NFL Coaching Carousel

[Big Sexy]

Today the Tampa Bay Buccaneers fired their head coach Raheem Morris after the Bucs lost their last 10 games of the season and the team looked like they had given up. It goes to show how quickly things can change. Last year Morris was a Coach of the Year candidate after turning the Bucs around from a 3-13 team to a 10-6 team. Last year Todd Haley led the Chiefs to a 10-6 season and a playoff spot but he was fired after a 5-8 start this season. Use this thread to discuss current vacancies, different candidates, and other coaches you see getting the axe.

The only other coaching change I see being made (other then the ones that have already been reported) is Norv Turner being fired from San Diego. This should have happened a couple years ago but now there is absolutely no reason to justify keeping him. Anything less then a trip to the Super Bowl should have meant the end of his tenure their. I know names like Andy Reid, Jason Garrett, and Mike Shannahan will come up but I don't see any of those guys being let go this offseason.

I'll come back later to discuss some of the candidates for the available jobs but I will say that Romeo Crennell has coached himself into the KC job. With him as interim coach and Kyle Orton at qb, the Chiefs went 2-1 in their last three games including handing the Green Bay Packers their only loss of the season. If it wasn't for Ryan Succop being an awful kicker then the Chiefs would have finished 3-0 and would be representing the AFC West in the playoffs.

 

[Davi323]

I don't think Todd Haley merited termination. The injuries the Chiefs had pretty much butt fucked their season, especially losing Jamaal Charles and Matt Cassell. I generally fall in the "you play with the guys you have camp" but the Chiefs lost the heart and soul of their team. Kyle Orton has provided a tiny spark...but if Charles and Cassell don't get hurt, the Chiefs record wouldn't have put them in a spot where they could have claimed Orton off of waivers anyway. None of KC's issues were due to faulty coaching. You anticipate some amount of injury...but the Chiefs got demolished by injuries in the two places you can afford them the least. With that being said, if they haven't already done so, I fully expect the Chiefs to announce that they have lifted the interim tag from Romeo Crennel's title. He is the only coach in the NFL with a win over the Packers this year. That's gotta count for something.

As for Raheem Morris, that was not really a surprise at all. They just never got on track. The Bucs have too much talent on their team to be 4-12. This team completely gave up on him, and he never gave them a reason to come back. A coach that has lost his team is no coach at all, and Morris definitely lost the Bucs a long time ago.

This coaching change will not happen this year, but I think it ought to: The Jets need to fire Rex Ryan. It's one thing if you are brash, outspoken and generally an asshole if you are backing it up with WINS...The only thing Rex Ryan has proven is that he is full of shit, that he is good at writing checks his team can't cash. He is just a bad representative of the New York Jets organization.

 

[Big Sexy]

There is a report that Jeff Fisher will be interviewed for the Titans head coaching job. Fisher would be a great hire for St Louis. His time in Tennessee was underrated if you ask me. Especially his last few years there when they didn't have a ton of talent but were still winning games with the likes of Kerry Collins and Vince Young at quarterback.

Fisher is a great defensive mind who can turn that defense around quickly. The Rams offensive personnel consists of a good group of running backs and mostly shit at the receiver position so he should be right at home in that regard.

 

[Nate DaMac]

TI'll come back later to discuss some of the candidates for the available jobs but I will say that Romeo Crennell has coached himself into the KC job. With him as interim coach and Kyle Orton at qb, the Chiefs went 2-1 in their last three games including handing the Green Bay Packers their only loss of the season. If it wasn't for Ryan Succop being an awful kicker then the Chiefs would have finished 3-0 and would be representing the AFC West in the playoffs.

What in the world are you talking about? Succop was on a streak of 21 consecutive FGs, tying the Chiefs all-time record, before those 2 were blocked by Seymour. What was he supposed to do about that?

It seems that Crennell getting the job is a foregone conclusion to most, but the hacks here in KC(by the way Jack and Frank, 2 local sports analyst, are the guys who cost Haley his job. They're the ones who turned the town against Haley) you'd think that he's not going to get it. He's done more than enough to earn the job, these dudes are ******ed.

Now maybe it's just me, but I don't understand what Indy is doing. This season was an anomaly in my opinion. No reason to gut the fucking organization. Talk is that Caldwell may be on his way out and while I don't really hate the decision as I don't think he's had much to do with any of the previous success in Indy, I still don't think it's the right move. What was he supposed to do without Peyton?

 

[Big Sexy]

What in the world are you talking about? Succop was on a streak of 21 consecutive FGs, tying the Chiefs all-time record, before those 2 were blocked by Seymour. What was he supposed to do about that?

The Chiefs aren't exactly a team that I watch closely every week. I just saw that he went 2-5 on field goals in the last two weeks. I change my statement to, if the Chiefs field goal unit could block then they would be in the playoffs right now. Either way it was poorly executed special teams that cost them for the most part.

On another note the Chargers are completely stupid for retaining Norv Turner. I know that the players all love him but that team underachieved more then any other team in the league the last two years. People always say Norv was keeping his job because he led the Chargers to some playoff victories when Marty Schottenheimer was unable to, but that he hasn't led them to a playoff win in the last three seasons. In fact they haven't even made the playoffs the last two seasons. If Schottenheimer got fired after a 14-2 season and a three year span of 35-13 then Turner should get fired for missing the playoffs twice in a row.

 

[Megatron]

Well another one bites the dust and Hue Jackson has been ousted in Oakland after only one 8-8 season. The Raiders have undergone new management, and thus are cleaning house (at least according to what Jackson said). I think Jackson got a pretty raw deal, considering the QB he had going into the season, Jason Campbell, went out about week 6 with a broken collarbone, had brought in Carson Palmer who hadn't gone through any training camp before (granted Jackson vouched for Palmer, but I digress). Someone will bring him in as an OC (Jets have been rumored should Schottenheimer leave, but that hasn't happened yet) and I wouldn't be surprised if he got another head coaching gig where he had some stability, 2-3 years from now.

In other coaching news, Marty Schottenheimer is reportedly going to be interviewed (actually has been, since the article is a day old) by the Bucs. I would like the hire, even though Marty has not really been known as a winner in the playoffs. He's a strict guy and can win in the regular season (61.4 win %) and if anything he could be a coach to transition to his own son being named the HC once he retires. He is 68 so he likely doesn't have a lot of years left, but enough to right the ship around and put the team in his sons hands.

 

[Big Sexy]

Marty Schottenheimer would be a great hire in Tampa. He has won everywhere he has gone (excluding the one year he got in Washington where he still went 8-8) and he is a guy who demands respect. That is what Tampa needs. The biggest knock against him as that he can't win in the playoffs but he went 2-4 in Cleveland and he can't exactly control Earnest Bynar and that fumble which cost them a trip to the SB. In KC he went 3-7 but since he left the Chiefs have won ZERO playoff games. In San Diego he went 0-2 but wasn't given an opportunity to finish what he started. He turned around that Chargers franchise pretty quickly after they had gone just 23-57 in the 5 seasons prior to his arrival.

21 seasons as an NFL head coach and only twice has his team finished with a below .500 record. That is damn impressive. In his one year as a coach in the UFL he went 3-1 and won his first ever championship as a coach.

 

[Big Sexy]

Joe Philbin has been named the Dolphins head coach and I think that is a good hire for them. He is a good offensive mind and that offense certainly needs a kick start. Chad Henne is likely gone as a free agent so they are going to need a qb and with Philbin as head coach, Miami is likely the favorite to land free agent Matt Flynn. I'm not sold on Flynn as a good starter yet but staying with Philbin and the same offense he ran in Green Bay would definitely help.

In other news, the Colts have interviewed Jim Tressel for their vacant head coaching job and I for one am not a fan. Successful college coaches often struggle to translate that success to the pros and the ones that do are usually guys with some NFL experience. Jim Harbaugh has made the transition perfectly but he also played in the NFL for 14 seasons and was a quarterbacks coach in Oakland for a couple seasons before joining the college ranks as a head coach. He always had the NFL mindset. Tressel on the other hand has never played in the NFL and in his 20+ years of coaching, has never coached in the NFL. His only experience in the NFL came this past season as a replay consultant.

 

[Big Sexy]

A couple more hires have been made. The Colts went with Chuck Pagano, who was the Ravens D coordinator. He has never been a head coach before but he is respected around the league and from what I hear, is a players coach. I don't know if that's good or not for the Colts who are going to be rebuilding but it should be interesting to watch.

The Buccaneers hired Greg Schiano from the college ranks. Schiano only has three years of NFL coaching experience (he was a defensive coach in the late 90's for the Bears), but he is still a guy who I think can succeed. He is young, he always ran a pro style in college, and he turned around a Rutgers football program that was god awful and made it respectable. The NFL is a different animal but he looks like a good fit to help turn them around.