If you don’t play your home games in New Jersey you are a piker in terms of organizational ineptitude.
No - absolutely not. I mean, I wish the best for Spags. If he wants to be a head coach, go do it. He’s the best defensive mind in the game, and I want him to stay, and take up the mantle when Big Red retires.
But why can’t they all just try to take Nagy off our hands?
His one stint as a HC was a disaster…10-38 in 3 seasons with the Rams. But he’s been a success as a defensive coach with several different organizations. He needs to stay right where he’s at.
Agree with you about Nagy, though.
Deion Sanders to the Raiders?!
It’s a good thing I just opened a beer, but I probably need to make some popcorn now
There are certainly examples of guys who were only OK (or even flat-out unsuccessful) in their first run as an NFL head coach, and then, several years later, did much better when they returned to the role: Bill Belichick (with the Browns), Marv Levy (Chiefs), and Pete Carroll (Jets and Patriots) come to mind.
That said, I agree, some guys are great coordinators, but probably not the right people to be head coaches. Dick LeBeau is considered to be one of the best defensive coordinators of all time, but went 12-33 in three years as the Bengals’ HC, and never got another shot at it.
Patriots are “reportedly” in negotiations with Mike Vrabel to be their new HC. As a fan, I’d be very happy with the Vrabel hire, but I have to say I am really disgusted by how the Patriots have treated the Rooney rule in this hiring process so far. They immediately brought in two black candidates, neither of whom it seems remotely likely they would hire. By all appearances, they were just checking the box before moving on to their preferred candidate. It’s a glaring and gross example of exactly how not to make good use of the Rooney rule.
I’ve been the token minority candidate on three job opening in our company in the last two years. I was invited (i.e. instructed by my boss) to apply for job after job that they had already decided to hire a white candidate for.
This is because we have a “balanced slate” target for executive positions (let’s say salaries of $200k+, total comp $300k+) where there must be one woman and one minority candidate on the finalist list that is interviewed by the C-level executive “before the final decision”.
So I had three “final interviews” with the CFO in which we had ZERO conversation about the jobs in question. He just chatted about the performance and outlook of the area I was currently working in, as if it was just an additional quarterly touch-base (I meet with him every quarter).
Ironically this perversion of DEI is called “honoring the process” by our obsequious HR folks.
It’s official. Multiyear contract, blah, blah. ESPN and other media.
Agreed, though since it seems so common across the NFL, I am less mad at the Patriots and more mad at NFL teams in general, and the NFL for allowing the formality to be acceptable.
Really, it’s an indictment of the rule itself. Diversity is a good thing but I don’t think this is the way to do it.
Where I work, DEI is something that we consider important and take it seriously. And when I was tasked with hiring someone for an IT role about 6 years ago, I kept it in mind. I had 20 candidates make it to through our filters to me for consideration, and only 2 of them were women. And unfortunately, both women didn’t have nearly the kind of experience we needed… We had to hire someone ready to hit the ground running as an independent IT support person doing pretty much anything required to repair PCs, and the most experience either woman had was in a help desk role where they answered phone calls and placed tickets for support technicians. They were great candidates for an entry-level job where they would be trained how to troubleshoot and repair PCs, but we needed someone with years of experience already doing that.
I really wanted to bring a woman in for an interview but I wasn’t going to do so just to make us look good.
Jet interviewed Maryland’s Mike Locksley last week. Locksley, former Alabama OC and owner of a 21-28 record with the Terps (and a 2-26 record with New Mexico). He has absolutely no shot at the job, but he checks that Rooney Rule box as well as anyone!
Now they are just trolling the Rooney Rule.
McCarthy Out:
I have a feeling that he could have another job pretty fast if he wanted to.
So I guess has permission to talk to Chicago now? 
Indeed. As it was, he only was prohibited from talking with other teams before this Wednesday (1/15), as the Cowboys had an exclusivity clause in McCarthy’s contract up through that date. Now, of course, it’s moot.
The Bears had asked Dallas for permission to talk with McCarthy last week, and were denied, at that time. That said, the Bears are interviewing pretty much everyone with a pulse.
This is a straight up catastrophe.
Ben Johnson will probably end up in Dallas and the Bears are going to Bears this whole thing and hire McCarthy.
Just kill me now.
Thankfully, Jerry missed the window to interview Ben Johnson, so now he can’t talk to him until after the conference championships.
I cannot speak for the Bears but I have significant doubts that Ben Johnson (or any hot young coordinator) is going to coach the Cowboys. Troy Aikman was just on the radio here in Dallas and openly expressed reservations that the Cowboys head coaching job has any cache any more. I am inclined to agree. Why would a guy like Johnson or Aaron Glenn take this job when they know the absolute mountain of garbage that they are going to have to tread through on a daily basis?
I’d love to be proven wrong, but it seems likely to me that the Cowboys hire a Kellen Moore (or, heck, Jason Witten, who has no head coaching experience above the high school level). At this point, the only thing that can probably shake the franchise awake would be to have a run like they did from 2000 to 2002 (15-33 overall record in those three years) and have a full on fan revolt on their hands. We came close to that earlier this year, when it was looking like the Cowboys might lose 13 games. They ultimately won enough to avoid it (for now).
I’m getting to the point in these playoffs where I am actually rooting for Washington; they are the quintessential example of how a franchise can be reinvented from the top down, and in a short amount of time.
My bet will be Kellen Moore, because Jerry Jones knows him from his days as a coach for the Cowboys (QB coach and later OC) and he probably doesn’t want to hire someone he’s unfamiliar with.
Of course, Moore is currently the OC in Philly, and they are still in the playoffs, so Jerry would have to wait to talk to him about it.
It’s kind of amazing how badly Dallas has handled this. It really looks like they just assumed McCarthy would be back, and he left them totally flat-footed. Otherwise, why deny the Chicago interview request and entirely miss the opportunity to interview hot coaching candidates currently working for playoff teams?
I know they think highly of themselves but Dallas can’t be “the” top destination for any top candidate given the dysfunction at the owner/front office level. Still loads better than the Jets (even worse owner/front office) or New Orleans (salary cap hell) but even Jacksonville is potentially a better situation in a less competitive division and decent young-ish QB, at least if Trent Baalke’s lips can be extracted from Shad Khan’s rectum.