Jeffro Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/joe_posnanski/09/29/mangini/index.html?bcnn=yes I haven't come up with a new word for a while, so I want to throw one out there .. the word is "fanbole" (pronounced FAN-buh-lee). The definition is simply: A sweeping, exaggerated and often ludicrous sports statement that a fan makes when under the influence of an emotional sports event (and perhaps various substances). If you see a shortstop make a diving stop and throw out a runner, you might say: "That's the greatest play I have ever seen." That would be a fanbole. It might be the greatest play you ever saw, but it probably isn't. In that moment, it feels that way. If you see the Kansas City Chiefs give up against the Philadelphia Eagles like they did on Sunday, you might say: "This is the worst football team in the history of the NFL." That too would be a fanbole. The Chiefs are terrible, but they are probably not the worst team in NFL history. Probably not. You call a player the worst ever, a coach a genius, a general manager an idiot -- these are probably fanboles. But one of the fun things about a fanbole is that sometimes, after uttering one (or tweeting one), you will find that after you think about it for a while -- hey, you know what? -- you ACTUALLY BELIEVE IT. I recently tweeted this: "Another one of those fan maybe-overstatement-maybe-not thoughts: Eric Mangini was the worst NFL head coach hire in 25 years." Now, I'll admit -- that's pure fanbole. I cannot stand what Eric Mangini has done to the Browns, the team of my childhood. I cannot stand the lack of respect he has shown for the team's history, the Mickey Mouse game he plays with quarterbacks, the amazing knack he has for getting his players to not play hard for him or the stupid fines he hands out like he's Principal Vernon from "The Breakfast Club." Don't mess with the bull, young man, you'll get the horns. But here's the thing: Based on the Twitter responses I've seen ... I'm actually starting to believe that I'm right. I'm actually starting to believe that Mangini really was the worst head coach hire in 25 years. The responses have mostly been to list other coaches who were worse hires than Mangini. But you know what? I don't think any of those hires WERE worse than Mangini. Remember: 1. Mangini had just been fired in New York, where he had done a terrible job. He had a losing record. His team had collapsed down the stretch, he had alienated his players, he was a pain in the neck to deal with. Point is: He'd already PROVEN how much damage he could do as a coach. 2. He came right out of the school of Bill Belichick ... and that didn't work THE FIRST TIME in Cleveland. It seems to me that Cleveland is a working-class town and Browns fans want a working-class coach -- not some pompous know-it-all who doesn't feel like he should have to explain to the commoners what he's doing. 3. What had he ever done to convince anyone he could be a head coach in the first place? Why, because he was a defensive coordinator for the Patriots under Belichick for one season? The Browns had JUST HIRED Romeo Crennel, who was ALSO defensive coordinator under Belichick. Attention Cleveland Browns owners, here's a good hint: BILL BELICHICK IS HIS OWN DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR. 4. Basically the first thing Mangini did -- first thing -- was have them tear down a mural of great Cleveland Browns players on the wall in the Browns offices. Now, there are differing opinions about what really happened, whose fault it really was, does it all matter, etc. You know what? The Cleveland Browns have never been to a Super Bowl. Never. Not one. But Browns fans still have a whole lot of pride. Browns fans grow up on a glorious history. If you allow something stupid like that to happen on your watch ... just a horrendous hire. Now, here is a partial list of hires Twitter people think were worse than Mangini ... and why I disagree*: *And remember: I'm talking about WORST HIRES, not necessarily WORST COACHES. Sometimes what seems like a good hire can turn disastrous. And sometimes what seems like a bad hire turns out well. We're talking specifically about the decision to hire Mangini here. • Art Shell (Oakland): Admittedly this was a dreadful hire ... but there's no way it comes close to Mangini. Shell is a Raiders legend, a Hall of Famer player, who was also the first African American coach in the NFL (well, second, going back to Fritz Pollard in the 1920s). He actually coached the Raiders to three playoff appearances in five years in his first stint. True, when the Raiders hired him the second time he clearly had lost his coaching marbles ... but there's no way that's as bad a hire as Mangini. • Jim Zorn (Washington): Well ... maybe. The whole process of hiring Zorn was nutty, and it's pretty clear he was overmatched. But Jim Zorn was a fine and fun quarterback, so at least he had that going for him. Plus he had not just been fired as a head coach. • Bobby Petrino (Atlanta): This turned out to be a disastrous hire ... but I don't think it was considered bad at the time. Petrino was one of the hottest names in college football. • Raheem Morris (Tampa Bay): Whew, yeah, that's a bad hire. But, again, at least he was hired from within and he had not just been canned. • Steve Spurrier (Washington): No way. Not even close. Spurrier turned out to be a horrible NFL coach, but the hire itself was exciting and had every chance to work. NFL teams were falling over each other to hire Spurrier as a head coach. This isn't even in the same ballpark as the Mangini hire. • Tom Cable (Oakland): The Raiders should have their own category when it comes to terrible NFL coach hires. But even this hire to me is not as insulting and infuriating as the Mangini hire. I mean, everyone in New York -- players, fans, media members, everyone -- DESPISED Mangini. I mean, I'm still wondering who in New York Mangini could have put down as a reference. • Rich Kotite (New York Jets): Well, this hire has many of the same problems as the Mangini hire -- Kotite had just been canned, nobody liked him, and so on. But at least Kotite was a New Yorker who had played in the NFL and he had a winning record as a coach. This WAS bad ... I think Mangini was worse. • Scott Linehan (St. Louis): Bad hire, of course, but he was a longtime assistant coach who had success in various other places. He'd coached in high school, in college, he was offensive coordinator for the Vikings and Dolphins. I don't think the hire itself compares to Mangini, though I certainly feel the Rams fans pain of having to endure two and a half seasons with him as coach. • Marty Mornhinweg (Detroit): He was considered a bright young coordinator when the Lions hired him -- and he's offensive coordinator for the Eagles now. Plus, he lasted two years with the Lions (long enough to elect to kick off in overtime). I really don't think Mangini will last the season. ugh... We just got TWO honorable mentions in a debate about the worst coaching hire of all time.. /wrist Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TD_washingtonredskins Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 Yeah, but at least someone is accurately portraying the mood that surrounded the Spurrier hiring. I still stand by my pass I give Snyder for that move. I didn't agree with firing Marty, but I certainly was excited (as were most experts) about the prospect of what Spurrier could bring to the NFL. It blew up in our face, but the decision itself was sound at the time. And, in hindsight, that means that the only two very bad decisions Snyder's made as owner here (coaching-wise) were: 1) Firing Marty 2) Hiring Zorn I would also mention firing Turner during the season instead of waiting 3 more weeks...but the guy was going to be fired either way so it didn't really change of the course of anything that occurred. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lombardi's_kid_brother Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 I've never blamed Snyder for hiring Spurrier. It made sense at the time. How was he supposed to know that Spurrier really didn't want to work hard? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rocky21 Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 Is is a good sign that 2 of Snyder's hiring decisions make the all time bad list? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scruffylookin Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 Wow I did not know Mangini tore down the former Browns pics from the facilities. I know what he was going for and all but still, way to piss off your fanbase right from the start. As for the Skins mentions. The Zorn hire isn't unprecedented, I think Andy Reid jumped from QB coach to Head Coach and there may have been a couple of others. What kills the perception of Zorn is the farce of a coaching search that preceeded his hiring. Spurrier in and of himself was a good hire. I remember reading/hearing that Ron Wolfe loved Spurrier and wanted him. What doomed the Ole Ball Coach was the fact that the plug was pulled on Marty so quickly just to get him and then of course his work ethic was just not to NFL standards. One defense to the Ole Ball Coach though would be that he was promised that he would have a top flight GM and have "a setup like Joe Gibbs had" with an owner who spent money and a top personnel guy getting the players. Instead, he got Vinny. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monte51Coleman Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 With Spurrier and Zorn the writer is simply playing the result which is both easy to do and intellectually lazy. With Mangini, Cleveland already had all the evidence needed not to hire him. It would be like Snyder hiring Cam Cameron. (Not to give him any ideas.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SIXX99 Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 Is is a good sign that 2 of Snyder's hiring decisions make the all time bad list? What do you think? :doh: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JdoubleU Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 Hold on there, Sparky! The Giants and Ray Handley? Arizona's gotta have a couple. Rich Kotite got hired by Philly & the Jets (double whammy!). That team in Texas with Dave Campo. Oh, everybody has their dark moments..except the Steelers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
21forlyfe Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 Give Spurrier this team instead of the team he had then i would judge Spurrier..Ramsey as a starting NFL QB was a joke..LMfao Trun Canidate or CP....Rod Gardener,Mccants,Green,Thompson..lmfao Moss,Cooley,Davis,Marko,DT,ARE,Kelly...No defense what so ever Edwards as a DC or Greg Will as a DC..to be honset we wanted Spurrier to turn water into wine Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farbod21 Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 Im really tired of people kissing Marty Crappenheimer's ass on this site. He has never won anything in 4234234239420349 years of coaching. He alienates veteran players like no other coach, he's released players like Junior Seau and treated our own Darrell Green like dog****! He runs the most boring offense known to man He's a complete ******* Ive gotten really tired of people thinking we fired jesus. I was pissed when we hired him, but relieved when he was fired. Just because he is better than Zorn or Spurrier doesnt make him a good coach. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bikie Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 spurrier was not a match for the NFL, by his own players' accounts, I've never heard of a more apethetic, incompatable coach for the pros but the hire was understandable due to the demand he was in (I wouldn't expect our FO to be acute enough to weed out a coach despite public demand for him)... zorn's hire bothers me because everything was ass backwards.. we hired the staff around him first (which he was a part of), which in turn alienated the other candidates we wanted before zorn... zorn wasn't so much a process of elimination as much as he was a process of incompetency by vinny and danny... zorn may not be among the worst hires, but the process in hiring him has to top the list... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
21forlyfe Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 Im really tired of people kissing Marty Crappenheimer's ass on this site. He has never won anything in 4234234239420349 years of coaching. He alienates veteran players like no other coach, he's released players like Junior Seau and treated our own Darrell Green like dog****! He runs the most boring offense known to man He's a complete ******* Ive gotten really tired of people thinking we fired jesus. I was pissed when we hired him, but relieved when he was fired. Just because he is better than Zorn or Spurrier doesnt make him a good coach. Marty was ,and is a grabage coach...If he ever gets to the SB i will be shocked..His teams normally get knocked out of the first round,if they even make the playoffs..Playoffs? don't talk about PLAYOFFS..JM:laugh: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DixieFlatline Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 im really tired of people kissing marty crappenheimer's ass on this site. He has never won anything in 4234234239420349 years of coaching. He alienates veteran players like no other coach, he's released players like junior seau and treated our own darrell green like dog****! He runs the most boring offense known to man he's a complete ******* ive gotten really tired of people thinking we fired jesus. I was pissed when we hired him, but relieved when he was fired. Just because he is better than zorn or spurrier doesnt make him a good coach. +1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TD_washingtonredskins Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 Marty gets to the playoffs though...that has to count for something. If you don't think Marty can coach, look at what Turner has done with Marty's 14-2 team. In the span of 2 years, they were sitting at 8-8. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Digger Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 well at least snyder isn't on the 'top 10 worst GM hires of all time' list because .... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Full Monty Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 Marty gets to the playoffs though...that has to count for something. If you don't think Marty can coach, look at what Turner has done with Marty's 14-2 team. In the span of 2 years, they were sitting at 8-8. Agree 100%. It wasn't pretty, but we were a physical team that scared people on both sides of the ball in the last half of the season in 2001. And despite being knocked out of the playoff hunt with two games to go, the team didn't pack it in *cough*cough* (2008) but we destroyed the Saints and beat the Cardinals in the rain to close the season. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ouvan59 Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 Give Spurrier this team instead of the team he had then i would judge Spurrier..Ramsey as a starting NFL QB was a joke..LMfaoTrun Canidate or CP....Rod Gardener,Mccants,Green,Thompson..lmfao Moss,Cooley,Davis,Marko,DT,ARE,Kelly...No defense what so ever Edwards as a DC or Greg Will as a DC..to be honset we wanted Spurrier to turn water into wine Ummmm, the players that we had were because of Spurrier. He is the one that booted Stephen Davis for Canidate. He is the one that went out and gathered every bum Gator he could find. He is the one that put together an offensive gameplan that made Chris Samuels and Jon Jansen look like Shar Pourdanesh. The issues the Skins had with personnel under Spurrier were of his doing. He wasn't the victim. Spurrier's ultimate undoing however was his absolute refusal to adapt his offense to the pro game no matter how much evidence was provided that his protection schemes just didn't work at this level. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chicken Fried Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 Yeah, but at least someone is accurately portraying the mood that surrounded the Spurrier hiring. I still stand by my pass I give Snyder for that move. I didn't agree with firing Marty, but I certainly was excited (as were most experts) about the prospect of what Spurrier could bring to the NFL. It blew up in our face, but the decision itself was sound at the time. And, in hindsight, that means that the only two very bad decisions Snyder's made as owner here (coaching-wise) were: 1) Firing Marty 2) Hiring Zorn I would also mention firing Turner during the season instead of waiting 3 more weeks...but the guy was going to be fired either way so it didn't really change of the course of anything that occurred. Snyder has made his fair share of blunders where you knew at the time his choice would backfire. The majority of his decision, however, seem like good moves at the time, but then they fail. People use hindsight too much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lombardi's_kid_brother Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 zorn may not be among the worst hires, but the process in hiring him has to top the list... No one outside of Oakland could have come up with a more bizarre hiring search. Hiring Zorn straight out of the box would have been odd, but you could make a defense for it. Hiring the staff and then essentially promoting a member of the staff was just weird. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lombardi's_kid_brother Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 Snyder has made his fair share of blunders where you knew at the time his choice would backfire. The majority of his decision, however, seem like good moves at the time, but then they fail. People use hindsight too much. In fairness, I'm not sure anyone has ever crticized a Snyder coaching hire. It's usually the firings that get people upset. Hiring Marty made sense. Hiring Spurrier made perfect sense. Hiring Gibbs was a coup of coups. Hiring Zorn was odd but defensible - the process was strange. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TimmySmith Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 1. Marty quit. 2. Bobby Petrino is now and forever the worst coaching hire ever. But now look where Atlanta is, so at least they recovered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheLongshot Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 Ummmm, the players that we had were because of Spurrier. He is the one that booted Stephen Davis for Canidate. He is the one that went out and gathered every bum Gator he could find. He is the one that put together an offensive gameplan that made Chris Samuels and Jon Jansen look like Shar Pourdanesh. The issues the Skins had with personnel under Spurrier were of his doing. He wasn't the victim. Spurrier's ultimate undoing however was his absolute refusal to adapt his offense to the pro game no matter how much evidence was provided that his protection schemes just didn't work at this level. Well, I don't think Vinny gets off the hook for all of it. I mean, signing Rob Johnson to back up Ramsey? He didn't remotely look like the kind of QB that would fit Spurrier's offense and soon was off the roster completely. As much as they didn't want Woeful back on the team so that Spurrier wouldn't be tempted to switch out Ramsey at the first opportunity, it was still a poor choice. As for the odd coaching hire of Zorn, blame Gibbs for that one. Normally, a team knows well in advance that they are going to need to replace a coach. Gibbs retiring was a shock and the FO wasn't as prepared as they'd normally be. Also, it didn't help that he retired after the first round of the playoffs, which kept some coaches off the board for a while. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
21forlyfe Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 Ummmm, the players that we had were because of Spurrier. He is the one that booted Stephen Davis for Canidate. He is the one that went out and gathered every bum Gator he could find. He is the one that put together an offensive gameplan that made Chris Samuels and Jon Jansen look like Shar Pourdanesh. The issues the Skins had with personnel under Spurrier were of his doing. He wasn't the victim. Spurrier's ultimate undoing however was his absolute refusal to adapt his offense to the pro game no matter how much evidence was provided that his protection schemes just didn't work at this level. ...You think Spurrier didnt want Portis? He did get rid of steven Davis was and it was a good move too..Steven Davis went on to have a good year on a Good team then he didn't play any more...My Point Is if Spurrier Has THIS TEAM..Basically if Spurrier was Jim Zorn and walked onto this team we would have been better than this...Ramsey was the worst QB in NFL HISTORY:doh::doh: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taylor 36 Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 Yeah, but at least someone is accurately portraying the mood that surrounded the Spurrier hiring. I still stand by my pass I give Snyder for that move. I didn't agree with firing Marty, but I certainly was excited (as were most experts) about the prospect of what Spurrier could bring to the NFL. It blew up in our face, but the decision itself was sound at the time. And, in hindsight, that means that the only two very bad decisions Snyder's made as owner here (coaching-wise) were: 1) Firing Marty 2) Hiring Zorn I would also mention firing Turner during the season instead of waiting 3 more weeks...but the guy was going to be fired either way so it didn't really change of the course of anything that occurred. +1 I agree with everything you said. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Destino Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 And, in hindsight, that means that the only two very bad decisions Snyder's made as owner here (coaching-wise) were: 1) Firing Marty 2) Hiring Zorn I would also mention firing Turner during the season instead of waiting 3 more weeks...but the guy was going to be fired either way so it didn't really change of the course of anything that occurred. Two "all time" bad decisions in 10 years is amazingly bad. Most owners only get one "all time" bad decisions in their entire time as owners. Actually now that I think about it most owners make none of those mistakes. Few make one. Snyder has done it twice in 10 years. "only two" like it's a small thing... HILARIOUS! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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