SportsFan Magazine -- Celebrating the Life and Times of America's Sports Fans

The sounds of the final whistles in last weekend's games had barely died down and the teams had may or may not have left the stadia before the stories broke that Dennis Green and Jim Mora Jr. would be looking for work next season. What has surprised me is that there have not been any other firings yet and we are now more than 48 hours removed from the end of the regular season. Just before Christmas, I made a list of fourteen NFL teams that ought to give strong consideration to a change of coaches. I believe that list is a solid one even though I admit that all fourteen of the coaches should not be fired. But let me say unequivocally that just as sure as Green and Mora should have been fired; there are other NFL coaches whose jobs damned well ought to be in jeopardy.

I'll arrange my list of teams that ought to be thinking about the performance of their head coach in alphabetical order for no other reason than it always gives me pleasure to put to use the time and energy it took back in kindergarten to learn to recite the alphabet. And on that basis the first team on the list is Arizona and they did indeed fire Dennis Green after a three-season record of 16-32. That's bad but what makes it worse is that one of the glaring deficiencies of the Cardinals in Green's first year was that they could not run the football; they were the worst in the league. Well, that was also true in the second year of the Dennis Green regime and then this year the Cards remained the worst running team in the NFL. Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The Cards could not run the football and they stunk - - three years in a row. Dennis Green ought to have a long journey on his famous high road before anyone decides to hire him again as a head football coach.

The second team on my list was Atlanta and they did indeed fire Jim Mora Jr. I do not - repeat NOT - believe that his silly banter on the radio about being willing to leave the Falcons in the middle of a playoff run to take the job at the University of Washington was his undoing. It wasn't Mora's record in Atlanta either; in three years he was 27-22 including one playoff appearance. I think his problem in Atlanta was simple. He tried to be "one of the guys" and when he needed to crack the whip and get some players to earn their money, they looked at him and sniffed. At the top of that list was Michael Vick and it sure doesn't look as if Arthur Blank and Rich McKay are looking to move him along. Therefore, the next coach will have to find a way to take this $120M player and squeeze a lot more wins out of his erratic play because Vick makes cap room a precious commodity in Atlanta. Good luck to the next guy in Atlanta.

Next on my list was Carolina. Let me say that I think John Fox is a good coach but this was a horrid season for the Panthers. Lots of folks had them penciled in for a Super Bowl appearance; just about everyone had them in the playoffs. The fact that they finished 8-8 is a huge disappointment/underachievement. John Fox should not be fired now, but he should be brought in to meet with the GM and the owners to participate in a real evaluation of the future of this team with a QB tandem of Jake Delhomme and Chris Weinke. If no good ideas about how to get out of that box arise from that meeting, either Fox or the GM or both need to move on.

Next comes Cincinnati. The reason the Bengals' owners should sit down with Marvin Lewis for a threatening performance review is the stunning lack of character shown by the team off the field and the stunning lack of intensity/intelligence shown by the team on the field. The fact that this team is not in the playoffs should embarrass each and every coach and player. The fact that they missed the playoffs by losing the last three games and losing earlier in the season to both Atlanta and Tampa Bay is unfathomable for a team with this talent level. Marvin Lewis won't be fired this year, but one more year like this and he will deserve being run out of town on a rail.

The fifth team on my list is Cleveland. The Browns are just a miserable team. Whereas Carolina has to evaluate its long-term future with the QBs at hand; Cleveland's problem is different. They have a quarterbacking trifecta that just doesn't work. I'm not trying to exonerate the offensive line for the Browns because it is pretty bleak up there, but I really doubt that any offensive line could make these QBs into anything more than emergency players. Romeo Crennel is 10-22 in two years but 2006 was a step back with a 4-12 record. In six of those losses, the Browns scored 12 points or less; in four of the last six games this year, the Browns scored 7 points or less. Maybe two years is not enough time to decide that Romeo Crennel is not up to the job in Cleveland, but the current status of the team would generously be described as "bleak".

The sixth team on my list may be a surprise to some but it is Dallas. I am not questioning Bill Parcells' coaching abilities; his accomplishments in the field demonstrate his abilities clearly and unambiguously. Parcells has won more than he's lost in Dallas and now has a QB that seems to excite him; that should be more than enough to keep him and the Cowboys off this kind of list - if he didn't look so pained on the sidelines during every game. I wonder if Terrell Owens is productive enough on the field to allow Parcells to tolerate his antics and his divisiveness? The fact that T.O. can polarize a locker room is no longer in question. What I wonder now is whether a coach can continue to be effective in a locker room where he has a player that he can't cut and can't stand to be around. Parcells is more likely to quit than be fired.

Moving along, the Detroit Lions need to assess the entire management/coaching chain for the team. The team was 3-13 this year and that's bad. The problem is that the Lions have been bad for quite a while now. Fans call for GM Matt Millen's firing; coach Rod Marinelli and his staff have a few decent players and a herd of question marks. The team's leading receiver in terms of catches was out of football last year and was a back-up safety in St. Louis before that. I know that you have to give Marinelli more than one year to try to get the Lions headed in a positive direction (a 7-win season would be more than positive for this agglomeration of players) but a rational team owner would have to do a critical assessment of the 2006 season and find the performance far less than acceptable.

Continuing along in the alphabet, we come to Jacksonville where Jack Del Rio and the Jaguars missed the playoffs with three straight losses at the end of the season and two loses to the Houston Texans during the season. The Jags were just awful on the road with a 2-6 record including losses at Washington and at Houston. A major problem in Jax is the QB situation where there seems to be a less than fully positive relationship between Byron Leftwich and the coaching staff. I'm not going to try to make Leftwich out to be a great QB; he isn't. But when David Garrard is the back-up and in the last game of the season where a loss eliminates you from the playoffs you have to pull Garrard in favor of Quinn Gray, that says that the team has a QB problem and this is the fourth year of the Del Rio regime. By that time, he should have settled on a QB.

Quick Quiz: No peeking now. Where did Quinn Gray go to college and within one year, how many years has he been in the NFL?

Don't feel bad if you didn't get both right - unless you are an alum of Florida A&M and then ought to remember him well.

The next team on my list is Miami. The Nick Saban flirtation with the University of Alabama became a more tiresome story than the "Will Brett Favre retire or not?" story. Saban has become the football version of Larry Brown; every job he has is a great one and one he always wanted to have - - except that he starts looking for his next job about 72 hours after he takes his latest great job. He's not worth the grief.

The Giants are the next team on my list. Yes, they are in the playoffs. But if you've watched any of the Giants' games this year, do you get any impression that the team is a well-oiled machine and that the players and coaches are in this together? I don't. Now, I happen to think that the Giants' players are not nearly as talented as they obviously think they are and I'd be happy to move a few of the loudmouths on to other venues were I in charge. But that's not the case and there's going to be a new GM in town next year and so maybe it's time to clean house with the coaching staff and let the new GM do a real restructuring of this bubbling cauldron.

Quick Quiz #2: When you see the expression on Tom Coughlin's face on the sidelines during a game, do you think he looks like the mad scientist whose experimental apparatus has just exploded or does he look like someone who is terminally constipated? Fifty words or less...

The eleventh team on my list is Oakland. Like Rod Marinelli, Art Shell has to be given more than one year to breathe some life into the train-wreck of a team that he inherited. But he also has to be scrutinized for a 2-14 season that included three losses by shutout. The Raiders two wins this year came in back-to-back weeks; they built on that momentum to finish the season with nine straight losses after those wins. In those final nine losses, the Raiders never scored more than 14 points in a game and scored 9 or fewer points in four of those games. Shell was hired ostensibly to bring some sense of player accountability to a roster that has been cobbled together by the Raiders' front office and/or Al Davis over the past five years. That roster is even more deficient than the one in Detroit and if that doesn't send shivers down the back of anyone in Raider Nation, then that person is unconscious. I don't expect Shell to be fired and the main reason is that even Al Davis has to realize that he would have a hard time hiring even a minimally qualified person to take the Raiders' job at this point. I'd rather have a job driving truckloads of nitroglycerin over logging roads. At least my demise would be quick.

The twelfth team on my list is Pittsburgh. The Bill Cowher saga hasn't been quite as annoying as the Nick Saban saga because the Cowher saga has been spread out over the entire season and so it hasn't been as concentrated. But the Steelers' owners have to have had enough by now. They probably want a decision from Cowher one way or the other and then a reasonable and rapid negotiation toward a contract extension. Absent either one, I think they'll move on. Cowher is a fine coach; in a meaningless game last weekend, his team outplayed and outhustled the Cincinnati Bengals even though the game was important to the Bengals. Cowher has been underpaid in Pittsburgh by modern coaching salary standards. My hunch is that he will sit out for a while and then come back to take a huge salary offer from another team in a couple of years.

The next team on my list is Tampa Bay. Yes, Jon Gruden has won a Super Bowl there; but in the four years since winning it all, his Bucs have had losing records in three of them. I believe his cumulative record in five years with the Bucs is now 42-42 and the current roster has a lot of age on its quality players and not a lot of quality in its young players. I know that starting QB Chris Simms was hurt for the year and that could not have helped the Bucs in 2006, but Bruce Gradkowski got worse as he played more games and the only option behind him at QB were Tim Rattay and Luke McCown. I think Simms might develop into a decent NFL QB one of these days but none of the other three would necessarily dominate an NFL Europe schedule. Here's the good news for Tampa and perhaps a good reason to keep Gruden around since he obviously isn't over his head in this kind of job. The Bucs have several high draft picks this year (four in the first three rounds) and they project to have ample cap room to add free agents to their roster. But if this team goes 4-12 again next year where they score 10 or fewer points in eight games, then Gruden's head should be served up on a plate.

My fourteenth team that ought to consider a coaching change - but will not - is Washington. The Redskins have 21 coaches on the staff and when you look at it from afar what you see is a collage of "celebrity coaches" and some good old boys and some nepotism. The staff costs at least $15M a year and probably closer to $20M; given the results it has produced in the last three years, it's got to be overpaid by at least 50%. Joe Gibbs is 21-27 coaching the team that spends more money than any other in the league and coaching the team that gets him just about every player he and his coaches seek in free agency. The staff does not draft well at all and their track record for free agent signings is horrible - despite the spin doctors on "Redskins.com". Last year, Adam Archuletta, Brandon Lloyd and Antwaan Randle-El cost the team about $30M in signing bonuses/guarantees and a couple of draft picks to acquire Lloyd. The production from the trio was pathetic. Archuletta was benched for about half the year; Lloyd didn't catch 30 passes and scored zero TDs and Randle-El caught 32 passes for 3 TDs all year long. Joe Gibbs won't be fired because even Danny Boy Snyder realizes what that would do to him in the DC area but the sad part is that Gibbs seems determined to stick around and try to make this work next year because it really looks as if the game has passed him by. And when you surround yourself with assistant coaches who are either "celebrity coaches", good old boys from your first time around in the league or your son, you're not likely to get the objective info you need to make it work.

That's it. That's my list. I'm sticking to it.

But don't get me wrong, I love sports.........


Privacy Policy \| Terms \| Site Map		©1999-2010 SportsFanMagazine
Search this site \|		Site by Emhcee