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CG playing to the crowd with an old fuck reference. 
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CGVT is a wild and crazy guyyyyy.
Where are we going; and what's up with this hand basket?Comment
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"Your division isn't going through Green Bay it's going through Detroit for the next five years" - Rex RyanComment
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I was going to say that only old fucks would get that, then I realized that everyone on this board with the exception of Cody is an old fuck, and he ain't no spring chicken any more. Ha!Originally posted by Mainevent View PostCG playing to the crowd with an old fuck reference.I feel like I am watching the destruction of our democracy while my neighbors and friends cheer it onComment
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Can't bury what came from the fuckin' dirt.
Except us old fuckers who already have one foot in the fuckin' dirt.Comment
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.Originally posted by froot loops View Post
I don't know. The fans were ready to ship him out midseason - and the locker room wasn't much better.
I think it's a spoiled for success fan base and owner struggling with the reality that the glory days have come and gone.
TBH, I've seen the same thing in Dallas the last 25 years.
The difference is Jerry does what Jerry does - damn the fans.Comment
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Brady going to hire Ben Johnson and trade for JJ McCarthy.
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That’s fine. The Raiders have a few worries, but it’s a solid opening that Ben Johnson should take IMO. The big worries in being it’s the AFC West (Mahomes/ Reid, Herbert/ Harbaugh, and Payton), the Raiders don’t have a QB, and home field advantage will never exist there.
On the plus side, Johnson should get a massive contract. No state income tax. Flexibility with front office now that Telesco was surprisingly let go. Lions fans will always like Johnson due to not taking the Bears (LOL) job. That #6 overall pick can be used for BPA OLine or yeah, JJ McCarthy could be available for the right price. Brock Bowers is a stud too.
If Ben Johnson is going to go, yes… take the Raiders job. Win a Super Bowl here in the next month first. Then the Raiders.AAL 2023 - Alim McNeillComment
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The Athletic
NFL owners show their ineptitude and impulsivity with quick coach, GM firings
Paywall article from 2 days ago. Interesting in the fact that the Detroit Lions are now considered a positive model for an
NFL franchise, after 5 decades of WCF Sr's mismanagement.
By Mike Jones
Jan 9, 2025
One of the most dreaded periods of the NFL calendar arrived this week, bringing with it a new collection of scapegoats.
People around the NFL call the first day after the final regular-season games “Black Monday,” because that’s the day heads roll. Owners, frustrated by their teams’ lack of competitive results, give head coaches and/or general managers their pink slips and begin searching for ways to sell hope to angst-ridden fan bases.
In this year’s edition, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft didn’t even sleep on his decision after the final game. He fired coach Jerod Mayo on Sunday, shortly after the rookie head coach guided the 4-13 Pats to victory over a Buffalo Bills team playing its second- and third-stringers. On Monday morning, the Jacksonville Jaguars fire coach Doug Pederson, a move that surprised no one. But then a day later, the Tennessee Titans fired general manager Ran Carthon after just two seasons, and the Las Vegas Raiders delivered two one-and-done firings of their own, sacking rookie head coach Antonio Pierce and, on Thursday, GM Tom Telesco. A smattering of coordinator firings also occurred as the dust of the regular season settled. This all followed the in-season head coach firings of the Jets’ Robert Saleh, Saints’ Dennis Allen and Bears’ Matt Eberflus.
Pederson’s dismissal came after three seasons with Jacksonville, and after last year’s second-half collapse spilled over into 2024. Pederson had all the answers seven years ago in Philadelphia, where he guided the underdog Eagles to an improbable Lombardi Trophy, but seemed clueless this season as a playoff roster regressed to 4-13.
But the other big moves of the week — firing Mayo, Pierce, Carthon and Telesco — were a renewed reminder of the ineptitude and impulsivity common of many NFL owners.
The axing of an NFL coach or general manager often leads to deep dives into the transgressions that warranted their dismissals. But for real answers, one often needs to look no further than the owners’ box.
Sure, there are times when a coach does a bad job. (See Pederson.) And maybe Mayo — promoted a year ago by Patriots owner Robert Kraft to replace Bill Belichick — truly didn’t understand how to meet the demands of leading a team. Maybe Pierce was in over his head as much as he repeatedly seemed during key game-management scenarios. Perhaps Carthon’s gambles on quarterback Will Levis, first-year head coach Brian Callahan and a high-priced free agent class didn’t pay off immediately.
But the ultimate failings of each of these franchises can be traced directly to dreadful decisions from above. The same can be said of the Jaguars, who seek their sixth full-time head coach in the last 20 years, and the majority of the eight other NFL teams that suffered double-digit losses this season. (Yes, a dozen NFL franchises lost 10 games or more).
Because of their net worth and their possession of large chunks of the cash cow that is the National Football League, we tend to think of team owners as successful. But most are bad at their NFL jobs. They’re no better — and often far worse — at talent evaluation, development and support than the people they hire with fanfare and then fire after the first sign of calamity. And their desperation for booming ticket sales prompts irrational thinking, because anyone who truly understands how hard it is to win in the NFL knows one or even two years isn’t enough time to transform tattered rosters into champions. But for some reason we get way more caught up in the shortcomings of the individuals who “didn’t get the job done.”
Why? They’re not the ones making bad hires and fostering environments counterproductive to success.
Mayo’s faults reportedly included an inability to establish a strong sense of discipline, accountability and credibility with players while trying to institute his version of The Patriot Way and replace Belichick, whose 24-season reign included six Super Bowl wins. But who’s inevitably to blame for Mayo’s struggle to gain his footing? The 38-year-old, who had only five seasons of experience as a position coach and none as a coordinator? Or the man who entrusted him with restoring a deteriorated roster to the contender ranks overnight with a first-year general manager and an inexperienced coaching staff?
Pierce certainly infused the Raiders with life in 2023 when he took over for a fired Josh McDaniels, and the linebackers coach-turned-interim head coach gained popularity with veterans, who lobbied for a promotion. But this season, Pierce proved woefully inept at executing crucial decisions in the chess match that is an NFL game. But is that the fault of Pierce, who had never called plays in any capacity in the NFL, or Raiders owner Mark Davis, who overlooked shortcomings and decided to appease a locker room rather than ensure the leader of his team actually met very basic qualifications?
Carthon spent big in free agency last spring in hopes that veteran playmakers would help expedite the rebuilding process of a roster that featured project players at many key positions, including quarterback. And his hand-picked head coach, Callahan, struggled to blend talent and coax the Titans towards a quick turnaround. But is Carthon to blame for the aggressive approach, or owner Amy Adams Strunk, who has proved impatient and impulsive? Strunk first fired respected GM Jon Robinson in 2022, then hired Carthon to work with coach Mike Vrabel even though the two shared different philosophies. Then she fired Vrabel (a hot candidate this offseason) and promoted Carthon before then elevating assistant GM Chad Brinker above him to president of football operations. This all happened while stressing the importance of a quick turnaround to ensure the Titans open their new stadium in 2027 to sellout crowds.
Quick hooks are not new to the NFL, where the average head coach or general manager tenure lasts just three years. (And are often even shorter for coaches and executives of color, as the firings of Carthon, Mayo and Pierce reminded us, again.) Finger-pointing and blame-shifting are common. Accountability often applies to everyone except for the owners who made poor hires, or failed to provide the support and resources necessary for the leaders of their teams to achieve success.
Kraft, Davis and Strunk, like many owners before them, have fallen into the trap of trying to catch lightning in a bottle. But in this league, success rarely comes without struggle. There’s no promised land without a wilderness.
You would think Kraft understood this. Perhaps he forgot about Belichick’s 5-11 first season with New England, or that Belichick had one winning season in six tries as coach of the Cleveland Browns. Maybe he got spoiled by Tom Brady’s magic and forgot about all of the quality drafts Belichick used to repeatedly fortify those championship rosters. Now you would be hard-pressed to find many players on the Patriots’ roster, aside from quarterback Drake Maye, who would start for another NFL team.
Kraft this week acknowledged in his news conference that he put Mayo in an impossible situation. Kraft didn’t, however, admit to glossing right over all of his deficiencies and also failing to create a plan to develop the coach along with his team, once his initial plan for a successful succession went awry.
Robert Kraft had high hopes Jerod Mayo, a former Patriots player, would succeed as head coach. (Eric Canha / Imagn Images)
It’s fine that Kraft liked and respected Mayo. It’s great that the owner saw potential in the player-turned-assistant. But if he really wanted Mayo to have the best chance of succeeding in his first stint as an NFL head coach, Kraft should have endured another season of roster restoration under Belichick, found mentorship from others for Mayo, and then made the move to him. A more experienced general manager this season also could have helped Mayo, who struggled to assemble a quality staff of veteran assistants because he had so small a network in a league where relationships are everything.
But after two-plus decades of winning, and with shiny options available on the coaching market, Kraft gave Mayo the hook rather than go through more growing pains.
Davis is paying for a similar gamble. He made the mistake of hiring the raw Pierce two years after he botched another interim head-coaching situation. In 2021, after the in-season firing of Jon Gruden, longtime special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia guided the Raiders to a playoff appearance. But rather than reward the 22-year NFL coaching veteran, who boasted great knowledge of all three phases of the game and strong talent evaluation and leadership skills, Davis pursued the sexier pick: New England’s Josh McDaniels. McDaniels wound up being a disaster, and Davis regretted not hiring Bisaccia.
Remorse over that situation likely factored into the decision to stick with Pierce, even though his experience paled in comparison to Bisaccia’s. Like Kraft with Mayo, Davis ignored that Pierce still needed to grow as a coach in key areas and gave him a roster devoid of top-level talent — then expected miracles.
He also fired Telesco, who actually had drafted well in his one and only draft as GM. The Raiders didn’t address the quarterback position in the draft, but Telesco did land Rookie of the Year candidate Brock Bowers and two more starting offensive linemen in Jackson Powers-Johnson (second round) and D.J. Glaze (third round), with other rookies contributing. But, Davis (and maybe Tom Brady as well) decided not even that was good enough to warrant a second year at the controls.
Patience also certainly remains lacking in Nashville, where Strunk — who declined to speak to reporters after Vrabel’s firing last winter and again this week after Carthon’s firing — has yet to exhibit an understanding of all that goes into rebuilding a team. Rather than foster a winning culture, her approaches continue to fuel division and a lack of trust among top officials.
Under Strunk, controlling owner since 2015, the Titans have struggled to figure out how to conduct their rebuild. The Titans hired Carthon because of his extensive track record of identifying young talent and a belief in building through the draft. But Carthon felt pressure to swing big on free agents rather than build methodically through the draft, and Strunk fired him after the Titans failed to deliver a rapid turnaround similar to that of AFC South-rival Houston the year before. She ignored that Texans GM Nick Caserio used three years of draft-based building to fortify a roster around 2023 rookie of the year C.J. Stroud, then sprinkled in high-profile free agents. The turnaround didn’t just happen overnight in Houston.
Many NFL teams use the L.A. Rams as the example of the franchise resurrection they aspire to achieve. Find a young, creative head coach in the vein of Sean McVay, immediately return to the playoffs and compete for Super Bowls a couple years later. Simple, right?
Wrong. McVay inherited a roster that general manager Les Snead, over the course of five losing seasons, had toiled on and stocked full of early draft picks before hiring McVay in 2017. The two have two Super Bowl appearances, one Lombardi Trophy and six playoff berths in eight seasons because they share a great understanding of the type of players who best fit their system, and because of the patience afforded them after a 5-12 2022 campaign.
Sustained success takes time, and it’s impossible to build a strong foundation when the architects and foremen and their approaches change every couple of years.
In the coming weeks, six teams — the Patriots, Raiders, Jaguars, Jets, Bears and Saints — will hire new head coaches. (The Bears are seeking their sixth full-time coach in the last 20 years and the Jets their seventh. The Jets and Titans will be hiring their sixth general manager of the last two decades.) The league office each season devotes resources to educating and developing coaches and talent evaluators with aspirations of leading their own teams. But those doing the hiring need education just as badly.
Without a doubt, owners will continue to make the mistake of developing a crush on and then hiring candidates who seem attractive on the surface but actually are poor fits for the jobs. If they are not given proper support, early struggles will again lead to wandering eyes by their bosses. The scapegoats will get kicked to the curb and the carousels will spin once again.
Mike Jones joined The Athletic as a national NFL writer in 2022 after five years at USA Today, where he covered the NFL, and eight years at The Washington Post, where he covered the Washington Commanders. He previously covered the Washington Wizards for The Washington Times. Mike is a native of Warrenton, Va.
"I hope to see the Lions in the Super Bowl before I die"
My friend Ken LComment
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What I'll say is that the quick hooks owners have now isn't particularly much better or worse than the owners who used to stubbornly cling to managers and coaches who were utterly incompetent. Remember how long of a leash Matt Millen had? How long did anyone really need to figure out he wasn't cut out for the job?
Sometimes, a guy just doesn't have what it takes, and they show it very quickly. For example, you could have given Matt Patricia ten years, and the only thing you would have done is wasted nine years. Sometimes, a quick hook is the right move.Last edited by chemiclord; January 11, 2025, 04:48 PM.Comment
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I think the key is a very robust interviewing cycle. People don't remember much but the Lions interviewed a lot of candidates for both positions. They didn't really do that in prior hirings.Comment
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Vrabel goes to the Patriots. See if Johnson wants that Bears job, otherwise I think he might come back.3,062 carries, 15,269 yards, 5.0 yards/carry, 99 TD
10x Pro Bowl, 6x All-Pro, 1997 MVP, 2004 NFL HoFComment
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I thought I saw Brady is pushing for Johnson to come to the Raiders. That might be a hard sell considering they don’t have a QB.Comment
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saw some speculation that the “dream” for the raiders would be to land Johnson and pay a kings ransoms to Minnesota for McCarthyOriginally posted by Tom View Post
"This is an empty signature. Because apparently carrying a quote from anyone in this space means you are obsessed with that person. "Comment
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I guess he is better than any QBs in this years draft but really dont know what he has yet......Originally posted by mason reese View PostComment
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