Washington hires Adam Peters away from the 49ers as their new GM. They talked to Chicago’s Ian Cunningham, Philadelphia’s Alec Halaby, Kansas City’s Mike Borgonzi, and Cleveland’s Glenn Cook.
Dammit
Look at it this way. It’s a sign of how good your team is when these things happen.
This marks the sixth time a Shanahan / Lynch assistant has been hired as a head coach or general manager, and it could happen again this season. I’d be better if we had jewelry already. This year’s team feels special, so I’m hoping it works out sooner rather than later.
I am a Seattle Seahawks fan so I am required by law to hope your team falls into a sinkhole never to be seen again, but I do think that going by the eye test your team is special this year. If they face the Ravens in the SB as expected, I think that’s going to be a tough ask, but still, the Niners have a pretty good chance of getting another ring this year.
I’m a bit mixed. One, the Bears having a coveted personnel department is a new experience. While Poles has definitely been a mixed bag as a GM, they’ve beaten the odds for the most part in his 2 drafts. However, if Cunningham had gotten the job the Bears would have gained two 3rd round picks…which would have been really nice.
He’ll probably get a job at some point and this offseason is one where the Bears really need to be operating at 100% in the front office.
In other news, I listened to a podcast which was proposing Pete Carroll as a interesting candidate for the Chargers head coaching job. It makes a ton of sense. He’s got strong ties to LA, he’s an established guy which is the opposite of what the Chargers have done in the recent past, and with Herbert and Bosa they are in a win-now mode. Carroll likely is too old to take a build it from the ground up kind of job. Anyways, Carroll seems to be fairly bearish on his chances at landing a job, but definitely sounds like a guy who wants to coach. Of course the Chargers are getting associated with both Harbaugh and Belichick, so it’s all probably just noise.
What are you hearing that would suggest he wants to keep coaching? He really seems like he’s happily hanging it up, and just wants a cushy front office job with low expectations that gets him in the owner’s suite on gameday.
From what I’ve read he proposed a few different fixes to management that would have kept him in his job as Seahawks HC.
He also made it clear that at 72 years old, he still feels he has what it takes to coach, a point he reiterated on his radio show when asked whether he sees himself coaching again.
“I don’t know that,” he said. "I’ve got plenty of energy for it and thought and willingness, but I can’t imagine there’s a place, the right one. I don’t know. I’m open to everything, but I’m not holding my breath on that.
It seems very clear that Carroll got pushed out. Them keeping him on in some advisory role is weird considering as we get further away from things that Pete and the team are not seeing eye to eye.
Well, he said he is open to it…
“I don’t know that,” Carroll said when asked about his potential desire to continue coaching (via ESPN’s Brady Henderson). “I’ve got plenty of energy for it and thought and willingness, but I can’t imagine there’s a place, the right one. I don’t know. I’m open to everything, but I’m not holding my breath on that. There’s a lot of world out here that I’m excited about challenging and going after. So if that happens, it happens. We’ll see.”
To me that means he’s not looking for another coaching job, but if the right opportunity came along he might give it a shot.
Until then it’s not like he’s totally out of a job right now.
There’s a prediction that Mike Vrabel will be the next head coach of the Seahawks.
The author of this article has an opinion identical to my own.
I’m hoping for something more . . . “inspired”, but there are certainly worse choices that Schneider could make (see Belichick, Bill and/or Harbaugh, John).
When I first heard this floated I thought… Eh, okay. Don’t hate it but I feel like if Seattle’s owners want someone to put them over the top and get them back to the Super Bowl, this doesn’t seem like it.
If this is true and not just a rumor, I hope I’m wrong and he’ll do better in Seattle.
McCarthy staying at Dallas.
As somebody who has little love for the team, I love that they have the sort of executive dysfunction that it was ever in doubt they would retain a coach who had a 12-5 record this year and an overall 2 division championships plus a wild card spot over the last 4 seasons
They did a terrible job in the playoffs but that was just one game. They were really, really good in the regular season. That isn’t a broken team that needs an overhaul, and it would seem insane to get rid of McCarthy.
Though since I hate the Cowboys as an organization, I’d have enjoyed the schadenfreude if they decided to just throw a monkey wrench in the machine as an extreme overreaction.
The number one criteria for winning the Super Bowl is making the playoffs. The Cowboys stumbled a bit finishing out the season, they just ran into the Green Bay Packers Buzzsaw* where they’re undefeated. The only people thinking McCarthy might be leaving are still living in the mid-90s.
* Copyrighted via Hopium
Weird. I guess every fan base has their baggage. Vrabel looks to me like the absolute prize of this coaching class. Even the “hot” coordinators are decidedly meh this hiring cycle.
Belichick and Carroll are ancient. Most of the experienced coaches with hot seats were retained (McCarthy, Eberflus, Tomlin, Siriani, Pederson) and the recently fired guys all look like they may not get a second shot.
Ben Johnson seems like the only coordinator from last year’s cycle who didn’t cover themselves in shit this year.
Harbaugh seems like the only real sexy name and I’m not convinced he isn’t just angling for more money from Michigan by taking interviews.
If I was a betting man I’d put money on exactly this being the case.
Same here.
Being a successful football coach at a FBS school gives you a huge amount of prestige, as well as giving you far more control over your program than nearly any NFL head coach would have.
As a college coach, a guy like Harbaugh (or guys like Saban, Dabo Swinney, Kirk Ferentz, etc.) effectively also acts as the GM and Director of Player Personnel in their programs – in other words, they have near-total control over their programs. They answer to their school’s athletic director, but as long as they’re winning, and their school doesn’t get hit too hard by NCAA investigations, their authority doesn’t get questioned or challenged. And, when you’re coaching 18 to 21 year olds, they tend to look up to you as a father figure.
Conversely, in the NFL, nearly every head coach – even the successful ones – has to share power with other people, particularly the GM. Also, their players are older, and the stars usually make more money than their coach, which leads some players to be another big challenge to the coach’s authority. And, depending on the team you wind up coaching, you may find yourself with less job security than you would at the college level.
Harbaugh is a rare example of a successful college coach (originally at Stanford), who successfully transitioned to coaching in the NFL (with the 49ers)…and, yet, he wound up in a power struggle with his GM, and after four seasons, went back to the college ranks.
The disadvantage of being a head coach in college is also the amount of responsibility. In college you get no time off. There’s no real offseason. You are constantly recruiting and planning. It can be exhausting.
A guy like Harbaugh seems like he’d much prefer the college gig. He doesn’t seem like a “down time” sort of guy.
NFL coaches don’t have much of an offseason, either. After the regular season (or playoffs), they’re involved in evaulating free agents and draft prospects, coaching during the offseason workouts and minicamps for their players, and developing the next season’s plans. My understanding is that the only real downtime they get is in the few weeks prior to the opening of training camps.
Below is a link to an older SI article by Ross Tucker, about the topic.
Not really a coaching situation, but it’s fairly big news, and I didn’t see another thread where this would fit (although any mod is free to move this if they think it fits better elsewhere):
In December, Colts owner Jim Irsay was found cold to the touch, blue, and unresponsive at his home. He was gasping for breath, and Narcan was administered (Narcan is a drug given to opioid overdoses in an attempt to bring them around). He was transported to a local hospital, where he was treated for a “severe respiratory infection.”