In This episode, Taylor talks about the NFL coaching openings after the firing of Kliff Kingsbury from the Arizona Cardinals, the Houston Texans moving on from Lovie Smith, along with the already open jobs of the Denver Broncos Indianapolis Colts and Carolina Panthers. He Goes over the reasons They were fired, the state they left their teams in and the next moves for successful transition to the next coach for those teams
In This episode, Taylor talks about the NFL coaching openings after the firing of Kliff Kingsbury from the Arizona Cardinals, the Houston Texans moving on from Lovie Smith, along with the already open jobs of the Denver Broncos Indianapolis Colts and Carolina Panthers. He Goes over the reasons They were fired, the state they left their teams in and the next moves for successful transition to the next coach for those teams
Taylor: What's up, everybody? It's the Roundtable sports podcast. My name is Taylor McLean and we finally have an end to the regular season. All the games are in the books that are good going to be played in the regular season. They decided not to get weird with the Buffalo Bills bingles game, so we had an end to the season and they got everything figured out with the playoff seating and everything without that game. So no weird wonky weeks in the middle of our playoffs and we'll still have the week before the Super Bowl. And that meant that we were going to have Black Monday come up today. It's a little bit later in the day than I usually get started with the podcast for a Monday. You'll probably be listening to this on a Tuesday when I'm able to get it out, but still, I just didn't know how to get started because it didn't feel right. Any game that I would go into would either be a playoff preview for one team and an obituary for the other as far as their 20, 22, 23 season was concerned. So I thought we'd go through the coaches firings that happened on Black Monday. I had to look it up to make sure that's what it was called, because I knew there was a name that the media had given. The day after the season is over for the NFL, because traditionally there's a bunch of firings on that day, and we get a really good feel for what jobs are going to be open in the offseason. So rather than go through games and we're going to go through the playoff schedule and what we think about those games later in the week if we can get to it. But I thought we'd go through the Black Monday firings and what we think about the five openings that are going to be out there for head coaches for now. I get the feeling if some playoff games don't go correctly that there's going to be even more openings and I think there might be even more firings than what we had here. It was just the obvious ones that happened today. Before we get into the firings and the whatnot like we just talked about, let's give a shout out to our sponsor, Evergreen Power Solutions. They're a concierge power company for our Texas Listers. Only they can go in there, get you the lowest rate they possibly can at this time, try and save you some money. And then when it's time, when you would normally renegotiate a contract or have to shop around, for whatever rate you can get at that time. They'll go in, shop around for you again and either lower your rate or keep it the same. That way you don't have to participate in rising energy costs. If that's what happens going forward, give them a call at 8886-6586, use prompt number two and let them know that the Roundtable sports podcast and Taylor McClain sent you. Now let's get on to the football and early on in the day, the Cardinals took care of business and fired Cliff Kingsbury. Coming off a four and 13 season, not exactly what Cardinals fans had in mind going into the season. And after you traded a first round pick for Hollywood Brown, that's kind of a win. Now trade, which is made a lot of times by your GMs and by your coaches, that their jobs are kind of on the line, which I've always thought is not great for an organization that is about to have to go through a rebuild, right. Because you have to trust your GM and your coach, but they're trying to save their own butt and probably have a little bit less of the organization in mind when it comes to that trade. So I've always found it funny that those guys get to make trades on behalf of the organization, but if you're not going to fire them, if you're going to leave those guys in charge, then you have to trust their decisions and that's kind of what you're signing up for in that way. So those are the breaks when you make that kind of decision. And I get why the Cardinals went ahead and kept Cliff and kept Steve Klein in place. They had made the playoffs and Cliff has shown some progress with Kyler in the first couple of years. That had made Kyler a legit threat and got him a big time contract extension from the organization. And what I don't get, though, is why they got extended exactly. And what that means for the money they're going to get now that Steve has walked away and Cliff has been fired, they haven't come out and said exactly how much money Cliff is going to get to keep of his extension, but I got to think that he's going to be in pretty good shape going forward. It definitely begs the question of how much extra money they're going to have to pay him because they signed into extension and because of the way that they handled their business. But after the slow start, the writings seemed to be on the wall. Kyler was kind of not openly critical but openly hostile towards Cliff in that game. And Kyler said that the teams were playing their offense soft and making them methodically move the ball. There's a lot of things that seem to be bad juju for this situation. I couldn't bring myself. I was too engulfed with the games and watching the film for myself to really watch The Hard Knocks, but didn't seem like Cliff was having a very good time. And sometimes these things just come to a natural end. It's just not usually after a contract extension like this. So definitely makes this weird. And now whoever comes in is going to have to kind of clean up a messier, even though there's definitely pieces to work with. They've made some short term moves. They kind of chose JJ. Watt over. Hassan reddick at one point. That made them get older, and now that he's retired, it's a little bit tougher. And then I think Chandler Jones was also a part of that process as far as the money goes. So they've gotten a little bit off schedule with their defense and are definitely going to have to put some pieces together there. The offensive line never really developed in the way you would hope from this era of drafting and from Cliff's leadership too. So it's just an overall thing for this team that the talent didn't come together and that Kyler, although he showed improvement and got himself to a certain level, it kind of feels like he thinks he's as good as he needs to be and that everybody else around him needs to get better because he doesn't seem to be putting in the time or putting in the effort. As far as his preparation and as far as his development with his game, he can do a lot of things, and the physical talent is tantalizing. Right. But ultimately as a pastor, he really hasn't gotten all that much better and isn't showing an advancement in his skill at the quarterback position. They don't really thrive until he's out there running around and making sandlot style plays, which is good, and you need to have a good second play once the first play breaks down, but you need to also be able to execute more within the offense and within the pocket and especially over the middle of the field. And because of Kyler's stature, he hasn't been able to work that part of the field. He's more on the edges, and that creates an easier time for the defense to cover those parts of the field more heavily. And then when Kyler isn't able to hit his guys out there, he struggles to adapt and that shuts off the offense. And then especially if they're able to run a successful contain scheme like the Rams did to them last season in the playoffs, everybody was able to stay in their lanes but still create pressure. And when you can do that to someone like Kyler that doesn't have that other part of his game, it makes them uncomfortable and all of a sudden the offense ceases to be functional. And that goes for any quarterback that has a flaw to their game. If a team is capable of taking advantage of that flaw, it can shut down the offense, and that's what leads to playoff defeats for some of these really high level quarterbacks. It's just like Lamar. Kyler and Lamar have similar problems, and we're about to see if Jalen Hurts runs into those problems as well, where at some point during the playoff run, the game comes down to their ability to pass from the pocket and to throw guys open and to do a bunch of advanced quarterback mechanics and quarterback plays. And those plays just aren't in their bag because they don't have the accuracy or they don't have the skill to make those plays in that moment, and they end up getting defeated. Lamar and Kyler have had similar problems in that way and as I said, that's kind of something that I have my eye on. Jalen hurts because his team hasn't been forced to rely on him in that way and he's been able to play more in the flow of the offense then you might have to at the end of games. Sometimes Kyler and Lamar are able to run themselves out of those problems and it's not a problem, but some teams are able to shut that down. And inevitably, during a playoff run, you run into one or two of those defenses and you don't always have another pitch that you can throw to get by those guys. So it'll be interesting to see what NFL coach takes his jobs and are they able to get Kyler on that path to advance beyond that. Because right now I'm not 100% that he's going to do that. But progression isn't always a linear thing. And until Kyler realizes that he has to take some additional steps as a quarterback and that he's not fully flushed out as a quarterback to be completely successful in a way that his talent suggests he could be, then it's going to be this way. Until he makes that jump and he's got his money. So that makes it a little harder to there's not as much carrot at the end of the stick, but it'll just be up to whoever comes in to maximize that talent and get that going. That's why I think it still has to be an offensive coach, whoever you bring in here with a strong defensive coordinator attached to him. Unlike some of the other jobs that we're going to talk about, this one has only been open for today, so we haven't heard as much about the names that they're interested in, but it's still an interesting job. DeAndre is a little older, but he still looked good when he was out there. You got Hollywood in the mix, so you've got a good tandem of wide receivers. Maybe you get herds back. Connor is fine. He's not great. And then you've got some pieces on defense, too, but it's a big job, and I don't know that it's going to be the first on everybody's list, even with kyler no attached. Because, like I said, there's just questions for me on whether he's going to be complete enough to ultimately be the quarterback that a team needs to elevate themselves. There. He might have to be dropped onto a team that is already put together that he can bus drive if he's not going to be able to perform in those later moments. There's been a lot worse quarterbacks than Kyler Murray win the Super Bowl, right, but the way that Kyler Murray is signed to his contract, he needs to be an elite guy that raises the level of his team because his team doesn't have that extra money to spend anymore. I mean, Kyler was the first pick, so they were already spending a penny on him, but not what they signed up for with this contract. So interesting job. We'll see who takes it. The other coach actually fired today was Levy Smith for the Houston Texans. This shortly after he raised the middle finger to the Texans organization and won a meaningless game that cost the Texans the first pick. To be clear, I don't fault him for doing so, especially if he had already been given indications that he was going to be fired. And I don't think that you can tell your team that they need to go out there and lose this game because there's no quarter speed in football. If you play quarter speed in football and the other team is playing at full speed, you're going to get yourself hurt. You're going to put bad film on tape that's going to get you put out of the league, and it's just not something that football teams do as much as the Miami owners might try to pay you to do. So you can get to a tongue of iloa. Regardless, it's why I was telling my Texans fans friends that you pretty much need to take a quarterback regardless if it's CJ Straud or Bryce Young, which it's good that there's two guys rather than just one in the top part of this draft draft for the Texans. But regardless, Levy went out on his own terms and Davis Mills couldn't lose you one more game. He got you plenty of losses throughout the season. It's just they had a better reason to keep Justin Fields out, even though maybe Jeff Driscoll gets you the same results. It's not like Davis Mills has really lit the world on fire, which is why I don't think that you can be so bad each season and you can't really tank in the NFL, as I said. So to try and go a second season without drafting who you think would be your guy at quarterback is typically a mistake. You at the very least want to try and take a shot and you just kind of need to keep taking shots at a young quarterback until you find your guy. That's scary, though, because that can take years and years and years. Just to ask the Chicago Bears or the Cleveland Browns, who have perpetually been without a solid quarterback. Call it being in the quarterback woods and it's hard to see and it's hard to see the light to get out of the woods and you might wander around in the dark trying to build a team without really having a direction. So I think that analogy kind of works and NFL teams don't like to go there, but sometimes if you don't go there, you end up floundering around with a bunch of replacement level guys and you can draft as well as you want around those guys, but typically they're not going to get you to the promised lands. And Davis Mills got you a bunch of losses this year and that worked out to get you down to where you know you're going to have the number two pick. And as I said, with CJ Strap and Bryce in the mix, I think you're taking a 60 40 coin flip style shot either way you slice it so at least you've gotten yourself that much. And Davis was good enough to make things interesting, but ultimately proved to not be enough at the quarterback position to kind of lift anybody up and give you any sort of idea that he would be the guy going forward. It was good until it wasn't and until miss time jump by one of the Colts defenders gets a touchdown. And it all escalated in a weird way very quickly. I wasn't 100% that Lovey was going to get fired until they pretty much said before the game that he was going to get fired. It seemed like. Obviously they made it official today, so we didn't know for sure for sure, but the writings seem to be on the wall. I think that you want to give this coach that's coming in kind of the choice of his guy or at least find a guy that is capable of taking that quarterback to the next level. I think that kind of gives you a pathway to what you're trying to do here. Even though the Texans have come out and said they're going to interview some defensive names as well. I think the way to go because you're probably drafting your quarterback is that way. Once again, you can try and not draft your guy this time and be bad. And even if you do draft your guy, you might still be bad and be in the same position and maybe you can talk yourself into going a different direction if you don't like what you see from one of the two top guys at quarterback. But I don't know, I don't think that tanking for Caleb Williams is something that a new coach is going to want to do and you just can't count season to season on being so bad. And it's different in basketball. You can put out a different line up in the last five minutes of games and get some losses there and get yourself some more lottery balls. But in the NFL, you have to be the worst team. And there's a lot of times there are some bad ones out there, and the Bears strip them selves down to get to this point. And unfortunately for the Texans, I feel like they're in a better spot. Even though the Texans might have more talent, the Chicago Bears kind of have their guy in my estimation with Justin Fields and what I saw this season. So they're out of the woods in my opinion, and now they can kind of play the first pick however they want to, whether that's getting their guy on defense or trading back and getting some more capital. They did trade their second round pick, which will be the first pick of the second round for Chase Claypool. Kind of feels like an overpay, especially when they had a worse second round pick to trade, but I think there was some lower second round to pick than what they traded, but higher than what they could trade otherwise. And they really want to play pool. We'll see if that works out. He didn't do a lot when he got there, but that's without being integrated. And Justin is still growing and has a long way to grow as a passer, so we could see more fruit bear out of that or born out of that, but still seems like a bit of an overpay. You can definitely recoup some of that value and probably trade back to a point where you still get a really good defender or someone to help Justin Fields. The Colts, being at five is an interesting target to try and get some of their picks on top of the fifth pick. So tough position. It definitely cost them some draft capital to win that last game, but it is what it is and you just have to move forward now with one of these coaches, and I do like that they're interviewing some younger kind of the hot coaches, the up and coming coaches. That's kind of the route that the Texans seem to be going with the names that they put out there. The DC Jonathan Gannon from Philadelphia, the OC from Philadelphia Station, Demiko Ryan from the 49, ers Ben Johnson, the offensive coordinator for the Lions who got a lot out of Jared Goff despite me not liking him as a quarterback. They've asked for interviews with all of those guys. Seems like Casario is going to remain in control and this will be his first off season without Jack Easterby kind of horning his rat nose into things. So hopefully this means that the Texans are on the way up. You would have liked to have seen it done with the first pick. That makes the job more valuable because the incoming coach can pick whichever quarterback that he wants. It seems like unless the Texans are willing to give up, like their second round pick plus a little bit more, then they're probably going to be stuck a second. But I like the way that CJ Stroud played in his last game, and I saw him play a little bit throughout the season, and he has the more prototypical size and movement for what you're looking for now. So I don't think that's an absolute bus, necessarily, even though it does hurt. And you could have traded out of that second. There's a lot of things you could have done from the first pick if you're the Texas there, but I still think they can get their guy and it'll be interesting to see who Gasteria moves in. I like the way they're kind of going about it so far. So just like with quarterbacks, sometimes it's a coin flip with these coaches, too. You just have a little bit more control over it and we'll see who they like when they start interviewing these guys. The other jobs are jobs from that have already been fired and there's been a little bit of talk about them already. Sean Payton went, or is going to. I can't remember if he already has, but is going to interview with the Broncos ownership. They're looking to get somebody in there to manage Russell Wilson and get that situation up and running in a better way. I hated the way that Nathaniel Hackett ran his offense and just didn't like the way it looked, didn't seem to have sound principles and didn't seem to adapt to what he had at any given week. So I've got to think that someone like Sean Payton could go in there and do it better. The question is, what does Russell have left? This made you question it in a big way if you didn't, I don't know what you were watching. As far as your Russell Wilson goes, it didn't look good for very long when it did, and it did look better once they had fired Nathaniel Hackett. So that's something for sure. They seem to kind of move things around in a good way and get more out of the offense. And I've always thought that Sean Payton would be an interesting fit for Russell Wilson when he was in New Orleans. I thought that would be a good place for Russell to go because I thought that his style had a Drew Breeze element to it. But after watching this season, I have some concerns because it wasn't just the offense or it wasn't just ill fitting things. Russell lost a lot of his accuracy and his timing. He seemed to be off on a lot of those little things that used to make him really effective and dangerous and with less determination to extend the plays with his legs and put himself in jeopardy for that. It just wasn't a good situation overall for the offense. It's something that they're going to have to fight through, but I think Sean Payton could manage that in a way that would put everything together and make that situation work. And I'm not going to just roll out Russell Wilson as a quarterback one in fantasy, and if I have him as my quarterback, two in best ball, I'm going to be backing him up with a third quarterback. You can believe that. But I don't know, I find myself talking myself into it a little bit because I think the price will be right that he'll be in like the 14th round. I can get a high upside guy. That is hard to believe that he had that much fall off in just one season. It seemed like an overall thing that they need to retrofit the offense around him a little bit, get better at the offensive line because he needs some support. He's not going to be able to uplift the team in the way you would hope, the way you're paying him, but that's a sunk cost. You're locked into it. You've already given up the picks if you're Denver. So bringing in somebody that can manage Russell in the right way, like a Sean Payton, is kind of a must. So if you have to give up more draft capital to do so, it's not great, and it's going to be harder to retrofit the offenses I just suggested. You need to, but what are you waiting on? Because this could be a disaster if you don't turn Russell around and aren't able to get as much as possible out of him, because you gave up a lot to get him and you got a lot invested in him money wise of your own doing. And I have to think that Denver fans at the time were probably on board with this. They've definitely had one of the more trying seasons out of anybody with the expectations that they had for this team. So I don't fault them at all for being frustrated with this situation and wanting more and shooting for the moon with a Sean Payton type of sean might have better suitors and he might want other jobs more than the Denver job. So they better jump on him quickly or risk losing him. Because I don't think that the Texans, the Panthers, any of these other jobs that are open now are the Colts. I don't think any of them are a better situation than Denver necessarily. That could change when the playoff games happen here in a bit. If I'm Sean Payton, I am waiting around for that. Unless I get a ridiculous offer, give me $20 million right now or I'm going to go live in Texas where I want to live. If the Cowboys go down or use it as leverage, you've got the leverage right now if you're Sean Payton. These teams are desperate. Broncos fans are desperate for a hero. Texans fans desperate for a hero both at quarterback and at coach. But for the Broncos, you're locked into the quarterback part of it. So you have to land this coach that's going to make things right. Didn't hit on this. On Nathaniel Hackett. It's a new ownership group they're looking to make us last year, and they seem to be willing to spend money, so we'll see what they come up with with that part of it. Another weird ownership group is the Carolina Panthers. I kind of forgot a little bit in the grand scheme of things that their job is open at this point. Steve Wilkes did a good job of writing the ship a bit and making the Panthers competitive down the stretch. Not as competitive as I would have liked them to have been if they really did give up a trade that would have netted them two first round picks for Brian Burns. And if they really did go for broke with not making some of the trades they could have made at the trade deadline. I can't fault ownership for wanting to win, necessarily, but I can fault them for not getting more capital than a player is probably worth that you're about to have to pay when your team isn't all that super close talent wise. DJ Moore is good and turned out to be better as the season went on once they got Baker Mayfield and his inability to throw deep out of there, and I like the way the line came together. Ikawanu definitely has potential, but you traded Christian McCaffrey, okay. And you didn't make the playoffs. You basically got a worst pick because of all that. And Sam Darnold was on a fifth year option. Are you going to do something with that? That doesn't seem like a good idea. He still makes really bad decisions. So you're in the woods in the quarterback position, and you're light years away from being in contention. Brian Burns may be all the way burnt out as a pass rusher by the time it's time for him to actually be able to rush the past or impress her situation. So, I don't know. Seemed like a weird decision. Then fire and rule was definitely the right decision, but now it's going to be on who they can bring in at the quarterback position and the coaching position. And that's going to be a tough sell, especially when this ownership group, it feels like it's a little bit more tumultuous tenuous, ready to blow at any given time, meddling all the things you don't want an ownership group to be. And in a market, no offense to Panthers fans, that isn't as big as some of the other markets. So it's going to be interesting to see who they're able to get into this job. What do they do at quarterback? Because they're not bereft of talent. They haven't had the same problems as some of these other teams. Just like the Colts, they haven't been able to figure it out at quarterback, and that's a problem for a bunch of teams, and that's why it's so scary to jettison someone like Derek Carr. Derek Carr is about to be on the market here. It's scary to go away from him, but at the same time, he just has this ceiling that you're going to hit up against when he's your guy, because he just doesn't have all the tricks that the elite guys have, and he isn't the elite decision maker that they are. And in the end, that ends up. Costing you when you have to pay him something comparable. So maybe you pay him $15 million, you get $25 million worth of extra players on your team, then maybe the equation makes sense. Maybe he can bust drive a team that can uplift him, but he can't uplift a team. And that's a big theme for a lot of the quarterbacks that are attached to these jobs that we're talking about here, including, like, the Colts. The Colts are in the same boat. They fired Frank Reich, and they haven't come out and fired Jeff Saturday or anything. But I got to think that that equation didn't work out, and that situation is going to correct itself. It's not like he showed something that would make us think that he might be some great coach in the making here. He's not some prodigy. He probably should start off as, like, an offensive line coach first. And this is always crazy. And I said, hey, it either gets you a better position to draft a quarterback, he got the number five pick, so it accomplished that, or he's a great coach, turned out to be the former, not the latter. So I got to think that job is out there as well. They might have the most talent out of a lot of these teams that are in this position, but they don't have their quarterback either. They're on the hook for some of Matt Ryan's money, but he looks to be pretty dead and gone at this point as a starter. Probably be a great backup and a great caddy for a young quarterback to help them along. I can't understand that. Having a veteran guy like that to build off of and to show a young guy how to be a professional quarterback in the NFL, I think that's extremely valuable. It's a question of does Matt Ryan want to play at this point in his career in that kind of role? Does he need the money? Not really, but some guys just want to play and want to be a part of the boys and want to earn as much money as possible with their playing career. And maybe Matt Ryan wants to move into a coaching thing. He probably made too much money to even want to deal with that. But ultimately, I think going into next season with him as your starter, as the Colts or really any other team that might have an opening might be a mistake, like you see him going to Shanahan or something like that. I don't see that being a part of what I would think would happen. So I guess it's really just speculation at this point anyway. But I just think it's an interesting conversation for these open jobs. One thing to wrap it up that I thought might happen was I thought the Saints might move on from Dennis Allen at this time. They're saying that they're going to go ahead and move forward with him they only have jamis on the roster. As far as quarterbacks go, I don't know that they bring back Andy Dalton after just some okay quarterback play, but extremely replacement level, mediocre quarterback play, and they're already somewhere between $65 to $45 million over the cap after a long, long scent of restructuring contracts and pushing contracts down the line. So he might be just a holdover situation while they kind of tacitly tank and get themselves right with the cap before getting a new guy at quarterback, getting a new guy at coach and then moving forward from there with a lava and everything else that they have because they have talent on defense and on offense. But I don't know, something about the whole situation doesn't sit right with me from keeping him to the whole cap situation, the quarterback situation, it's probably all going to be a little messy this next season. So why bring a new coach into that to figure things out? Well, because maybe he'd handle the situation better. Maybe you get him some experience and maybe you would get a better feel for which parts of this roster he would like to keep and which ones he would not. But maybe you don't want to saddle your coach with that kind of negative vibe for what seems like it'll be the next season for the Saints, because they were already kind of meddling, and they're going to get worse with cutting guys to get themselves under the cap, and then they're not going to be able to sign guys to replace those guys. So it's going to get worse before it can get better. You could always restructure it and kick it down the line some more, but why do that for a roster that is where it's at and for a record for what your team was at this time, injuries, whatever. Every team can point to that. And I just think this roster needs an overhaul. The organization needs an overhaul and they're going to trade Sean Payton probably and get that overhaul with a little bit more capital, but they owe their pick to Philadelphia because of the Alave trade. So it's going to be hard to get your guy at quarterback this season. So why subject your new coach to that, I guess. But I would have liked to have seen them gone in a different direction because I wouldn't really inspire much except for New Orleans did play good on defense, I got to give him that. So I guess that saved his job in the end, is that the defense was the strength of this team and he was responsible, I got to imagine, in a big way for that. So there it is. That's what I've got for this. It's been a great season. I'm still going to continue to podcast throughout the playoffs and whatnot, but been a weird day to try and get out there and watch a bunch of individual games even though I've watched a couple and then podcast about it. So I appreciate you sticking with me with this Black Monday podcast. It kind of feels like a little bit of a retread after we talked about some of these coaches firings that we'd already had, but it wasn't as black on Monday as it typically is. Guessing we'll see some more jobs open up, but this is what we've got so far. If you've gotten to this point and haven't done so, download the podcast. Let me know that you're here and listening like and subscribe on all the other platforms that have it set up that way. Look for more videos this week. Definitely got some highlights picked out for the shorts and for everything else video wise, so look forward to that and have a great rest of your day.