NFL - NEWS & NOTES

It looks like the Cardinals have found their defensive coordinator.



Josina Anderson of ESPN reports that the team is working on a deal with Vance Joseph to join head coach Kliff Kingsbury’s first NFL staff.

Joseph interviewed with the team on Thursday and was scheduled to meet with the Browns on Friday, but it would seem that he won’t be making the trip to Cleveland. The former Broncos head coach’s name also came up as a possible defensive coordinator candidate with the Jets as he held the same job with the Dolphins in Adam Gase’s first season in Miami.

The Cardinals said this week that they wanted to find a veteran coordinator to run a 3-4 defense with “an attacking style” and it appears Joseph is that coordinator.

 

Looks like Gregg Williams is headed to the Jets and Vance Joseph to the Cardinals, both at the DC position obviously.

 

@Tim mentioned earlier about a coach's fit with a given team is not unlike a situation into which a player gets drafted. Most casual fans still believe Hue Jackson was fired because of his W/L record. What they keep forgetting is that he was actually fired not because of his record but because of the dischord within the coaching staff which he did not difuse.

How bad was it? Consider this;

• Nick Chubb (by any standard) had a pretty good rookie season after starting out behind Carlos Hyde on the depth chart.
• Cory Coleman never lived up to his draft expectations.
• Josh Gordon still had more question marks about where is head was than TD receptions.

Todd Haley, through play calls that used specific personnel, kept Chubb on the sideline while still trotting Coleman and Gordon out on the field. John Dorsey recognized what was happening so he forced Haley's hand by trading all three players. Hyde never did much for Jacksonville and the results for Coleman and Gordon speak for themselves. The Browns had no choice but to use the players that remained on the roster.

Jackson landed a new gig within a week more than likely due to his history with Marvin Lewis. But I haven't heard Todd Haley's name even mentioned once for an opening - any opening. It remains to be seen what Hue will be doing next year (if anything), but I'm pretty sure Haley will be taking in the NFL from his family room lazy-boy.

 

Well for me the attraction was adding a creative schemer / playcaller as the OC to run Shurmer's offense and add some layers to it.

As a HC I like it a little less but who knows. The cards line was hot garbage when the year started and then players started dropping like flies. Pugh got paid way to much for what he is and he always spends at least 4 weeks on the sidelines in a season. He hasn't made it through a season since his rookie year in 2013. The Cardinals desperately need to improve that unit and they should be able to find some guys who can at least stand between Rosen and the pass rush... But Kingsberry should also be scheming ways for Rosen to be getting the ball out quickly as well.

I think he makes Arizona more interesting at least and I certainly think if you want to try and get something out of Rosen things needed to change there.

 

Good points but if Hue Jackson was 12-4 in 2017 instead of 0-16....there’s basically a 0% chance he would have been fired during the season in 2018.

 

I disagree. Jimmy Haslam is first and foremost a business man. He knows firsthand what internal dischord can do to an organization. Plus, during his presser announcing Jackson and Haley were terminated, he made it a point to say Jackson's record had nothing to do with his dismissal - to the point where he said it was expected.

 

If we're going on hypotheticals, if Jackson had been 12-4 in 2017 instead of 0-16, he would not have been forced to bring in an offensive coordinator for 2018. Thus, Haley would never have been there. So, yes . . . Jackson would probably not have been fired.

 

Plenty of winning teams have had discord. The Patriots have had some major dysfunction.

You can’t ignore or justify discord when you lose games. You can when you win.

If the Browns were a winning team...the odds that Jackson gets fired mid season is extremely low.

Every team official can say the record didn’t mean anything...but you’d need to be extremely naive to believe it doesn’t play at least a small role.

 

What if his OC had bolted and became a HC somewhere after the winning season? And Haley replaced him?

 

I belive Hue was the oc so there would have been no bolting to become an oc as he already was the oc.

 

Jackson was both the HC and the OC in 2017.

 

You're forgetting that the Browns were in year 3 of a 5 year plan. That plan included gutting the roster in years 1 and 2 (which they did) and to acquire assets during that same time frame (which they did). So, when Haslam made it a point to say his record "was expected", there was no naivety on my part to take Haslam's words at face value.

 

Forgot about that.

Obviously it’s a hypothetical but I don’t see any possibility that had he previously been a winner in Cleveland...that Hue Jackson gets fired.

The discord can be the reason...but to think his W/L has nothing to do with it is naive to me.

 

You think Haslam “expected” to go 0-16.

I don’t either.

 

I think what this boils down to is the reasoning behind the discord...

The record IMHO had a lot to do with it. Todd Haley came in and had absolute zero respect for a coach that had led a team to a 1-31 record. He is divisive by nature, but he was outright disrespectful outwardly to his superior. He felt that by showing how inept Hue was, he would win the HC when the shit hit the fan. Haslem, and probably moreso Dorsey, saw through his act and when he wasn't named HC, he threw a tantrum leading to his dismissal with Hue.

So, in essence, I believe you are both right, but for different reasons. I don't think he was fired because of 1-31, I agree with Lyman...but I also think 1-31 indirectly led to the discord, which is why he was fired.

 

NOBODY expects to go 0-16. But they damn sure did. My point was (and remains), not one but two guys got fired and only one of those two packed a lunch to take to work the following week. The other guy hasn't even been mentioned as a possibility to fill one of the many openings out there.

 

Not 0-16, but he also knew this roster wasn't on par with a NFL roster. A lot would have to go your way to win, when your roster is subpar to every team you have on the schedule. Had there been a couple of games where every young player were healthy, they probably would have found a way to win 1-3 games...in 2017, that wasn't the case. Every game, there was at least a couple of players injured...all teams have a couple of players injured at any given time, but for the most part they have professional level players to step in during injuries...the Browns did not. Many of the players let go from 2017 roster in 2018 are no longer playing football...not merely transitioned to someone else' bench.

 

Kubiak our as Denver’s OC.

That was a short stint

 

Well put.

 

You’re right about discord. It’s all really fair points.

I just don’t think you can act like the W/L has nothing to do with it.

It does. It has to.