Miracle Covers

Chiefs, Bucs, Bills

Make it three offensive coordinators fired in three days, after Buffalo fired Turk Schonert this morning having failed to score a preseason touchdown.

From Mike Lombardi:

I’m not suggesting that Raheem Morris or Todd Haley should not have replaced their offensive coordinators. What I am suggesting is that they should not have hired either man in the first place. The interview process should have alerted both coaches of potential problems. But since both men have never really been in a position to interview coaches, they ran the risk of making mistakes.

What would worry me most if I were a Bucs fan is that the word going around was that while players and coaches were not happy with Jagodzinski, Morris in fact got along with him — but felt he needed to make the change to make peace with everyone. That doesn’t sound like the work of the leader, but rather the work of a committee.

Dick Jauron doesn’t have that excuse, but seeing how wretched their offense was this preseason, it’s probably the most defensible move of the three. It doesn’t change the fact that their offensive line according to their left tackle, “is still trying to come together.” Whether they can do that before their fragile QB gets injured again is a big question as their skill position guys are pretty solid, and they have one of the best return men in the game.

Over/Unders

Full writeups on all 32 teamsOver/Under Picks coming next week after cut day, but the lines for the fired three:

Buffalo 7.5
Kansas City 6
Tampa 5.5

I think Tampa was actually at 6.5 some time ago, which seems ridiculous now. There may be value in the current 5.5 and I’m almost certain 6 or 6.5 with some juice is still out there. I’m certainly going to try and find where as rebuilding teams with little/young talent and coaching problems are probably teams to bet against winning seven games. KC is currently off the board so we’ll see if their line moves at all. We’ll look at Buffalo some more next week, but firing the guy who tried to run a slow no-huddle offense with a new O-line is probably a good thing.

Edit: Quote by Dick Jauron in the press conference today shows the difference in his thinking compared to Morris:

“I wasn’t thinking about it two weeks ago. And when you start thinking about it, I think you need to move on it and do something. So when I started thinking about it I gave it a good deal of thought and did it. Clearly I believe it’s the right thing to do. It’s painful for him and for his family and for the organization to go through it, but it was just a decision I needed to make I felt, and made it.”

Jauron acknowledged that the preseason struggles factored heavily into his decision.

The productivity parts of it, no doubt,” Jauron said. “I just didn’t feel like we were progressing and I didn’t get the sense that we were going to move forward and that we were going there.”