What happened to all the creative play-calling from last year? Foster out wide. Fake punts. Wildcat. Watt as a tight end. Double reverse. What happened to all that?
Replace them with whom? I do not think that you can easily to find a good coach in this day. The teams keep firing the coaches, but bad teams are still bad, only Mami is exception. This coach should have one more year to work on, but so far so bad.
Quinn is doing a good job with the Falcons. Bowles is doing well with the Jets. Bruce Arians was a good hire for Arizona. There are good coaches to be had. The problem with going forward with OB is that if he's lost the locker room, if he's lost the respect of his players (and there are reports that he has), then there's really no coming back from that. Giving another year to a coach the players have already quit on is an act of futility. I don't think you fire him right now. You still give him the chance to salvage something and maybe win back his players. But if he can't, there's absolutely no reason to expect things to change next season. And again, OB still has full control of the roster and has done an awful job with it. If OB stays, there's no reason to expect him to do a better job with the roster next year. There needs to be a power shift as far as control of the roster goes. And because it's in his contract, I'm not sure if you can do that while OB is still the coach.
You don't keep a bad coach (assuming BOB is a bad coach) just because you're scared you might not find a good coach. You keep going until you find the guy. The Saints had lots of bad coaches...they kept firing and hiring...and eventually got one good enough to get them a Super Bowl. The same is true of New England...and every other team in the league. You don't hold on to a bad coach because you might hire another bad coach....there's risk in it all. But the bigger risk is sticking with someone who has proven to be bad (if we're saying that's where BOB is).
Are there really reports of that? "losing the locker room" always seems like a made-up media cliche term... in the end, bad teams are bad teams for a lot of reasons. Also, doesn't make much sense that they'd be able to execute a game plan as of one week ago with a "lost" locker-room.... or that they'd be able to attempt a comeback in the second half of yesterday's game if everybody had already "given up" (with some guys continuing to play hard... maybe too hard). They definitely got smashed early/often yesterday (as they did against Atlanta) which indicates being out-schemed/out-gameplanned... and frankly out-talented from the get-go.... all fireable offenses if it doesn't get better as the season goes on. The defense is particularly concerning... a lot of high priced "talent" that doesn't look very good outside of Watt/Clowney. There were rumblings in pre-season/training camp that they weren't really as good as they were supposed to be on paper... hell, BOB himself said it on Hard Knocks. But I seriously doubt they make a mid-season change unless people really believe they're "under-achieving" as a team. Maybe the defense gets a little bit more motivated with a different leader... but even that is wishful thinking as long as Cushing is 40% the player he used to be, and Kareem/J-Jo just continue to be guys out there.
But even bad coaches get more than 1.4 years... and its still going to take more time to figure out if the improvement from last year was just an aberration or if the mixed bag of awfulness this year is actually who this team is. Most likely, there will be coordinator shuffling prior to any HC changes... worked for Kubiak in 2011, worked for Garrett in Dallas. The biggest concern is whoever is responsible for the 2nd-4th round picks (BOB, Smith, who knows??) needs to get their head out of their ass and move on from that position... but hey, XSF actually played a game yesterday, Baby-Gronk had one of the most comical non-catch inducing pick 6's ever, while Strong suited up but not sure if he actually played a single down.
To me, it is too early to say BOB is a bad coach yet. He has other 10 games to prove that if he is a NFL coach. Heard that he may go to USC for his head job position if he can not get thing done here. USC will be perfectly for him.
Absolutely true...but I wouldn't stick with that "other coaches don't get fired till...." mentality if I was the owner and I was convinced I had hired the wrong guy. I'm far more inclined to fire Rick...hire a real team president/GM....make sure there was clear distinction between what BOB does and what the new guy does....and then hold both accountable for the job they're doing. My point was more about the fear some people have of change when they're convinced that the status quo sucks. It's amazing to me, really...and it's a great study in psychology and management.
Agreed. I think nobody wants to fire Bill Belichick like Cleveland once did.... but there were far more extenuating circumstances behind that stupid decision vs. what we have here. Hell, even Kubiak is actually doing some decent coaching in Denver with some of the worst QB play he's ever supervised. And Jim Harbaugh certainly looks like he's in a much better situation than the team he left behind.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Bill O'Brien deserves an award for acting the part of a great head coach in "Hard Knocks." But he sure isn't much of a real one.</p>— Skip Bayless (@RealSkipBayless) <a href="https://twitter.com/RealSkipBayless/status/658692834963406848">October 26, 2015</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
It's not definitive, but it's out there. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Players in the locker room have compared the situation with this coaching staff to a "college environment".</p>— Jayson Braddock (@JaysonBraddock) <a href="https://twitter.com/JaysonBraddock/status/652325959081816064">October 9, 2015</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">A lot of players aren't buying what the Texans' coaching staff is selling, any more. Have some players checked out on these coaches? Yes</p>— Jayson Braddock (@JaysonBraddock) <a href="https://twitter.com/JaysonBraddock/status/652326275487539200">October 9, 2015</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
This was mentioned when we canned Kubes, but sometimes a coach doesn't really succeed until his 2nd or 3rd stint because they need the time off from having the responsibility of a HC to really reflect on what went wrong and what to do better next time. I don't think that if Cleveland hadn't fired Belichick that they'd be like the Patriots. Belichick needed those 4 years between Cleveland and New England to become the coach he needed to be.
Eh, Jayson Braddock has a history of tweeting out his own personal thoughts, without much evidence behind it. But even if its true... you have to presume that those not buying into certain ways of doing things are going to be the holdovers from the previous regime. Out of those players, really only Watt could actually hold enough weight to say if he feels if something wasn't working as well as it had in the past. Cushing certainly talks a big game... but his continued regression is one of the single-biggest reasons why this defense is where it is right now.
Well, it's not like this is a roster chocked full of future hall of famers so just who are they to tune out the head coach? If anything, I feel that BoB and Romeo et.al. have severely overestimated the ability of this roster to implement their systems. What I found symbolic was yesterday after yet another defensive lapse, the camera panned over to the Texans sideline and BoB and Crennel were standing there with "WTF are they doing?" looks on their faces. That told me everything I needed to know about the state of this team.
Yea, that may be true... but people also say that Belichick had it basically figured out in Cleveland (and had an AMAZING staff which included Saban, Kirk Ferentz, a young Ozzie Newsome learning how to draft/GM, Mike Lombardi, etc.)... and if it wasn't for Modell making the sudden move to uproot the team to Baltimore, which led to a wave of distraction for a team coming off a playoff season and had a 3-1 start to the season... they'd have ended up having a very good year and very good run. A lot of the foundation he helped employ there went a long way towards Baltimore having a long run of sustained success that very well could have happened in Cleveland. BB also did a lot of the same things he did in Cleveland once he got to New England... hell, he was doing these things as a coordinator for the Giants and Jets as well (calling out veterans, not doling out preferential treatment for guys of stature, micro-managing...).
That really wasn't such a bad decision made by Cleveland in firing Belechick as he was an awful head coach. It took him going to NY and working under Parcells to get him back on track to what he is now. There was no indication then that he would eventually evolve into the type of coach he is today.
