NOTE: PER STANDARD, MY EFFORTS TO BE RESPONSIBLE AND DRAFT THIS AHEAD OF TIME (I.E. BEFORE ANTONIO PIERCE GOT SHITCANNED) WERE THWARTED BY REALITY. THIS IS WHY I PROCRASTINATE: AT LEAST I ONLY HAVE TO DO THE WORK ONCE
Black Monday has come and gone, with profoundly mixed results. Discounting the strange Existentialist limbo that Mike McCarthy currently inhabits, more coaches were fired midseason (three) than after the curtain dropped on the regular season (two). I think that is a first; in the absence of motivation to do research, I will assume my own infallibility.
First, the obvious: Doug Pederson. Dude’s motivational mojo seems to go stale quickly. I don’t know of any coach who could have pulled this roster into the playoffs, but Pederson made the least of his situation. In the meantime, the guy who constructed said roster (Trent Baaaaaaalke) manages to survive his fifth coach firing. That’s…just impressive. Possible explanations:
- Baalke invented an addictive mustache wax for Shad Khan;
- He’s the only guy who knows how to replace the filters on the giant stadium hot tub
- Brain-eating amoeba/brain slug
- Khan suffered an aneurysm after declaring this the best roster the team ever had preseason and is now stuck in that groove, like Trump with his lust for Greenland
Entertainingly, Khan has subsequently said that he would fire Baalke if a desired head coaching candidate stated a “credible” case for doing so. Not that I think that can happen, if the current mound of evidence isn’t already sufficient. But it was worth it to see the micro-expressions on Baalke’s tiny Botox-immobile face as he heard this in real time.
Jerod Mayo: Fall Guy. The coach who followed Belly in New England was always going to be disposable, doubly so with a rookie QB and a roster more bare of talent than an Omaha strip club. My mistake was assuming that Jerod Mayo- Kraft’s handpicked successor- would get two seasons before being discarded.
My only thought is that Kraft heard Brick Johnson wanted Mike Vrabel for the Jets. Faced with the prospect of spending the next 3 seasons watching his preferred mediocre white coach go 7-10 for another team in the same division, Kraft did what any billionaire would do: declare the Young Black Guy experiment a failure and boot his ass to the curb.
Mike McDaniel, Antonio Pierce and Brian Daboll: survived, for now. [LATE EDIT: NOOOOPE]
McDaniel looks like he got a pass due to Tua being injured much of the season. I’m not sure what Stephen Ross thinks is going to improve next year- Tyreek Hill is already agitating for an exit (he apparently decided to sit out the 4th Quarter and remarked after the game “I’m out, bro. It was great playing here,”) and Tua isn’t going to get more durable. They’ve got 20+ free agents and less than $9 milion in cap space. This was supposed to be their make-or-break year, and they broke.
Daboll (and his partner GM Joe Schoen) must be really fucking charming in person. I just don’t get it. The quarterback-desperate Giants pick third in a two-player QB Class. The Tits are at least as desperate, and Deshaun Watson’s “injury setback” give the Browns cover for spending yet another top draft pick on a quarterback. As far as I can tell, there are precisely four colorable ‘plans’ here:
- Pray Sam Darnold forgets the living hell of playing quarterback in the Tri-State media market and signs with the Giants;
- Sign Russell Wilson and pray
- Trade for a quarterback and pray. Kirk Cousins or Derek Carr would be (relatively) cheap, but are old, broken or both. JJ McFuckface could be available if Darnold stays in Minny, but is likely to be expensive in terms of draft capital; or
- Hope that Deion Sanders pulls an Archie Manning and threatens to hold out his ego extension…er, son if drafted by Cleveland.
Unless we have some truly prodigious tampering going on, none of these seem like enough to hang your franchise on. These are more like “hopes” than “strategies.” But we are in a wishcasting world now, so maybe this was enough for the Maras and Tisch.
Pierce…well, who can tell with the Raiders? Unlike McDaniel and Daboll, whose teams put out press releases confirming their retention, all we have from Las Vegas is Pierce saying no one has told him he’s fired, so he’s going to assume he is not. On a semi-normal team, that would be something. But with Mark Davis, it could just mean he hasn’t figured out how to hit “Send” on the e-mail firing Pierce.
Spoiler Alert: that’s because he’s using the microwave.
UPDATE- Apparently it was one of those wifi-enabled microwaves, because the e-mail actually went through. Can’t wait for co-owner Tom Terrific to convince Mark Davis to let him try to be a player-coach.
OTHER NEWS:
-Titans’ GM Ran Carthon got Ran out of town. I assume this was largely down to his apparent inability to evaluate quarterbacks. Tennessee, you may recall, had its pick of Michael Penix, McCarthy or Bo Nix last year. Carthon decided to roll with Will Levis and draft a tackle. At the moment that looks like a Significant Mistake, as all three alternatives have shown some suggestion that they can start at quarterback in the NFL. Not the guy you want making the call on the #1 overall in a draft with no clear Likely Superstar.
