The (Burger) Kings of the NFL

Mike Shanahan has been hired to bring a Lombardi trophy back to the Washington Redskins. Mike Holmgren was hired to do the same in Cleveland. Both guy have a big name, Super Bowl victories and adoring media heaping praise and expectations upon them. Holmgren was given the title equivalent to “Grand Poobah” with the power to hire (and fire) a GM and head coach, and ultimately control all player personnel decisions, much like the roll Bill Parcells has in Miami. Shanahan has been given the title of “Executive Vice President” in addition to head coach, meaning he as the final authority on all personnel decisions (cue the Office Space quote: “So what is it that you would say you do here, GM Bruce Allen?”). But there is no reason to expect great success from either guy, and not because of the situations they are entering. Both men are extremely overrated, and have failed when given the power they so craved. Both the Redskins and Browns franchises paid dearly for the big name and expect results that they likely will not see.

MIKE SHANAHAN

Shanahan was known as “Coach Teflon” in Denver because no matter how many mistakes he made, he was always able to lean on those back-to-back Super Bowl titles with John Elway and Terrell Davis. A hefty majority of his success can be tied to the three year stretch from 1996-98, when he went 39-9 (.813 winning percentage) during the regular season and 7-1 in the post season. Then John Elway retired, Davis got hurt, and starting in 2002 he made a power play to get final say in all personnel matters.

Outside of that 3 year run, his record is 107-89 (.546), which is still above Ray Rhodes or Romeo Crennel, but he was 1-4 in the playoffs during those 11+ seasons. The biggest anchor to his coaching success? His GM skills. He was so arrogant and stubborn he thought he could win with Jake Plummer and Brian Griese, and believed he would be able to harness Maurice Clarett - drafting him about 8 rounds too early, and there are only 7 rounds in the draft. He also signed multiple defensive linemen from the Cleveland Browns - linemen who had failed on a horrendous team - and somehow believed they would not be lazy and slow in the thin air in Denver. Among his other notable draft failures were Jarvis Moss and Ashlie Lelie.

Again, my point is not that he’s a bad coach. It’s that he’s a bad personnel guy. And yet Daniel Snyder and the Redskins were all too eager to whip out his wallet and give Shanahan full control over the football operations. It’s as confusing to me as why he always has that orange tinge to his skin - does he own a tanning bed like Pauly D from the Jersey Shore? It’s not that sunny in Denver.

MIKE HOLMGREN

As for the Big Show Mike Holmgren, he was given hired as the football guru in Cleveland to turn around the franchise that has 2 winning seasons since being reincarnated in 1999. They have blown the #1 pick in the draft twice on Tim Couch & Courtney Brown (later signed by Mike Shanahan to fix Denver’s defense). So now they have their football guy - a guy with a Super Bowl ring and 3 Super Bowl appearances - to get things corrected and bring the franchise back to its hey-day when they would get knocked out of the playoffs by John Elway or a crushing fumble every year. But is Holmgren really the right guy to make personnel decisions? Like Shanahan, Holmgren is a great coach, but he does not have aa strong track record with power/personnel.

He had tremendous success in Green Bay as the head coach, utilizing the players that legendary GM Ron Wolf would provide him with - Brett Favre (also Mark Brunnell, Ty Detmer, Matt Hassel beck & Aaron Brooks - all of whom were NFL starters for multiple years), LeRoy Butler, Santana Dotson, Reggie White, Desmond Howard, Keith Jackson, Andre Rison, & the best o-line in the NFL, etc. He then moved on to Seattle (costing the Packers the ‘97 Super Bowl to Shanahan’s Broncos by shortchanging his preparation as he prepared for the move to the Pacific Northwest. Yes, I‘m still bitter) where he was given the ultimate power over everything football.
Holmgren was the coach and GM with the Seahawks from 1999 until 2002, when he was fired from the GM position, but retained as the coach. Interestingly enough, the lone Super Bowl appearance with the Seahawks came in 2005, 3 years after Holmgren lost his personnel power. Coincidence? During his 4 year run as King of Seattle he had 6 first round picks, with only Shaun Alexander and Steve Hutchinson being impact players. His big risks and misses included Koren Robinson, Jerramy Stevens and Chris McIntosh. After he lost his GM title, the team drafted Marcus Trufant, Ken Hamlin, Michael Boulware and Lofa Tatupu, all key players on that Super Bowl team.

So in the end, Cleveland and Washington need to temper their expectations a little and know that they paid for big name great coaches. Unfortunately for Cleveland, only one of them is coaching. And both of them have their hands in the personnel cookie jar, which hasn’t worked out very well in the past.

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Given the news about Warren Beatty’s bedroom “success rate” together with Tiger’s tales and the legendary Wilt number - no, not the 100 point game, this is a pretty funny take on the Biggest Studs out there. Here’s the best excerpt: “There should be an adjusted OPS+ type formula. Degree of difficulty is huge. Being an absolute dictator (Castro), having women paid to have sex with you (Ron Jeremy) or being in a rock band whose apex came at the height of the hard drugs era and before AIDS (Gene Simmons) is like being a left-handed pull hitter in Yankee Stadium.”

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I still like Alabama tonight to win the national championship and cover the spread. It’s a great storyline to have Colt McCoy (and his talented girlfriend) go out a champion after his incredible college career. Yet Texas does not have the offensive line to give Colt the time he needs. Colt said it himself, already telling his offensive line the game is on them and if they give him time, they will win. I also think the Alabama quarterback Greg McElroy is still underrated and will play smart enough to bring home the title. Expect him to then get drafted a little higher than he should - remember Brodie Croyle? - and end up as a career back up in the NFL.

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Week 15 Hangover - Love/Hate

Today’s post is going to be a little shorter because I didn’t get much time to watch any of the games yesterday. The reason? The biggest hate of the week: Airtran Airways. Airtran is more of a nightmare than Jay Cutler having the ball when it matters. They’re worse than a combination of Brittany Murphy and prescription drugs. (Too soon? RIP Brittany – I actually enjoyed you in Clueless, 8 mile and Just Married).

Saturday afternoon after finishing some last minute Christmas shopping and doing some ice skating with the wife, get home and start packing while the snow flakes start to get bigger. Check on the Sunday morning flight back to Wisconsin…….cancelled. Hate. The 1-2 feet of snow covering the northeast caused more than 12,000 flights to be cancelled. Click around on my options, and the only option is buy a ticket on Tuesday night and pay an extra $900 for our two flights. Tried calling and waited 6 hours on hold without ever getting through. My cordless land line phone battery died while waiting. Instead, we drove 13.5 hours back to Wisconsin.

So the HATE OF THE WEEK: Airtran.

LOVE

- Seeing the diva in Favre taking over. Coach Childress tried to bench him on Sunday night and Favre whined and basically told him he wasn’t coming out of the game. Carmelo Anthony and Rashard Lewis get blasted as being terrible characters when they disobey their coaches, yet Lord Favre can get away with whatever he wants. Think Minnesota is rethinking that contract extension they gave Chilly? We always knew he was a bad coach and would do something to cost the Vikings. We didn’t know it would be an incredibly stupid decision to try and take one of the game’s all-time warriors out of a 1 point game in the third quarter. Who’s driving this team? Wait, we know Chilly is the driver…..but not the one in charge.

- Well at least Jerome Harrison removed Jim Brown from the Browns record book for best individual game. The guy went for 286 yards and 3 TDs. Maybe Cleveland is making a late play to be the 12th team in the Big Ten?

- The AFC playoff picture is extremely jumbled, which should make for many more games with meaning in the final two weeks of the season. All of the 7-7 teams are alive, especially with the Broncos proving that they are very capable of ending the season 8-8. With the Dolphins, Jets and Jaguars all losing, it’s going to be an interesting run for the AFC wildcard spots.

HATE

- The state of Pennsylvania. Not just because of the disheartening Packers loss. (side note: it’s time for Mason Crosby to pull a “Reverse JP Lossman” and move to the UFL) What a strange decision by Mike Tomlin to attempt the on-side kick, but thankfully the Packers decided to go into a prevent defense with a bevy of cornerbacks that stink – yes, I’m talking to you Tramon Williams, Jarrett Bush and Josh Bell. In addition to that game that was tough to swallow, I had to drive through the entire state yesterday to get from New York to Wisconsin. It was horrendously boring and not much to see, even with driving through the Poconos Mountains.

- The way the Redskins are handling their front office and coaching situation is a joke. They had Bruce Allen moving into the office before Vinny Cerrato even had a chance to get out of the building. Now they’re talking to Mike Shanahan about their coaching job…..before they fire Jim Zorn.

- Did I mention that I hate Airtran? Yeah, I covered that already.