Quote:This I can agree with. Honestly though I think Coughlin's ego wouldn't have been able to handle a demotion/loss of job title. The only question I would ask though would be, could a Coughlin/Harris combo be successful?

Coughlin/Harris? No way. Coughlin/Gene, I think, could've had a shot. Gene was very good at picking his draft board and sticking to it--something that I think Coughlin didn't do when he would reach for a guy. That said, I think Coughlin would have blocked Gene from making some of his worse moves (Alualu and Blackmon for sure). The two styles, as weird as this sounds, might have meshed just enough to preserve sanity.

 

Quote:Yeah and the Jags basically traded Stroud for Derrick Harvey eh. I'm a Gator fan and I said Harvey was gonna suck before the draft. Didnt Mike Peterson and Jack Del rio have issues that led to his release also?

Yeah. Peterson made a tackle in a close loss to the Bengals, and made some kind of inoffensive celebratory gesture. Del Rio took issue with it and called Peterson out in front of the entire team in a meeting the next week. Peterson stood up to defend himself, and he was sent home for a few days as a result. I still believe that the Peterson incident was the one in which Del Rio lost his team once and for all. Unfortunately, it took Weaver three more years to notice.

 

Stroud and Henderson were both run out of town because they disagreed with Del Rio. Reggie Nelson was traded to Cincinatti, where he became a solid safety, over a disagreement with Del Rio as well, although Del Rio had a leg to stand on in that one. When a team's invested a first-round pick in you and you complain about being played at corner in an emergency, the coach has every right to say that you'll play kicker if he tells you to. I'm sure there were plenty of others who left because of Del Rio's ham-handed way of dealing with the team that just never made the news.

 

Quote:Drafting Byron Leftwich started a chain of events that has held this franchise back for a decade now. 

Agreed, but how many people here weren't happy to see Leftwich drafted? I remember being thrilled. I also remember being about to graduate from high school and not really understanding the personnel side of things, but I was thrilled to see that Brunell's successor was in the fold. The bigger issue with Leftwich, I think, was his being thrown out on the field far too early. History repeated itself with Gabbert who, given a year to learn instead of starting by default after the release of Garrard and the tanking of McCown, might have been a different player for us.

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