09-19-2016, 12:48 PM
First off, I get the frustration. I really do.
I was livid yesterday, and I'm still in disbelief how we could have been so bad.
However, to say that Gus should be fired is really not fair to him, our team, our fans and most importantly our chances of having a good season.
Firing Gus at this point would basically be firing him based on the results of one season, in which he had a roster capable of competing but not talented enough to be favored against any but the worst teams.
Dave Caldwell came out and said after the second year that they actually won more games than they projected to win in their first two years.
The way they decided to build the team was through the draft, not dipping into the higher tier of free agency until years three and four.
In doing that, they had a 78% roster turnover of a 2-14 team and came close to setting the league record for roster transactions in a single season.
Ultimately, Bradley is in his second season with a legitimate chance to compete in games, and in the two games played so far, we were in the game against one of the best teams in the NFL until the last few seconds, despite having 16 missed penalty calls, one of which was defensive holding on the last play, which would have given us first and goal.
Yes, yesterday was HORRIBLE.
I was sick to my stomach.
The play calling was bad.
The discipline was bad.
Players were not playing anywhere near their potential.
It was really really bad.
On the flip side, when momentum shifts towards one team so quickly in the beginning of a game, there aren't a lot of teams in the NFL that can overcome that type of deficit. The statistics show that it's an anomaly for that to happen. So to call for Gus to be fired after one bad game in his second season that he could legitimately compete in is ultra short-sighted.
Let's walk through what that would look like.
Gus gets fired.
We get an interim head coach that is promoted from within.
Olsen and Wash are still play callers, which means that your chief complaints are still not addressed.
We cannot bring in a new coordinator midseason, because it is literally impossible to install a new offense or defense over the course of a season.
Maybe you say we bring in an interim head coach who fires Olsen and promotes Hackett to OC, as he is the most likely candidate since he has OC experience and is generally regarded as a brilliant football mind, since he is talented and is the son of a coach.
However, that is still a tremendous amount of instability in the middle of the season, and for what? To say we got rid of Gus?
A head coach's responsibility is to set the tone, culture and direction for the franchise.
Our guys are not quitting on the field.
They are not taking plays off, they are not freelancing and disregarding scheme.
They just had a horrible game yesterday.
To those who say that it was a mistake to give him a contract extension, I say you really don't get it.
Khan is the third richest owner in the NFL.
Coaches pay does not come out of the salary cap.
If he wants to, he could fire the entire coaching staff today and replace them, and it wouldn't affect his net worth percentage-wise at all.
And believe me, if our season turns out as horribly, he will absolutely fire Gus, have Dave hire a new Head Coach, who will then bring his own staff on board while interviewing current coaches to see if they would like to retain any of them. (Praying that he would keep Jerry Sullivan, provided he doesn't want to retire again).
Khan will definitely do this though, because he has proven he will do it in the past. He fired Mularkey and his entire staff after one season, while they each had 2-3 years left on their contracts.
Khan is committed to building a winning franchise, as evidenced by all that he has done on the business side of things. There is no way that someone can make the argument that they have made the improvements on the business side of things instead of the football side of things, because nobody is dumb enough to believe that the heads of the team think that having a good product on the field isn't important.
Therefore, giving Gus and his staff a one year extension was the smart thing to do for two reasons:
1). It allowed us the best chance of signing the free agents that we coveted most, since it takes away the argument that they don't want to play for a lame duck coaching staff.
2). It protected the coaching staff, as it is common for coaches to seek work with other clubs during the last year of our contract. Even if you see that as a bad thing, because you don't like the coaches, this was still the right thing to do because it is following through with the plan by giving the team that you put in place to run things every possible chance to succeed.
I think the reason why this is so hard to accept is because it's counter-cultural to the way the modern NFL works, in which the demands to WIN NOW are placed on coaches regardless of the circumstance in which they are hired, and when they can't work a miracle and turn around a team in 1-2 years somebody else gets the job, which perpetuates the cycle of losing.
Bottom line, Gus should (and most likely will) be given this season to prove once and for all whether he can be a good NFL head coach in this league. This is his first chance he has had to do this, as even last year the team wasn't talented enough to win consistently.
The only purpose that firing him now would serve would be to appease the angry mob, which has never been a good thing to do in the history of the NFL. Fans SHOULD NOT be able to dictate personnel moves of a franchise, because they are not professionals at this business, and there is so much that goes on that they don't know about.
Given Khan's history with the Jaguars, (and Fulham too), we can rest assured that the contract extension that Gus received last year will have zero bearing on whether he is fired or not.
Khan and Dave have both said that a winning season is a reasonable expectation for this year, based on the talent that we have on the team.
If yesterday's game turns out to be the incident that causes a tailspin and we go on to have a miserable season in which we are being blown out and have another terrible record, then there is no way that Gus will be retained, and we will get our wishes for a new coach anyway.
Therefore, the best thing that can happen for this franchise is to have a little more patience and see how this season goes.
If we beat the Ravens this week, we'll be 1-2.
The Colts are not looking strong so far, so we stand a reasonable chance of beating them too, which would bring us to 2-2.
I guarantee that there are very few people here who would call 2-2 after the first month of the season in which we face four of the best quarterbacks in the NFL a failure.
So please, let's collectively take a deep breath, get some perspective, and back off that ledge of the Modus building.
Fin.
Again, I know this is going to be downvoted into oblivion, but I really do want some discussion to come out of this, because I think that even if people disagree, there are some good discussion points, and discussing this rationally is much better than shitposting about how unhappy we are.
Thanks.
I was livid yesterday, and I'm still in disbelief how we could have been so bad.
However, to say that Gus should be fired is really not fair to him, our team, our fans and most importantly our chances of having a good season.
Firing Gus at this point would basically be firing him based on the results of one season, in which he had a roster capable of competing but not talented enough to be favored against any but the worst teams.
Dave Caldwell came out and said after the second year that they actually won more games than they projected to win in their first two years.
The way they decided to build the team was through the draft, not dipping into the higher tier of free agency until years three and four.
In doing that, they had a 78% roster turnover of a 2-14 team and came close to setting the league record for roster transactions in a single season.
Ultimately, Bradley is in his second season with a legitimate chance to compete in games, and in the two games played so far, we were in the game against one of the best teams in the NFL until the last few seconds, despite having 16 missed penalty calls, one of which was defensive holding on the last play, which would have given us first and goal.
Yes, yesterday was HORRIBLE.
I was sick to my stomach.
The play calling was bad.
The discipline was bad.
Players were not playing anywhere near their potential.
It was really really bad.
On the flip side, when momentum shifts towards one team so quickly in the beginning of a game, there aren't a lot of teams in the NFL that can overcome that type of deficit. The statistics show that it's an anomaly for that to happen. So to call for Gus to be fired after one bad game in his second season that he could legitimately compete in is ultra short-sighted.
Let's walk through what that would look like.
Gus gets fired.
We get an interim head coach that is promoted from within.
Olsen and Wash are still play callers, which means that your chief complaints are still not addressed.
We cannot bring in a new coordinator midseason, because it is literally impossible to install a new offense or defense over the course of a season.
Maybe you say we bring in an interim head coach who fires Olsen and promotes Hackett to OC, as he is the most likely candidate since he has OC experience and is generally regarded as a brilliant football mind, since he is talented and is the son of a coach.
However, that is still a tremendous amount of instability in the middle of the season, and for what? To say we got rid of Gus?
A head coach's responsibility is to set the tone, culture and direction for the franchise.
Our guys are not quitting on the field.
They are not taking plays off, they are not freelancing and disregarding scheme.
They just had a horrible game yesterday.
To those who say that it was a mistake to give him a contract extension, I say you really don't get it.
Khan is the third richest owner in the NFL.
Coaches pay does not come out of the salary cap.
If he wants to, he could fire the entire coaching staff today and replace them, and it wouldn't affect his net worth percentage-wise at all.
And believe me, if our season turns out as horribly, he will absolutely fire Gus, have Dave hire a new Head Coach, who will then bring his own staff on board while interviewing current coaches to see if they would like to retain any of them. (Praying that he would keep Jerry Sullivan, provided he doesn't want to retire again).
Khan will definitely do this though, because he has proven he will do it in the past. He fired Mularkey and his entire staff after one season, while they each had 2-3 years left on their contracts.
Khan is committed to building a winning franchise, as evidenced by all that he has done on the business side of things. There is no way that someone can make the argument that they have made the improvements on the business side of things instead of the football side of things, because nobody is dumb enough to believe that the heads of the team think that having a good product on the field isn't important.
Therefore, giving Gus and his staff a one year extension was the smart thing to do for two reasons:
1). It allowed us the best chance of signing the free agents that we coveted most, since it takes away the argument that they don't want to play for a lame duck coaching staff.
2). It protected the coaching staff, as it is common for coaches to seek work with other clubs during the last year of our contract. Even if you see that as a bad thing, because you don't like the coaches, this was still the right thing to do because it is following through with the plan by giving the team that you put in place to run things every possible chance to succeed.
I think the reason why this is so hard to accept is because it's counter-cultural to the way the modern NFL works, in which the demands to WIN NOW are placed on coaches regardless of the circumstance in which they are hired, and when they can't work a miracle and turn around a team in 1-2 years somebody else gets the job, which perpetuates the cycle of losing.
Bottom line, Gus should (and most likely will) be given this season to prove once and for all whether he can be a good NFL head coach in this league. This is his first chance he has had to do this, as even last year the team wasn't talented enough to win consistently.
The only purpose that firing him now would serve would be to appease the angry mob, which has never been a good thing to do in the history of the NFL. Fans SHOULD NOT be able to dictate personnel moves of a franchise, because they are not professionals at this business, and there is so much that goes on that they don't know about.
Given Khan's history with the Jaguars, (and Fulham too), we can rest assured that the contract extension that Gus received last year will have zero bearing on whether he is fired or not.
Khan and Dave have both said that a winning season is a reasonable expectation for this year, based on the talent that we have on the team.
If yesterday's game turns out to be the incident that causes a tailspin and we go on to have a miserable season in which we are being blown out and have another terrible record, then there is no way that Gus will be retained, and we will get our wishes for a new coach anyway.
Therefore, the best thing that can happen for this franchise is to have a little more patience and see how this season goes.
If we beat the Ravens this week, we'll be 1-2.
The Colts are not looking strong so far, so we stand a reasonable chance of beating them too, which would bring us to 2-2.
I guarantee that there are very few people here who would call 2-2 after the first month of the season in which we face four of the best quarterbacks in the NFL a failure.
So please, let's collectively take a deep breath, get some perspective, and back off that ledge of the Modus building.
Fin.
Again, I know this is going to be downvoted into oblivion, but I really do want some discussion to come out of this, because I think that even if people disagree, there are some good discussion points, and discussing this rationally is much better than shitposting about how unhappy we are.
Thanks.
R version? Maybe tell me where I can get the cliff notes?![[Image: GusBradley.jpg?itok=JPCGCQh8]](http://savannahnow.com/sites/default/files/styles/slideshow__640x360/public/GusBradley.jpg?itok=JPCGCQh8)