http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/02/sport ... flcnd.html
With the dismissals today of Houston's Dom Capers, Green Bay's Mike Sherman, New Orleans' Jim Haslett and St. Louis's Mike Martz, the list of head coaching vacancies ballooned to seven, and more could be on the way, especially in Oakland, where Norv Turner could be fired.
Is there something odd about this TimesSentence? How could more vacancies be "especially in Oakland" unless Oakland has more than one NFL team and both are about to be fired, or unless the one Oakland team (and they only had one the last time I looked) has more than one coach?
Don't they mean something like "including Oakland"?
I would have ignored this, but the Times calls itself "the newspaper of record", and I had Donald Kauffman for English at Northwestern HS.
Meanwhile, the summary:
Four More N.F.L. Coaches Fired
By JUDY BATTISTA
On the same day that 12 N.F.L. teams began preparations for playoff games, four others took what they hope will be the first steps toward such prosperity, firing their head coaches.
With the dismissals today of Houston's Dom Capers, Green Bay's Mike Sherman, New Orleans' Jim Haslett and St. Louis's Mike Martz, the list of head coaching vacancies ballooned to seven, and more could be on the way, especially in Oakland, where Norv Turner could be fired.
Detroit fired Steve Mariucci during the season, and Mike Tice was fired in Minnesota on Sunday just minutes after his team beat the Bears in the season finale. Dick Vermeil retired from the Kansas City Chiefs, reigniting speculation that Coach Herman Edwards of the Jets could be on the Chiefs' list of candidates.
Last year, just three new coaches were hired, and in a business as cyclical as football, there is little surprise at the volume of turnover this season.
"This was more thinking in terms of where we are and where we need to get to," the Packers general manager,Ted Thompson, told reporters in Green Bay. "And again, it was what I thought was best for the Green Bay Packers over the long haul."
Those were the diplomatic sentiments expressed over and over across the league as coach after coach was sent packing.
The question, though, is where all these teams will find suitable candidates. Among the assistants expected to be in demand are Gregg Williams, Washington's assistant head coach for defense and the former head coach in Buffalo, Bears defensive coordinator Ron Rivera (whom the Rams have already asked permission to speak to), Giants defensive coordinator Tim Lewis, and Philadelphia offensive coordinator Brad Childress. If Lewis gets a head coaching job, Capers could rejoin Giants Coach Tom Coughlin, for whom he was the defensive coordinator in Jacksonville.
Among college coaches, Iowa's Kirk Ferentz, who is part of Bill Belichick's coaching tree, is considered a leading candidate, as is Bob Stoops, Oklahoma's head coach. The tilt toward defensive-minded coaches is also no surprise, given the recent success of Lovie Smith, Jim Mora Jr., Tony Dungy, Jack Del Rio, Marvin Lewis, John Fox and Romeo Crennel, all former defensive assistants who have revived their franchises.
Even in a profession as volatile as coaching, this has been a particularly brutal year. Capers's team had been making steady progress since joining the league four years ago, but they bottomed out this season. Haslett led the Saints out of New Orleans just ahead of Hurricane Katrina and they never returned, playing home games in San Antonio, Baton Rouge and New Jersey even as the Saints' owner, Tom Benson, sparred with the league about his naked desire to leave New Orleans for good.
General Manager Mickey Loomis of the Saints said he took into consideration the strife the team faced after Katrina forced the Saints to become nomads.
"I think Jim performed really well under some adverse conditions, unprecedented conditions," Loomis said at a press conference. "But unfortunately we haven't had the results the past five seasons that you come to expect in this league. It wasn't based just on this season."
Haslett issued a statement through the team: "There were some unexpected challenges, but in any case our record isn't good enough," he said.
Martz missed the last 11 games of the season because of a heart ailment and despite leading the Rams to a 56-36 record before his leave of absence, and to the playoffs four times, he had clearly worn out his welcome. The tension between Martz and the organization sprang into public view when, while Martz was recovering at home, he tried to call his offensive coordinator in the coaches' box during a game. Jay Zygmunt, the president of football operations, stopped a team employee from entering the coaches' box with the phone call from Martz.
The team's president, John Shaw, cited "the general direction of the team" in explaining Martz's dismissal and added "I can't really pinpoint at what exact time we made a decision to change our coach."
Sherman's offense was decimated by injuries, but his departure could have a more devastating impact on Green Bay. The Packers' iconic quarterback, Brett Favre, is mulling retirement and he indicated during the season that he would be reluctant to return if he had to learn a new offense from a new coaching staff.
"Eventually Brett Favre's going to retire and go back to Mississippi," Thompson said. "But that didn't have any sway in this particular decision."
Perhaps the most peculiarly timed firing was Tice's. He had already spoken to his team and to reporters after the Vikings beat the Bears in Sunday's season finale. Then he walked into his small office in the stadium and was fired by the owner, Zygi Wilf. The team's vice president of public affairs, Lester Bagley, handed out a two-paragraph statement to reporters in the emptying locker room announcing the firing.
Among those he handed the statement to, according to an account in the St. Paul Pioneer Press: Tice's 16-year-old son Nate, who works as a ball boy for the team. That is how he learned his father had been fired. Many players learned the news from reporters, or from news reports.
Today, Wilf defended his handling of Tice's dismissal.
"First, there is no easy way or good time to let someone know that their contract will not be renewed," Wilf said. "We have great respect for Mike, and once a final decision was made, we did not want him to twist in the wind another night."
The Vikings may wait to hire a general manager, who would then be allowed to hire a head coach. After a year in which players were accused of lewd behavior during a boat trip, Wilf is looking for a candidate with a specific qualification:
"There are many aspects of coaching that I don't claim to be an expert on, but certainly discipline is one of the criteria," Wilf said.
Cornerback Antoine Winfield learned of the firing 15 minutes after leaving the Metrodome Sunday night in a call from another player. "It was a tough way to do that, right after a game, handing out flyers in the locker room," Winfield said. "I don't think that's the right way to do it, but I'm not the owner."
Tice will likely have no trouble landing an assistant's job. He has worked on staffs with Tony Dungy, Brian Billick and Dennis Green. Green fired two of his assistant coaches today.
"Everyone that is going to be fortunate enough to be part of this organization moving forward is going to find that they are blessed, because the Wilfs are going to be great owners," Tice told reporters today. "They've got some things to learn, but we all have things to learn. I remember my first year as head coach. Boy, did I have some stuff to learn."
And now he, like so many others, has learned something else: what it's like to be fired.
