dave mcbride

It sucks, actually, which is why a lottery of the worst seven teams in the first round (with no weighting) is the obvious path forward. I can't see it not happening after this.

He was a grad assistant at PSU and an LB coach at W & M. He has never recruited anyone, and that's over 50 percent of a college coach's job.

Respectfully, I don't see it. Daboll is all in on Jones, who is a poor man's Allen. Daboll was hired to fix Jones, whom Giants management fully believes in. Not saying they are right, but the tools are definitely there. Pittsburgh, on the other hand, is a good team that just happens to not have a credible quarterback.

I don't see it. He can start in this league, and he presumably wants to be paid like a starter.

I truly don't see the Giants. They are committed to Jones. Houston's QB may well be the second best QB from last year's draft after Lawrence. Mills was the number one recruit in the country coming out of HS, after all. Maybe Indy, but Pitt makes a little more sense to me. I don't like Wentz, but he's a legit NFL starter. Pittsburgh doesn't have a starter at present. Nothing even close, actually. Rudolph is bad. Could be. Seems like a chaotic situation down there now, however.

I truly believe the Giants are committed to Jones for this season. Every report I've read is that Giants management across the board loves Jones and think his talent has been wasted. Assuming Trubisky is a competitor, he's going to where he will be the starter. Pittsburgh is the most stable organization in the league and hasn't had a losing season in forever. The receivers are good. The RB is good. The defense is generally good (albeit with some holes). It makes the most sense to me.

I strongly believe he'll be moving on, and I've thought about the best position for him to land. He is not a franchise QB like Allen, but he's legitimately decent, has won in this league, and has all of the tools. If I'm Pittsburgh, which has no credible QB, I'm targeting him hard. In my view, his best career trajectory comp is Tannehill. Tannehill is not elite, but he's good and can help get to 11 wins and maybe a SB if the stars align. Pittsburgh has most of the other pieces outside of QB. Pittsburgh would be legit playoff contender with him. They are not a playoff contender with their current stable of quarterbacks.

The NYT stat is a small sample size, but yeah, in recent years Caldwell (9-7), Lovie Smith (10-6), and Flores (9-8) were all fired after winning seasons. I think the only white coach to be fired was Mularkey (9-7), but there may be more that I'm not remembering.

The obvious solution is a draft lottery for, say, the worst 6-7 teams. And I wouldn't do it like the NHL, where the worst team has an advantage. Moreover, you could make so that only round 1 has a lottery, with rounds 2-7 following the current order of worst to best. Seems like a solution to me. Ross isn't the first to do this; the Browns apparently did it too.

You could well be right about JBJ. I am just putting it out there because he did say this. Trump did fund Caputo, though. Not sure how much effect it had.

@PromoTheRobot,did you read the Bon Jovi interview where he said he never, ever planned on moving the Bills from Buffalo, and that the smear campaign against him was engineered and funded by Trump (which it actually was)? https://touchdownwire.usatoday.com/2020/10/24/why-jon-bon-jovi-erased-buffalo-and-the-bills-from-his-life/ and https://www.gq.com/story/donald-trump-shady-scheme-to-buy-nfl-buffalo-bills

I am glad you brought this up. I was going to. Cosell spoke at length about the problems with the Bills offense about 9-10 games in, and he made an excellent point. He said that running the ball consistently with your running backs isn’t just about gaining rushing yardage, but also about getting d-linemen moving sideways in anticipation. That, he said, is what opens up play action and takes the pressure off of your QB. If you’re clearly de-emphasizing a conventional running game, d-linemen don’t have to worry much about moving laterally to effectively defend rushing plays. Instead, they can just get after the QB. You gotta know that McDermott knows this, and I can only imagine that there were some intense arguments, especially in that phase where the Bills were basically running a spread offense (one that was utterly exposed vs Jax, vs Indy, and vs TB in the first half of that game). To be sure, Daboll adapted and the Bills offense became much more multiple down the stretch. But there may well be some lingering resentment on both of their parts (e.g., McDermott may blame him for the Jax loss, which was a terribly called game on offense). I certainly don’t know for sure if that’s the root of the problem, but it could be.

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/01/10/absentee-ownership-directly-contributes-to-weird-outcomes-like-the-firing-of-brian-flores/ What is your point? He took over a truly terrible team, and those were the facts on the ground that he dealt with. Please clarify, with specifics and a demonstration of knowledge of the 2019 Dolphins roster.

Barbs, I respect you as a poster, but you can do better than this.

Maybe he was concerned with the players on the team he was coaching and all of the assistants he hired and asked to move their families to Miami. Life is complicated.

The miami roster in 2019 was without question the worst in the league with regard to talent. Pretending otherwise is just bias. The fact that he went 5-11 with a 1-15 team (talent-wise) and was competitive the entire second half of the season was good coaching, and everyone in the NFL knew it. Re: your line above, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Saying he had a .500 record is so divorced from context. The expectation in 2019 was that Miami would be 1-15 AT BEST. Him going 5-11 there and being consistently competitive there over the second half of the season with that roster was remarkable. There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Remember that.

Not really. Flores also has an obligation to his players and his coaching staff. If he quits, his staff gets canned too. It's not that simple.

When both of your former assistants are named Brian ...

In 2013, the Panthers defense had a ridiculous 60 sacks, which led the league, and their D was second in both yards and points allowed. McDermott is plenty happy with lots of sacks.

What are you talking about??? He was *awesome* his final season at Arkansas, which went 10-3 (ranked 12th at the end of the season) and lost the Sugar Bowl to Ohio State because of a very controversial penalty call on a blocked punt in the final minute. That year, Mallet had a 65 percent completion rate, 9.4 ypa, 32 TDs, and a 163.6 rating. He led the SEC in passing yardage, TD passes, and ypa. He was good the year before too (30 TDs/7 INTs; 9.0 ypa). Anyway, the comps are there: massive size, cannon arm, accuracy issues. I didn't say he was exactly alike, but no two players are ever exactly alike. But there were certainly some notable similarities in terms of the scouting reports.

One of the worst performances I've ever seen by a great player. It's as if the mafia had something on him and he was throwing the game. I know he didn't do that, but the number of horrible -- not bad; horrible -- plays by him was staggering.

The Pats spent a third rounder on him, which was very high given the context -- i.e., the fact that they had the GOAT playing QB in his prime and were never going to spend a first on a QB at that moment. But that wasn't your point. Your point was that BB would never have taken a player with a track and skill set like Allen. It was never about where the player was drafted. Mallet isn't exactly Allen, but he's very comparable in terms of massive size and a cannon arm.

The advanced numbers show a steady downward trend for him: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/B/BradJa00.htm. Note the missed tackle percentage (the last column).

Remember this playoff game from Peyton Manning, where he barked out such a long stream of Rube Goldberg-machine nonsense before each play that it sounded like he had logorrhea? https://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/200301040nyj.htm. He was absolutely pathetic vs. Herman Edwards' Jets defense and just choked.