Black Monday

Rex Ryan should go to the Falcons. Would be a perfect fit. He can fix that defense and would finally have a legit QB after having such horrible QBs in Geno and Sanchez. That division sucks too, so he could easily make the playoffs next year.

 

One Harbaugh down, one to go.

 

The Niners are obviously the best job of those 5, but in the toughest division. Raiders have a young QB to build around ? Jets have talent , but Bills & Dolphins are getting better. Bears have major issues with Cutler, & the Defense.

 

Mike Smith got fired...

 

About time. I don't know how that guy survived a 4-12 season without getting fired.

 

5 straight winning seasons, including two 13-3 seasons, and a career record of 56-24 buys you a mulligan, I would hope.

 

1-4 record in the playoffs. Pretty mediocre. I guess if you like underachieving in the postseason Mike Smith is your guy.

 

When your team had never made the playoffs consecutively in your entire 40+ year franchise history, you probably have some appreciation for a coach who gets you there 3 times in a row and 4 out of 5 years. I'm pretty sure if the Texans made the playoffs in 4 out of Kubiak's first 5 years, he wouldn't have been fired after 2-14 either.

 

But if they had fired him after last year (when the team had shown drastic regression, despite having similar talent), they possibly don't suffer another wasted year under him, with several key skill players in their primes.

When there is no clear cause for the regression, you have to look at coaching. All coaches really only have a 2-3 year window to turn a team around... and if regression hits after success, its very unlikely a coach will "recapture" the team.

Using the same logic, the Saints may be wise to make a switch now from Sean Payton... there really wasn't a clear-cut personnel cause for regression (both offensively and defensively), and I don't see them suddenly making a SB run again with that core.

 

Certainly true - but there's also the possibility of it being a one-off fluke. Look at NYG. If they had fired him after his mediocre seasons post-SB, they maybe never win the 2nd SB. Or look at Pitt with Bill Cowher. They made the playoffs his first 6 years, then missed it 3 years in a row. If they had fired him somewhere in there, they would have missed out on the Superbowl run several years later.

I'm not saying they couldn't or shouldn't have fired Mike Smith last year; I'm just saying that there were legitimate reasons to give him a mulligan. It just depends on organizational philosophy. If you think you have a great coach and want long-term stability, then you have patience through the difficult times. If you think change and fresh ideas are useful after a bad season, then making a move is probably more likely. But teams have had success going both routes.

 

I think there were also some reasons for the failure last year. They let their top RB go and replaced him with an oft-injured and ineffective guy. Harry Douglas was their top WR thanks to constant injuries to their two star WRs. For a team that's built around skill-position offensive players, that was fairly devastating.

 

Good points.

Perhaps an exception could be made for SB winning coaches... which would nullify my logic that the Saints should get rid of Payton now. However, coaching regression is a real thing... sometimes you can only get so much out of a team, and likewise sometimes a team can only hear so much out of a coach before they either start tuning him out or their methods simply no longer work on a given crew.

In the case of Cowher, he was allowed to over-see a new core of players.... he was also extremely young when he was first hired.... both aspects that increased his chances of adjusting and finding success with a new regime (then again, Mike Tomlin basically inherited Cowher's team and had increased success with it... so maybe it was more about the core talent than who the actual head coach was).

In the case of ATL, its clear their core can't really be changed/upgraded all that much... so if you're suspecting regression more due to coaching than personnel, you go ahead and make that change.

 

Monday isn't exactly black if you're Harbaugh getting a raise.

 

Technically the Niners didn't fire Harbaugh, they just had a mutual agreement to part ways.

 

Rex Ryan / Trestman would make an amazing OC/DC duo somewhere.

 

I wonder if Trestman would be interested in going back to Cleveland to replace baby-shanahan (who has done nothing on his own to earn repeated OC job opportunities), and if Ryan would be interested in being a DC under his former protege (Pettine) there?

Chances are unlikely both happen... in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Ryan ends up with another HC job.

 

I heard this morning baby Shanahan might even be up for HC openings.