I also don’t understand why I called Jeff Fisher, Jim.
Kyle Shanahan leaving the Browns. Hmm, his own head coaching job or part of a tag team with Mike?
Not surprised he left after the word leaked out that he was upset with the front office. And he knows he’ll get a job somewhere else (whether HC or OC).
The Bears have hired Ryan Pace as their GM. So, while they might be a bit behind on the interviews, at least no one’s been hired yet.
Fuck it. I’ve stuck it out for 15 long years and I’m out of enthusiasm. Kyle left because of a toxic front office situation where ownership is marrying Johnny Disaster and he wants no part in it. The whole fucking thing is a dysfunctional mess. Fuck everything.
Looks like Rex Ryan to the Bills. Yet another situation where he will have no QB and the Bills aren’t getting Winston or Marriota.
I wonder if the Jets and Bills will do a coaching swap.
John Fox and Denver agree to ‘part ways’ The carousel getting more interesting
Well the Falcons dodged a Rex Ryan sized bullet. Five more years of suck for the Bills
Peyton isn’t coming back for one more year just to break in another head coach. OC he can handle; he’s always been his own anyway.
Rex Ryan seems like a bad fit for Buffalo. That team has the same problems as the one he left. And 49er fans will be happy to tell you how much Greg Roman sucks.
Todd Bowles the Jets’ new head coach, bit of an upset there. Chan Gailey is a good get for him at OC, though.
Looking more and more likely that it’ll be Del Rio in Oakland and Gase in SF. If Fox can get hired in Atlanta or Chicago, it might be the first time a team has fired its coaching staff and immediately had three of those coaches take head coaching jobs elsewhere.
If so, 49er fans are morons.
That is why I am always baffled when teams are seriously looking at Adam Gase for a head coaching position. I figured that he had one of the easiest jobs in football, since Manning seemed to be the OC.
Greg Roman wasn’t the sole cause of the 49ers’ offensive underachieving, but he was most definitely a big factor. He’s very creative and effective in the run game, unmatched even. BUT, he can’t design a pass play to save his life (or win a Super Bowl). His in-game adjustment are atrocious, either not making any or just abandoning what had been effective. He wouldn’t design plays to exploit personnel mismatches or get the ball to a playmaker in space. His hat-on-hat blocking schemes were great, but he wouldn’t trust the ballcarrier to beat a guy.
Flaws, but strengths counter most of them. The biggest problem on offense was Harbaugh and his insistence on a half-dozen collaborators cooking up nonsense for gameplans, multiple playcallers in games and whatnot that ultimately cost us the Super Bowl through chronic lethargy in pre-snap offense.
I believe and hope Roman does better with ownership of the offense by himself, without a meddling crazy on the sidelines.
And with a QB who can do make more than one read.
I find it a bit tough to blame Roman when I’m pretty sure that the problem is Kaepernick just isn’t smart enough to cut it as an NFL QB… on the other hand, I don’t really think EJ Manuel is either.
49ers apparently are hiring Jim Tomsula, not Adam Gase. I know he’s a likeable guy but I think he’s going to be a Tom Cable/Tony Sparano type that can motivate the troops and teach some techniques but that’s about it. Don’t think he has coordinator chops and will be very dependent on his coaching staff. Probably the sort of guy who can go 8-8 or maybe a first-round playoff loss at best. Of course, the real problem began when the 49ers decided to fire Harbaugh. Gase wouldn’t’ve been the answer either.
I’d like to actually find out if Kap can regularly make multiple reads, but the O-line was so terrible at pass protection if the first read wasn’t open… sack.
Kaepernick has made multiple reads just fine in the past, although I’d like to see more consistency. His receivers weren’t getting open, the routes sucked, and nobody could go deep. He could very well be at his ceiling, but too many other factors were bad to guage his development accurately.
Hey, no coordinator chops? Jim Tomsula was the DC of the World Bowl-winning Berlin Thunder :D.
I think Tomsula can do better than 8-8. He’s got a lot to work with, but yes, he will have to get the right coordinators in place.
People don’t realize Harbaugh wasn’t solely responsible for the team’s success. The roster was very good even before he got there, it was underachieving because Nolan and especially Singletary were horrible coaches. The roster got even better because of GM Trent Baalke. The defense was darn good before Harbaugh brought Fangio with him, I see no reason to expect it to get worse barring further injury plagues. And Harbaugh has no coordinator experience at all and was pretty much just a motivator (“cheerleader in khakis”).
I think we’ll continue to disagree about Kaepernick. I think that, unless his O Line is great, he has a running game, and you’re running a single or maybe two read system, he’s just another average QB. He was lucky enough to play on a team with a dominant defense, a great running game, and an offense tailored to what he can do, so he accumulated wins and got to the title games. Now that defenses have adjusted to his game, and he doesn’t have one of the best O lines in front of him and a great running game, and a defense doesn’t carry the team, we’re finding out he’s over-rated and overpaid. He’s a “win with” QB, which is fine when you have a great team around him. But I don’t think he’s a “win because of” QB. I think Kaepernick could, if the Niners want to risk it, find success running the read/option with limited reads. But the risk of injury and adaption by NFL defenses make it unlikely.
So, it’s John Fox for the Bears. I have a little mixed emotions about the hiring. I was pretty strongly in favor of them hiring an experienced guy instead of the coordinator du jour and, at least on paper, Fox is about as good as you can get for a retread coaching hire. Success in more than one place, lots of recent success and left his team not because of abject failure the way most longtime winning coaches eventually leave.
The only problem, Fox just always left me feeling pretty blah. He just seems like such a bland nothing of a coach. I never really felt like any of his teams won because of him, mostly he seemed to just stay out of the way. You never heard about Fox out-coaching anyone. Nice guy, players coach, but ultimately he’s a caretaker. I don’t think the Bears need a caretaker.
Then when I stop and think about it, I’m probably being dramatic and selling the guy short. He did get to two Super Bowls and pretty consistently built good to great defenses and drafted well. He almost won it all with Delhomme of all people, and then probably underachieved with Manning so it’s probably not fair to say he rode Manning’s coattails.
I’m sure that Fox will make the Bears a better team pretty quickly. I think Pace just hired the best available coaching candidate, bar none. The worst I can say about Fox is that he might end up being the next Lovie Smith, players coach, never terrible, rarely great, struggles to develop offenses and possibly primed for a long comfortable stay in Chicago where management loves a guy that doesn’t rock the boat. Then again, he drafts and develops players better than Lovie and has had more stretches of sustained success.
The next rumor is that Kyle Shanahan will be coming along as the OC, which will be a very interesting dynamic with Cutler assuming he’s back. Shanahan gets a lot of kudos for his play calling and game planning chops so that’s exciting. I haven’t paid that close of attention to him, so we’ll see what happens. I feel a lot better about this Shanahan running the offense than I would have about daddy running the whole organization. Anyways, this is still a rumor so probably not worth writing more about it.
Dennis Allen is getting a bunch of play as a possible DC candidate. Another guy that I watched a lot, but Fox and Pace both have history with him. He merited a HC opportunity, with the Raiders dubiously, so you’d assume he’s not entirely smoke and mirrors. Fox will probably run that side of the ball, but Allen would be a good consigliere and I like the idea of bringing in a guy who’s who’s recently been in another locker room and scouted the rest of the league. Might lead to some good under the radar free agent signings.
All in all, I can’t complain too much about the way things have shaken out. We’ll see if the rumors are true.
In accordance with the prophecy, Spags is back as Giants DC. Everything is going according to plan, NYG’s Super Bowl title next year has been confirmed.