs, they will have someone to blame besides the quarterback for failing to win back-to-back championships: Bert Bell. It was Bell, then the owner of a woeful Philadelphia Eagles club, who in 1935 suggested the radical idea of a reverse-order draft. To strengthen weak franchises, the last-place team would pick college players first and the first-place team last. The scheme devised by Bell, who went on to be NFL commissioner, became a first for a professional sports league.

TAMPA, Fla. - New York Giants defensive tackle Keith Hamilton has been in the NFL too long to yell at the official after what he feels is a bad call. "What good does that do?" Hamilton said after the Giants lost to the Ravens, 34-7, in Super Bowl XXXV last night. So, instead, when Hamilton was called for holding on what would have been a Jessie Armstead return for a touchdown, he just went back to the huddle. "Two years ago, I would have argued," Hamilton said. One would have understood if he had let loose about a play that might have changed the momentum in the game.

Fifty years ago, an undersized defensive back named Andy Nelson climbed into a car alongside a 25-year-old, fresh-faced quarterback. Was it a Pontiac? A Chevrolet? Tricky thing about time: Just as easily as it can help shape a legacy, it can fade a memory. Nelson and his friend drove together to Memorial Stadium, where they would catch a bus to the airport, where they would board a plane for New York, where they would make history just a couple of days later. If there were only a way to get into his head.

Ravens owner Art Modell slowly pulls out a long list of Ozzie Newsome's acquisitions during the past two years, and he sees the present turning into a bright future.Modell points out the free agents that his vice president of player personnel has signed who are now prominent players. Defensive end Michael McCrary. Defensive tackles Tony Siragusa and James Jones. Tight end Eric Green. Right guard Jeff Blackshear.And then Modell sounds even prouder when he talks about the past two drafts, which included Jonathan Ogden, Ray Lewis, Jermaine Lewis, Peter Boulware, Jamie Sharper, Kim Herring"Enough?"

Former NFL executive Ernie Accorsi, a Baltimore resident and consultant to the Maryland Stadium Authority, says Charley Eckman's comments in Wednesday's "Sidelines" were "totally inaccurate."Glen Burnie's colorful Eckman, who has spent a lifetime speaking his mind, said, "Baltimore won't get an expansion team because the big man of the group [of owners] is Art Modell of the Browns. Modell fired Ernie Accorsi, you know, and he isn't about to have him back in the league."Upon reading Eckman's remarks, Accorsi said, "[Modell]