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Anytime a with Super Bowl aspirations limps out of the box, the talk radio, message board, and newspaper fingers start pointing in many directions. Most of them wind up pointed squarely at the Head Coach. Sometimes those fingers, often just the middle one, are well-deserved. But sometimes those angry fingers miss their mark.
After 4 weeks, we find 3 NFL teams that were thought to be legit Super Bowl contenders struggling with 1-3 records. San Diego, Chicago, and Philadelphia all finished the first quarter of the season with humiliating losses to allegedly inferior division rivals and all find themselves in last place in their respective divisions. Two of these three surprise bottom dwellers are there in no small part because of their coaches, but the other has bigger issues than their plus-sized coach.
The fingers started pointing at Chargers coach Norv Turner before the team ever took the field. Norv has crashed and burned in prior head coaching gigs, often spectacularly. His defenders pointed out that his Raiders and Ethnic Slurs squads had major issues besides Turner?s coaching. However, even those who know and like Norv wondered aloud what exactly Chargers GM AJ Smith was thinking when he handed the reigns of a 14-2 team laden with Pro Bowlers to Turner this offseason.
To quote one of my favorite bands, Lit: Looks like they were right. His laid-back persona eliminated the sense of urgency and the culture of demanding excellence and personal responsibility from the players that suited this team so well under former coach Marty Schottenheimer. His play-calling is as predictable as the next Ann Coulter column on Hillary Clinton. The players are not handling the losing well, often engaging in heated sideline arguments and animated discussions as they walk off the field. Perhaps most disturbing is the obvious regression of QB Philip Rivers, because Turner is a noted QB guru who excels at developing young QBs. Rivers looks tentative and clearly has no confidence in his WRs, though the line in front of him isn?t nearly as stout as in 2006. Turner appears clueless about the myriad cracks in the dam he?s assigned to manage, and with tough AFC West contests against Denver and Oakland coming up next, the dam is going to collapse unless Turner unifies his charges and gets them back to demanding excellence from themselves instead of accepting mediocrity (or worse). Nothing in Turner?s history indicates he has the aptitude or ability to do that.
Many will point fingers at AJ Smith for hiring Turner after letting his personal issues with Schottenheimer boil over. As my friend Jonathan Kim points out, Smith fired a coach who can?t win playoff games for a coach who can?t win regular season games. But my finger points at Norv too; this is still one of the 3 most talented rosters in football, but the level of play and on-field discipline have tanked, and that?s squarely on the coach.
Chicago isn?t as cut and dry, but it?s about time the sycophants in the Windy City step back and properly assess Lovie Smith?s coaching ability. No, Lovie is not responsible for having every good defensive player except Brian Urlacher and Mark Anderson injured. And he?s not the guy dropping passes or repeatedly running directly into the back of his own linemen. But I?ve seen some very disturbing things with these Bears, and many of those things point squarely at Lovie.
It?s not just the messy QB situation that makes me question Lovie. Though there is no real good solution to the train wreck that is the Bears QB, Smith stuck with turnover machine Rex Grossman at least 6 quarters too long. By choosing to go down with Rex?s lead-filled sinking ship, he killed the confidence of the skill position players and came perilously close to an ugly offense/defense rift. In some ways his reluctance to bring in Brian Griese was vindicated by Griese?s awful showing in Detroit, but that traces back to Smith too. No team ran fewer reps with their backup QBs this offseason and preseason than the Bears, and the lack of cohesion was painfully evident Sunday.
Smith?s playcalling leaves much to be desired. Running unelusive RB Ced Benson on toss sweeps and slow-developing delay hand-offs is a recipe for disaster, especially against a strong defensive front 4 like the Lions, or a dominant Chargers DL. Lovie seems to have no inclination to attack the weaknesses of opponents. I?ll grant him that some of that is personnel related, but a week after the Lions proved their secondary couldn?t cover me or tackle a dummy, the Bears did very little to test the Lions downfield. No crossing routes, no flooding one side to create confusion, just simple slants and ultra-quick checkdown routes. Clock management, long a bugaboo (see last year?s playoff game against SEA, or the PIT game in 2005), continues to be a major problem. I?ve not seen a trailing team slower out of the huddle since the Eagles in the Super Bowl. Twice they took delay of game penalties, they burned a timeout, and Griese often had to rush his pre-snap reads because the plays were not getting called with expediency. Some of that falls on Griese, but it?s Smith?s job to ensure that Griese is ready to take over the reigns, and he clearly was not. This team commits a lot of careless penalties, a sign that the coach is not running a tight enough ship. Lovie?s style is to let his playmakers make plays, and that worked last year when he had a more dynamic RB and a defense stocked with top-shelf talent. Now those are gone, and Smith appears incapable of winning games where he doesn?t have a decided talent advantage.
In Philadelphia, where the fans hate pretty much everything except complaining, Andy Reid is starting to see a lot more fingers than usual (again, one finger in particular). While the 1-3 start and brutal offensive display in Sunday?s loss to the Giants don?t reflect well upon Reid, he?s less a part of the problem than Lovie or Norv are for their team?s misfortunes. The Eagles played Sunday without several key starters, notably LT William Thomas and RB Brian Westbrook. Their offensive line could not handle the strength of the Giants, their awesome DL, and it disrupted whatever the Eagles were trying to do. QB Donovan McNabb is clearly bothered by pressure, perhaps worried about his next season-ending injury. The Eagles faced a similarly dominant DL in Green Bay in Week One and lost only because they couldn?t field punts. Despite all the sacks and missing stars, the Eagles hung tough and lost to the Giants primarily because of two McNabb mistakes, which led to a fumble return for a TD and a hope-ending penalty.
The Eagles are close to winning and could easily be 3-1 if not for one or two key plays in each loss. Reid needs to keep his team focused throughout the game better, and needs to face the legit questions surrounding his clearly declining QB. But this team is not finished yet, unlike the Chargers and Bears appear to be after the season?s first quarter. The impetus is certainly on Reid to come up with schemes to cover the crippling injuries to his roster, and perhaps make a tough decision at QB if McNabb continues to struggle. But I think the larger problem that Reid?s coaching is that the expectations were too high and the depth behind injured Pro Bowl-caliber stars Brian Westbrook, Lito Sheppard, Brian Dawkins, and William Thomas not sufficient. Reid?s long, strong coaching tenure affords him the benefit of the doubt for his team?s slow start.
On the brighter side of the coaching spectrum, how about the impressive work turned in thus far by rookie coaches Lane Kiffin, Ken Whisenhunt, and Mike Tomlin, all of whom have made their teams definitively better. Instead of fingers, they all get thumbs up.
The author can be reached at Jeff.Risdon@RealGM.com
