By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
November 25, 2013
I get a bad rap around these parts that I want every single local coach fired. The genesis of that narrative is my utter hatred for Jim Leyland.
And yes, I was indeed calling for Cancer Stick’s scalp back in 2006 when the relic was starting Alexis Gomez in the American League Championship Series, but I had philosophical differences with Leyland from day one.
I am sorry if I just happened to be years ahead of the curve on Leyland. But if you look at my overall history, I have been more than patient when it comes to coaching changes.
Look, I was adamant that Rich Rodriguez deserved another season at Michigan even after his Josh Groban karaoke moment and the Wolverines’ shellacking at the hands of Mississippi State in the Gator Bowl.
I never really called for any of the recent Pistons coaches to be fired because, I mean, who cares? Can there possibly be any substantive difference in the Win/Loss column between Flip Saunders, Don Chaney, Alvin Gentry, George Irvine or Ron Rothstein when you have no talent? Joe Dumars could have kept Lawrence Frank after last season for all I cared.
Hell, I have made it my personal mission to bring awareness to the abject failures of the Ken Holland Administration, but I have never once posted an article about Mike Babcock, who has some culpability in keeping the Red Wings lineup as youthful as an Off-Track-Betting parlor in Pompano Beach.
And I even gave the subject of today’s article the benefit of the doubt for years, though most of my flock turned on Jim Schwartz way before I threw in the towel on him.
As a matter of fact, my thought process is this: Unless a team is good enough to win a championship, firing a manager or coach just for the sake of doing so is about as effective as rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Yes, I wanted the Pistons to fire Rick Carlisle back in the day. The reaction from most people? That I was a lunatic. The guy had recently won a Coach of the Year and had taken the team to the Eastern Conference Finals. But that version of Prick Carlisle wasn’t going to get the Pistons to the NxT LvL™ (DetroitSportRag), so I welcomed Larry Brown’s arrival.
Dave Lewis coached two years in Detroit. In his first season, the Wings had 110 points. In his second year, the team won the President’s Trophy with 109 points. But after back-to-back playoff failures, I wanted him gone as badly as genital herpes. And the Wings complied by shit-canning a dude who just led them to the best regular season record in the NHL.
And I am not going to rehash the entire Leyland saga, but it has been my long-held belief that the Tigers could have won a World Series in the last eight years with a manager equipped to deal with today’s data.
[BRIEF TANGENT: A couple of weekends ago, my cousin was at a party downtown where he met someone who works for the Tigers. Anyway, it turns out this employee had some responsibility for preparing information on advanced metrics for the team.
The kid is like 23 years old and is named Sam. So, this young whippersnapper tells my cousin that most of the sabermetric work he prepared for Leyland ended up “in the trash.” Of course, my cousin is a reader of this site so he was inquiring about this subject on my behalf.
Now, this isn’t the first time similar information reached my desk. A couple of years ago, a kid who interned for the Tigers and spent most of his time in the clubhouse told me the same exact thing. That college student was also the source of the “Leyland walks around the locker room in urine-stained underwear” story.
So, I took this most recent “Leyland Refused to Consider Advanced Metrics” tale with a grain of salt. Sam was probably just some 23-year-old intern in the front-office or some shit.
Well, I did some research. Sam isn’t at Comerica Park working for free. Sam is actually Sam Menzin. The Tigers STATISTICAL ANALYSIS COORDINATOR.
Yep, the dude in the front office in CHARGE of providing advanced data to the team. His reports ended up in the trash can right alongside Leyland’s leftover chicken salad.
On the bright side, “Sam” is really excited about the Brad Ausmus hire. END OF BRIEF TANGENT.]
Do you know what scares me most about the Brad Ausmus hire? The fact that I was just as giddy about the Jim Schwartz hiring for the exact same reasons.
Back in 2009 when Schwartz replaced Rod Marinelli, I figured the Lions FINALLY had gotten it right. I mean, the two best DETROIT professional football coaches in my lifetime had been Jim Stanley and Tim Markum. And that’s not a joke.
But this time it was different. Jim Schwartz was a bright guy who had learned under Jeff Fisher and Bill Belichick. He attended Georgetown, for Christ’s sake. Hell, if you did enough digging about Schwartz in 2009, you would have discovered that he valued advanced metrics in FOOTBALL.
The similarities between Schwartz and Ausmus are stunning. Sarcastic? Check. Ladies find them attractive? Check. Impressed with their own intellect? Check. Impressive collegiate resume? Check. One’s Jewish, the other has a Jewish last name? Check.
And while the Ausmus Era in Detroit is just getting started, it would appear his doppleganger might not be the Lions head coach by the time pitchers and catchers report to Lakeland.
Before this season started, I wrote a piece intimating that Schwartz had to have a very successful season or risk losing his job due to his personality conflicts with the front-office. And I wasn’t alone in my opinion.
Martin Mayhew even addressed the situation before the season commenced and refused to douse the flames very much. Not to mention that Bill Ford, Jr. gave Mayhew a vote of confidence while remaining tight-lipped about his head coach.
From everything that has leaked out of Allen Park, there is a huge personality issue between Schwartz and Mayhew. There even have been rumors that Mayhew wanted Schwartz gone after last year’s disappointing season only to be talked out of it by someone. Tom Lewand? Feeble Old Man Who Was a 2005 Michigan Sports Hall of Fame Inductee? I don’t know.
But the conventional wisdom was that Schwartz had to win big this year for him to keep his job. Instead, the Lions head coach has taken a gift-horse and punched it right in the fucking mouth.
Not that he would be the first member of this organization to do so:
Everything has fallen right into Schwartz’s custom-tailored lap and the egomaniac hasn’t been able to take advantage. Mayhew has provided him with more than enough talent to win the NFC North and the Football Gods have kept his team relatively healthy.
While the Bears are dealing with the loss of Jay Cutler and Charles Tillman, the Packers are sans Aaron Rodgers and a small army of key players. On Sunday, the Lions were COMPLETELY INJURY-FREE. That is almost unheard of in Week 12 of an NFL season.
And how did Schwartz handle that good fortune? He helmed a team that lost to the 2-8 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. At home.
An opponent that has dealt with a MRSA outbreak, an insane quarterback controversy and weekly questions about THEIR head coach’s future. Greg Schiano’s players hate him. Former Bucs despise him. And their rookie QB yesterday was something named “Mike Glennon.”
While the other teams in their division have dealt with catastrophic injuries and the murder of a toddler, Schwartz has lived a charmed life. Good organizations capitalize on fortuitous circumstances like these and turn them into a 13-3 season and a first -round bye.
The Lions? They have flushed that luck down the toilet with pathetic losses against the Steelers and Buccaneers that have made only the following people happy:
1) Citizens of Green Bay
2) The fans in Chicago
3) People for the Ethical Treatment of Headsets
And in Lion-esque fashion, Schwartz has now become a laughingstock in NFL circles. Last week, he was mocked nationally for his imbecilic decision to attempt a fake field goal in poor weather conditions. Today, Ron Jaworski called the Lions “an embarrassment of riches” based on their talent and divisional competition.
And the fake field goal in Pittsburgh wasn’t even the most ridiculous coaching blunder Schwartz’s staff made last Sunday. The greatest offensive weapon in the league (Calvin Johnson) recorded 179 yards and two TDs in the first half against the Steelers.
Then he was targeted only THREE TIMES in the second half. When asked after the game if he had changed formations after halftime in order to mitigate the damage Megatron could do, Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin said this:
“It might just have been what they didn’t do.”
I mean ……
Scott Linehan should have been left at the airport upon returning from Pittsburgh “Lane Kiffin-style” on the strength of that quote alone.
Like, you had a guy on pace to break the receiving yardage record for a regulation game and you only targeted him THREE TIMES in the second half. Even though Tomlin admitted they didn’t change ANYTHING?!?!?!!??!
Oh, and who owns that record, mind you? Ummm, his initials are Calvin Johnson, and he set that mark just a couple of weeks earlier!!!!!!!
How can 81 just disappear for quarters at a time? It would appear that when these lulls occur, Linehan does absolutely nothing schematically to change it. How about putting the guy in motion once in awhile? SOMETHING. ANYTHING.
And Linehan looks like a genius compared to his defensive counterpart. I am pretty sure that Gunther Cunningham is under the belief that, like tackling a quarterback below the knees and targeting with your helmet, BLITZING has also been banned by the NFL.
Have you ever seen a team blitz less frequently than the Lions? Cunningham constantly depends on the front four to create pressure; when they don’t, their anemic secondary is ripe for the picking.
The old, tired saying is that the definition of insanity is doing the same exact thing over and over and over again and expecting a different result. Well, if that is accurate, the old Kraut should be locked up in a mental ward somewhere and throwing his feces at a wall.
As much as I would like to see Schwartz and his psychoses ushered out of Motown for a new head man, I am even more anxious for a new defensive coordinator who is familiar with an exterior blitz to assist Ndamukong Suh and Nick Fairley once in awhile.
Seriously, what do you think the Lions record would be with Jim or John Harbaugh coaching this organization? Hell, at this point, I think I would take Jack or the chick married to Tom Crean.
Not only did the Lions embarrass themselves again when they had a chance to put a strangle hold on the division, this time they did so in front of a war hero. If I were Captain John Munsee, I think I would have disgustingly taken the next flight back to Afghanistan and gone “Hurt Locker” on an explosive device after watching that pathetic display by his “home team.”
[Speaking of which, this dude lost a kidney and his spleen in Iraq. And then was deployed TWICE more to Taliban Country after he healed. Whatever happened to the good old days of the Korean War when Jamie Farr thought that wearing a pink hat and sun dress would get him sent home? Or was M*A*S*H historically inaccurate?]
And while I would probably broom Mayhew out the door with Schwartz at the end of the year, I am guessing that the Lions GM has done enough to keep his job.
There is finally ample talent here, and considering Russ Thomas kept his gig for 23 years and Matt Millen for eight, I am guessing Mayhew probably has the job security of a Supreme Court Justice or Vladimir Putin.
But how good COULD the Lions have been if Mayhew didn’t:
1) Waste a first-round pick on a known concussion case in Jahvid Best?
2) Waste a second-round pick on known lunatic Titus Young?
3) Completely drop the ball in that same draft with Mikel Leshoure, who is constantly a healthy scratch?
4) Waste ANOTHER second-round pick with injury-prone Ryan Broyles?
The Lions probably should be 8-3 or 7-4 at WORST and they have gotten virtually nothing out of the second and third rounds of the draft.
Considering their usual horrid performance in those rounds, they also could have swapped a future draft choice for Cleveland’s Josh Gordon before the trade deadline.
The Browns made it known that Gordon could have been had for a second- round selection, but Mayhew decided to pass on the 22-year-old. All Gordon did yesterday was put up 237 yards receiving and a TD. Think Gordon might have helped Johnson extricate himself from triple coverages?
Oh well, this season was the equivalent of Haley’s Comet for this Lions organization but they overslept and missed the sighting. Between the cupcake schedule and all of the injuries to their foes, they should have been in the race for a playoff bye.
And for a franchise that has only won ONE playoff game in 55 years, a free bingo slot is a pretty valuable commodity.
After the Steelers loss, Schwartz now famously boasted that he “ain’t afraid.”
I wonder if he will feel the same way when his exit meeting for the 2013 season commences behind the closed doors of Martin Mayhew’s office.
Because without some Tom Coughlin-like pulling a rabbit out of your ass December and January run, Mo Cheeks is going to be the coach in Detroit with the second-longest tenure come Groundhog Day.