Category: Miami Dolphins

Previewing the Dolphins Game: The Offense

The Miami Dolphins ranked 14th in total offense in the NFL last year. They played with reasonably good balance in that they were 17th in passing and 12th in rushing, being almost equally mediocre in both – statistically that is.

Deep Thinking

The Dolphins hired Bill Lazor to be their offensive coordinator last year, hoping that he’d bring some Chip Kelly magic to the team after he spent time as the Eagles quarterbacks coach. Lazor kept life simple for quarterback Ryan Tannehill in 2014, with a vast majority of his throws targeted at receivers on short and intermediate routes. Tannehill accumulated 1,965 of his passing yards after the catch (11th-most in the NFL), although his YAC percentage was 48.6 (19th), according to Advanced Football Analytics. This sounds OK but it points to the major issue with last year’s Dolphins offense – the lack of explosive downfield plays. Tannehill has a reputation around the league as throwing one of the worst deep balls of any NFL starter.

He wasn’t helped by the presence of wide out Mike Wallace, his only downfield threat at receiver and a disappointment as a Dolphin after signing a huge contract to come over from the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2013. Wallace was criticized for his lack of physicality and fell further out of favor in Miami last season following a Week 17 sideline altercation with head coach Joe Philbin in a loss to the New York Jets. He was benched in the second half, which raised questions about his future with the team. He was traded along with a seventh round pick to the Minnesota Vikings for a fifth round draft pick in the offseason.

Time will tell whether the lack of a deep threat was more due to Wallace or Tannehill. Thanks to a younger, bigger, stronger and faster group of wide receivers this year, in theory Tannehill will have more capable options in the vertical passing game. The hope is that Kenny Stills, acquired in the offseason by trade from the New Orleans Saints, and first round draft pick DeVante Parker may provide a one-two punch of downfield threats and finally force defenses to play a little further back, opening up everything else in the process.

Parker is out with a foot injury and the hope is that he’ll be ready for at least limited snaps by the opener.  Nevertheless, how often the Dolphins throw deep and how effective they are at it will be a point of interest to keep an eye on Thursday night. We will also want to keep an eye on how Wallace does with Teddy Bridgewater at quarterback under offensive coordinator Norv Turner in Minnesota this season. Between the two, much will likely be determined in Miami about the reasons for the limitations in their offense, past and/or present.

One last note on the Dolphins’ receiving game. The Dolphins signed Jordan Cameron at tight end while losing Charles Clay in free agency. Clay accounted for a lot of yardage last year but wasn’t particularly effective at scoring touch downs in the red zone where tight ends can become such a huge factor in the game. The hope is that Cameron, a former Pro Bowler, can improve this area of the game and it will be interesting to see if that is evident on Thursday night.

Line Dancing

Lack of a deep threat aside, there has been much offseason hand-wringing amongst fans and media in Miami about the offensive line.  And with some justification.

The Dolphins use a zone blocking scheme, something the Bears will be doing more of this year and it will be interesting to observe their technique along the line. At least where they have the talent to play there.

The Dolphins are well-established at right tackle, where Ja’Wuan James is a solid starter, and at center, where Mike Pouncey is a star. The problems come when you look virtually everywhere else.

They start at left tackle where Branden Albert is normally the best player in this group.  But he has undergone a knee reconstruction. He’s supposed to be ready for the season opener but he hasn’t seen the practice field and no one knows if he’ll be the same coming off of the injury. Jason Fox is supposed to be starting at left tackle in his place but he didn’t play in Saturday’s intra-squad scrimmage and may be injured. Donald Hawkins reportedly is not playing well at the position as Fox’s backup. It will be a bad sign if whoever plays outside linebacker for the Bears on Hawkins’ side on Thursday night, likely either Jared Allen or Pernell McPhee, doesn’t dominate.

Both guard positions are arguably an even bigger problem. Albert at least is a very good player when healthy. But the right guard is Billy Turner, a virtual nobody. How big of a nobody? When looking for biographical information about Turner on the Dolphin’s website the only notation was “No data available”. Other sites where they apparently care more about Turner than the Dolphins do indicate that he was drafted in the third round in 2014 by the team.

Turner has been competing with (and understandably losing to) newly signed defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh. In fairness, a likely guess is that, for the purposes of practice in camp, the Dolphins have been often leaving Turner to single block Suh, something that no sane offensive coordinator would do very often in a real game. It will be interesting to watch Turner against the lesser talent along the Bears defensive front to see how well he can be expected to play against normal competition.

The left guard competition is between Dallas Thomas and rookie Jamil Douglas. It sounds like the third year veteran Thomas is winning the competition but that’s not very comforting to many Dolphins fans. Veteran football writer Armando Salguero at the Miami Herald calls Thomas “only good enough to be embroiled in a full-blown competition with a rookie fourth-round pick who is still learning the offense”.

The Dolphins are painfully aware that they have a problem at guard. They sent a committee of players to woo guard La’el Collins, the undrafted standout from LSU, but they were unsuccessful. They were amongst the first teams to call Evan Mathis after the Eagles released him but they are reportedly far apart on money. Still, no one would be surprised if something is done on this front before the season starts.

Bottom Line

The Dolphins are going to be a good opening opponent for the Bears defense with their newly minted 3-4 scheme. Problems along the Miami offensive front should give fans a good idea of where the Bears are in terms of their front seven. Given the Bears’ inexperience in the scheme and the apparent lack of talent in this area, the Miami offense should still be significantly better but not overly so. They should offer just the right degree of competitive challenge to allow some individual Bears players to perform without the team overall being completely buried by a much superior unit.

Points to bear in mind while watching:

  1. How well will the Bears outside linebackers do against a team that should be badly hurting at left tackle?
  2. How will the Dolphins competition at left guard between Thomas and Douglas grade out? How will right guard Turner grade out against fair competition?
  3. How will Bears rookie Eddie Goldman, who shows a fair prospect of starting at nose guard, do facing a Pro Bowl-quality center in Pouncey?
  4. Will Tannehill be able to effectively throw the deep ball against a mediocre Bears defensive backfield that is unlikely to do anything fancy on Thursday night?
  5. Will the Bears linebackers and/or safeties be able to clamp down and keep tight end Cameron out of the end zone?

Bears May Look to Miami as a NFL Draft Trading Partner and Other Points of View.

Bears

  • Will Brinson at CBS Sports rates wide receiver David Terrell as the worst Bears first round draft pick in the last 25 years. I don’t see how he beat out Michael Haynes and Cade McNown but it must have been close.
  • Hub Arkush at chicagofootball.com continues to claim that the Bears have a “screaming need” for a number one receiver. I’m not too sure that they don’t have one in Alshon Jeffery. In fact, I’m going to be mildly disappointed if he’s not. I look around the rest of the league at what other teams have and I’m not too sure the need at receiver is as great as some Bears commentators seem to think it is. Dan Wiederer at the Chicago Tribune agrees here.  Don’t get me wrong – another playmaker would be welcome and you won’t hear any complaints from me if they draft one. But with Marquis Wilson and Eddie Royal, with Martellus Bennett at tight end and Matt Forte at runningback, I think that the Bears have plenty of receiving talent. The “need” might be for depth.
  • Arkush has the Bears selecting runningback Todd Gurley in his latest mock draft. I would hope the Bears would desperately try to trade back if Gurley is their guy.

    Arkush has been pushing runningback as an underrated need for the Bears for quite a while now. He’s got a point but this might be over doing it. The draft has plenty of depth at runningback and Stanford OT Andrus Peat, Iowa OG Brandon Scherff, Michigan State CB Trae Waynes and West Virginia WR Kevin White – picks 9-12 in Arkush’s mock – all look like better picks to me in that spot.

    The guess here is that Arkush is just having a little fun with it and that he doens’t seriously believe that the Bears will take Gurley at seven.

  • The Bears best free agent signing? For my money its linebacker Mason Foster, signed from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (profiled here by Adam L. Jahns at the Chicago Sun-Times). Foster wasn’t a great fit for the cover two but I think he’s perfect for an inside linebacker in a 3-4 defense. Football outsiders points to the Bears struggles at linebacker in coverage as a major problem in 2014, one that they think Foster could help solve. Jon Bostic in particular looked lost in space last year.

Elsewhere

One Final Thought

For those of you wondering what Brit McHenry did to get herself suspended from ESPN, the video of this media darling is below. McHenry’s car was towed by a company that is, by most accounts, pretty shady. Note that she is warned immediately that she is on camera.

I get that she’s upset and I would be, too. But taking it out on the employee at the front desk, especially in this manner, is not a good look.

Ineptitude, Thy Name Is “Dolphins”

miami-dolphins-3d-1024x768

Want to know what a dysfunctional franchise looks like? Ordinarily I’d point to the Browns but sometimes I think the way the Dolphins are structured at the top with competition and rivalries amongst coaches and front office personnel make for a better example. In this case, Adam Beasley at the Miami Herald reports that there is a “spirited debate” about where to play linebacker Koa Misi. Head coach Joe Philbin and defensive coordinator Kevin Coyle want him at middle linebacker. So what’s the problem? The “personnel department” has apprently made it known that they think Misi should play outside and that Kelvin Sheppard should be tried in the middle.

In most organizations, the coaches make this determination and that’s the end of it. But in the corporate environment that Dolphins owner Stephen Ross has allowed to develop in the organization, Philbin is seen as being in a weak postion and, therefore, front office personnel apparently feel free to insert themselves into the process.

Occasionally I’ll point out that the Bears are lucky to have the McCaskeys as owners of the Bears. Consider the Dolphins as yet anouther reason why. This is no way to run a franchise.

Is Mike Wallace the Final Piece of the Vikings Puzzle?

Mark Craig at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune wonders whether the Vikings signing Mike Wallace was a good idea:

“For a guy who scored 60 million bucks a couple of years ago, Mike Wallace sure sounds like he spends way too much time complaining.

“He complained about Todd Haley’s offense at the end of his four-year stint in Pittsburgh. He complained often about his role while cashing $27.1 million worth of Dolphins checks the past two years. Heck, there were reports that then-Dolphins General Manager Jeff Ireland had to escort a visibly angry Wallace off the field after he caught one pass for 15 yards in a 23-10 win over the Browns. And that was after his FIRST game as a Dolphin!

“And, yes, not surprisingly, there are now reports that he’s not too happy about trading in South Beach for Eastern Eden Prairie. I’m sure the Dolphins were chuckling about that possibility when they traded for Saints deep threat Kenny Stills and were looking for places to send Wallace on a one-way go route.

“So if you were to ask me what I think about Wallace joining the Vikings, I’d have to say, ‘I’ll let you know.’ I’ll let him determine whether he’ll be the No. 1 receiver the Vikings covet for Teddy Bridgewater’s next step or a moody malcontent who threatens to be a drag on the second-year quarterback’s promising progression.”

I’ve a sneaking suspicion that this signing is going to work out pretty well for both the Vikings and Wallace. Wide receivers are a different breed and sometimes diva behavior comes the the territory.  Head coach Mike Zimmer isn’t the kind of guy who is going to put up with much nonsense. Wallace is going to find himself fitting into the middle of quite a bit more structure and discipline than he likely had with the Dolphins under Joe Philbin.

Wallace was a star with the Steelers. He averaged yards 19.4 yards per catch as a rookie in 2009 and increased that number to 21.0 in his second season. But his performance plummeted with the Dolphins and that could be a concern.

I’m inclined to cut Wallace a break here. He was stuck with one of the worst deep throwing quarterbacks in the league in Ryan Tannehill in Miami and, as a result, the Dolphins rarely threw the long ball, Wallace’s specialty. The guess here is that he’ll do considerably better with Bridgewater in Norv Turner‘s offense. All in all this could be an opportunity to revive his career and I’m sure he knows that.

You have to like the direction that the Vikings are headed in. With Wallace to boost the passing game and the likely (in my opinion) return of Adrian Peterson, they are going to be a problem for everyone in the NFC North. With the Detroit defense falling apart up front and very possibly in the midst of a similar transition to the 3-4 to what the Bears are undergoing, they look like the primary challengers to the Packer’s dominance of the division in 2015.

Head-Scratcher? And Other Points of View.

Bears

  • According the Rich Campbell at the Chicago Tribune the Bears signed free agent guard Vlad Ducasse. Ducasse was drafted in the second round in 2010 by the Jets and played well but has struggled ever since. He shows flashes of ability but this is one of those signings where you wonder if the team wasn’t better off with Eben Britton. Perhaps the Bears believe Britton has topped out and that Ducasse has more potential if they can find a way to bring it out. In that respect, he’s a bit of a boom or bust signing. At 6-5, 326 pounds he’s at least got the look of a road grader that might come in handy in a run first offense.

    John Mullin at csnchicago.com thinks the signs point to Kyle Long moving to left tackle in part because the Bears have apparently been looking strictly for help on the interior line in free agency. I tend to agree.

  • Marc Sessler at nfl.com on Bears left guard Matt Slauson‘s comment that Jay Cutler can be “every bit of a Tom Brady, a Peyton Manning, an Aaron Rodgers“:

    “Where do we begin? Our friend Slauson has boarded a rocket ship into the bizarre, taking us to new frontiers of insane offseason hype.”

  • Michael C. Wright at ESPN.com goes over the Bears draft options at wide receiver:

    “In the debate between [Amari] Cooper and former West Virginia receiver Kevin White, coaches seem to prefer the former, while scouts tend to give the edge to the latter. That’s primarily because coaches view players with an eye toward them helping right away, while scouts take more of a long-term perspective.”

    This was a funny statement only because my experience is exactly the opposite. Coaches tend to like the physically gifted, less developed prospects (like Johnny Manziel) because they think they can coach anyone with the necessary physical skills to be a star. Scouts, on the other hand, tend to go with the Teddy Bridgewaters of the world. IMO they also have a bad habit of being right. Anyway, Wright goes on to quote Cooper:

    “You don’t want to give the defensive back any signals about what route you’re going to run. Every time I run a route, I try to make it seem like I’m running a different route than I’m actually running so I can get open.”

    If the Bears go in this direction, they certainly have an interesting choice. White is both bigger and faster but Cooper has the look of a football player. Which choice he makes (if available) may tell us something about Bears general manager Ryan Pace.

  • The Bears attended a private workout by Northwestern safety Ibraheim Campbell. Campbell had four forced fumbles in 2014, an unusually high, Charles Tillman-like number. Via Adam L. Jahns at the Chicago Sun-Times.
  • How do you beat Aaron Rogers and the Packers in the NFC North? Probably the same way that Houston is trying to beat Andrew Luck and the Colts in the AFC South. From Zak Keefer at the Indianapolis Star.
  • Kevin Fishbain at chicagofootball.com points out the Bears need for a tightend:

    “The Bears were interested in Virgil Green, who re-signed with the Broncos, and [offensive coordinator Adam] Gase used two tight ends a decent amount in Denver’s offense the past two seasons. It’s a weak tight end draft, and there’s not much left on the free-agent market, yet this is a position group that should grow in the coming months.”

    The Bears are going to want the option of using two tight ends in a run-based offense. I’d be surprised if they didn’t find one that could block somewhere. The draft actually is a viable possibility here if all you want is someone who can block and catch a ball only every occasional blue moon.

  • The Bears sit at 25th in Elliot Harrison‘s NFL power rankings at nfl.com. I thought that was surprisingly high until I looked at the teams below them: Jets, Redskins, Jaguars, Browns Buccaneers, Titans, and Raiders. You could debate whether the Jets are worse than the Bears but with their quarterback situation I’m inclined to agree with Harrison. Even with a terrible defense in transition to a 3-4, the Bears belong at 25th in a miserable bottom portion of the league.

Elsewhere

  • Conor Orr at nfl.com wonders about the success of the teams in the AFC East as the spend to try to catch up with the Patriots:

    “[H]ow does [Bill] Belichick buffer his offense to face off against three brutal front-sevens twice a year? What will his counter be to all the noise being made by his counterparts in free agency? Perhaps the Patriots will be a sleeping tiger now that the market is officially open and they’ll load up for one last (reasonable) title shot in the Brady-Belichick era.”

    Doubtful. Because they don’t have to load up.

    The point about building the front-seven is well taken. The best thing to do is to mimic the Baltimore Ravens who give the Patriots the most trouble year in and year out.

    But the problem with the AFC East generally right now is that the other teams are playing fantasy football, over-paying talented players and winning in March when, in fact, what counts is winning in January. The Patriots win football games because they get players to hit the grass every week and do their jobs. The other teams in the division can spend gross national product but until they get that part down, it’s the Patriot’s devision to lose.

  • Mike Florio at profootballtalk.com reports that DeMaurice Smith has been re-elected as NFLPA executive director. This is good news for fans. Smith faced eight challengers the most vocal of which was Sean Gilbert, who wanted to sue the NFL for collusion and to force the league to re-open negotiations on the collective bargaining agreement. Gilbert’s election probably would have meant labor trouble, something no fan wants. Gilbert may have shot himself in the foot by advocating an 18 game season, which the vast majority of players clearly don’t want.
  • Gregg Rosenthal at nfl.com thinks Adrian Peterson will most likely stay in Minnesota. Why? Follow the money.
  • Chris Wesseling, also at nfl.com speculates that Phillip Rivers might be traded, perhaps to the Titans. All indications are that Rivers will play out his contract in 2015. Similar to the situation in New Orleans with Drew Brees, I doubt very much that San Diego could get what it would want for the 33 year old Rivers. He’s worth more to them than anyone else at this point.

    A lot of teams are going to be looking to develop young talent behind aging quarterbacks this offseason. The Bears arguably need one worse than anyone else and if they have their eye on anyone in particular, they may have to over draft him. Former NFL scout Daniel Jeremiah, also at nfl.com, has the Bears taking Marcus Mariota with the seventh pick in the draft. It’s not out of the realm of possibility.

  • The Dolphins had the smash hit signing of the year when the added Ndamukong Suh. But you have to wonder if the price of crippling the rest of the team with the cap implications is going to prevent them from winning and defeat the purpose. From Armando Salguero at the Miami Herald.
  • Mike Rodak at ESPN.com suggests that the Bills are spending recklessly in free agency rather that looking for value. Personally I think situations like this almost always end in disappointment as performances in December rarely meet expectations generated in March.

One Final Thought

Rosenthal considers the signing of Bears wide receiver Eddie Royal to be one of free agency’s biggest “head-scratching” moves:

“In a relatively depressed receiver market, the Bears gave $10 million guaranteed to a receiver that has topped 800 yards once in his seven-year career. It was just a random move, and felt a little more painful after the Bears grudgingly swallowed paying Jay Cutler big money into 2016.”

I think the Bears offensive coaching staff sees Royal as a Wes Welker-type of player. The Bears have never gotten the most out of these types of slot receivers but if anyone knows how to do it, it should be Gase. This could be a better signing than most people think.

The Bears Reasonable Approach to Free Agency and Other Points of View

Bears

  • Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune gives the details of the Bears first three free agent signings of 2015. The interested observer will note that each of these contracts is about as front-loaded as you could make them. None has a great deal of guaranteed money past the second year.

These signings look like the type that are meant to allow maximum flexibility once the prospects which they will supposedly be developing come into their own. They’re also meant to spend the 2015 cap space that the Bears have available essentially as quickly as possible. The Bears definitely aren’t looking to buy a championship anymore. At least not this year. Hopefully they’ll leave some room to negotiate an extension with Alshon Jeffery and possibly Matt Forte. I understand the reluctance to extend Forte yet another deal at his age but he’s been very healthy and he’s still the most productive all around player this team has.

  • Speaking of Forte, Rich Campbell at the Chicago Tribune asks (and answers) the following question:

    “Now that Jay Cutler has been named the starter, how can the Bears prop him up?

    “Pace and new coach John Fox have hammered the importance of a strong running game and good defense.”

    Continuing the theme of how the offense is changing, Biggs makes some good points:

    “[Eddie] Royal gives [offensive coordinator Adam] Gase a receiver who can run option routes and crossing routes and be an underneath target as part of a combination. He can be in the flat when [Alshon] Jeffery is running a curl or corner route. Royal can be lined up tight to the alignment with Martellus Bennett, who can run high with Royal running low. They are two-level reads for Cutler the Bears didn’t have last year.”

    Yeah, sure, I get it. And with a running game you can add play action. Before you know it, you have a big boy NFL offense.

    The question is, “do the Bears have the personnel to run one?”. Campbell calls adding a running attack a “quick fix” because the Bears have Forte but I’m thinking the Bears aren’t going to be able to do this without doing some serious shuffling along the offensive line. The one thing former Bears head coach Marc Trestman didn’t do was emphasize things that he didn’t think his players could do. I think they didn’t run the ball more is because he didn’t think they could block it.

    The new blocking scheme will add an interesting wrinkle here and its possible that the finesse blockers the Bears have up front will do better with it. We’ll see.

  • On a related note, Biggs is reporting that the Bears are making a run at Dolphins free agent center Samson Satele. I’m a little iffy on whether this would be a clear upgrade or not. Satele is a smallish center who had a reasonably good start to 2014 but his performance apparently fell off late in the year. Satele is younger than current Bears center Roberto Garza and if the Bears sign him, Garza might move to right guard and kick Kyle Long to the outside at left tackle.

Center Stefen Wisniewski is being considered by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Seahawks per Kevin Patra at NFL.com. I thought maybe the Bears would make a run at him but there’s no apparent interest.

  • Adam L. Jahns at the Chicago Sun-Times reports the excitement that Bears head coach John Fox felt when he watched quarterback Jimmy Clausen‘s snaps last year:

    “So I’ve seen a guy that’s matured. I watched his one start [and] a lot of preseason snaps that he was involved in, and I’ve seen him grow as a quarterback.”

    Whatever else you think of former Bears head coach Marc Trestman, he seems to have been a pretty good quarterbacks coach. You have to wonder if Clausen will regress under new quarterbacks coach Dowell Loggains. Some will recall that Loggains pushed for the Browns to draft Johnny Manziel over Teddy Bridgewater, then coached him to some of the most miserable quarterback play the league has ever seen. The Browns apparently fired him for it.

    It’s still a quarterback driven league. I don’t think its a coincidence that the Packers coaching staff is always loaded with former quarterbacks coaches. You have to wonder if the Bears have the support on staff that’s needed to maximize what they can get out of theirs.

  • Hub Arkush at chicagofootball.com has personal experience with new Bears safety Antrel Rolle and says that we can expect him to be a vocal leader in the locker room that they’ve been missing.
  • Campbell continues to speculate about where the pieces are going to fit on defense:

    “Jeremiah Ratliff and Ego Ferguson project as nose tackles in the 3-4, so the need to draft Washington’s Danny Shelton, for example, is smaller than how much a top-flight edge-rush prospect could help.

    “Jon Bostic stands out as a leading candidate for playing time at inside linebacker, but few others do. And the Bears still are searching for big-bodied 3-4 defensive ends.”

    An awful lot of this depends upon what type of 3-4 the Bears decide to play. If its the classic, 2-gap type then I’m not entirely convinced that Ratliff won’t play defensive end. Certainly he’ll play a great deal of outside linebacker but Houston will probably see a great deal of time there. They’ll probably also try Will Sutton there.

    In any case, I’m saying that defensive line is one of, if not the top, needs that the Bears have. I’m also going to say that I’d hate to see the Bears pass on Shelton, especially to take an edge rusher where the Bears have all kinds of options. My gut tells me Shelton’s a player with that rare and possibly necessary body type and, especially if Ratliff plays more end, they’re going to want a good nose guard.

Elsewhere

  • Ben Goessling at ESPN on the Vikings acquisition of wide receiver Mike Wallace and the release of Greg Jennings:

    “Wallace seemed like a good fit for Norv Turner’s vertical passing game, more so than a 32-year-old Jennings did, but Jennings still was an effective enough slot receiver, a fine route-runner and a trusted adviser for younger wideouts that it looked like he could return in 2015. All that wasn’t worth $11 million in cap space to the Vikings, though, especially when they could save $6 million by releasing him.”

    “Wallace is no sure thing, either, after his relationship with the coaching staff fractured in Miami, but he’s three years younger, a few tenths in the 40-yard dash faster and a better schematic match for what the Vikings are doing now. “

    No, Wallace certainly isn’t a sure thing. But the odds are that Vikings offensive coordinator Norv Turner will find a better way to use him to his abilities than they did in Miami. On the other hand, Turner had an obvious problem with Jennings, opting to call receiver Charles Johnson the best on the team after the season “by far”. So that’s addition by subtraction there.

    Its hard not to like what’s going on in Minnesota right now. You wonder in quarterback Teddy Bridgewater‘s second season if they aren’t going to be ready to contend with the Packers. Again via Goessling:

    “‘I think you saw the receivers did some good things last year, but you saw us start evolving in the offense, because it’s the first year in the system, too,’ general manager Rick Spielman said Friday night, after the Vikings treated free-agent defensive end Michael Johnson to dinner. ‘And you saw how much more comfortable Teddy was, especially down the stretch. And they start developing that chemistry. Now, getting another big-play potential threat, as our young guys continue to develop, that’s kind of the direction we wanted to go.’ “

    Bottom line, the Vikings are worth watching.

  • Goessling also comments on the Adrian Peterson situation:

    “[A]s I understand it, the relationship between Peterson and the team might not even be the biggest concern at this point. The running back went, in very short order, from being a beloved figure in Minnesota to a pariah, as sponsors retreated and legislators heaped scorn on the Vikings for their initial decision to play Peterson following his indictment for child injury charges. He was stung by a Minneapolis Star Tribune investigation into his past, and claimed it did not take into account Peterson’s steps to clean up both his personal life and financial misappropriations in his charitable foundation. And he certainly heard the people — fans, media members and public figures alike — who called for the Vikings to end their relationship with him. It’s important to note all of these events are down the river from Peterson’s initial actions. His excessive discipline of his son initiated this, and Peterson has expressed regret for his actions in several interviews.”

    People are generally the same everywhere but the people of the state of Minnesota tend to be odder birds than most. Its a reasonably liberal state with strong notions of right and wrong. Its easy to believe that they were particularly hard on Peterson. Maybe too hard.

    Heaven knows its nice to see a fan base that doesn’t just roll over and forgive every action just because it was perpetrated by a star athlete. But Minnesota may be one of the few areas in the country that will never forgive Peterson no matter how sorry he is. I still think he’ll be back there. But its possible that he’ll eventually conclude that he has to force himself into a friendlier situation.

  • One of the free agents to keep an eye on in the secondary free agent market is Tramon Williams. The Packers already lost Davon House to Jacksonville and Rob Demovsky at ESPN says that they’d like to have Williams back. But at age 32 there’s a limit to what they’re going to offer him.

Williams is a possibility for the Bears but they’ve probably got their corners set with Tim Jennings on one side and Kyle Fuller on the other. And if they were going to sign a corner of a certain age it might as well be Charles Tillman.

  • Dan Hanzus at NFL.com points out that when it rains, it pours:

    “This time last year, [Jadeveon] Clowney was on top of the world. A college hero, combine wonder and soon-to-be No. 1 overall pick in the NFL draft. Since then there’s been a hernia surgery, concussion and two knee surgeries that have put his career in jeopardy. And now this …

    “SportsRadio 610 has learned that Clowney was bitten by teammate D.J. Swearinger‘s pit bull last week. Police records obtained describe a bite to Clowney’s right arm that sent him to a Pearland emergency room. The incident occurred in the early morning of March 4th.”

  • Hanzus also notes that there were 11 people in the Dolphins photo when Ndamukong Suh signed his contract and none of them was named Joe Philbin. It turned out that Philbin was in the gallery “probably next to some schlub columnist who calls for his firing on a weekly basis. It’s just a matter of time before Joe’s desk is in the basement.”
  • According to Michael Rothstein at ESPN there’s a distinct possibility that the Lions will be moving to the 3-4 defense this year. Even with new defensive tackle Haloti Ngata (who might fit a 304 better) the Lions are desperately short of tackles on the roster who are signed for 2015.
  • The more I read about Colorado State quarterback Garrett Grayson, the more I wonder if he’s the guy the Bears (or someone else) trades back into the first round to get. From Sharon Katz at ESPN.
  • TMZ is claiming to have video of Seattle runningback Marshawn Lynch in a scuffle outside of a San Francisco bar.
  • Rumors persist that Chip Kelly acquired Sam Bradford as a bargaining chip to get to a position to draft Marcus Mariota. This time its Josina Anderson at ESPN doing the reporting:

    I still don’t think he can make it high enough into the draft order to pull it off (if he actually is trying at all).

  • The Giants are getting desperate for safety help now that Rolle has signed with the Bears. There isn’t much out there. Via Josh Alper at profootballtalk.com.
  • Mike Reiss at ESPN considers the alternatives for New England now that Reggie Bush has signed with San Francisco. I’d worry less about that and more about the potential absence of Vince Wilfork in the middle if I were them. Good nose tackles for that defense don’t grow on trees, something that the Bears might want to remember as they switch to the 3-4.

One Final Thought

Gregg Rosenthall at NFL.com considers the Bears to be one of free agency’s losers so far:

“Royal getting $10 million guaranteed was a head scratcher. And Pernell McPhee could be the latest Ravens defender to look a lot different away from Baltimore. It’s also hard to get excited about a team that is so openly ambivalent about its starting quarterback.”

This is a decidedly pessimistic view, of course. Technically Cutler’s situation had nothing to do with free agency. And McPhee could just as easily turn out to be Paul Kruger as Dannell Ellerbe.

Royal fills a gap in the offense. Yeah, it was too much guaranteed money. Apparently the Bears think Royal is Danny Amendola. For all we know he might be but we’ll never find out because Cutler isn’t Tom Brady. Anyway all of that guaranteed money is in the first two years. Which means that if he doesn’t work out the Bears could free themselves of that contract without a cap penalty when they’ve developed a draft pick to replace him.

Personally, I would have been disappointed had the Bears been more aggressive than they were the first week of free agency. This team needs to get younger and start developing prospects rather than overspending and selling out to win immediately. If the last couple years taught us anything its that you can’t buy a championship.

Why Bears Fans Should Be Thankful. And Other Points of View.

Bears

  • Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune answers your questions. Included is the annual call for running back Matt Forte to be traded:

    “I don’t know how much the Bears could get in return for Forte when you consider he’s 29, he’s got 2,260 carries and receptions combined over the past seven seasons and his contract calls for him to be paid $8.2 million this season. Again, I’m not saying he can’t be a valuable performer both as a running back and as a receiver in 2015. I just don’t believe a team would be willing to fork over much to acquire him. Forte’s value is probably greatest to the Bears right now.”

    Every year somebody writes in and calls for Forte to be traded. And every year my answer is the same. Forte is the Bears best player right now. It would be insane to trade him, especially given that they’d never get what he’s worth.

    These are the guys you want to keep.

  • ESPN‘s Kevin Seifert and Matt Williamson rate the top 20 free agents this offseason. See any Bears on that list? That tells you everything you need to know.
  • According to the article, the Bears are estimated to have the tenth most cap space available in the league at roughly $25 million.

Elsewhere

  • Mike McCarthy is giving up play calling duties and by all accounts is going to be more of a CEO-type head coach next season. That’s led to quite a number of new titles on the coaching staff. Via Darin Gantt at profootballtalk.com:

    “They named Tom Clements associate head coach/offense, Edgar Bennett offensive coordinator, Alex Van Pelt quarterbacks/wide receivers coach, Mike Solari assistant offensive line coach.”

    As Gantt notes, throwing an extra position group on Van Pelt’s “a little curious”. The guess here is that McCarthy might be giving up play calling duties and Clements might be the offensive coordinator but that means McCarthy will be spending a lot more time with the quarterbacks, making Van Pelt literally a third wheel (with Clements also being a former quarterbacks coach).

    Rob Demovsky at ESPN says that the shift also means that McCarthy will be spending a lot more time in meetings for both the defense and the special teams. I thought these quotes from McCarthy were interesting:

    “‘And I will spend a lot of time with the special teams. Special teams needs to improve. It’s an area definitely of concern in the past.’

    “McCarthy referred to himself as ‘the third guy in the room now’ when talking about the special teams coaching staff, which includes new coordinator Ron Zook and new assistant Jason Simmons. Zook, who was the assistant last season, replaces Shawn Slocum, who was fired Jan. 30.

    “‘That culture’s going to change in there,’ McCarthy said. ‘I promise you that.’ “

    The Packers special teams were miserable last year. It sounds like McCarthy is going to make sure that there’s going to be a lot more kicking asses and taking names next year.

    I don’t have much doubt that McCarthy is doing the right thing here. It’s long past time for Clements to be a coordinator in more than just name and the best head coaches are the ones that coach the coaches. I think McCarthy will be pretty good at that.

  • I like former Bears and Buccaneers quarterback Josh McCown well enough. But calling him “the best free agent quarterback available” is stretching it. From Michael David Smith at profootballtalk.com.
  • Armando Salguero at the Miami Herald gives this in depth breakdown of the Miami Dolphins as the NFL’s ultimate stagnant team. Its not a pretty picture and it makes you wonder if they won’t be headed towards a complete blow up in a few years as the roster ages with little overall influx of real talent.

One Final Thought

Of course, the Dolphins organization is a well oiled machine compared to the Cleveland Browns. Jason La Canfora paints a picture of unbelievable dysfunction starting with the meddling owner who insisted on drafting Johnny Manziel over the general manager’s preference for both Derek Carr and Teddy Bridgewater.

“The culture in the Browns building is toxic, I’m told. Morale is beyond low. If you can flee, you are fleeing. There is no shortage of individuals throughout that organization who would, like former offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan, get the hell out of there if at all possible. There’s an overwhelming sense of dread about the future and a fear that, come the end of the 2015 season, [owner Jimmy] Haslam will do the one thing he has managed to do with any consistency during his three-season reign — that is, blow up his entire building once again and fire everyone, in essence blaming all but himself for his sweeping failure.”

No matter who you root for in this league most of us can all be glad of one thing: you aren’t a Browns fan. This article is a must read for any fan who needs to feel better about the Bears current situation.

The Season Isn’t Over. Yet. And Other Points of View.

Bears

  • Mark Potash at the Chicago Sun-Times quotes Bears safety Ryan Mundy after the Bears blow out loss to the Patriots last Sunday:

    “‘We’re definitely frustrated, ­upset and disappointed — all those emotions,’ Mundy said. ‘We’ve just got to stick together — that’s the most important thing. At times like this, it’s really easy to have the worst in people come out, especially with all the arrows that are being thrown our way. Our job as a team is to stick together.'”

    There’s a lot of truth to that, of course. But more importantly I think your job as a team is to do your job as individuals. Right now its pretty rare to find a play where all 11 guys have been doing that. Tight end Martellus Bennett might have put it best (via Patrick Finley, also at the Chicago Sun-Times):

    “‘It’s not just Jay [Cutler]. It’s the offensive line. It’s the running backs. It’s the tight ends. It’s the wide receivers. He’s the quarterback, so everybody always looks at him. But we have to make sure all the guys around there are doing their jobs.

    “‘Jay does his job, we do our jobs and we’re O.K. I think that’s the biggest thing: that everyone around has to look at themselves. I’m not here to judge Jay or talk about Jay. I only can look in the mirror and see what I have to do and what I can do better to help my teammates out. And that’s what it’s really about.'”

  • From Brad Biggs‘s film review in the Chicago Tribune:

    “Cornerbacks Darrelle Revis and Brandon Browner had their way with [Brandon] Marshall and Alshon Jeffery. The duo combined for only 72 receiving yards before Cutler was pulled. Marshall was unable to create separation and Jeffery didn’t fare much better.”

    Miami’s Cortland Finnegan also blanketed Marshall the week before allowing double coverage on Jeffery for much of that game. This is a major issue. I’m wondering if Marshall is still hurt. He has that look about him. Biggs would seem to agree:

    “Maybe it is a sign that Marshall, while healthy, isn’t all the way back from that ankle injury. But who knows what to believe? One week he feels explosive. The next week he says the injury should have kept him out a month. But it is one of the issues plaguing an offense that is short on explosive plays.”

    In any case if these two don’t start getting open more, the Bears season will end even worse than most fans suspect at this point.

  • I’m sure everyone has pictures of this billboard. But just in case:

  • Hub Arkush at chicagofootball.com answers your questions:

    “From @imx007: What’s the chance (the) Bears owners follows lead of the Blackhawks and Cubs and actually put real football people in?

    “Ted Phillips is the team President and he has no football background at all. He is a very good accountant and was the team’s finance guy when Virginia McCaskey replaced her oldest son Michael with him. Actually, Michael was elevated to Chairman of the Board and Philips became President but the net effect was to move the family out of the day-to-day operations of the team. To Phillips’ credit, his first major move was to change Michael’s policy of not having a GM;…[Jerry] Angelo and [Phil] Emery were and are football people. The two questions are: 1. Are/were they the right football people; and 2. Should they be reporting to a football person? The first answer is it’s starting to look uncertain, but it’s still too soon to give up on Emery. The answer to number two, I think, is most definitely yes.”

    There’s a flaw in this logic in that ultimately a non-football person has to decide which football person to hire. I see little difference between Phillips doing it in collaboration with ownership and ownership simply doing it on their own.

    In the end, Phil Emery is making the football decisions. I don’t have a problem with that. As Arkush says, its a little early to tell, but I think the team’s drafts have gotten decidedly better, especially at the top, under his leadership. Whether Marc Trestman was the right hire as head coach is debatable but there is certainly a lot to like about him as an offensive mind and quarterback coach. I applauded this hire at the time for exactly those reasons. We’ll just have to wait and see if his leadership style either catches hold with the team or changes with the circumstances.

  • Biggs makes the point that the biggest adjustment that the Bears have to make in the second half is to get the running game in order. This is one traditional way to beat the zone defenses the Bears have been seeing this year:

    “There’s too much window dressing to the ground game and not enough brawn and muscle. Alshon Jeffery coming in motion on a fake jet sweep isn’t leaving opposing defensive coaches studying film deep into the night. The Bears must commit to running rough, dominating the line of scrimmage.

    “‘We have an offensive line that can block the run,’ Trestman said. ‘And we have a very good running back.'”

    The latter is definitely true. Whether the former is true is yet to be seen.

  • Honestly, does anyone care what Michael Irvin thinks?

One Final Thought

Could this possibly be the ever cynical Hub Arkush that we’ve come to know and love?

“From @mosconml: Let’s not kid ourselves, the playoff hopes are done. Who’s looking good at MLB, SS and FS in the draft?

“Well, first of all you’re wrong. In my preseason predictions, I had the Bears at 4-5 coming out of Lambeau, and winning six of their last seven to go 10-6 and claim a wild card. I don’t feel that way anymore, but to say it’s no longer possible is just wrong. Apparently you haven’t been watching the NFL recently. Two weeks ago the Saints were done at 2-4 and now they’re in first place in the NFC South. Many times even 9-7 can get you into the playoffs. I hate what the Bears have done so far like everyone else, but let’s let it play out at least three more weeks before we bury them.”

Couldn’t agree more.

Leading the Leader and Other Points of View

Bears

  • Rich Campbell at the Chicago Tribune points out that Cutler continues to overthrow receivers and attributes it to poor mechanics. But he then offers no specifics about what is wrong with those mechanics and gives us nothing to look for. Frustrating.
  • I’m not in the business of bashing quarterback Jay Cutler. Too much. But I found this article by Campbell to be pretty amusing. He first starts off by quoting an exchange between GM Phil Emery and a fan on the Bears website:

    “Q: ‘Given Jay’s enormous contract in the offseason – how happy are you with his performance thus far? I’m a huge Jay Cutler fan, but he can’t seem to make that leap to elite status and just makes too many mistakes.’

    “Emery: ‘Jay Cutler is a winning quarterback in this league and no matter how you analyze the history of quarterbacks in the NFL, if you have a winning record you are an elite player at that position. I’ll say it again: Jay has enormous skills and he continues to improve in all areas as a football player. I know he has some throws he would like to have back, but all of our players have had plays that they would like to have back.'”

    He then quotes the statistics (only some of which I’ll include here):

    “Cutler’s teams have a 59-52 record in games he has started during his eight-plus NFL seasons.

    “The Bears, for whom Cutler has played the last six seasons, are 42-32 when he has started. Since coach Marc Trestman took over before the 2013 season, the Bears are 8-10 when Cutler has started.

    “Cutler is 1-1 in the postseason, having beaten the 7-9 Seattle Seahawks in 2010. The Bears lost the NFC championship game at home that season to the Green Bay Packers. Cutler did not finish the game due to a knee injury.”

    OK. Maybe it’s not so funny.

  • Biggs answers your questions:

    “How is it that nationally, Matt Ryan is not held to the same scrutiny that Jay Cutler is?””– Brian C., from email”

    “The difference between Ryan and Cutler over the course of their careers is Ryan has experienced sustained success. His record as a starter in his first five seasons was 56-22. He experienced two 13-3 seasons and helped the Falcons to the playoffs in four out of five years. Cutler is in his sixth season with the Bears and they have reached the postseason once. The Bears have been unable to sustain success under Cutler and that is probably the best explanation for the difference in perceptions nationally for the quarterbacks.”

    Nationally Cutler is most criticized for his tendency to turn the ball over. Even I’m surprised to see that he has 8 fumbles this year compared to Ryan’s 1 fumble.

  • Here’s another interesting response from Biggs:

    “Why is no one talking about the inability of the Bears to tackle properly?””– John J., from email”

    “This is a question I could pull out of the mailbag five or six times a year.”

    “But I think most observers would agree the Bears have been better tackling in the open field this season. Open-field tackling is difficult, for starters. When it’s one-on-one, that’s not always an easy play to make. How many times do you see tight end Martellus Bennett slip by a defender? It happens usually at least once a game. So tackles are missed on both sides of the ball.”

    I couldn’t agree more. I’m usually one of the first people to start criticizing tackles on a game-to-game basis. But you can’t do it unless you are seeing it consistently over and over again. Seeing players miss the occasional tackle is not unusual and its not a big deal. There are lots of things to criticize about the Bears this year. This isn’t one of them. Yet.

One Final Thought

Patrick Finley at the Chicago Sun-Times describes the reason given for the fact that the Bears ran so little in the first half Sunday:

“Cutler said he made the right decisions when changing plays from runs to passes in the 27-14 loss Sunday to the Dolphins, even though he handed the ball off only two times in the first half.

“He changed two runs to passes and decided to throw on two more run/pass options. One, a deep ­incompletion to Alshon Jeffery on third-and-one, stalled the Bears’ first drive and seemed to mire them in a funk that lasted the first half.”

Translation: They couldn’t pass against a run defense.

The excerpt highlights what is wrong with the media focus on Cutler’s performance last week. Most writers have emphasized the fact that Cutler has mental breakdowns which result in turnovers, something that Rich Campbell at the Chicago Tribune does a particularly good job of highlighting here. They also ridicule the idea put forward by the team that turnovers are a team statistic. But perhaps they shouldn’t be so hasty as, in a way, this is particularly true of Bears.

The Bears insist that Cutler is an elite quarterback, something that is patently absurd. The Packers Aaron Rogers is an elite quarterback. He makes everyone around him better. Cutler depends upon everyone around him to make him better. And that’s the rub.

Cutler is the kind of guy who is going to be a great quarterback when things are going well. But when the going gets tough, Cutler’s not going to get going. That’s what happened last Sunday. The Dolphins were blitzing and playing the run and the Bears receivers were getting blanketed in single coverage. The team was sinking and in those situations Cutler isn’t going to be the life raft that keeps them afloat. He’s going to be a lead weight that takes them to the bottom.

That’s why Cutler’s turnovers are a team statistic. Most media and fans are laboring under the mistaken impression that Cutler’s turnovers are causing the team to underperform. Its the other way around. Like it or not, whether you think its the way that it should be or not, its the team’s poor play that is resulting in Cutler’s poor play.

If the Bears want to get better, they’re wasting their time if they are depending upon making Cutler better first. They should certainly try but he’s 33 years old and everyone has to accept that he is what he is. The only way the Bears are going to get better is by coaching up the other positions and making them better. If they do that, Cutler will follow.

A Question of Style and Other Points of View

Bears

  • Rick Telander at the Chicago Sun-Times on quarterback Jay Cutler after the Bears loss to the Dolphins Sunday:

    “You know what’s sad? This from Dolphins intercepting safety Reshad Jones: ‘After watching film all week, we saw [Cutler] was looking where he threw the ball. He was always looking at his receivers and never looking off. We tried to take advantage of that, and it paid off.’”

    Rick Morrissey, also at the Chicago Sun-Times, says that wide receiver Brandon Marshall reportedly called out Cutler after the loss (amongst others).

  • Former Bears Blake Costanzo on Twitter. Via Morrissey:

    “[Head coach Marc] Trestman [sic] has made the bears soft. I took pride in wearing that jersey. [Mike] Ditka, [Brian] Urlacher, [Lance] Briggs. Unreal man. No respect”

  • Here’s one thing Morrissey said that I can totally agree with:

    “‘We have no identity,’ cornerback Tim Jennings said. ‘We still don’t know who we are. We win on the road; we lose at home. That’s the most frustrating thing about it. We don’t know who we are just yet.’

    “He might want to consider the very real possibility that this is exactly who the Bears are.”

    So might the fans. As Jeff Dickerson at ESPN.com put it, “This team seems to be destined to be 0.500.” My suggestion is that fans relax and deal with it.

  • Hub Arkush at chicagofootball.com after the loss:

    “Could it be these Bears think too much of themselves and that just arriving at Soldier Field should be enough? Are they playing hard enough and giving 100 percent effort?”

  • Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune shares my concern here:

    “The other thing that jumped out was running back Matt Forte receiving only two carries in the first half. That couldn’t have been part of the game plan in the ‘good week of practice,’ right? The offense runs through Forte and there the Bears were on third-and-1 from their own 47-yard line on their first possession. Shotgun formation? Check. Press coverage from the Dolphins? Check. So throw it deep to Alshon Jeffery with Brent Grimes in coverage? Uh, check.

    “Trestman called it the right move when Miami opted to press the wide receivers. But it was a low-percentage shot and reinforced one thing: The Bears do not always seem comfortable running the ball in short-yardage situations.”

    I didn’t have the big problem with this call that most fans had. You take your shots down field when you can and the call would have been a brilliant surprise move if it had worked.

    But I’m still bothered by the overall situation. The Bears have had trouble blocking in short yardage situations for two years now and it led me after last season to call for changes in the offensive line. The Bears opted to stick with the same five guys and they are reaping their reward.

    Its OK to take a shot down field on a play like this on rare occasions. But if you aren’t confident enough to run the ball on third-and-1 and get it the vast majority of the time its a problem. The Bears resort to passes or trap plays and other types of techniques to get leverage instead because they aren’t strong enough up front to block a run play without it. They need to be able to occasionally just blow off the ball to get a yard. Because good teams simply won’t be finessed.

  • Biggs makes an outstanding point regarding wide receiver Brandon Marshall‘s post game tirade:

    “Former Bears receiver David Terrell was a likable guy with a playful personality. But Terrell had an act from time to time like winning was more important to him than anyone else in the locker room. I’m not comparing Terrell to Marshall at all. Terrell was a bust. Marshall is a big-time offensive producer. But the idea that one guy takes winning and losing more personally than 52 others doesn’t pass the smell test. The locker room is full of professionals and it requires a professional approach. No other player wants to hear another guy in the locker room say it hurts more for him.”

    Rich Campbell and Dan Weiderer, also at the Chicago Tribune try to pass Marshall’s tirade off as something that happens every week. I don’t buy it.

  • Offensive guard Kyle Long on his criticizing the fans in a postgame interview:

    “Long backtracked Monday, telling WXRT-FM (93.1) that ‘it was wrong for me to point fingers at the fans’ and that it was up to the Bears to give the crowd a reason to cheer.

    “‘I just think (reporters) had asked everybody in the locker room how they felt about (fans booing), and a lot of the guys didn’t take the bait,’ Long said. ‘Obviously emotions are running high after a game. Obviously if we were giving them something to cheer about there would be a lot more cheers coming off the field at halftime. Hopefully the score would be a little bit closer as well.”

    The impression of both the players and the media that the fans were booing the poor first half performance as the Bears went in at half time might not be totally off base. There was certainly a lot of frustration and venting at that point. But I can tell you that, right or wrong, the fans around me were most upset by Trestman’s decision to take a knee with time left on the clock rather than taking a time out and to move into field goal position. My impression was that the reaction at the time was more about that than anything else.

  • Patrick Finley at the Chicago Sun-Times places the blame for the Bears not running the ball in the first half squarely on Cutler. He quotes Trestman as saying that the change to more of a run-based offense after half time was because the Bears took the option of changing the plays from Cutler:

    “‘We took some of the options off, and we handed the football off,’ Trestman said. ‘And we got more of what we would expect out of our offense — a good, solid drive.'”

  • With all of the talk of concern about the lack of leadership from Cutler and Marshall, (and Trestman) no one seems to be talking about the obvious void – the lack of leadership on the defensive side of the ball. This was, of course, supposed to fall to Lance Briggs but he has pretty much proven now that its not his bailiwick and I’ve yet to hear of anyone stepping into his shoes.
  • No matter how much criticism Cutler takes he still goes home after every game to this:

Just sayin’

One Final Thought

Morrissey is also questioning Trestman’s leadership style:

“Those of us who respect Trestman and appreciate his mind know that neither respect nor football knowledge necessarily makes a successful NFL head coach. There’s more to the game than X’s and O’s. There’s the matter of dealing with large, talented human beings who, because they have been coddled their entire lives, believe they can do anything they want. It takes a real leader to tell them they can’t. Allow them to run free, and, well, this happens.”

Anyone up for some Double Nickel barbecue?