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I keep hearing Jim Schwartz (Titans DC) name popping up in coaching openings. I'll be a little surprised if he's back next year.

His specific comment was that he kept getting called into the principal's office and called out in front of the students. Yeah, sounds a bit childish to me.

The personel started going downhill when Lovie started getting more say in personel decisions, after the super bowl. I'm skeptical about Angelo, but I do have some faith in him improving things if things go back to his office making those calls and he presses Lovie for new coaches. Lovie has "gotten the most" out of the players from an effort standpoint. What he hasn't done is outcoach anybody on Sunday. This is a plain vanilla team that can be exploited by any decent team with a reasonable amount of talent and discipline. They don't fool anybody with anything they do. There's only so much you can do when you don't have much talent to work with. I've said it a bunch already but Kyle Orton is Lovie's quarterback - he doesn't have a great range of skills to pull from. Devin Hester is the number one receiver for the Bears. The Titans don't have a lot of talent at WR or QB (with Vince on the bench) so they are very vanilla as well. Luckily, they have an awesome offensive line and two very good running backs to combat that. The Bears have a very good running back, and a decent, aging offensive line.

Exactly. I put more blame on Angelo for not having the talent than Lovie. Smith has actually done a pretty good job, I think, with the talent deficiency.

I'd love him, but I think the Bears are only interested in undersized defensive lineman that get blown off the ball 99% of the plays. That's the cover 2 defense! :D The Colts do the same thing - tiny, but fast D-linemen. Dungy and Lovie are both from the same school of thought. And Albert is a great, great DT. Everything I've heard is that the Titans will bring him back, but they're still bickering over the contract, so I'm not certain. I like to call it the "Tampa Terrible" defense. Hey look, I got a 260lb DT that runs a 4.7! And once a game he can use that quickness to make a play 5 yards in the backfield. Forget that he gets his arse handed to him the reaminder of the game, we have a real playmaker here. You have to have the right fits everywhere to make it work, but the Colts and Bucs have proven it can work and work extremely well. The Colts play semi-frequently with DTs smaller than a lot of team's ends and their defense is solid. But they have the right players in place to run it. The Colts have two players over 300 pounds on their defense - Antonio Johnson and Daniel Muir. Muir played in just six games and Johnson was picked up at midseason off waivers from the Titans. Indy's starting DTs weigh 274 (Brock) and 254 (Dawson).

The Steelers are better than the Bears at QB (significant), WR (incredibly significant), TE (very slightly) and they're pretty even on the offensive line. The Bears (Forte) are better than the Steelers (Willie Parker) at RB. They could find a great coach, yes. But the likelihood is, when you're making a coaching change, that you will bomb. Miami has been through numerous coaches before Sparano, Atlanta the same, though Baltimore did well going from Brian Billick to Harbaugh. If the coach is clearly the problem, he should be replaced. Given that Lovie got nine wins out of a Bear team with Kyle Orton, Devin Hester and an aging offensive line playing a huge role, I don't think he's the problem. And if you don't trust Jerry Angelo (which you don't seem to), why trust him to upgrade from Lovie? He brought enough to the table to barely miss the playoffs with a mediocre QB, bad wide receivers and an aging offensive line. Coordinator changes might be in order, but Lovie has done a pretty good job.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/recap?gameId=280113011 Happy now? :D I guess it could happen, but with the way the Colts have been playing I'll be shocked if the Chargers upset them.

I'd love him, but I think the Bears are only interested in undersized defensive lineman that get blown off the ball 99% of the plays. That's the cover 2 defense! :D The Colts do the same thing - tiny, but fast D-linemen. Dungy and Lovie are both from the same school of thought. And Albert is a great, great DT. Everything I've heard is that the Titans will bring him back, but they're still bickering over the contract, so I'm not certain.

Very true, very true. Actually, I saw on ESPN yesterday that Favre wasn't exactly thrilled with playing under Mangini. i wonder how thrilled mangini was to have a veteran quarterback putting up a qb rating in the bottom third of the nfl and throwing 4 more INTs than anyone in the league. But, that QB is Brett Favre and he made the Pro Bowl . . .

If he was willing and/or able to hire quality offensive and defensive coordinators, he'd be fine. But he's a gameday idiot and he has bad coordinators. Lovie can't make a decision to save his life. This team routinely wastes precious seconds trying to figure out what they are going to do, call all sorts of unnecessary timeouts and punts in enemy territory every game. This team was playing from behind for a playoff berth and Lovie played these games like a 12 win team just trying to coast into the playoffs. He does "get the most" out of the players, but then he sabotages those efforts with stupid decisions, including letting Babich and Turner repeatedly muck up winnable games. Fair enough, but who would you replace Lovie with? The only guy I would consier is Marty, which I would do in a heartbeat. I don't see Angelo making such move at all. I really think the root of all this teams problems start with Angelo. Like they say, Veteran's Commitee flows down not up. The 2007 draft is a complete joke outside of Olsen. Dan Bazuin, Michael Owko & Wolfe? Are you kidding me? These players should be filling key positions now, but are basically wasted picks. We should also kill the notion that Angelo is some type of defensive guru when it comes to the draft. He hasn't found any gems on D since 2004. Since then he has basically drafted borderline starters. Now that I think about it, Bill Cowher would also be an upgrade, but both he and Marty are longshots to come out of retirement and then you'll have to outbid the Browns, (perhaps) Cowboys, Lions, Jets, etc for both. Otherwise, it's probably a young up and comer who's a huge risk.

Firing Lovie, I think, is similar to SD firing Marty Schottenheimer. Sure, there are coaches out there who might be better, but the chances of landing one are so low that you're likely going to end up downgrading. You could well end up with Norv Turner part 2. Like you said, the only coach who is a sure thing improvement over Lovie is Marty, but will he come out of retirement and is he a very big upgrade? Ummmm, no. SD was a very good team that supposedly couldn't get over the hump. The Bears aren't even near the hump. It's much more like the Jets firing Mangini. The team outperformed in his first year, raising expectations, but they have disappointed of late. I'm not talking about team performance as much as how good the coach is. Lovie got good results out of this year's team. Nine wins with Kyle Orton as your QB and Devin Hester as your "#1" receiver is pretty good. My point with the comparison to Marty is that it's going to be hard to find a coach as good or better than Lovie, so is it worth the risk to fire him when he's done a pretty good job. If the Bears had finished way out of the playoff race and under .500, I could understand firing him. But he's doing a pretty good job and there's not likely a clearly better coach out there. I'd hang on to him for another year. As for the team comparison, though, I think you're right on. The Bears and Jets have similar talent levels, produced similar results, and I think both coaches should keep/have kept their job.

Mangini never had great talent there either. The Jets are getting better, but they've never had a very good QB, the running backs have been serviceable and the receivers are decent. Defensively they're improving, but still not better than what they showed this year. Mangini isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread like everybody thought when he was first hired from the Patriots, but I thought he should get one more year.

Firing Lovie, I think, is similar to SD firing Marty Schottenheimer. Sure, there are coaches out there who might be better, but the chances of landing one are so low that you're likely going to end up downgrading. You could well end up with Norv Turner part 2. Like you said, the only coach who is a sure thing improvement over Lovie is Marty, but will he come out of retirement and is he a very big upgrade?

Very true, very true. Actually, I saw on ESPN yesterday that Favre wasn't exactly thrilled with playing under Mangini. The Jets have said they want Brett back, so I wonder how much that had to do with the "Mangenius'" exit? I doubt it had much to do with it, honestly, but it may affect Favre's decision to retire/return.

I figured this would be an appropriate thread to make since I believe we had one last year, but if the mods find it too much then feel free to merge it. This is for any coaching moves that have been made, rumored, etc. And there's a lot of news today: Eric Mangini is out as Jets head coach. Rod Marinelli (no surprise) is gone. Browns GM Phil Savage is also out, along with Romeo Crennel. ESPN is reporting that Cleveland will go hard after Bill Cowher as head coach, and Scott Pioli (of New England) as GM. Mike Singletary has been named the 49ers' head coach, dropping the interim tag. And Bill Parcells could opt out of his deal with Miami if owner Wayne Huizenga sells the team. Numerous teams will certainly be interested in him at that point.

Wow. Auburn has hired Gus Malzahn as its new offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. Very interesting move.

I guess in regard to the best matchups for the Titans, I'll be pulling for Baltimore this weekend. That'll guarantee we only have to play one of the Colts/Steelers and it'll be in the AFC Championship game. Despite the Chargers having Norv Turner as their coach, I'm a little torn on who I want to see win the Indy/SD game. If the Chargers are on and Turner doesn't screw things up, they could be a tougher matchup than the Colts. The chances of Norv Turner beating Peyton Manning and Tony Dungy are next to nothing, though, so I'm not too worried.

Bad news. It was posted at 3 a.m.

I'm sure he didn't agree with the pick. It's just what his computer told him to pick. Yeah, he was complaining about that before the ND game. He picked Notre Dame, even though he was worried about it. I probably would have picked ND, but would have had less than ten points of confidence in it. UNC had hat game won, but White made perfect passes downfield all night long on what was pretty good coverage. He beat them single handedly. I didn't get to watch any of the games, but it looked like Pat White was unusually on target.

And so goes any hope I had of winning my fantasy championship . . . :evil:

The Titans look like a team with nothing to play for. The Colts have run right up and down the field on us and are up 13-0 early. And the Sorgi v Vince match is underway.

It was a great day for me too, even though I just got 48 points. I had 28 on FSU, but just wasn't that confident in the other two - just 11 on Cal and 9 on WVU. That doubled my overall score, though, to 80 points. I actually had Miami picked until this morning, and just before I left for the day I swapped the pick to Cal. I'm extremely glad I did.

I'm sure he didn't agree with the pick. It's just what his computer told him to pick. Yeah, he was complaining about that before the ND game. He picked Notre Dame, even though he was worried about it.

Even though I picked CM it was to my benefit that FAU won b/c most other ppl. had more confidence pts. on them. Like me. :oops:

As happy as I am for Schnellenberger and FAU, I am now pretty much completely screwed in the contest. I put 29 confidence points on Central Michigan beating FAU. #-o