I thoroughly enjoyed this post because it gave a very bold reason as to why more of these idiot coaches have yet to be fired, money. I found most interesting an article I read over at Sports Illustrated today about how Wade Phillips may still get fired despite leading the Cowboys to the playoffs, well that is if they lose for the 5th time in a row. Good coaches are hard to come by apparently or else the owners are just too stupid to find one. Great article, BBS.

Scary but true; enjoy this season while it lasts because who knows what the future holds for the NFL.

If Wade Phillips’ Cowboys lose their opener against their rival Eagles in a rematch of last week, you could see Jerry Jones bring the hammer down on the Head Coach. Some think he saved his job with the Divisional Title, but the 1996 talk is starting to get under Jones’ skin. Jason Garrett didn’t exactly boost his stock with some of the Cowboy’s offensive woes at times throughout the season and the inability of Roy Williams to get involved.

Jack Del Rio might be in limbo. If the Jags are indeed up for sale or end up moving, they’d likely make a major overhaul starting with Del Rio.

A little surprised the Bears were so loyal to Lovie. There are some (mis) management issues throughout that team and the Shanahan / Cutler reunion seemed interesting until Dan Snyder actually did something right and swooped in first.

The Wild Cards are Bill Cowher and Brian Billick, they will end up somewhere and might entice an owner into landing one of them.

Panthers won 4 of their last 5 Titans won 8 of their last 10, with both losses being to the top 2 AFC seeds.

While it shouldn’t, the recent games naturally get weighed heavier in the GM/Owners’ minds.

Coaches don’t count against the salary cap. It’s worth noting that Cowher was with the Steelers for 14 years before he won a Super Bowl. Maybe owners are starting to wise up to the fact that you can’t build a winning franchise by giving a Super Bowl winning coach players that don’t fit his system, and expect him to turn a crap sandwich into a diamond necklace. For that matter, maybe they’re figuring out that having a coach who has won a Super Bowl does virtually nothing to advance his current team to the Super Bowl.

Let’s take a look at the model of terrible team management: Oakland. The Raiders are so bad, Lions fans feel bad for them. At least the Lions have hope. The Raiders just have Crazy Al Davis. Crazy Al, although once a visionary, has now had the game pass him by to the point that it’s embarrassing to the league to watch him draft and run his team. Bad drafting and horrible personnel moves have put the Raiders years away from respectability. If Crazy Al Davis hired a GM and a head coach today, it’d take three to four years for them to get rid of enough dead weight to have them competing for a playoff spot. Beyond that, it’d probably take another year or two for them to be Super Bowl caliber. And even if you have a Super Bowl caliber roster, there’s still no guarantee you win the Super Bowl.

Are any of these guys “good” coaches? Probably not. But they’re probably better than the alternative of starting over. It’s the constant turnover of coaching staffs and poor personnel decisions that cause franchises to fall into the toilet. Fix those, and it’ll truly be Any Given Sunday.

Here’s the message: don’t hire unproven talent on multi-year guaranteed contracts. Try the Mike Singletary plan.

I seem to recall you thinking he sucked.
Either way, interesting read. I hope they get it figured out.

OC Bruce Arians – interesting when you consider that the Steelers had one of the top passing attacks in the league and that most of their losses against bad teams were due to the defense slacking at the end of the game!

As a Colts fan living in the middle of Bears country, I can tell ya’ that I’m not shocked that Lovie Smith retained his job. The Bears ownership, the McCaskey family, are notorious for not eating contract money in regards to their coaches. And for whatever reason, there is still a 3-year long love hangover towards Smith when it comes to their last Super Bowl appearance (where they lost to the good guys). Granted, there are Bears fans screaming for Smith’s head but the firing of offensive coordinator Ron Turner is going to be the bone that’s thrown their way.

It’s interesting to see how many people who don’t follow baseball naive about what really goes on behind the scenes with the ownership of the small market clubs. If people looked into the situation more I guarantee you you’d respect the Yankees more than you’d hate them for what they do.

Even though the Texans just celebrated their first winning season in franchise history, they missed the playoffs yet again. Four years under the current regime; fours years of sitting at home in January. So, why is Gary Kubiak still employed?

In 4 years of being a coach at Houston, Kubiak has turned this team into a contender. Three straight seasons of at least 8-8, the first winning season in franchise history, development of Matt Schaub, and of course getting rid of that joke of a QB in David Carr. Ultimately, Kubiak did enough to show that this team has improved. This coming season will be it for him though, he has to make the playoffs or he will be gone.

Todd Haley seemed to make enemies everywhere within the Kansas City Chiefs whenever he opened his fat yap. The rumor was he and Scott Pioli barely spoke to one another during the season. After trading for Matt Cassel and Mike Vrabel (and drafting Tyson Jackson with the #3 pick), the Chiefs managed to win only 4 games. Oh, and Haley is supposed to be an offensive expert. He even fired his offesnive coordinator during pre-season and took over the job himself. The 2009 Chiefs ranked 25th in the league, averaging 18 ppg.

This was a team that hasn’t been any good in years, and honestly, anyone is kidding themselves if they thought this would be fixed in one year. I really liked what I saw out of the Chiefs this year. They fought in most games, gave some really good effort in most of their close losses, and only really toward midseason started to gel. This is a team that could possibly be a surprise team in 2010. Not a playoff team, but could be a 2009 Texans type team…

This was also a team that had a new QB, benched and cut its star RB, traded it’s best offensive weapon at the time, and had zero defense to speak of at the start of the year. Despite all this, this team competed.

Josh McDaniels did the exact same thing his predecessor did (start fast only to fold up like a tent down the stretch and miss the playoffs). Only this time, McDaniels seems to have survived the chopping block whereas Mike Shanahan last year did not.

This was a team that overachieved early, and didn’t live up to inflated expectations late. McDaniels while being a bit of an ass and over excited, did a much better job with this team than anyone expected, due to the defense change and the difference at QB. Ultimately, this was not a good year for the Broncos…..but to finish .500 was better than expected. Still…I wouldn’t be happy with this..

After a playoff appearance last season, both John Fox’s Panthers and Jeff Fisher’s Titans all regressed even though both were expected to compete for a Super Bowl in 2009.

Both of these teams were derailed by injuries on both side of the ball. Of course, age had a factor in some of those, as older players were not playing as well as the year before. However, at least in the case of the Titans, they lost enough players on defense to injuries that they couldn’t stop teams at all. It was only after they started getting healthy again and VY came back as QB that they started winning.

This next line I have to take a bit of an exception to…

The Wellington Maras of the “share the wealth” age are dead. Replacing them are the greed-minded morons like Jones, who view revenue sharing as an obstacle to them buying a winning team, ala the Steinbrenners in New York with the Yankees.

The Steinbrenners bought an 8 million dollar franchise and turned it into a 1.4 billion empire. They did it buy not settling for anything less than winning it all. They did it buy spending money. MLB doesn’t have revenue sharing like the NFL, but they have the Luxury Tax. The teams like the Yankees who spend all that money are actually FUNDING the crappy teams like the Pirates, Marlins, and so on who refuse to spend money on their teams. You should really look into that….

The irony to your comment is that the Yankees are responsible for allowing teams like the Tampa Bay Rays and Florida Marlins to play in the World Series. Maybe you should have likened them to the Lakers…..at least that would have been accurate…

Jack Del Rio and Gary Kubiak on the sidelines for their teams… forever. And ever. Make it happen Wayne Weaver and Bob McNair! LIFETIME CONTRACTS!!!!

My second answer is time. Although teams have turned around in as little as a year, it takes a rare genius to turn around and STAY turned around. I’m obviously no G.M., but my gut tells me that you need to give rookie coaches longer than a year or two to really turn around a team. The question is whether a clear path was laid out… will the strategy be dump the aging and rebuild from scratch? Plug in a couple of weaknesses and accept 8-8 or 9-7 until the draft can spit out the guys you want? Change the offensive or defensive to match the talent?

If the coach can’t articulate how he sees his strategy playing out, then I’d question him.

…couldn’t the answer also be that there’s a growing realization in the league that consistency breeds success? Among the premier teams in the league a trend is immediately noticeable of teams having the same system for a number of years.

I suppose it’s possible that the causation of consistency is success, but it might just as likely be the other way around, right?

Calling JDR and idiot is just plain buffoonery. Coughlin left him with little talent from the draft and too often Shack Harris failed during JDR’s tenure. How much of an idiot is he if annually the Jaguars are competitive with the Colts, a team with significantly more talent on both sides of the ball? He is obviously on a short leash and surely money plays into it, but you aren’t going to win many games with a Byron Leftwich at quarterback and your starting receivers being Reggie Williams and Matt Jones. If you think Dungy would have been successful without Manning and Harrison you’re dreaming.