fired

All posts tagged fired

THE RIVALS 2019 (PT 3 of 3)

Posted by The BEAST on 2020/01/12
Posted in: Conversations, NFC East, NFL, Reviews, Rivals, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

NFC EAST

IT’S THAT TIME AGAIN KIDDIES!!!

GENERALLY when I talk football, it’s about my Eagles. I tend to keep mum about our rivals, unless we have a game coming up against one of them. Otherwise, I’ve reserved most talk about them for my Pre-Draft Preview, which drops each April. (Look for it).

In 2017 however, I decided to try something new, and give our fan base a running commentary of what the division is doing around us. This ensures that Eagles fans ARE actually the best informed, and most knowledgeable fans, in the NFL. (Provided you visit this site often.) These updates will come out three times during the season: After Weeks 3, 9, and 15.

Note: This was supposed to come out weeks ago, but since the Eagles playoff push was going to affect how Dallas’s season was viewed, I pushed it back so that a clear verdict could be written for the Cowboys season. Then there was the workload for OUR playoff week…

Since then every team beside the Eagles, has fired their head coach. This report will focus on the state of the team as of season’s end, and not attempt to calculate the impact of the firings or hirings. I almost skipped this, but this report HAS to happen so that I can wrap up the 2019 season.

This is where we left off in PART 2.

This is where things are today:

Washington Redskins: 3 – 13, dead last in the division

beawarning_fullpic_artwork

Congratulations on the number two pick in the next draft! (That’s assuming that the next draft doesn’t involve Iran.) If they could, the ‘skins would use that pick to draft an entire offense. They need to. Ranking 32nd in points and passing yards, 31st in yardage, and 22nd in rushing, is a sign that maybe your team has trouble winning ball games.

Defensively they’re nearly as awful. While coming in 31st vs the run, 27th in both points and yards allowed, they fared okay vs the pass. They managed an 18th ranked spot there, despite the most injury decimated secondary in the division, and possibly the NFL.

Washington’s RB of the future is Adrian Peterson and their best QB is Case Keenum. They spent a 2018 second round pick on RB Derrius Guice, and he’s played less than six games in his two year career. 2019 First round QB Dwayne Haskins started 7 games, and threw all of 7 touchdowns. Which was equal to the number of interceptions he tossed. They do have WR Terry McLaurin, but that just seems like a punchline to a joke with no set-up. For instance: “THE ARISTOCRATS!” See? The set-up is important.

They have a front seven worthy of my envy, as pass rushers. However, their 2019 3-4 system, exposed them to any offense where the QB was awake for 60% of the game. I’m gonna miss that predictability. 

New York Giants: 4 – 12, 3rd place in the division

Look at that sweet #4 draft spot!

What’s to say about this team? The floundering started in 2018, after the new GM started a fire-sale and divested the team of key talent. So this was a continuation of that. All season long, the giants looked like a team with no focus, no direction, and no personality.

This was only natural, given that they took keys to the kingdom from QB Eli Manning, and gave them to rookie QB Daniel Jones. Basically, in search of a “spark”, the coaching staff switched from Dasani to Evian. 

Miranda Sings Spicy.gif

Okay that may have been a bit harsh. March of Dimes may not be the most exciting guy, and might not have the best arm, and might lack any major intangibles, and…and… Where was I going with this?

Oh, right. In truth, rookies are just trying to figure stuff out. So it was only natural that the team looked a little lost out there this season. It will be interesting to see how Jones approaches his first pro offseason.

Dallas Cowboys: 8 – 8, runner-up in the division

How does such a “talent-loaded” team finish .500? This despite a very healthy roster, in a division where half the teams are rebuilding, and the division winner was decimated by injuries. How indeed! I’m not going to talk around the issue. You already can, and already do, get that from any professional journalists. I’m a fan. So let’s real talk this motherfucker, shall we?

neil-degrasse-tyson-drops-mic gravity.gif

The Owner’s answer to Dallas’s woes, was poor coaching. So poor coaching is how a team finishes offensively 1st in yardage, 2nd in passing yardage, 5th in rushing yardage, and 6th in scoring. (In case you’re wondering, that’s solidly a Top 10, and likely a Top 3 offense.)

It’s also why they finished 9th in yards allowed, 10th in passing yards allowed, and 11th in both rushing yardage allowed, and points allowed. (That’s also a Top 10 unit.) Yeah. That sounds like some pretty shitty coaching, right? (In case you missed it, that was sarcasm.)

The fans and media’s favorite flavor of the month, is blaming the Owner for meddling all the time. It’s true that he does, but this team was poised to win even with the meddling. In fact, the Owner has meddled every year since he bought the team. If you want to blame him for the meddling when it doesn’t work, you have to praise him when it does work.

FNFFACT

The problem wasn’t the coach, and it isn’t the Owner. Well, it is, but not how you think it is.

This team is loaded with players who can’t deliver in the clutch. How many Cowboys games this year turned on just a handful of downs? Division rivals won’t want to hear this, but the Cowboys were probably 15 to 20 made plays away from being 12 – 4 or 13 – 3. And I mean 15 to 20 plays collectively on the season.

Because the Owner doesn’t hold his players accountable for anything, on or off the field, nobody on this team has any deep motivation to give all-out effort when the Cowboys backs are to the wall. You saw how they rallied to save their coach’s job, and how hard they fought to win what everyone knew would be the division’s lone playoff spot. (That was also sarcasm.)

The team is wall-to-wall with guaranteed money. It’s a boarding school filled with rich kids, and now they’re getting an interim (7 – 9) headmaster. And trust, this is an interim (6 – 10) situation. Being that it’s the Owner, not the coach (5 – 11) who’ll sets the culture of the Cowboys, you can expect a similar mindset from the players for next season.

Didn’t even need the mic for that.

So that’s the state of our division rivals as your Eagles head into the offseason. It’s about time to start looking ahead to how these four teams will go about re-arming for the 2020 season. 

WHY I’M BEHIND DOUG PEDERSON

Posted by The BEAST on 2016/06/13
Posted in: Coaching, Conspiracy Corner, Front Office (F.O.), NFL, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

home

DOUG Pederson has to be successful here. The franchise is in serious trouble if he isn’t. Possibly for decades to come.

Back in November of last year (2015) it was clear to me that owner Jeff Lurie was itching to fire (TIK) despite him having posted two straight 10-6 seasons as the team’s Head Coach. While I was all for (TIK) quitting (or leaving by some other means), I wrote on 11/27/15 that firing him prior to the end of his fourth season would be a mistake. Well, on 12/29/15, with a game left to go in the season, Lurie dropped the hammer.

Not only do I still think the timing was bad, but one of my fears soon came to pass. Look at the candidates who came sniffing at the Eagles vacant Head Coach position. Position coaches, and a couple retreads, but no real up-and-coming Coordinators bothered to have serious conversations here.

The fan base was hardly what you would call energized when Pederson was interviewed or hired. We didn’t hate him. In fact, I wrote that I am fully behind him. However, we recognized that Lurie was just running back to the familiar, when he hired him. Pederson was a safe choice for Lurie due to his familiarity and willingness to work with General Manager Howie Roseman, because many coaches in the NFL would not and will not.

If Pederson doesn’t work out here, then naturally Lurie will have to fire him. The problem comes with replacing him. No one wanted this job already. If we’re still trending in the wrong direction, and our biggest problem still seems to be our Front Office, then no one who is clearly worth having, will want the job. We will again have to gamble on a guy being able to grow into the role, and hope that he becomes a gem for us. This is how we ended up with (TIK), and then how we ended up with Pederson.

So we need Pederson to work out. Not just for immediate gratification, but for the long picture as well. Once upon a time the Eagles set the Gold Standard for the NFL as an organization, and that attracted both coaches and Free Agents to us. Today we’re becoming the New Cleveland Browns, as we’re now known more for the talent we lose, than the talent we acquire.

Between the coming years of missing Draft picks, an unforgiving media, and a dysfunctional F.O., our pickings to replace Pederson would likely be laughable at best. We need to be behind this Head Coach. Pederson has to be successful here. Because we are staring into an abyss if he isn’t.

SO WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Posted by The BEAST on 2015/12/30
Posted in: Coaching, Conspiracy Corner, Defense, Front Office (F.O.), Offense, Roster, trade, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , . 11 Comments

1000px-Philadelphia_Eagles_logo_primary.svg

OWNER Jeff Lurie wasted no time cutting out the cancer on his team. Former Eagles Head Coach Chip Kelly didn’t even get a chance to coach the final game of the season, or give a farewell address to the players. I almost said “his players” but unless you played at Oregon, I have severe doubts that he has many (if any) players in that locker room who considered themselves “his” guys.

Considering how much of his coaching staff was handpicked to coach specific techniques for his system; and considering how many soft and candy-ass players he bought in here, there will be a lot of debris from the tear down that is soon to follow. So lets take a look at what it will likely mean.

The coaching staff will turn over. Defensive Coordinator Bill Davis may as well not even show up for all the good he’s done. Fans hate him, and as you know (if you’ve been following this website for the last two years), his system is full of bad concepts which teams exploit almost in their sleep. If we switch from a 3-4 to a 4-3 it would make sense for the entire staff to go except for maybe Defensive Backs coach Cory Undlin. This unit was a train wreck before he got here and it’s hard to pin much blame on a guy for struggling within an already badly flawed system.

The worst part is the inability of this staff to develop our youth. Offensive Line coach Jeff Stoutland didn’t develop any of his second string charges into competent linemen, and even starting RT Lane Johnson is nowhere near where his potential suggested he could be when he was drafted. In the last two drafts we added WR’s Nelson Agholor in the first round, Jordan Matthews in the second round, and Josh Huff in the third round. While Matthews seems productive at first glance (145 catches, 1815 yards and 14 TD’s in two seasons) his production as you can see, has been HIGHLY erratic. Our WR’s mostly disappointing numbers (Agholor has 21 catches for 260 yards and a TD this year; Huff has 35 catches for 410 yards and 3 TD’s in two years) have more to do with poor coaching than anything else.

And then there’s the blatant favoritism. Would anyone care to explain why 2nd round pick DE Vinny Curry has never started a game in four years, yet DE’s Brandon Bair (FA) and Taylor Hart (5th round) have? By the way size isn’t the issue, as Curry is 279 to Bair’s 280 and Hart’s 281.

In fact, aside from Special Teams coach Dave Fipp, Running Backs coach Duce Staley, and the aforementioned Undlin, I’d broom the whole staff.

It also means that you can just about kiss goodbye to QB Sam Bradford. Kelly trading away a second rounder for him was almost the equivalent to the purchase of Manhattan. Lurie will likely want to air out the stink of that trade.

Player movement in a regime change is hard to predict, but when you bring in a new coach he usually arrives with a wrecking ball. So as for PLAYERS to package in a trade or let go of, the smart list looks like:

QB’s Sam Bradford and Mark Sanchez: Draft a QB and get a back-up who can run the new system.

RB Kenjon Barner: He’s one dimensional and we’re loaded with the other three in a real system.

WR Riley Cooper: We never needed him. Eat the dead money and open up a roster spot.

TE Brent Celek: I love him but we need the cap space, and it’s time.

OT’s Jason Peters, Dennis Kelly, Matt Tobin: Peters is done (unless he moves inside) and the other two are disasters.

OG’s All but our starters: We need new starters but our current starters would be decent depth.

DL Beau Allen and anyone who played at Oregon: Cedric Thornton can rotate at DT in a 4-3.

OLB’s Connor Barwin, Marcus Smith: Barwin is good but doesn’t fit anywhere in a 4-3.

ILB DeMeco Ryans: Is more valuable as a leader than as an athlete at this point.

CB Nolan Carroll: I let him walk in Free Agency and let Denzel Rice push to start.

S Walter Thurmond and Chris Maragos: Move Eric Rowe to FS.

Again you don’t have to RELEASE all of these guys. Packaging and trading some of them with picks insures that we’d be in better positions to replace the players we can’t really use, with pieces that fit better. I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of seeing guys walk for nothing.

REPLACING BILL DAVIS

Posted by The BEAST on 2015/12/02
Posted in: Coaching, Defense, Front Office (F.O.), Players, Rants, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

bdawk

WHILE Defensive Coordinator Bill Davis hasn’t been fired yet, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where he gets to return for the 2016 season. For that reason I’m as giddy as a kid on Christmas Eve. I’m generally the last person to advocate for anybody getting fired, but we can’t get any better as long as he’s hanging around here. Every year we’re a joke versus the pass, and many fans (as is common with sports) blame the players.

Last year I made it a point to say that our Cornerbacks weren’t the problem and that the real problem was our defensive scheme, which I mentioned last November, and even Brian Dawkins took issue with it a month later. I specifically pointed out our flawed cover coverage concept. I said our pass defense problems would persist until the defensive scheme was changed. Many disagreed and clamored for a new Secondary.

Lo and behold fans got what they wanted. If you were one of the fans screaming for a new Secondary, congratulations. How did that work out for you? What did I tell you would happen? The Eagles even went so far as to overspend on the top Free Agent on the market in CB Byron Maxwell. They were aggressive and didn’t cheap out. There were about a million and five things wrong with that signing. I even went so far as to point out some of what they were.

Side question: Who leases a shiny, new, 12 mil a year CB, and then uses a rookie back-up to cover WR Calvin Johnson with no Safety help? Answer: Someone who should be fired.

If Davis is fired we’ll need a replacement. QUICK! Of all of the assistants on this staff who would you like to see take over for him? (Cue the sound of crickets). And other ideas? Please don’t say Brian Dawkins. I love the guy but he hasn’t even been a position coach yet. Asking him to come off the street and put together a defensive scheme and game plans that worked, is to set him up for failure.

And please, no one say Rob Ryan. I’m so sick of hearing his name. He’s been awful everywhere he’s gone. If he wasn’t Buddy’s son and Rex’s brother, he’d be one more fat guy buying two buckets of KFC while saying “It’s not as good as it used to be when it was Kentucky Fried Chicken. Hey, you remember Gino’s?” So please don’t mention him.

If Chip Kelly were to be fired, I don’t really know who I’d want to replace him yet, but I already have a short list of people who I’d like to see replace Davis. You’ve likely never heard of any of them before and that’s part of the point. These are guys hungry to prove that they’re ready for the job. There’s also no book on their tendencies that would help opponents early on.

If say…Rob Ryan, came here, you already know it’s a 3-4 with a blindside rush LB, a NT that plays over the Center, and multiple ineffective coverage looks. The NFL would have to learn a new guy just as he’d have to learn the NFL. If you get a position coach already in the league, he has several legs up on any collegiate coach that we could bring in, and so the NFL is where I focused my search. Here’s my short list:

Kris Kocurek: Currently the Defensive Line coach for the Detroit Lions. He has a knack for getting production from young players, which hints at him being able to motivate people on their lown evels. It would be nice to have a coordinator who could also develop players we draft instead of wasting pick after pick like we’ve been doing.

Bryan Cox: Currently coaches the Defensive Line for the Atlanta Falcons. He also coached the front seven for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He’s a former player, who brought his lunch pail and intensity on Sundays. That doesn’t always make for a good coach, but Cox seems to have made the transition. The positions he coaches tend to be solid but not flashy. It would be interesting to see what a whole defense coached with that solid, intense, hard-nosed attitude would look like.

Adam Zimmer: Currently the Linebackers coach for the Minnesota Vikings, over his 9 year career he’s had success both working with and without his father (famed DC now Vikings HC Mike Zimmer). While he’s never held the reigns as a DC, he may be itching to be more than a position coach, and has a GREAT brain to pick for advice.

Andre Patterson: Currently the Defensive Line coach for the Minnesota Vikings, he has plenty of NFL coaching experience but none as a coordinator. He’s been collegiate DC, and twice he was a collegiate Assistant Head Coach. Having coached at the high school, college and NFL level, he’s yet another candidate that has shown that he knows how to get young players to produce early.

These guys also have one very important thing in common (as far as I’m concerned). They all come out of 4-3 systems. While the 3-4 is faster and more flexible, it’s also less stable and easier to exploit. There is no point in shipping out Davis for a less good version of the same thing. I’m no Kelly fan, but I think with a 4-3 defense this is a team that has a shot at winning playoff games. A 3-4 serves as a poor counterbalance for the offensive system we run.

Time to make a change.

WHY THE EAGLES REGRESSED

Posted by The BEAST on 2015/11/30
Posted in: Coaching, Conversations, NFL, Rants, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , . 4 Comments

chicagosinkhole

AFTER three seasons here’s what we’ve got:

2013: 10 – 6 with a playoff loss

2014: 10 – 6 with no playoffs

2015: 9 – 7 (at best since the team is currently 4 – 7)

This team is not making progress. In fact it’s regressing, as you can clearly see by the diminishing returns every year.

Most fans and journalists attribute our slide to the league catching up to the version of the Spread that Chip Kelly runs. While it’s clear that that has in fact happened, there are bigger factors at work here that the media is either missing or afraid to mention for some reason.

I don’t believe that this many pro journalists are missing such obvious signs. It’s more likely that they want to stay on the Eagles organization’s good side to keep their access to players, coaches and news to report. I on the other hand am not a journalist, so I have no ass to kiss. This means when I see something I have no incentive to shut up about it. So here’s what’s destroying our team.

Inexperience:

Most coaches come out of college as assistants or coordinators. The lion’s share of NFL Head Coaches do a little time in the NFL before they get handed the big headset. (One example would be Andy Reid.) They get a chance to learn things about how the NFL works vs how college works. For Kelly it was a crash course, and he had no time to pick up any of the NFL’s nuances. Now with the duties of being a GM, he has even less time to look into the fine points of being an NFL Head Coach.

At this point with this much to do, he will never be able to catch up now. He will simply never have the time.

Stagnation:

Smart coaches learn they have to constantly innovate to keep ahead of the curve. What they learn over time is that the NFL is a copycat league. Other coaches will steal/borrow/adapt the things you do to help their own systems; and in the process of practicing against it day in and day out, they learn how to defend against the thing they stole/borrowed/adapted from you.

Kelly on the other hand is still running the same basic handful of plays and concepts that he was working in early 2014 after the Offense shifted from a being partially vertical, to being almost exclusively horizontal.

Inability to adjust:

Checking out of one play and into another almost never happens anymore. You can almost set your watch by what the Eagles run on a given down and distance. I mentioned last year that the WR Bubble Screen to WR Jordan Matthews had all but disappeared. It STILL hasn’t been able to make a return because teams take it away. Kelly says the reason the Eagles don’t challenge deep often anymore has to do with coverages that take that away from us. So why does he just eat that?

When the Eagles get into a hole, what you don’t see is him on the sidelines actively coaching. He becomes a spectator. At that point the CSC security staff seems more involved in the game than he is. If things don’t go his way early, he has no idea of how to get them back on track.

Players:

If you thought I was about to rant about all the talent he gave away, Surprise! I’m talking instead about the players that are still here.

Injuries are beginning to really mount despite the smoothies, sleep schedules and all the other sport science ubba-gubba that he preaches. This is the one that I’m most surprised to never hear about. His sports science crap is just that. CRAP. It’s not crap because it’s not working now. It was always crap.

Listen, players at Oregon didn’t benefit from smoothies. They benefited from being between the ages of 18 and 22! They also played fewer games than NFL players. It didn’t hurt Kelly to have a game day roster twice the size of an NFL  game day roster. (The Ducks 2015 roster has 105 active players on it. In the NFL your roster is 53, but on game day you only have 45 active. )

Kelly is also known for driving his players harder in practice than he does in games. That’s easy to get away with when a guy is 19 and you’ll only have him for 2 more years. But when a guy is 30+ with almost a decade of NFL wear and tear on him, you just can’t beat him up like he’s 20 anymore. Especially with little to no depth behind him. I’ve said as much, RIGHT GODDAMNED HERE  and HERE  as well. Oh yeah, and here as well. This was too easy to see coming.

Kelly came to the NFL (like Steve Spurrier), determined to teach everyone a lesson, and he did. What he taught us all was that he’s a one trick pony who can’t hack it at this level. He has a winning career record but it’s meaningless considering that he can’t beat decent-to-good teams for the most part.

Simply put, the Eagles have regressed because our coach can’t coach.

That being said, the organization has painted themselves into a corner with him, making it where firing him now would hurt us. Possibly for a very long time. That means we have another year of him to look forward to. So buckle in for a not so great 2016 season.

Unless he does us all a favor and runs back to college.

FIRING KELLY NOW WOULD BE STUPID

Posted by The BEAST on 2015/11/27
Posted in: Coaching, Conversations, Front Office (F.O.), NFL, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , . 8 Comments

ck

FIRING Chip Kelly now would be one of the worst moves that Eagles team owner Jeffery Lurie could possibly make. If Kelly decided to quit, that would be awesome. I’d be totally on-board with that, since I felt his hiring was a mistake to begin with. But firing him now could set the Eagles back for years, and maybe even decades, if Lurie (now 64) owns the team into his 80’s or 90’s.

Step back a second and don’t see it like an Eagles fan. Imagine you were a highly sought after head coaching candidate doing interviews with several teams. Not just the Eagles, but several teams. You have your pick of jobs, so why go to the place where the owner will fire you for having a down year after two straight 10 – 6 seasons? Why go to the place that fired it’s All-time best coach for a down season, the year his son dies?

Many of you may not remember this, but when we were looking to replace Andy Reid, most top candidates didn’t even stop here. There were a couple of place holder interviews, but Lurie gave Kelly a contract worth 32 million over 5 years (6.4 py) which was more than the 3 year, 16.5 million dollar (5.5 py) extension Lurie gave Reid in 2011. And this was after Kelly initially turned the Eagles down.

In a nutshell: No one wanted to come here and so Lurie had to beg and overpay to get Kelly. For Lurie to run Kelly out of here AT THIS POINT, would show everyone who avoided coming here that they were right to do so. It would also signal to future candidates that the smart ones among them should do the same. That would only make finding a GOOD replacement even harder this time around.

As a long-time follower of the Oakland Raiders organization I can tell you how hard it is to find a good coach when the owner is perceived to be the organizations biggest problem. Former Raiders owner, the late Al Davis, (always a control freak anyway) realized there weren’t many days ahead of him, and he wanted to see the Raiders on top again before he passed away.

That removed any sense of patience Mr. Davis had, so he’d hire a new coach who wanted to take the team in a new direction, the rebuilding team wouldn’t do well so early, Mr. Davis would get impatient, fire the coach, hire a new one and the cycle would begin again. Serious candidates wouldn’t even interview there after a while. It got to where even though Raider fans love Mr. Davis, they knew the team wouldn’t see greatness again until after he died.

This is what is beginning to happen with Jerry Jones in Dallas; and if we aren’t careful, this could be also be the Eagles.

Don’t look at it like a fan. See it as a business. The handling of Andy Reid is already seen as a black mark on this organization by other NFL coaches. To compound it with firing Chip Kelly AT THIS POINT only makes working for Lurie seem like a pointless endeavor. Better to just go where you’ll be appreciated.

I’m not saying that Kelly won’t be fired, since reports of him losing the locker room, and his apparent inability to make in-game adjustments seem taking on a life of their own. What I’m saying is that firing him before the end of 2016 would be a tactical error for the long term picture. I would much rather see the Eagles suffer for another season than suffer through a decade of Kotite/Rhodes level coaching talent.

If Kelly wants to quit, I say let him. In fact, I’ll take him anywhere he wants to go so long as it’s a minimum of 500 miles away from my football team. But firing Kelly would be stupid. Particularly at this point.