Atlanta is supposed to hire Jacksonville DC Mike Smith as their new head coach, not waiting for Giants DC Steve Spagnuolo. My previous post answers its’ own question, with Jim Fassel being the Washington “Mystery Candidate Who is Not Russ Grimm” and presumed next head coach.
Smith has six years as a coordinator and the Jaguar defenses have quietly been very good, so the Falcons don’t appear to have made a mistake here. I can’t say I feel the same for my Redskins. Fassel has some coaching talents; getting that 2000 Giants team to the Super Bowl was one of the great overachievements by in recent NFL history. Likewise, that he got some good games out of Kerry Collins and Danny Kanell is impressive.
Still, I found his Giants teams to be unimpressive and he (kind of like Gibbs 2.0) has a roughly .500 winning record. Fassel, like Marvin Lewis and Brian Billick is a genius coordinator who arrives at a HC position and his teams do the exact opposite of what made him a genius. Frankly, I found the Arizona teams he OC’ed to be a bit overhyped, heavily dependent on throwing 800 screen passes to Larry Centers, with the occasional bomb to Rob Moore. In the Jersey swamps, Fassel ended up running a weak version of the strangleball that Bill Belichik used to run in Cleveland. I won’t, however, hold Fassel’s recent failure as OC in Baltimore against him. Kyle Boller is not a NFL QB and is missing out on a fine career as a H-back.
In returning news, Mike Holmgren has decided to lame duck himself in Seattle and finish out this upcoming final year of his contract and then quit. Jim Mora, Jr. is not publicly named successor. My B-team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, gave Jon Gruden a three-year extension as HC, which I find reasonable. I just hope he figures out who the Bucs QB of the future is this year.
