Seneca Wallace on the possibility of Mike Holmgren returning to coaching:
“I kind of do just because things probably haven’t turned out the way he wanted on offense and being an offensive guy, I think he still has that itch to come back to coach,”
If Mike Holmgren really wants to coach again, and I always did believe that he had every intention of eventually making himself head coach of the Browns when he took the President of Football Operations job with them, he is going to do it.
Holmgren and Mangini have a meeting about the future of the Cleveland Browns on Monday. I would be willing to bet the mortgage payment that Mike Mangini is out of a job by the end of a week (especially in light of the thrashing that the Browns took this week) and Holmgren becomes head coach sometime in the next few weeks, right after the Browns pretend to interview a couple of candidates.
–UPDATED 3:20 PM – it didn’t even take to the end of the week – Mangini is out of a job.
In the game that means everything for the week, the Seahawks, who despite having a losing record and giving up at least 33 points to opponents in 6 of their last 8 games (the only 2 teams that failed to score that many are Arizona and Carolina – who currently have the 2 worst records in the NFC) have a chance to be the first team without a winning record to win a division in a non-strike year and make the playoffs. I would really like to see the Seahawks win because: I live in Seattle and I really think this will finally make the NFL change their playoff seeding. It seems like every year there is some team that makes the playoffs as the wild card with a significantly better record than the 4th seeded division winner and then gets to play that game on the road. I think that is just stupid. Home field is a pretty significant advantage in the NFL (more on that below) and I don’t think that winning your division should guarantee you that advantage, especially if you are playing a team with a better record.
Can he lead the Seahawks to the promised land of the playoffs?
As for the Hawks chances, well, this is a tough call. They have the home field this week which can be good for them and they are going to be going against a rookie QB which could work to their advantage. The weather, which will probably be bitterly cold probably doesn’t help either team as neither offense if particularly great to being with. I would however like the Seahawks chances a bunch more if they had Hasselbeck starting for them instead of Charlie Whitehurst. My prediction, the Seabirds beat the Sheep 13-10 in an epic suckfest.
The topic of home field has come up a lot in stuff I have read recently. I decided to actually take a look to see how big of an advantage home field really is in the NFL over the last 6 seasons. The numbers played out pretty much the way I expected them to:
Home W
Home L
PCT
2010
133
107
.554
2009
146
110
.570
2008
147
108
.576
2007
149
107
.582
2006
136
120
.531
2005
151
105
.590
There is definitely a downward trend in home field advantage – Bill Simmons attributes it to all of the new “luxury stadiums” that have been built in the NFL over the last couple of seasons. I think I might have to agree with him (but that is for another post involving much more research). Unless something bizarre happens, like all of the home teams win this week, the win % for home teams will drop again slightly. Still, you have to figure that there is probably about a 5-10% advantage to playing at home versus playing on the road. Basically, you still probably want the home game if you can get it.
In other weird NFL news:
If the Dolphins manage to beat the Patriots this week, they will be guaranteed at least a tie for the best road record in the NFL (The Fish are currently 6-1 on the road). Only the Steelers and Bears have a chance to win 7 on the road this year (they are both currently 6-1). The strange part of that is that they have already locked up the worst home record in the NFL at 1 – 7. Even the truly pathetic Carolina Panthers have won 2 games at home. I would be willing to bet that no team has ever had both the best road record and the worst home record in the same season in NFL history.
You could end up in a situation in the NFC and AFC where a 12-4 team ends up having to play all of their playoff games on the road. In the AFC, if both the Steelers and Ravens win, they end at 12-4 but the Steelers have the tie-breaker, so the Steelers get to take next week off and the Ravens have to go on the road to play (most likely) Indy. In the NFC, if the Saints win and the Falcons win, the Saints get to go on the road as the WC (and play the “winner” of the Seahawks-Rams game) while the Falcons get a 1st round bye and home field throughout the playoffs. If the Saints win and the Falcons lose, the Saints get the bye and the Falcons are the wild card. If we end up with a situation where a 7-9 team gets to host a 12-4 team in the playoffs, the NFL really needs to rethink its seeding.
What happens to the bottom 10 QB’s the following year?
2009 and 2010 both have 32 quarterbacks with enough attempts to qualify as “regular” players. Below are the #23-#32 qb’s from 2009 — the right column shows what they’ve done in 2010.
LaDainian Tomlinson will join the NFL Hall of Fame after he retires, and his retirement is probably coming up soon.
Here are Tomlinson’s Career Yards Per Carry, season by season:
Tomlinson’s Yards Per Carry declined steadily after his age 27 season — four years ago he averaged 5.2 yards per carry. Since then his average carry dropped to 4.7 yards, then to 3.8, bottoming out at 3.3.
At that point the Chargers had seen enough, and they released him … Running backs don’t stay employed for long while averaging under about 4.0 yards per carry.
The Jets decided he could still play and signed him to a two-year deal.
Tomlinson started this season going gangbusters for the Jets. Television analysts were saying things like “He hasn’t run this well in years!” or “He looks like the LT of old again!”
That lasted four or five games:
Yards Per Carry, 2010
Note the helpful “trend line.”
Fortunately for Tomlinson, he started well enough that his season average sits at 4.3 yards per carry — even after a six-game stretch of fewer than 4 yards per attempt. I’ll be interested to see if Tomlinson plays next year, and if so, how much the team lets him handle the ball. My suspicion is that he’s basically a 3rd down back at this point in his career, and the Jets have tried to use him as an every-down back — a role he can’t capably fill anymore.
Great career though. He’s 6th all-time in career rushing yards, 2nd in rushing touchdowns, and 7th all-time in total yards from scrimmage.
No matter how bad your day is going or how much shit has gone wrong for you today, you are still in better shape than the Carolina Panthers. Their starting quarterback is out for the year, their backup QB is out with a concussion and their 3rd string QB doesn’t give the coach the warm fuzzies that he is ready to start an NFL game. So what do you do, you go out and sign and start Brian St. Pierre. Never heard of him? Not surprised. St. Pierre after very underachieving career at Boston College (he was very highly recruited) managed to spend 8 seasons as a back up QB for the Steelers and Cardinals. In those 8 seasons, he managed to throw exactly 5 passes. Yep, not a typo.
I feel bad for Tony Pike (the aforementioned 3rd string QB) – he is being passed over for a guy how has thrown fewer passes in the NFL (Pike has 12 attempts), was not even in any team’s training camp this summer, and, up until last week, he was stay at home dad, although, Carolina coach John Fox isn’t exactly giving St. Pierre a ringing endorsement:
A season of anemic offensive play, multiple injuries and one victory took an even stranger twist Thursday when coach John Fox picked the 30-year-old St. Pierre over rookie Tony Pike to play against Baltimore.
“The guy has been in some games,” Fox said.
That’s good enough these days to start for Carolina (1-8), the NFL’s lowest scoring team that has scored nine touchdowns and has no healthy, experienced quarterback.
Let’s face it, Carolina is probably the worst team in the NFL, is 1-8, has averaged 12 points per game and is playing Baltimore this weekend. I want to watch this game purely out of morbid curiosity.
In honor of the Raiders revival, one of the coolest and most famous cornerbacks of the 80’s — Lester Hayes:
Note the header text: Gerry Cooney, next Heavyweight King. The press was borderline desperate for a white champion in the 80's -- back when anyone cared about boxing.
Watch the video — At one point Hayes has a free blindside shot at a quarterback and pretty much tries to rip the guy’s head off. That was normal at the time, or even encouraged. The only legal place to hit a quarterback now is between the waist and the shoulders. The game has really changed the last 30 years.
Lester Hayes was a big, strong guy for a db. He played linebacker in college at about 6′ and 200 lbs. His size and strength fit well into the Raider’s defensive schemes: The Raiders have always played “Bump and Run” coverage — their db’s try to “jam” the wide receiver at the line of scrimmage. Lester was strong enough that he could maul guys before they could get into their routes.
Lester had 13 interceptions in 1980, good for 2nd all-time, winning the Defensive Player of the Year Award. (He did this in a 16-game season.) The remarkable thing is that he had another five interceptions in four playoff games, giving him 18 in total for the year. (Night Train Lane holds the regular-season record, with 14 interceptions in 12 games as a rookie in 1952. Lane’s listed position was “RDH”, which I assume means Right Defensive Halfback in Precambrian Football Terms.)
The other enduring image of Hayes is the stickum.
Ew. The NFL outlawed this stuff, because it's disgusting. This was called The Lester Hayes Rule.
I’ve talked about how the I thought the Seahawks were going to get bigger players with Pete Carroll in charge. I estimated that in 2010 they’d be about 5 pounds heavier per man.
Here’s the table:
Position
2009 Weight
2010 Weight
Weight Difference
Offensive Line
304
306
2
Defensive Line
283
298
15
Linebacker
233
242
9
Defensive Back
199
200
1
Halfback
205
210
5
Wide Receiver
194
206
12
Tight End
257
250
-7
Quarterback
210
225
15
The Seahakws are bigger at every position except Tight End — they have a 227-pound special teams guy listed at TE. If you take him out the TE’s average 255 pounds.
I left Fullback Owen Schmidt off of the table — the Seahawks don’t have a designated “Fullback” this year.
Sources:
2010 roster, ESPN.
2009 roster, Pro-Football-Reference[dot]com.
Pro-Football-Reference is usually terrific for this kind of thing, but for whatever reason their 2010 roster listed only three offensive linemen. According to their site the Seahawks got 9 pounds lighter in 2010, and that’s pretty obviously not right..
So who had the worst weekend of the Washington football teams:
Udub Huskies – they played like a puppy who has just been disciplined for peeing on the carpet in their 41 – 0 beat down by Stanford at home. They didn’t pass 100 yards of total offense until 3 minutes left in the game, had most of the fans leaving at halftime looking for anything that was more interesting, looked outmatched and outclassed, gave up a 51 yard run to the opposing QB on a fake handoff and were outgained 470 – 107 total yards. Jake Locker may have single handedly played himself right out of the first round in the 2011 draft with his putrid performance in front of 20 NFL scouts in this one. The Sled Dawgs have been a big disappointment all year for those who were drinking Sark’s cool-aid, but they still can make themselves bowl eligible by winning 3 out of their last 4. It is doable since they play @ Oregon (let’s face it, this one could get ugly), vs. UCLA (They have the same record as the Huskies and are actually a worse team), @ Cal (should be a winnable game, maybe) and @ Wazzu (heck, I think my HS football team could beat the Cougs). My prediction – the Pups get their act together and finish 6-6, saving Sark’s job; and if they lose to the Cougs somehow – Sark gets fired before he gets back to Seattle.
"Ay, the performances of the Washington Football teams this weekend were defintely not Scottish, so they were CRAP!"
Wazzu Cougars – They played like an old cat that is in need of being taken out back and shot in their 42 – 0 blowout at ASU. The Kittens were their own worst enemy, getting into the Red Zone 6 times (!) and not scoring once (!), turning the ball over 3 times and giving up 493 yards of offense. In all of this, they somehow managed to actually hold the ball slightly longer than ASU. Not that I think it would have made a difference, but it would have probably been a bit closer than the actual final if they managed to get a few points on the board. Let’s face it, WSU just plain sucks and will be lucky to end this season with more than one win (and that was a 1 point win against FCS Montana State), so this pasting really wasn’t much of a surprise.
Seattle Seahawks – Just a few days after being anointed the “best team in the NFC” by Tony Dungy, they go out an play like a bunch of canaries being chased by a cat in a 33 -3 embarrassment against the Oakland/LA/Oakland Raiders. The Chicks gave up 545 yards of offense and still couldn’t stop the Raiders despite the Black and Silver’s 11 penalties. If anyone thinks the Hawks are a good team, you haven’t been watching them. The offense, to put it nicely, is pathetic. The only way they stay in games is through defensive turnovers and special teams – if those two aspects of the game don’t come through for them, they don’t stand a chance. The really sad thing about this game is that the Hawks were only down 10 – 0 at the half and still never looked like they were in the game at that point.
My vote for this week’s inept performance – The Seachickens. No way should you ever give up 545 yards to a team in an NFL football game. On the bright side, they should still win their division as none of the other teams really seem like they are trying either.
FlatbreadGarden 