A Mangenius No More
Nobody was shocked when Rod Marinelli or Romeo Crennel got the short haircut Monday. But Eric Mangini?
Wasn’t the Jets coach known as Mangenius not that long ago? Didn’t he lead New York to the playoffs in 2006?
True, but the team tanked this season after a massive retooling. Quarterback Brett Favre was one of the culprits, throwing just two touchdown passes and nine picks in the final five games as the Jets lost four of their last five games.
Here is what columnists in New York were writing:
Mike Vaccaro, New York Post: “It had been 12 years since the Jets New York Jets were allowed to fire a head coach; Bill Parcells, Bill Belichick, Al Groh and Herman Edwards all walked away, for various reasons, to various degrees of success. Eric Mangini’s walk came on a gangplank, a day after the Jets completed a 9-7 season that sure felt like 6-10, little more than a month after they were 8-3 and forcing even their most cynical supporters to re-think their skeptical ways. This was a firing earned on merit, and underachievement, and the paranoid police state Mangini constructed around his team.”
William C. Rhoden, New York Times: “For the first time all season, players and sportswriters were on the same page: everyone was stunned by the early-morning announcement that Eric Mangini had been fired as coach of the Jets. This truly was a stunner. I guess we expected that Mangini would keep escaping. In three seasons, Mangini had mastered the art of deflection and obfuscation. He had adopted a Belichickian style, gruff and secretive, but with an added twist of denial, forever ignoring and refusing to concede the obvious. Mangini and General Manager Mike Tannenbaum were close friends and partners in constructing a season that was so strong through the first eight games.”
Filip Bondy, New York Daily News: “As Laveranues Coles put it, somewhat sympathetically, ‘He doesn’t deserve the total blame.’ But Mangini has earned a good chunk of it, nonetheless. It was Mangini who fell in love with the 3-4 formation, sabotaging Kris Jenkins and his own pass rush. It was Mangini who never believed in Chad Pennington, when now we know an effective game plan was all that Pennington required. It was Mangini who failed to get the ball more often into the hands of the Jets’ only game-breaker, Leon Washington. It was Mangini who demoralized his own club against Seattle two Sundays ago, making several calls that appeared intuitively absurd and inevitably backfired.”
ON THE OTHER HAND . . .
Mangini did expose Bill Belichick as the cheater that his is.
MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE
Questions to ponder waiting for Chase Daniel to complete a deep pass down the middle of the field against Northwestern:
- Did NU engineers create a force field for it defense to deploy in the deep middle zone?
- Do the Wildcats have the two best safeties who ever played the game?
- Is Jeremy Maclin incapable of running a deep post? Does Daniel have a sore passing arm?
- What’s the point is lining up five men wide when you spend half the game trying to wedge 4-yard sideline passes in front of the defense?
- Isn’t this spread offense supposed to be explosive?
PINBALL WIZARD
So what was NBA center Todd MacCullough to do after an unfortunate foot condition cut short his NBA career?
Finances weren’t a concern, since his six-year, $34 million with the New Jersey Nets was fully guaranteed. So he took up hobby full-time. He started buying classic pinball machines, worked on his skills and became a touring pinball player.
MacCullough is now the 100th-ranked player in the world – which is a loftier standing than he ever reached in basketball.
“I perceive him as one of the fastest-rising players,” said second-ranked Bowen Kerins told the Washington Post. “Two or three years ago he was good. Now he’s really good.”
YES, JOE PATERNO IS OLD
Even he admits this is the case.
Here are some other Paterno news conference highlights.
QUIPS ‘R US
Here is what some of America’s leading sports pundits have been writing:
Mark Kriegel, FoxSports.com: “I’m not saying that the Jets’ collapse was epic. Just that the Mets are jealous. The Jets — with seven pro-bowlers — managed to lose to the 49ers, the Seahawks and the Raiders in the same season. Remember that. One day, it’ll be on ‘Jeopardy.’ ‘I’ll take colossal collapses for $200 . . .’”
Mike Bianchi, Orlando Sentinel: “If you’re keeping score at home, I believe the Yankees have just signed CC Sabathia, Mark Teixeira, LeBron James, Adrian Peterson, Tim Tebow, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and the Jonas Brothers.”
Gene Wojciechowski, ESPN.com: “If you’re the 0-for-’08 Detroit Lions, there’s hope. The galactically dysfunctional New York Knicks and Dallas Cowboys? There’s hope. The penny-pinched Pittsburgh Pirates, once-proud U-Dub Huskies, orphaned Oklahoma City Thunder … there’s hope. Even a Donald Sterling-owned team or a roster managed by absentee exec Michael Jordan can walk a little taller today. That’s because the perennially worst franchise in sports has performed reconstructive cosmetic surgery on itself — and it worked! Any prettier and the Chicago Blackhawks would have their own modeling deal.”
MEGAPHONE
“I can’t say he’s a bad coach. I just think he was put in a really difficult situation.”
Detroit Lions quarterback Dan Orlovsky, on fired coach Rod Marinelli.
I was wrong. Unimaginative play calling and re-tread defensive schemes can win you a bowl game. Go figure…
I hope Chase Daniel graduates with some sort of degree since it is highly unlikely that any NFL team will waste a draft pick selecting him in April.
Terrific college quarterback but would get chewed up and spit out in the NFL.
One thing is for sure Mizzou fans, Pinkel is a bad, bad coach. Even though his team won the game last night, he seemed to do his best to sabotage the effort. He could recruit the New York Giants and still not win a big game. This program will never take the next step to elite status with Pinkel calling the shots.
While the process needs to be complete, hopefully the Rams will move quickly in the coaching search. There will be plenty of competition for coaches so please don’t get caught with your pants down and settle for the last option ala Rich Brooks.
It makes perfect sense why the Cardinals didn’t sign Brad Penny:
1. He is way too healthy – not nearly broken down enough.
2. He throws over 80 MPH.
3. $5 million is way over the line to pay for a guy that could win 15 games and help solidify the rotation.
The embarrassment of an off-season continues. There is no reasonable explanation on why they did not make a serious run for him. Understanding he does have an injury history, Penny is light years better than some of the trash this organization has dug up the last several years.
Wow. How quickly we forget the poor Mizzou football of recent years. Now there is griping that they don’t win by enough points. Winning bowl games in OT has become mundane and unacceptable. Reminds me of how quickly the Rams fans got spoiled with success and how quickly it all came crashing down when opposing teams caught up with them.
And Penny? Please. We just got rid of two chronically injured pitchers in Clement and Mulder and are still stuck with Carpenter’s $50M albatross. Ya’ll are the same people who would whine that we signed another injury prone pitcher the first time he lands on the DL. Wait until the roster is set before determining that actually playing the games in 2009 is a waste of time.
I agree with that last guy
Sammy, Penny is around 75-55 in his career, can chuck it over 90 MPH, and eats innings. All this for a measly 5 million, a steal compared to most of the retreads we get.
Tim -
If Penny eats innings (your words) it’ll be an $8M deal. Read the entire article and not just the heading. So with the Cards having $17M to spend (so they say), and still a need for a closer, LHRP and another SP, I think risking $8M on a pitcher that is coming off a horrible season, three times on the DL and a bum shoulder to boot, is a bad idea. Remember, if they signed him for the same deal, they would have had to plan on the $8M salary and not the $5M…leaving $9M to spend on a LHRP, closer and a backup plan in case Penny cant go (ala Mulder, Clement, etc…). But again, it’s easy to bash management without understanding the facts around the entire situation.
Remember, Boston tried this experiment with Bartolo Colon last year. How quickly you forget that he couldn’t recover from his injuries and was quickly cut. The difference is Boston can afford to eat the $5M if he can’t go, and will be happy to pay $8M if he pans out. However, if the Cardinals made this move, management bashers, like S.W. would have said typical Cardinal signing…injury prone picther. I’m sure he had both sides written just in case.
I am not a management supporter or basher, but in this case, I think they made the right decision.
WOW! I can’t believe my eyes… reading these asinine comments from fans about Pinkel being a terrible coach, and Daniel being a piece of ****. What a difference a game makes… or an era.
I’ll take it though. I remember lou Holtz telling a story about getting chastized for winning a bowl game at ND, because he didn’t win all of the games that season. Well, the next year he won all of them and the National Championship. Guess what? He again found the alumni to be unhappy… apparently, Notre Dame didn’t win the games by enough points.
His point was that you can only become a winning tradition and franchise, when you set the goal as high as possible, and you expect dominance.
From the posts I’m reading in this column… it appears as though Mizzou must already be at that elite level… b/c anything less than 52-10 victories every game is unnacceptble.
Beating a ranked 9-3 Big 10 team in a Bowl Game, is no longer acceptable to Mizzou fans… honestly, never thought I’d see the day.
WOW! I can’t believe my eyes… reading these asinine comments from fans about Pinkel being a terrible coach, and Daniel being a piece of ****. What a difference a game makes… or an era.
I’ll take it though. I remember lou Holtz telling a story about getting chastized for winning a bowl game at ND, because he didn’t win all of the games that season. Well, the next year he won all of them and the National Championship. Guess what? He again found the alumni to be unhappy… apparently, Notre Dame didn’t win the games by enough points.
His point was that you can only become a winning tradition and franchise, when you set the goal as high as possible, and you expect dominance.
From the posts I’m reading in this column… it appears as though Mizzou must already be at that elite level… b/c anything less than 52-10 victories every game is unnacceptble.
Beating a ranked 9-3 Big 10 team in a Bowl Game, is no longer acceptable to Mizzou fans… honestly, never thought I’d see the day.