Yes, I can count them too? He's extremely well liked as I've said. He's like Tony Dungy. I don't get your point?
Well you can forget about the NFL Network or anyone at Fox Sports asking a tough question because those networks are too busy waving their NFL pom poms.The closest thing I've seen to legit criticism came from SAS and Michael Irvin this morning on First Take where they pointed out just how insulting this is to black coaches with legitimate NFL/College coaching experience. Under normal circumstances, the NFL wouldn't even give a sh*t about the Rooney rule and "optics" but they so totally botched the Colin Kaepernick situation, they now have to deal with these "pesky" issues. For the league, this is merely a PR problem - one to throw slickly produced commercials and money at until it all goes away.
This organization is the biggest joke in all professional sports. It would be funny if it were not so pathetic. Consider this: We have a former all-pro starting QB sitting on the bench that we will be paying 35M a/year to not play. We have a GM and Team "Advisor" or whatever the hell Jack Easterby is, who appear to know nothing about football. The GM is either incompetent, incapacitated, emasculated or incapable of doing the simple things, while the "Team Advisor" apparently is paid to tell keep Cal away from the bottle. We allowed a former coach with no experience to trade our best players for nothing. We appear to have no plan moving forward on how to get out of this mess. Think about it, the Team was seriously considering making a mediocre backup QB with no coaching experience at any level the HC of an NFL franchise. I swear its like the script from a bad Adam Sandler movie. You know, the NBA used to have an owner like this, his name was Ted Stepien. He traded number 1 picks two years in a row and had his GM coach the team because he did not want to pay two people. He was so bad, that the NBA forced him to sell the team. Sadly I doubt the NFL would ever do this; otherwise, Mike Brown would have been forced to sell the Bengals years ago. Remember Houston, you guys helped pay for this with a huge subsidy to build the stadium. Great use of limited public resources.
He's at the point that he can say anything he wants... whether its fact or pure conjecture... and cannot be held accountable for it. I have a problem when people reach that level and have no great track record to support it... and its based simply on being in one place for a long time. It is telling that he chose not to get another job elsewhere when the Oilers left. That's entitlement/laziness/institutionalization/etc. And once the Texans landed in Houston's lap, he simply resumed his mouth-piece role and nobody questioned anything. Being "experts/insiders" by default is a problem.
My point is that he's not been successful enough to get 3 opportunities, regardless of how well liked he is. Dungy was fired after losing an NFC championship game and was rightly re-instated immediately elsewhere. Dungy should have been a head coach far earlier than he was finally granted the opportunity. This is also not as if Lovie has been passed over every interview cycle due to being a minority. After your 2nd failed head coaching stint, something needs to change... either you revamp a team as a coordinator, you have major success in college, or you reinvent yourself either as a broadcaster or a front office type. Its clear that he's now being considered for "other" reasons... and I don't see how that helps this team in any way (nor does it help the situation that most minority coaches are having to deal with year-in/year-out... this further's that mindset).
Right now, feeling pretty good about my decision to give up on rooting for/caring about the Texans last year. Texans should change their logo to the poop emoji.
This is all true. Lovie Smith can be charming for awhile. He was well liked my ownership in Chicago for years. He knows what old rich white people want to hear and he will always be available to speak to ownership and he will ingratiate himself with management. He will stick up for his players and he will also reward them being tough. He will also piss off the press because he doesn't like the press, and he will refuse to be honest to the press. He was famous for lying to the press in Chicago. Over time his poor management of the offense will become a problem. He is extremely conservative and he regularly would steer his coordinators towards a very vanilla and conservative offense. He is very familiar with Pep Hamilton, and he will almost assuredly follow suit. I remember for years in Chicago fans thought the Bears would win more if they just got a better OC to go with Smith's excellent defense. The problem was that in the draft a lot of the emphasis was on defense as well. Smith can get you solid and even good, but not great from what I have seen. At his age he likely won't be around when the Texans are good..... I just don't expect a very innovative team.
This right here! Yeah, maybe the NBA would hire you, but not the NFL. Honestly, I am not even sure the NFL would hire a white HC like that anymore. I cannot remember who said it, but another coach once said that the NFL stands for the "No Fun League". I think that person nailed it.
Then we are on the same page..... It really feels like the Texans wanted to hire someone special........ no one special emerged so they are hiring a recycled coach that can run a defense and lead a team and not be unprepared. It is an incredibly non-inspiring hire, about the most uninspiring hire possible.... and the fact the Texans are the one doing it makes it seem worse.... but at this point does it really matter? There just isn't enough talent on the roster. Smith will likely be able to find a couple diamonds in the rough on defense as well. I'll just say I hope Smith has almost no input on the draft or free agency.
Tony Dungy was 54-42 56% when he was fired from Tampa. Lovie was 81-63. 56% He had just gone 10-6. His final three years were 11, 8 and 10 wins despite never being given a good QB. He went to a superbowl. He was hired by the rebuilding Bucs, got the number 1 pick and won 6 games and got fired. Lovie Smith absolutely deserved a better 2nd gig than a rebuilding team that wasn't giving him more than 2 years. BUT, they got blinded by a sexy OC that was going to bolt if he didn't get a HC gig. Lovie then almost got the Texans job and then ended up in college. The only reason Tony Duny is seen as a better HC is because he ended up in Indy with Peyton and won ONE superbowl. Now, that was a LONG time ago. Today Lovie Smith is 63 years old and like I said when he was hired as DC, the NFL has largely moved on from a lot of his defensive principals. But Lovie Smith was a really good coach 20 years ago that deserved real run as a head coaching candidate. He's very similar to Tony Dungy, but instead of hooking up with Peyton he took a rebuilding job that stabbed him in the back.
It matters because it's indicative of one of a few things: 1. The Texans demands/expectations of a head coach are so unreasonable that anyone qualified is saying no. 2. The Texans front office is so limited in their capacity to identify talent that over the course of two years now, they've been unable to identify a good head coach 3. They are so laser-focused on one guy that if they can't get him, they have no idea what else to do They wasted a year putting BoB as GM while waiting on Caserio while lettting BoB run the organization into the ground. Then they spent a year waiting on either McDaniels or McCown. Now it appears they'll spend another couple of years spinning their wheels waiting on McCown. It will be funny if McCown takes a QB coach job somewhere and moves up in some other functional organization and they lose that option. The front office here doesn't seem to be capable of doing the basic functions of their job.
Where was this case 8 years ago when it was actually more pertinent? Also Dungy built a contender in Tampa and built a contender in Indy... after having years of successful defenses in Minnesota (a longer stint than Lovie had with the Rams). Anybody who can lead two different franchises to success like that deserves more than "He was only good because of one QB" statement. I have no problem with Lovie Smith the coach.. and would say he certainly deserved better for a 2nd coaching opportunity after his first one (where he did have good success). But the narrative cannot be that he's the best possible candidate right now. They're settling for him. All the rest of the point were salient for the 2015-2018 coaching searches that he was not part of... and most would say he really wasn't a candidate here when Cully got fired. Either you say he should have been a candidate all these years, including now, and the world just overlooked him wrongly... or they're settling/kicking the can down the road, and also trying to make it more PR based (which seems pretty transparent at this point).
I want to re-iterate what I said in that last post. I'm not making an argument for Lovie Smith TODAY I'm disputing the idea that he wasn't a really good coach back THEN. He got knifed in the back in Tampa. He built a contender in Chicago. Maybe we've forgotten that? He NEVER had a good QB but was constantly churning out winning seasons in Chicago because of his defense. He was a really good coach in that era where the Tampa 2 was really effective. I didn't say he was ONLY good because of Peyton, I said he's remembered the WAY he is because of Peyton. The Indy teams regularly had bad defenses but Peyton carried them. They won a single super bowl the year they had a good defense. Tony Dungy is a really good coach. So was Lovie Smith. This is all I said. He had a REALLY good run in Chicago. It's as impressive as Dungy in Tampa. He built a great defense and had crap for QB and still went to a SB and was a regular contender. That was a long time ago though. A decade+ 100% I agree. They are settling on him. No argument. I think he should have had a better 2nd gig than the Tampa one and should have gotten a job after that. Today, he's a 63 year old man who until this past season had been out of the league for years. So no, I'm not saying he should be getting this gig at all. But I'm definitely pushing back on the narratives surrounding him.
Got our coach, now it’s time to move forward. Regardless who they brought in Nick has to build the team from the ground up again. The main focus is to put as much talent around Mills with Pep and the coaching staff getting him ready to go. Like Shannon said this morning on Undisputed, if the qb position is not figured out the possibility of any coach lasting long is slim. Nick your up…
There are some similarities between Smith and Dungy although I would say that players seem to like Dungy more and he also is more religious. Smith is religious but he isn't the choir boy that Dungy is. If you look at Chicago, you will see that he was fired coming off a 10-11 win season and there were some that felt he should have kept his job, but most fans felt he was solid but couldn't get them over the hump and were ready to move on. I don't agree that he didn't have a QB, he had Jay Cutler who was a talented QB. He never had a strong offense though. The Bears as a franchise have a recent history of every four years or so winning 11-12 games and then being mediocre and then terrible for a year or two. Happened with Nagy, Smith and Jauron.
Did we even know Lovie was interviewing? I'm kinda surprised (I mean, aside from the history of ownership liking him).
I don't think you want to judge any coach by not winning enough with Jay Cutler. Great arm, terrible leader by all accounts. As noodle-armed Jimmy G shows, the latter matters more than we'd like to think.
