As a lifelong Packer fan, season-ticket holder, and shareholder, if you want to join the cult, I’ll happily send you some gear to get you started. Truly. PM me if you’re in. 
That’s a very nice offer, but I don’t know if I could ever just switch like that. The more likely consequence unfortunately is that I just lose interest in football generally - I was much less into it this year than in previous years.
Anyway
Well, I’d be surprised and happy if we could land Horton, they really seem to like him in Arizona.
It’d be a weird offseason for the Browns. We’d be making a fruit punch with a lot of good ingredients, and then someone takes a big old Mike Lombardi sized shit in the punchbowl. Kinda makes it hard for those over flavors to work.
Could you tell me more about Banner? Most of what I’ve heard out of Philly was that for years he was the salary cap guy/contract guy, and he did a fine job of it, but in the last few years he tried to become a bigger player in the front office, influencing football decisions, which lead to power struggles of sorts. He became persona non grata and now he’s very hated in that organization.
So I have to wonder, if Banner spent most of those years as just the salary cap guy, how much could he be responsible for building the winning organization? And if he did somehow acquire more power in the later years, is that part of how the franchise started imploding?
From what I gather, he seems to be a power hungry asshole who thinks so much of himself that he thinks that because he can write some contracts and manage the business end of things, he can go ahead and just be the GM too and make football decision. So he hires an inexperienced head coach and a lifetime toady personel ass kisser yes man so that he’s the undisputed top dog there.
Plus, he just seems slimy. Reports are that he sneaks into people’s offices quietly and just waits there for a while until he notices them, tries to do weird in their face talking creepy stuff, that sort of thing. Nothing coming out around him is positive.
Browns get Horton. He seems really well respected, so that’s quite a get. Turner/Horton seem like the best coordinators the Browns have had since 99 easily. Don’t know if Chud is HC material, but at least he was good at his OC job, unlike Shurmur. Hopefully he brings some aggressiveness.
Really, overall, it would be a pretty solid offseason of the Banner/Lombardi combo wasn’t worse than chernobyl.
I see Ryan Mallett in the Browns’ future.
I don’t know if I have any other insight. The power structure in Philly was always so clouded and nebulous with at least three, and likely four, powerful voices in the organization. I’m not sure anyone on the outside really knows who was responsible for what choices. Banner was definitely the architect of the contracts and the cap, but beyond that it isn’t clear where his influence was, if at all.
There’s widespread speculation that Banner was behind all the garbage that came out during the Chip Kelly courting period. Several “unnamed sources” were primarily used to trash Eagles’ GM Howie Roseman (with whom Banner lost a power struggle) in transparent hatchet-job articles. I don’t doubt that the erroneous and patently contrived report of Kelly being near a deal with the Browns was a Banner leak to get everyone to back down from Kelly. So, slimy, absolutely. The guy is loathed in Philly, but he isn’t without serious value, which I think people forget.
I think the Eagles fell apart recently for reasons that didn’t have anything to do with Banner. A lot of that was the erosion of the power structure as a whole and Reid’s shortcomings finally undermining the team (this is a whole other subject).
Managing the cap the way Banner did (and I assume he played a significant role in how the Eagles managed the draft since the two strategies share concepts) freed up the organization to make mistakes. This is pretty huge because no personnel guy is perfect in evaluation. Everyone misses. But when you miss, you can’t do so in such a way that can set the entire organization back five years. I think Banner played a huge role in that not happening to the Eagles over the last decade. He managed the contracts so they couldn’t hurt the team even if the player imploded. He made it so the Eagles weren’t beholden to players after they turned 30 and started to decline.
The worry is definitely that Banner has grown to think he can branch off into scouting and personnel decisions, etc. He doesn’t have that background and the hints are that when he has tried, he has failed. So you have to have a strong personnel guy to take advantage of what Banner can bring.
Oh, whew. We have Michael “Gabbert is a can’t miss. I would bet my reputation on it” Lombardi as a strong, competant personel voice to keep Banner in check.
I think Banner objected to Whisenhunt and a real GM candidate because he thought he would be better able to push around a career asskisser like Lombardi and a less in demand first time head coach just grateful for the opportunity. Which is consistent with what I think he wants, and also the worst thing for the organization.
I’ve heard nothing but good stuff about Horton as DC. Any Arizona fans want to chime in?
Eagles get Pat Shurmur as OC. Cleveland’s revenge!
Why would a guy adapting a new, innovative offense to the NFL want a guy who can’t adapt and runs an offensive system that’s oudated by a decade or two?
Horton was a DB coach in Pittsburgh. Until he took over, Corners were a liability. They have been good since.
Can’t say I was thrilled when I heard. Shurmur made embarrassingly stupid decisions as a HC with the Browns. Interestingly enough, Shurmur was probably directly responsible for the loss to the Eagles this season. You’d think the Eagles, of anyone, would know about Shurmur’s shortcomings.
I can speculate a little bit, here. I think it’s a given Kelly is going to design the offense and call the plays. So whoever they picked as an OC wasn’t going to contribute in the manner of a typical OC. Chip ran a run heavy offense in Oregon so it was always assumed that he would bring in someone who would help develop the passing game.
Shurmur was a disaster as a HC, but as a QB coach with the Eagles, he helped develop Donovan McNabb (McNabb went to three Pro Bowls while Shurmur was in town). I’m hoping, and I’m betting, he’s a glorified QB coach and that his in-game impact is limited. Also hoping that Shurmur is one of those guys who isn’t fit to be the head coach, but has value as a coordinator (I think the Eagles are hoping so too). Then again, he didn’t get results with the Rams either.
Not at all thrilled, though.
That’s the thing - most coordinators who become HC have done so because they’ve excelled as coordinators. Not so with Shurmur - he was ranked in the bottom 8 in offense every time he was an OC. He was hired, we suspect, because he shares the same agent with Holmgren. That sounds ridiculous, right? Except that like 8 guys in the Cleveland FO and coaching staff had the same agent, and it was clear Holmgren was doing a half-ass job. We started calling them the Cleveland Lamonts, as Bob Lamont seemed to determine who was on the team.
So yeah, Shurmur wasn’t even a good coordinator. He’s awful at designing a running game (you can almost always spot a run by personel package), and he’s married to an offense that’s well outdated. It’s kind of weird that you’d hire essentially a WCO specialist who is not flexible as the guy to manage the implementation of something innovative or radical.
I wanted Kelly although after he flaked out I’m not enamored with him, but I think I’d rather have Chud/Turner/Horton vs Kelly/Shurmur/whoever the hell your DC is.
I think Kelly is recognizing that he can’t just take what he did in Oregon and translate it directly to the NFL. It’s clear he wants someone who can bring in some different concepts and try to take the best of both worlds in his NFL offense. I think you’re probably strongly overstating how much input Shurmur will actually have (even so, Shurmur’s inadequacies seem to be mitigated in that Kelly will probably do everything Shurmur sucks at). I’m really hoping that the OC title is a misleading description of Shurmur’s real responsibilities.
Also, I’ll say right now that, while all this analysis is admittedly speculation, I’m entirely confident that the Eagles offense won’t be that radical. Anyone expecting an offense that no one has seen before will be disappointed.
I agree that Chip Kelly’s offense won’t try to be like it was at Oregon, but it’lll try to look something like New England. Either way, it will not strongly resemble a mid-90s era west coast offense, which seems to be the only thing Shurmur has any willingness to entertain.
Whatever Chip Kelly does, I doubt it will be terribly conventional, so you’d think you’d want a flexible offensive coordinator that can help you adapt something, rather than a guy who just sticks to what he knows.
Just seems like a weird match.
For whatever people say about Kelly’s “offense,” the only trait that he has consistently shown in his play calls is a focus on controlling tempo. Kelly wants to rapidly, methodically hit you while your defense is in an unfavorable personnel matchup. The WCO actually fits this surprisingly well.
Eh, I can’t say that I know anything for sure. Most people are a little confused, I am too. But I trust Kelly to design an offense that works, so we’ll see.
The Bears settled on Mel Tucker to be their Defensive Coordinator. It’s an interesting hire in a lot of ways but I’m not sure I’d call it a good one. Tucker is another coach with some Head Coaching experience as the interim with the Jags. Tucker’s unit last year was terrible, but prior to that he’d had quite a bit of success and garnered some interviews for HC positions. Tucker runs a 4-3 in Jacksonville but has experience running a 3-4. The Bears almost certainly will always run a 4-3 as their primary but it will be interesting to see how much those 3-4 concepts are incorporated. McClellin is a 3-4 style guy so maybe Emery tipped his hand a bit about wanting a more diverse system. A common theme in Emery/Trestman’s hires so far is flexibility and adaptability to personnel.
I think perhaps a more interesting development in this Tucker hire is who was not hired. Raheem Morris was due to interview prior to the hiring and it’s unknown if that will be cancelled, not sure if Morris will be considered/interested in a position coach role. Clearly Morris’s experience as a HC and with the Tampa 2 made him a popular choice though I speculate that Tucker will sit better with the veterans on the roster.
Also this hire means they passed on the opportunity to promote Jon Hoke who’s considered a up and comer. Hoke will be retained as the DB coach, but in his time in Florida he showed the ability to run the show. In any case, the Bears have completed filling in the main pieces of the staff with the notable exception of the LBs coach.
Trestman brought a couple of assistants down from Montreal to coach the TEs and DLs, Bischoff and Sinclair respectively. Both are mostly unknowns, but the TE position is going to be a critical one.
ETA: Tucker coached in Jacksonville and Cleveland, anyone have a take on him?
Tucker was a well liked DB coach. Haven’t heard anything positive about him as DC. There were rumors before Horton that the Browns would have to settle for him, and the fanbase wasn’t happy with that. It’s weird that the Bears ended up getting two hires that Browns fans were worried about us having to take. The general attitude was along the lines of “oh yay, we have to settle for these guys while real nfl franchises get the good coaches”, but surprisingly Cleveland got the top OC and DC available and others had to settle for less.
It’s almost enough to make you pretty optimistic about the direction the franchise was going until they took a huge Lombardi sized dump on all our heads.
I’ve been digging in on the stats of Tucker’s defenses and there’s nothing much to hang your hat on. He universally had dogshit offenses giving little to no support and they were on the field a ton, but you’d think there’d at least be some consistent themes popping up like sacks, turnovers or run stopping. Let hope he blossoms with a bunch of veterans under his command.
I like Horton. One of his main philosophies is that your cornerbacks and safeties must be able to tackle. Consequently, one of his first acts was to look at the corners that Arizona had, declare Rodgers-Cromartie soft and allow him to be shipped off to Philadelphia (what Arizona got in return is not his fault, so I’ll stick with Horton and his role, rather than expanding into what else was going on). The defence became a lot tougher as a result, more physical in coverage and swarm the ball if passes were completed (good to see, as the corners in Arizona used to provide too much of a cushion for the opposition).
Furthermore, you can pretty much draw a correlating line through the Arizona defence and its improvement and the employment of Horton. It took a while - maybe 8 or so weeks - in Horton’s first year for the scheme to be fully implemented and the players really pick up on it. Once it was in place though, performance improved significantly, despite the fact that they’ve got no real pass rush in the linebacker corps (Daryl Washington is good but Paris Lenon is old and O’Brien Schofield is injury prone, whilst Sam Acho is a lower round pick who works hard). Horton got good production from his unit and the fact that Arizona won games down the stretch in 2011 is probably due to the defence stepping up rather than anything to do with the offence (as was proved with largely the same personnel this year).
He’s a good coach in my opinion - a bit abrasive, opinionated and will speak his mind - but I reckon this is a good personality trait in an NFL coach. No one on the defence is going to get a free ride.
Raising this thread from the dead because the Eagles just (reportedly) finished out their staff, finally finding their defensive coordinator. And it’s… Billy Davis?
I guess anytime you can scavenge the staff of an inept 5-11 team, you gotta do that! Good thing we have the Browns’ miserable, brain-dead head coach to coordinate our offense and their middling, catastrophically-bad-in-the-past-as-a-DC LB coach to handle our defense!
I’m willing to give Chip Kelly the benefit of the doubt since he hasn’t yet coached a single game… but these hires are awful. Well, except the guys they got for Special teams and O-Line. Kelly was really exciting to me when he was hired because, as I said in this post, he’s exactly the type of coach I want. The problem is that he’s starting to really give the impression of that guy who thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room, in every room, always. The type of guy who makes a move because he thinks it’s so brilliant and no one will expect it that he passes up more obvious, safer choices. The guy who drafts his big sleeper in the third round because he believes it so much instead of getting the same player in the tenth. That guy always fails miserably when tested. So now I’m worried.