Just listened to an interview on ESPN 1000 with Mike Tice. He was surprisingly candid, and he basically came out and said that the Bears will get a WR1 who wins one on one matchups down the field. No implication of if that’ll be through the draft or free agency, but it sounds like he at least identified the issue and doesn’t intend to tip toe around it.
The Bears sure are putting a shitload of eggs in the Jay Cutler basket. I’m not sure that’s so smart, considering he’s a guy who has never ever cracked the top 10 in QB rating, in any of his 6 seasons in the NFL.
You say that like his only credentials are as a Cutler buddy.
For 3 years the Bears have actively worked against their franchise QB. Might be nice to see what happens if they actually throw him a bone for a change.
KC is sticking with Crennel. Based on the last few weeks of the season I can’t blame them, if they somehow were unable to look at his head coaching history.
Actually, my fear now is that Romeo learned in Cleveland why he was a terrible fucking head coach and has now corrected it and will become a good coach. We can start a tradition of being the failed learning grounds of great coaches. Whee.
What’s the deal with the Patriots’ OC? OCs plural?
It seems like a pretty smart move. McDaniels knows the system somewhat and knows a lot of the key personnel. Getting him in early will help him get up to speed for next season and give them an extra set of hands to gameplan with. It’s pretty rare that you see a coach go back to the same position he left, but it seems like it’ll probably work out pretty well for the Pats and McDaniels.
Probably just as weird is O’Brien accepting the Penn State job but choosing to stick around and coach the rest of the playoffs. I wonder if that’s a sign of Penn State’s desperation in this situation. O’Brien by all accounts wasn’t even a top 10 choice for them, so they might have been forced into this concession. I know that Weis did the same thing before accepting the Notre Dame job, and won the Super Bowl that year no less, but outside of Foxboro it’s pretty much unheard of.
I just read this for the first time.
Now that is fucking strange. What the hell are you people smoking in Cheese country?
The Bucs appear to be turning over every single rock and leaf looking for used up, failed former head coaches. I guess the whole Raheem Morris youth experiment really soured them on that stratagem.
Strangely, with all the youth on that team Marty ball might be just the recipe for about 2 and a half seasons until the tune his ass out.
Brad Childress? He epitomizes the squeak in desperation’s voice.
Wade Phillips has said recently he’d like the top job for a club again. KHOU reported tonite that Texans owner McNair had given the Bucs permission to contact him. That would be a crushing blow to our D next year as evidenced by several poor performances when Wade was out for some necessary medical procedure.
If Schottenheimer gets hired by the Bucs and does well I’ll flip. The excuse the Browns didn’t chase him like 6 years ago was that he was too old to coach anymore.
I generally hate the schottenheimer style of coaching but he as an amzaing record of not sucking, so I figured he might be nice for 3-4 years to stop the bleeding and then get a good coach to take over.
The newly-hired GM of the Raiders fired Hue Jackson.
The Titans have denied the Bears permission to interview Loggains. On to the next man up, you know what might help smooth things along? A fucking GM.
Whoever they hire will be GM in name only. This is Lovie’s team, with a heavy dose of Cutler. The GM will have to draft players who fit Lovie’s schemes, not who the GM thinks is the best player to draft. I’m not sure any established GM would want that gig. Look at the Raiders. The first thing their new GM does is fire the coach. Not having your coach of your choice will make the GM job a lot less attractive. Kinda like being OC for a coach who may have been on his last year isn’t attractive and led to Mike Martz.
I really don’t understand why the Bears are doing it this way. It seems backasswards to me.
Lots of developments.
The Colts have a new GM in Ryan Grigson, poached from the Eagles. He’s a local kid who comes from an organization that seems to acquire a lot of talent that underachieves. Pretty good swap for a Colts team that tended to overachieve with crummy talent flanking Peyton and Freeney.
The Chargers pretty inconsequentially are losing their OC who no one has heard of, Clarence Shelmon. He quit, it’s unclear if he is retiring or if he’s looking for another job where he gets to call plays. He might be an interesting addition to the Bears if he has any interest in being an offensive assistant. The Norv system will be pretty similar to what Tice claims to want to run. The Chargers are going to promote form within according to PFT.
In perhaps the biggest shit sandwich announcement of the offseason thus far, Mike Mularkey was hired as the head coach of the Jags. Mularkey failed in Buffalo and hasn’t been much of a success as an OC in Atlanta, as evidenced by the rumors that he was about to be fired. I suspect it’s going to be a really tough run for the Jags these next few years with MJD aging, Gabbert sucking (and probably preventing them from drafting a different QB) and a failed retread as a HC before the inevitable move to LA under this new owner. There’s always a chance that Mularkey could be a Belicick type story who got a gig too soon and learned a lot and is primed to blossom, but I doubt it.
The change parade continues in the garbage fire that is the New York Jets. OC Brian Schottenheimer has resigned instead of getting fired. Personally I think he’s getting screwed and that the issues are a dysfunctional organization, a noodle armed QB who won’t prepare and a bunch of selfish diva WRs. If any of the speculation that his pop is a candidate for the Bucs gig, you’d have to think that Brian would be a lock for the OC job there in what could be a massive upgrade. The Bucs could even seal the deal by labelling him as the HC in waiting for whenever Marty gets tired and decides to call it a career.
In a somewhat questionable move, the Jets are adding Tony Sparano as Schottenheimer’s replacement. The only good thing about this is that it gets Tony Sparano into his ideal home of New Jersey. He’s never been an OC before and hasn’t ever had anything resembling smashing success calling plays. He also seems like another empty one-liner machine who gets by on style instead of substance. Perfect for the Jets, less perfect for winning. Like the Jets the Dolphins always looked good while underachieving.
The Jets lost Bill Callahan, who’s jumping ship for the OL coach job in Dallas. Callahan was probably the only competent assistant in New York and he saw the writing on the wall when he refused to sign extensions. The Jets also fired WR coach Henry Ellard who probably deserves a fair amount of the criticism for the failures of that passing game and the dysfunction of the WR corps.
There were some rumors that Todd Haley was going to come to the Jets and team up with Sparano. Talk about adding some more mouths to a already deafening facility. They’d have employees passing out from a lack of oxygen with Ryan, Haley, Sparano and those players all being blowhards. For some reason the new rumor is that Haley is going back to the Cardinals, something I’m not sure is a great idea after who well Skelton played to end last season.
The Cowboys have shit canned Dave Campo who oversaw the joke that was the Cowboys secondary. Talk about a failure, Campo would probably be working at Denny’s if not for a friendship with Jones.
The Falcons have both Coordinator jobs open and will be probably considered a pretty cush place to land. We’ll have to wait and see who goes there. Spagnuolo has gotten some press as a DC possibility, as have the other fired HCs in Morris and Del Rio. Offensively Haley might actually make more sense here than in Arizona.
After getting too much credit for making Cam Newton into a success, one of my former wishlist OCs for the Bears, Rob Chudzinski is going to be interviewed by the Rams for their HC job as a Jeff Fisher backup plan. Probably a good call, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Chudzinski is one of those guys who’s a great OC but would fail as an HC. That said, a great teaching OC like him could pay huge dividends for a guy like Bradford who might benefit from that Norv-lite system.
Of course, we still aren’t any closer to learning where Fisher is going to end up. Miami and St. Louis still seem to be the frontrunners but I guess Fisher is enjoying being flown around on private Jets.
Well, that was what Jerry was. They fired him. I have some hope that they realize that a strong personality is required at GM. Naturally what the need most is a better talent evaluator, and maybe a good talent evaluator who can select guys who fit Lovie’s system isn’t a complete issue since Lovie does tend to win games.
That’s the catch. Lovie may not be the problem, but he’s certainly a problem when it comes to hiring a GM. Ideally they’d find a up and comer who sees the potential and takes the long view. Established big name guys won’t do that. Hopefully they can find a young guy who’s an elite talent evaluator who can grow into the management aspects. They have a cap guru, Lovie will determine where the money is spent (defense) but they might be able to make it work if they can just hit on more draft picks.
You got that right. I understand the decision to keep Lovie, he wins with subpar talent, but he can’t be absolved of the blame for that talent gap. He’s got a lot of power in Halas Hall. If he could be taught some humility and we could get a GM who’s empowered to reign Lovie in on some of these silly personnel choices Lovie could be an asset, but that’s not likely to happen. We’re basically stuck in the same situation the Eagles and Chargers are in with Norv and Andy. The Bears should have just taken their medicine and canned Lovie too, but they didn’t so not they need to sell that decision to people. Tough to do for the top GM candidates who can write their own check.
Well, the Sun-Times seems to be selling Bears fans on the idea of Ruskell sticking around to be the GM. The idea turns my stomach, but they make a couple of valid points I suppose. The comments about him cleaning up Holmgren’s mess are particularly interesting and the tug of war over Jason Babin are pertinent after the season he just had. The Shaun Alexander notes however are worrisome in light of Forte’s situation.
The Bears have officially scheduled interviews with 4 GM candidates. The list is pretty uninspiring and is probably indicative of what they will be left to settle for considering the Lovie situation. Hopefully this is just the first slate, but maybe one of these guys blows everyone away and is the next Polian.
The list is Chiefs director of college scouting Phil Emery, Patriots director of pro personnel Jason Licht, Chargers director of player personnel Jimmy Raye and Giants director of college scouting Marc Ross. Raye and Ross satisfy the Rooney rule, and while these aren’t well know names they all come from very successful organizations who have drafted particularly well. We shall see.
As a Bills fan, I found this choice bewildering. Mularkey wasn’t any good in Buffalo, and while the Jags’ offense was painful to watch, the Falcons offense wasn’t very good either. Certainly you can’t say Matt Ryan has developed into a worldbeater at QB, although that’s not something you can pin on one person, and the Falcons’ offense just got shut out by the Giants this weekend.
Of interest to pretty much no one, Hue Jackson was fired as head coach by the Raiders’ newly hired GM Reggie McKenzie (a former Packer executive).
This should be a surprise to absolutely no one. After making one of the stupidest trades in NFL history, Jackson’s success was tied to Carson Palmer, the guy he gave up the farm for. And it didn’t work at all.
Jackson, I thought, was a horrible head coach, a bad decision maker on personnel, an idiotic hothead, and may have set the Raiders back a couple years. He truly deserved to get fired.
Well, no one here (why isn’t there a Raider fan on the Dope?).
I was babysitting my nephew for my Raider-nut sister- and brother-in-law. My B-i-L was surprised but OK with the move. We agreed that Hugh’s press conferences and radio interviews were awesome. More entertaining than Rex Ryan, for sure, but only we here in the Bay Area got to see it.
The real story isn’t Jackson or even McKenzie, but Al’s son Mark coming into his own as an owner. He hired a quality GM and gave him authority. At the press conference, Mark Davis spoke about things an owner is supposed to, like stadiums and front-office organization, not players or playcalling. It’s looking good for that team across the Bay. (I just hope they stay. The threat to move to LA is very, very real.)