"Story" about Jim Fassel and 'Skins HC job from Pro Football Talk.......

[Monte51Coleman]

Hey Jim- We still need a receivers coach!

[Art]

I'm sure Bugel and Gibbs talked about the team after Spurrier wanted consultants to come in and look at things to give him ideas. I'm positive Bugel and Gibbs compared notes as to what Bugel saw and perhaps that started planting the seed for Gibbs to come back.

But, unless we think Gibbs is a liar, we are pretty confident he didn't get with Snyder until after Spurrier was terminated on New Year's Eve. I don't think Gibbs is a liar.

[Atlanta Skins Fan]

Originally posted by Art

But, unless we think Gibbs is a liar, we are pretty confident he didn't get with Snyder until after Spurrier was terminated on New Year's Eve. I don't think Gibbs is a liar.

I think you're not giving Snyder and Gibbs enough credit to anticipate this problem, Art.

I actually don't think that Snyder and Gibbs met face to face about the job prior to January 1st. They didn't have to do so in order to explore the option of Gibbs coming back, and not doing so gave them a plausible deniability firewall -- saying that they had never met face to face about the job during the season.

It also greatly reduced the chances of a midseason leak. Both Snyder and Gibbs are high-profile guys, and their movements are easy to spot. Anybody with two brain cells to rub together, even an airport worker, seeing the two together would figure out the significance of the meeting. It was too damn risky.

So Gibbs didn't have to lie. However, he did have to stammer repeatedly "I can't recall" during the press conference about how long he'd been in discussions about the position. Either Gibbs is getting senile, or he was just avoiding lying.

My feeling is, Gibbs isn't getting senile.

[GB81]

If this hasn't been posted already, Karl Swanson responded to the rumor:

POSTED 8:11 a.m. EST, January 23, 2004

FASSEL STORY SPARKS FIRESTORM

Okay, maybe it wasn't a firestorm. But the headline caught your attention, didn't it?

Anyway, our story from Thursday morning regarding rumors that former Giants coach Jim Fassel received -- and passed on -- an offer to coach the Redskins for a salary of $4 million a year has generated a buzz in several circles, and has generated a direct response from the team that Fassel supposedly dissed.

Karl Swanson, the Redskins' Senior Vice President, contacted us by e-mail on Thursday to respond.

"Someone, for some reason, is feeding you misinformation," Swanson said. "The Redskins made no offer to Fassel, or any candidate other than Coach Gibbs. No terms were discussed, no salaries suggested. Coach Gibbs was the only candidate with whom the Redskins discussed a contract and made a financial offer."

For starters, we'd like to state for the record that we don't believe anyone anymore, with the exception of our expanding nucleus of regular sources sprinkled secretly throughout the league.

We're not suggesting that the NFL is populated with pathological liars. Instead, we recognize that bad information deliberately is disseminated by the various NFL franchises on a regular basis for specific strategic reasons.

After all, many aspects of football game-planning are rooted in deception. Play-action passes, zone blitzes, draw plays, fake punts. When it comes to matters of "X" and "O," games often turn on the ability of one team to dupe another into reacting a certain way to a certain play.

The lies naturally extend beyond the playing field. No team wears on its sleeve its intentions for draft day, lest it be leapfrogged by another team in the pecking order. Likewise, denials regularly are issued regarding rumors such as whom will be cut, whom will be signed, and/or whom will be hired to be the next coach and/or G.M.

On Wednesday, for example, Count Chocula emerged from his crypt long enough to deny that Sean Payton ever had been offered the Raiders' head-coaching job, even though it widely had been reported that Payton had secured the gig.

So was Al Davis pulling a Tommy Flanagan for nothing? Hardly. At a time when the Raiders are scrambling to hire a coach, admitting that the arguably underqualified Payton told them to get bent does little to advance that whole "Commitment to Excellence" mantra.

Why, then, should anyone believe that the 'Skins didn't make an offer to Fassel? At the time, Fassel inexplicably was one of the hottest available head-coaching candidates, and he clearly had generated a better track record than Steve Spurrier, whom the 'Skins had hired in 2002 at a rate $5 million per year.

From Dan Snyder's perspective, he was getting a good deal. He pays Fassel $1 million per year less, and he gets a coach who could be a million times more effective than his predecessor (an exaggeration, yes, but it fit with the sentence).

Could it be that Snyder and the Redskins now hope to perpetuate the notion that Joe Gibbs wasn't the team's second choice, that Snyder didn't swing and miss on a substandard candidate before turning to the guy whose return to D.C. has absolved nearly all of Snyder's sins in the eyes of the team's fan base?

Swanson's denial of the offer to Fassel prompted us to do a little research on the issue. And we found a story from the Washington Times that contained the following:

"Circulating through league circles was word of a hefty offer the Redskins have made to Fassel, just short of $4.5 million a year," the Times wrote. "However, both a Redskins source and agent Steve Rosner denied any sort of offer had been made. 'Obviously, Jim is still very interested in the head coaching position of the Washington Redskins,' Rosner said. 'But as of the moment, we have not received an offer from them.'"

In essence, the Times was reporting on the same rumors that have migrated onto our grapevine. Obviously, if the Redskins had made such an offer to Fassel and Fassel isn't the coach, then either he rejected the offer or the offer was pulled.

Either way, Fassel blew his chance to get paid very well.

Our story also made its way onto the desk of Fox Sports NFL info guy John Czarnecki, who wrote on Thursday afternoon: "There's a nonsensical report out that Jim Fassel rejected a $4 million annual offer from Daniel Snyder to coach the Redskins. It didn't happen."

In the next breath, however, Czarnecki unwittingly validates one of our recent reports, which many folks likewise had dropped into the caa-caa category: "What has happened in Washington, though, is that former coach Steve Spurrier received somewhere between $4-$5 million to walk away from the job."

Our report that Spurrier received a secret buyout, by the way, came from the same source who told us that Fassel had received, and passed on, a $4 million offer.

http://www.profootballtalk.com/rumormill.htm

[TankRizzo]

wow...2 articles in a row from PFT without him calling Snyder Snyderbrenner.

[Art]

Tough day to be an accountant it seems.

[SonnyJ]

What a standard of proof!

"Well, no one can prove that an offer wasn't made. And the WT printed a similar rumor."

Some corroborration. That is the basis of proof that this guy offers.

[Tommy-the-Greek]

Al Davis as Count Chokula is funny as hell though....:rotflmao:

[GB81]

Just another side note--I believe that IF the Skins had offered the job to Fassel, they would have been in violation of the league's minority hiring policy. I believe he was the first interviewee.