Coaching Shorts

By Brett | Permalink | No Comments | September 19th, 2006 | Trackback

The NFL is a coach’s league, or so they say. Like most sports fans, we here at NFL Logue believe that wasting countless hours of our lives watching football gives us both the ability and the right –no, the responsibility– to call out coaches for the stupid decisions that they make. And that’s a responsibility that we take pretty darn seriously.

This weekly column will be our forum for pissing, moaning, second-guessing, and otherwise nitpicking about some of the coaching decisions that happen on a week to week basis in the NFL.

We may even say something nice about one or two of them from time to time. But probably not.

Andy Reid
Crime: With his team leading by like a million points in the 4th quarter vs. the Giants, Reid fell victim to one of the classic blunders: Never going in against a Sicilian, when death is on the line. Wait. That’s not it. Oh, right…he went and got all conservative, allowing the Giants to get back in the game, and eventually deal a season ending blow to the Eagles. Now, we don’t have a problem with going conservative when you have a big lead, per se. But, if you’re gonna go conservative late in the game, you’d better have a stud RB to feed the ball to, which the Eagles don’t. Unless you count Correll Buckhalter, the object of Andy Reid’s man-crush, which we don’t.

Punishment: May the Philly faithful tar you with cheez whiz, and feather you with grilled onions, ripe, moist peppers, and savory strips of steak…..mmm….cheesesteak.

John Fox
Crime: We love John Fox. Think the guy is a great coach. Although, to be honest, his offense pretty much just seems to consist of “Hey Jake, throw to it Steve!” So, you know…maybe he’s not an offensive mastermind, but he has a reputation as being a great strategist. That’s why his decision –and we have to believe he signed off on this one– to try to pull off a throwback on a punt return late in a close, must-win game was so strange. Just an awful play call at that point in the game, and it cost his team the W.

Punishment: May God have mercy on your mortal soul.

Joe Gibbs
Crime: First, the decision not to let Clinton Portis suit up against the Skins’ biggest division rival, in a game in which the loser would fall to 0-2 was questionable at best. Even worse, though, was that, in the abscence of Portis, the Skins were unwilling or unable to build a gameplan around Santana Moss and Chris Cooley. Get the ball into the hands of freakin’ playmakers, Joe. It’s not rocket science. Finally, while we haven’t seen Jason Campbell play all that much, can he really be much worse than Mark Brunell right now? The highly paid –and highly hyped– Redskins coaching staff was totally outclassed by Parcells and his crew in this one.

Punishment: Get back to NASCAR with thee!

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