silvermike

So what's our ideal starting 11, if all are healthy? Schobel-Stroud-Williams-Kelsay Scott-Posluszny-Mitchell McKelvin-McGee Byrd-Wilson? What's screaming for an upgrade there? DE and LB?

Side point - on your phone, do you get a dial tone right away when the other person hangs up? Because mine doesn't work like that and I've always wondered why it does on TV.

He took them to 6 AFC championship games in there, too. That's a lot of success.

Sounds like it's a better time to be Eric Wood than it was 18 hours ago.

It's possible that they've already formally interviewed Fewell for the full-time job.

Did Fitzpatrick call that play?

Zuh?

At least with Lynch, there wasn't some talent on the board screaming DRAFT ME like Ngata in 2006.

Oilers?

Those numbers are really interesting. I wonder if there is a reason why coaches don't win championships with second teams, or if it's mostly a coincidence. Looking over the list, the following champion coaches have had second jobs: Dick Vermeil, Mike Holmgren, George Seifert, Jimmy Johnson, Bill Parcells, Mike Ditka, Don McCafferty, Hank Stram, and Vince Lombardi. Nine coaches isn't a huge sample size, and it gets smaller, too: Lombardi passed away after one season with his new team, as did Don McCafferty (It's something that two coaches died after a year with a new team, and zero have won the Super Bowl with them.) Hank Stram's stint with the Saints was only two years, most of it without Archie Manning. In the modern era, Ditka was a wreck with the Saints, and Seifert could do nothing with the Panthers. Jimmy Johnson had an above-average-but-not-by-much run with the Dolphins. Vermeil only managed one playoff season with the Chiefs, and then Holmgren and Parcells had generally good runs with their new teams that included a Super Bowl appearance. I'm not sure what to make of all of this. I'd say Johnson, Vermeil, Seifert, and Ditka all won the Super Bowl with basically coachproof teams. Especially since Switzer and Martz repeated their acheivements with the same group of players. Brian Billick probably goes in this category, with the defense he had to work with. Maybe Gruden, too. I wonder if there's something about why a coach gets fired even after getting a ring? The best coaches tend to go out on top, or stay with their teams until it's time to retire. I'd say we're better off looking to the coaches who left on their own terms (Dungy, Cowher) than the ones who got fired (Shanahan, Gruden).

I think this is most painful with "conventional wisdom" that neither coaches, politicians or either kind of pundit will challenge. There are always a bunch of fans/voters online asking their guy to be more aggressive and reject decisions that are traditional but don't make sense (crummy TV ads, punting on 4th and inches from midfield) and even though the ones who break the system are usually successful, the rest still try to pull them back down.

Cowher finished 8-8 and Holmgren 4-12. Billick ended with a 5-11 season. If you refuse to hire a coach who ever had a down year, you're going to be hiring coordinators.

Keep in mind that five of those guys were put on in camp to see if they had some chance of making the roster next year. They would otherwise have been cut straightaway: Justise Hairson, Lyndell Sargent, Philip Marvin, Marcus Smith, and Jermaine McGhee

Dungy made the playoffs four out of six years once he got to the Bucs, and was fired after making them again. The Colts may have been a coachproof team, but still, he got them further than Jim Mora did (not that Mora is the ideal coach, either). Gruden was the one who got that team over the top, but they fell apart a year later and were never the same again. I don't know how to apportion the success there, but Dungy's had some real success. He'd need a solid GM, and some talent to work with, but it could happen.

Regardless of DF's performance, the Bills overcame the decision to start Rob Johnson. That's the key in terms of unstoppability.

Aaron Maybin plays special teams? That's more value than I thought we had from him this year.

That's an ugly list, but I think Craig Nall is the best QB we've had since Jim Kelly.

The Steelers had satisfied the Rooney Rule before they interviewed Tomlin. But something happened between the rule's adoption and the present that led to a big upswing in the number of black coaches in the league. It could be a coincidence, of course, but there did seem to be a run of successful black coaching hires after the Rooney Rule went into effect. The NFL ownership ranks include a large number of crusty old men from a different era who really may have needed the nudge to start thinking about black coaches, not even necessarily because of specific racism but just because it didn't fit their preconceived idea of a coach.

Drew Stanton, if not cut, has already been actively replaced.

I don't really care about the Rooney Rule. Nobody has any objection to it besides the fans, because it really doesn't have much of an effect. It generally makes the owners look good, the number of black coaches has leaped up since it was instituted, and it costs about as much as a few plane tickets each year. At this point, I think that most vacancies would involve the interview of a black candidate anyway, so at the HC level, I don't think it has much of impact. Or else it fulfilled its mission I have no idea what the numbers look like in front office positions.

If Shanahan gets both roles, the key will be his ability to delegate in the personnel department.

It really doesn't matter what his stats are in a crummy league. It shows that he's probably better than Quinn Gray or Shane Boyd and probably a little worse than Brooks Bollinger. If that has NFL ramifications, it's not in terms of starting QBs.

While Shanahan didn't win any Super Bowls without John Elway, Elway didn't win any without Mike Shanahan, either. He had some of his best seasons under Shanahan, all after he turned 35. Those four years rank 1, 2, 3, and 5 in terms of TD passes in his long career, 1, 3, 4, and 5, in passer rating, etc.

I mean, there's a better chance Brian Brohm will grow up to be an NFL QB than Trent/Ryan/Gibran at this point, so why the heck not?

It doesn't matter. The regime is over and the season now is just going through the motions. Who cares who the QB is.