Add one more NFL team looking for a new head coach to the list from yesterday. Late yesterday, the Tampa Bay Bucs parted company with Lovie Smith in a surprising move. In 2014, the Bucs won only 2 games; they were downright awful and had the overall #1 pick in the draft which they used to take Jameis Winston. In 2015, the Bucs finished at 6-10 which is a clear improvement. However, at one point in the season they were 6-6 and were in the mix for a playoff spot; then they lost their last 4 games in a row.
After Jon Gruden won a Super Bowl in Tampa in 2002, he stayed on as coach there until 2008. Since then, the Bucs have gone through Raheem Morris, Greg Schiano and Lovie Smith as head coaches. The roster has talent; the fanbase is very much a front-runner group; the owners do not exhibit a lot of patience. It will be interesting to see what kind of enthusiasm emerges for that job.
I do not want to jump the gun here because the NFL Free Agency scrum is not going to happen for more than a month, but there are a few players whose contracts expire when their seasons’ end who played their way into a big contract during this year’s free agent frenzy. Just a couple off the top of my head in alphabetical order:
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Kirk Cousins: His rookie contract – the one doled out to a 4th round pick – is over and he is now a certified starting QB in the NFL. My guess is that Cousins has made about $2M in his first 4 years; my guess is that his salary next year will be north of $13M and will escalate each year that the contract is in force.
Josh Norman: His rookie contract – the one doled out to a 5th round pick from a small college – is over and he is one of the top corner backs in the NFL. Like Kirk Cousins, he has probably made about $1.5-2M so far in his career but his contract next year will be significantly higher. Might he get a contract worth $13M per year on average?
Russell Okung: His 6-year contract that was worth $48.5M is up and he is one of the best left tackles in the league. His only problem has been some nagging injuries. Okung is only 27 years old so he should expect a fat long-term deal.
Muhammed Wilkerson: His 4-year contract with the Jets probably paid him a total of $3M and then the Jets picked up an option for 2015 at about $7M. Despite his injury in Week 16, Wilkerson is an exceptional defensive lineman. He may not get “JJ Watt money” (6 years for $100M) but he will cash some nice paychecks during the next deal.
I mentioned above that Russell Okung and Muhammed Wilkerson have had injuries to deal with. That reminds me that I have grown very tired of hearing analysts spout the same old stuff about how this team or that team will have to adopt a “next-man-up culture”. Frankly, that is pretty shallow thinking and it says nothing meaningful about what an injury situation really means to the team. What it says most loudly is that the analyst has no idea what to say about the future and so he falls back on what has become an “old saw” in only a few years. Consider:
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If every team with an injury to compensate for needs to adopt this “next-man-up” attitude, then it stands to reason that such an attitude is part of the essence of being an NFL team. If the supplier of tape and bandages to a team went bankrupt, no one would say the team needed to adopt a “next-tape-supplier-up” attitude. They would say that the team had to adapt to a new situation.
If you think even a little bit about the idea of a “next-man-up” culture, you will realize that it is more than nonsensical; it is mandatory. If a team loses its starting middle linebacker to an injury, it has only 2 choices:
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It can play someone else at middle linebacker.
It can play without a middle linebacker.
That choice is not going to be very difficult for the majority of coaching staffs in the NFL…
While I am on the subject of nonsensical phrases that are overused to the point that they become meaningless, I am tired of hearing that this coach or that coach has “lost the locker room”.
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Memo to Oblivious Coach: Follow your nose and head toward the rancid smell of sweat and dirty jockstraps. You will find the locker room at the end of the line of stink.
Often, I tell you about culinary atrocities that are available at baseball parks around the country but I ran across a report about one that will clog your arteries at a football stadium. At Lambeau Field, you can buy something called The Horse Collar.
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No; it is not horsemeat.
No; it is not a saddle.
The Horse Collar is 22-inch long kielbasa bent into a long U-shape. It is served in a roll that is the same U-shape and the sausage – which has been cooked in beer – comes with melted cheese and deep-fried sauerkraut. That is correct; the sauerkraut, which is the only marginally healthy ingredient here, is deep-fried to add to the stress test you will set upon your Lipitor prescription.
The description above is the “baseline Horse Collar”. You can add fried onions and/or fried peppers at your whim.
A horse collar tackle in an NFL game draws a 15-yard penalty because it is a dangerous way to bring down a ball-carrier. I wonder what penalty a cardiologist might wish to impose on a patient that he saw chowing down on The Horse Collar at Lambeau Field?
Finally, an item from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times:
“Baltimore Ravens behemoth John Urschel co-wrote a paper, published in the Journal of Computational Mathematics, titled ‘A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fiedler Vector of Graph Laplacians.’
“And to think, some of his O-line brethren can’t even remember the snap count.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………
Calvin Johnson is 30 years old and has four years left on his 10-year contract. The Lions are mulling ideas for roster changes and hints have been made about asking Megatron to OK a trade. Clearly, he still has good years left, but his $15 million contract is likely a barrier. He tweeted this week he is considering his options. If he were to agree to come home to Atlanta, think about a Julio Jones – Calvin Johnson tandem!
Doug:
The salary cap problems may be insurmountable… However, defensive coordinators would have a tough time choosing which one to double cover.
Also part of the free agent and draft pot-boiling is the ownership. I recall back in the day that John Elway refused to play for the team that drafted him since he considered it an invitation to constant injuries. Setting aside that he’s from Stanford (and therefore a tad spoiled) he’s also made a valid point (the Colts were awful and did not protect the QB at all), since less-spoiled Stanford alum Jim Plunkett (Pats) and BYU grad Steve Young (Bucs) both went to awful teams and suffered for it. In those two cases they did not blossom until they actually had an O-line.
Ownership also makes a difference in coaches. Since Tomsula was fired at SF, there is rabid speculation with respect to a successor, with notable attention paid to the fact that the new victim/coach will have to operate within constraints that match anything Danny Boy could dream up.
rugger9:
It would almost seem as if Jed York and Trent Baalke are going out of their way to figure out how to make the Niners look like the most dysfunctional team in the league. If reports are correct, those guys gave Tomsula a 3-year $15M deal and he has about $10M coming to him after one year in the head chair. After they “clashed” with Jim Harbaugh, rumors have it that they are talking to Mike Shanahan. “My Way Mike” is not going to sit back and take any nonsense from these two guys neither of whom has ever sniffed the Lombardi Trophy.
I get mentally nauseated by all the football fans that want to talk about their team’s injuries. Did they not see M*A*S*H, the movie?
Tenacious P:
Injuries and football are inseparable. Injuries can and do affect the outcomes of seasons for more than a few teams. This is not a surprise; it has been going on since the advent of football.