Cards got Bruce Arians.
Who may not retain Horton as DC. If the Browns landed him I’d start being a little optimistic about this offseason.
It’s good to see the Cards maintaining the Pittsburgh West tradition.
Interested in him for the Bears too considering Marinelli is leaving.
Bruce Arians? Geez. The Cardinals love getting the Steelers’ castoffs, don’t they? At least we know where Todd Haley’s going to end up in another two years when Arians gets canned.
Haley was already interviewed for the job this time around - and let’s not forget he came on board with Whisenhunt as the OC for the team that realised Kurt Warner was a better QB than Matt Leinart and got to the Super Bowl.
If the Cards get rid of Horton as a result of this, after what he has done for the defence, I am going to be pretty pissed off. He’s still got 1 year on his contract but I would resign him, if I were them.
I know it’s probably just initial enthusiasm based on little to no information, but I listened to the Marc Trestman presser today and I found myself getting a little fired up about what seems like a entirely new way of doing things in Chicago.
Trestman and Emery are terrible orators but they speak with conviction and are specific and clear about their goals and the steps they took or plan on taking. This is a wonderful contrast to the Lovie era of double talk and vague cliches.
Trestman didn’t equivocate on anything. He’s calling plays and he’s going to make certain that the QB is what drives this offense. He and Emery have clearly defined responsibilities and seem like two of a kind.
I think the media will be happy too, there isn’t going to be any duplicity or moratoriums on talking.
They still need to sort out the Defensive leadership. Trestman said he plans to bring a bunch of his staff down from Montreal. And Trestman was unprepared to talk about any players due to lack of knowledge. So there’s clearly work to be done, but I’m at least in a positive frame of mind about the direction right now.
Fuck. Lombardi is interviewing with the Browns today. I thought after all this time, with no contact from the Browns, the rumors of the Browns being interested in him were bullshit.
Everything I said about being mildly optimistic, even if we land Horton, will completely reverse. This would be a soul-crushing, franchise-crushing move. It would realize everyone’s worst fear about the piece of shit now in charge of running this franchise - that he’s some asshole businessman that thinks so highly of himself that he’s going to run football operations and act as GM and just needs a kiss ass yes-man to rubber stamp all his moves.
This is seriously the single worst move I can think of for the franchise. It may be worse than simply disbanding.
Well fuck, that didn’t take long. Lombardi is now vice president of player personel. I guess this leaves Banner, a fucking business guy who wrote contracts and managed the salary cap as GM.
I take back anything remotely positive I said about this new organization. Fuck it. Just burn it all to the fucking ground.
It’s incredibly difficult, given the impressive history of failure of the team since '99, but I think Banner is going to end up turning out to be the worst thing that has happened to the franchise since then.
Fuck this.
Looking increasingly likely that Horton is out in Arizona - with Todd Bowles favoured to take the DC role under Arians (coming over from Philadelphia, that bastion of defensive solidity) - both ends of this deal are under contract though, so will take some time to resolve. Apparently, Horton didn’t take too well to being passed over for the HC job and had a bust up with GM Steve Keim.
Given the shape Horton put the Cards defence in this year, if he is going, I’d wish him every success. I reckon they’ll regret letting him go at some point and the new guy is going to have to win over the unit who, by all accounts, were Horton loyalists.
Well fuck if Horton is going to come to the sort of dysfunctional organization that would hire Lombardi. Enjoy, Bears.
Looking at the Lombardi stories in various places on the net, I don’t think I have seen one positive comment in any comment box about this hire. Even the people who are not Cleveland fans are thanking Cleveland for hiring Lombardi.
I can only imagine what the Browns’ fan sites are doing right now.
I hate to quote Bill Simmons but, as he is fond of saying “the lesson, as always, God hates Cleveland”.
SenorBeef, you and I both need to choose new teams. The Browns and Lions are going to keep shitting on us, and it’s time to leave our abusive relationships.
Who should we glom on to?
I hope the Rams take a run at getting Horton at DC. Much better fit then Rob Ryan would be and knowledge of a division rival is a big plus.
The Packers have always appealed to me. I view them as being the second best fans in the league behind Browns fan. Old, storied franchise. Cold weather, classic football team. Great fan support. I like them a lot, but I’ve never been able to get my heart into rooting for them 1/50th as much as the Browns. I just can’t do it, I can’t just flip fandom. I’ll probably just have it fade away.
Packers wouldn’t be a good call for you, I assume, on account of the division thing.
When Lombardi was VP of Player Personel the first time around in Cleveland, 15 of his 40 draft picks didn’t even make the team. He’s since proven himself by failing even worse everywhere he went after that, running other teams into the ground until he was eventually run out of the league, where he became one of the dumbest most consistently wrong commentator on TV.
I would honestly rather have a random recruiting guy from a D3 college in the GM position. At least that guy is only likely to be bad. With Lombardi, we have a long history of proof that he will surely be bad.
I just had an ingenious idea.
Lombardi has proven over and over again, that he basically always makes the wrong decision.
And when you’re facing a choice, knowing which one is the wrong decision can be very valuable, almost as valuable as making the right decision.
So the Browns are going to be NFL innovators. They are going to be the first time to hire a proven consistent failure in their organization so they can get his opinion on what to do, and then do the exact opposite.
It’s genius!
They should team him up with Vinny Cerrato and Matt Millen. It’d be the Ultimate Triumvirate of Clueless NFL GMs.
Haslam is such a fucking liar.
I may have mentioned it in this thread, but one of the Browns fans wrote a letter to Haslam a few months ago and got a reply. Basically it was a plea not to hire Lombardi, pointing out his failures, etc.
He actually got a reply to the extent of “I’ve received a lot of passionate letters about potentially hiring Lombardi, and while half of them are negative, the other half are positive”
Which is an utter lie. No one in the entire fucking world would write a passionate, positive letter begging Haslam to hire Lombardi. I’ve never seen the Browns fanbase so in sync in wanting anything. I knew then that this bullshit was going down. Why lie like that unless he was really going to bring him in?
So now he brings him in and he says he talked to a lot of NFL executives. They all said “if you can get Lombardi, then you go get Lombardi”. Right, which is why the guy has been out of football for 6 years, because teams are all rushing to hire him.
I guess, technically, maybe Haslam hasn’t lied in the latter case. Maybe he’s an idiot. Maybe personel people really did say “Uh yeah, you go ahead and hire Lombardi, that way there’s no risk that your franchise snatches up one of the young up and comers that could potentially go to my team”
The Bears coaching staff is starting to take shape.
HC - Marc Trestamn
Assistant HC - Joe DeCamillis
OC - Aaron Kromer
QB - Matt Cavanaugh
RB - Skip Peete
OL - Kromer
WR - TBD
TE - TBD
DC - TBD
DL - Mike Phair
LB - TBD
DB - Jon Hoke
ST - DeCamillis
Assistant ST - TBD
Big gaping hole at DC and the early favorite is an internal promotion to Hoke. The additions of Cavanaugh and Peete are interesting if not inspiring. Both were recently fired.
The “Cleveland Browns Present **SenorBeef’s **Suicide Watch” is becoming an annual thing. It may deserve its own thread, like those Steelers ones.
The Lombardi thing… ouch. I wonder if he’s as bad as everyone thinks or if perception is colored by how atrocious he is as an analyst. Hear me out here. When Brian Billick interviewed for the Eagles job recently, reaction within Philly was predominantly negative. People were lining up to self-immolate, but it was absolutely because most people really know him as a terrible color commentator. People don’t remember what he was like as a coach. People know Lombardi really only as an idiot on TV, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s an idiot talent evaluator.
I still think he’s an idiot, but there you go. Lombardi is a personnel guy, clearly. Banner is a business guy. And in fairness, he was a central part of what built the Eagles organization which, for over a decade, was the smartest organization in the NFL with regards to contracts and draft management. The Eagles rarely made moves in free agency that flopped and they never crippled themselves with bad contracts. This team competed yearly for a Super Bowl, for a decade, despite having a QB who was never once considered an elite player at his position in that span. A lot of what kept the team afloat was never running aground with the cap and never getting anchored down by albatross contracts. That was Banner.
You have an owner who at least cares. A GM who has a strong reputation for managing the business side. And a personnel guy who has somehow managed to get multiple high level jobs in the NFL over a long period of time. This could definitely be worse. I think.
As far as the draft, who have been the most successful teams in the draft recently? I wonder if 25 of 40 picks making the team is as absurdly bad a percentage as it seems.